Page 49 of Sticks and Stones (FBI Romance/Thriller #65)

Unfortunately for them, they were going to have to dig into it and find out.

“I just hope the CIA isn’t involved,” Greyson said.

Corbin glanced over.

“They can’t work on US soil.”

They all started laughing.

Why?

They knew better.

“Oh, you believing that is funny,” Greyson said. “And a little na?ve, Baby Citizen,” he said, teasing him with a play on how they busted him about being a baby detective. “The government breaks the rules all of the time.”

Yeah, Corbin was realizing that he was a whole lot of na?ve. If anything, he learned that the hard way.

“So what are you guys doing tonight?” Corbin asked, knowing they were heading out.

Gene put the rest of Ethan’s burger down and chewed before speaking.

“We could tell you, but then we’d have to kill you,” he joked.

Corbin shrugged.

“I’m pretty hard to kill, apparently,” he admitted. “I’ll take my chances. You can trust me.”

Yeah, they could.

“My gut says Gabe wants the bikers who transported the drugs and mules. I know how he thinks, and he’ll try to get them,” Gene admitted.

Neither of the other two Feds said anything because they tended to agree.

“To interview?” Corbin asked.

They.

All.

Laughed.

Oh, someone was all kinds of funny tonight that he thought this would play out like that.

Corbin would take that as a no.

“Uh, if not to interview them, then what?” he asked. “What are they going to do?”

Greyson was in the military, so he shared.

“If the CIA gets wind of this from Gabe, which they likely have since this was supposed to be handled in Colombia, they’ll interrogate them at Guantanamo,” he admitted.

“If they are responsible for drug smuggling or helping a smuggler, they’ll get it out of them.

This is more a pickup mission,” he admitted.

If Gabe wanted him to play alibi for the men, what Ethan and Gene were going to do was going to be dirty.

He’d bet on it.

Corbin was pretty sure that wasn’t legal.

“With warrants?” he asked.

Oh, wasn’t the newbie all shiny like a newly minted penny?

“Yeah, Corbin, with warrants,” Gene said, knowing there wouldn’t be a single, solitary warrant to be found. If the newbie couldn’t figure that out, he wasn’t saying it out loud.

“Really?” he asked.

Ethan laughed.

“No. They’ll call them terrorists and lock them away until they talk. No one will see them unless they give up some of the good information.”

Greyson interjected.

“Maybe, or they’ll drop them in a grave somewhere in a foreign country, so no one finds them.”

Corbin looked horrified.

That’s when Gene shut that down. Someone needed to put that sympathy away for a bunch of rapists. Justice came in many shades of gray.

Not just black and white.

As soon as he learned that, he’d have a better chance at survival.

“Corby, remember how I said I was going to teach you the rules to stay safe and that I’d skipped a few but would get back to them?”

He nodded.

“Rule three. Always assume the government is just as guilty of every crime they are trying to shut down.”

Yeah, that sounded about right.

“Make sