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Chapter Three

Monday morning, three days after getting run down, Jack’s skull still pounded. Beneath the fiberglass cast, his busted wrist throbbed even worse than after the doctor had set the bone. Sixteen years as an FBI agent and no injuries. Until now.

He fumbled with his good hand to flip the cap off a bottle of aspirin. The cap sailed end over end before splashing into the saltwater tropical fish tank on his credenza. His two clownfish— John Wayne and Annie Oakley —darted away as the cap sank to the bottom of the tank.

“ Sorry , guys.” The brightly colored orange-and-white fish were the highlight of his mornings, something beautiful to look at when his days went to shit. Like today.

John Wayne rose slowly to nibble on a blade of algae-tipped seaweed. Over the last week, JW had become listless, swimming around the tank with sluggish swishes of his fins. A pang of remorse hit Jack in the gut. He recognized the signs. The old fish had reached the end of his lifespan.

He let out a long exhale. Just like people, fish came and went.

Jack flipped the lid back over the tank and shook his head in disgust. He’d be a one-armed man for the next five weeks and one sorry excuse for an FBI agent. If Smitty and the paramedics hadn’t found him knocked out cold behind Rocco’s building, he’d have frozen to death.

As Jack’s backup, Smitty had been parked a block away. Being in hot foot pursuit, Jack hadn’t had the opportunity to reach out to him. Only the arrival of a patrol car and an ambulance had alerted Smitty something had gone down.

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. He had nothing to go on.

There were no cameras in the alley where he’d been hit.

Somehow , his assailant had avoided getting picked up by any other city cameras during that timeframe.

He’d even checked with the emergency communications center, hoping to ID a witness from the 911 call.

Turned out the anonymous call that had come in reporting a man lying on the side of the road was made from an untraceable burner phone, and no one had stuck around.

Leaving him wondering if the caller had been the same person who’d run him down.

Or the woman he’d been chasing.

A spasm of pain shot through his injured wrist. He jerked his arm, whacking it against his coffee mug. Mud -brown droplets spattered on his white dress shirt and gray slacks.

He gritted his teeth, though what he really wanted to do was heave the mug and its remaining contents against the wall. This wasn’t his day. Or his week.

Truth was, the last six months had been the worst of his life.

That interfering little cat burglar had only added to his frustration.

Whoever she was, she’d made a serious mistake wrecking his op.

If it weren’t for her, he’d have had that bug planted and been long gone before Rocco had shown up.

As it was, there was no bug, and he was totally screwed.

Stopping the Falzones before they become a major player in the modern-day world of organized crime meant everything to him, and that’s where his listening devices came in.

The Mafia was more insidious than ever and spreading like a cancer.

Just because they didn’t make headlines anymore didn’t mean they were gone. They were reorganizing.

In the fifteen years he’d worked on the FBI’s Organized Crime Strike Force Team , he’d witnessed the mob growing smarter and more sophisticated.

Technology was transforming every day and becoming increasingly complex.

So was organized crime. Where once the Mafia’s bread and butter came from extortion, heroin trafficking, and waste management, now the almighty internet provided a virtually covert way for them to make millions off scam cyber-crime businesses.

Although , when it came to modern innovation, the Falzones were running behind.

The phone on his desk rang, interrupting his thoughts and hammering into his skull. He grabbed the receiver. “ Gates ,” he snapped.

“ Is this Special Agent Jack Gates ?” a female voice with a heavy Italian accent asked.

“ Yes .” He narrowed his eyes. Something about the voice was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. “ Who’s this?”

Click .

He replaced the receiver, then wolfed three aspirin and washed them down with a swig of rotgut coffee that only added to his sucky mood.

With a groan, he rose to retrieve the bottle cap from the fish tank.

He plunged his good hand into the water to scoop out the cap.

Again , his clownfish bolted in opposite directions.

Jack’s partner sauntered into the office and headed for a chair opposite Jack’s desk.

The chair creaked as he sat. The buzz cut Smitty had gotten last week made him look like a blond, blue-eyed—albeit very out of shape—marine.

His lime-green dress shirt stretched across his broadening gut to the point where two buttons defied the laws of physics by not popping off.

Smitty’s customary Monday morning aftershave—eau-de-doughnut—wafted across the desk.

Smitty swiped at the powdered sugar on his orange-and-purple tie, flinging some onto Jack’s files. “ Still pissed, I see.”

“ Getting run over will do that to a guy.” He glanced at the cast covering half his right hand and extending up his forearm.

“ Getting outrun by a woman must sting too.”

When Smitty snickered, Jack drew his brows together and instantly regretted it. The movement was enough to tug on the strips of tape an ER doctor had used to close the cut on his scalp. “ Did you get the memo?” he bit out. “ I’m on the disabled list.”

“ I got it.” Smitty leaned forward, wearing a more serious expression. “ You know Morrison had no choice.”

He gave a slight nod. “ Yeah , although I didn’t think he’d assign you to another squad.

I can easily get back into Rocco’s to finish the job there, but I don’t have a key to the deadbolt on Psycho Fiori’s front door.

” Between Rocco’s apartment and Psycho Fiori’s house, he’d have two of Franco Falzone’s top soldiers covered.

“ Even if I could climb a twenty-foot rope to get onto the balcony, which I can’t with a busted wrist, I’m no locksmith, and all our tech teams are still tied up on the west coast. How does Morrison expect me to get that second bug planted before the court order expires? ”

“ I don’t,” Special Agent in Charge Michael Morrison boomed from the doorway. He strode into Jack’s office and planted his beefy hands on the desk. “ You’re on light duty until the doc clears you. You’ll have to get an extension on your Title III orders for those bugs.”

“ I can’t.” He reached for the manila folder in his in-box and smacked it on the desk.

“ This was the last extension Judge Ortiz would sign. Said our probable cause was getting stale.” Jim Spencer had given his life to get that PC and Jack would be damned before letting an agent’s ultimate sacrifice be meaningless.

“ If I don’t get these devices planted within the next four days, this case is dead. ”

“ Better the case dead, than you.” Morrison straightened to his full six feet and crossed his arms over his massive chest. Glare from the overhead lights glinted off his balding head. “ I won’t risk losing another agent just to nail Franco and Tino Falzone .”

The mention of that trigger-happy piece of garbage had Jack grinding his teeth.

“ What happened to Jim Spencer wasn’t your fault.”

“ The hell it wasn’t.” Renewed guilt ripped through him as it had every day for the last six months.

Since he identified Jim’s bullet-riddled body in a Pennsylvania cornfield.

His gut told him Tino had personally done the hit, with or without Franco’s blessing.

“ He was too young, too inexperienced, and I put him in anyway.”

“ He was good,” Smitty said. “ That’s why you picked him.”

Jack stared at the file on his desk, not really seeing it.

No matter how many times he heard that he hadn’t been responsible, and that he’d done everything by the book, he’d never forgive himself for Jim’s death.

Worse , it reminded him of someone else he’d once been responsible for.

A cooperator he’d wired up to gather evidence against the Falzones .

That was nearly fifteen years ago, but he’d never forgotten the way that bookie’s face had looked when the body was discovered behind the old Meadowlands Arena .

Gunshots to the man’s head had all but obliterated any identifying features.

Morrison held up his hand to stop Jack from objecting further.

“ Agent Spencer had the requisite five years’ experience as a field agent.

He aced every practical problem and scenario Quantico’s undercover school could throw at him.

The board reviewed his qualifications and blessed him as a UC operative. ”

Jack dragged his hand down his face. That might be enough to mollify some agents.

Not him. He’d failed Spencer and could never make it up to him.

“ I should have waited for Mark Simmons to get freed up on that other case. He had more experience.” But Jack had been impatient, too eager to get an undercover inside the Falzone organization before the secret Mafia Commission meeting took place.

Jim Spencer’s murder had to be avenged, and it was his responsibility to do it. It was a matter of honor among agents, and the only thing that mattered in his life right now.

He looked at the manila folder containing the soon-to-expire court orders, then at the calendar blotter on the desk. Midnight Thursday . The deadline was approaching fast.

“ Don’t even think it.” Morrison’s baritone cut through Jack’s haze of revenge. “ You’re a senior agent in this office. You and your brothers are the best I’ve got on the Strike Force teams. No offense, Smitty .”

Smitty shrugged. “ None taken.”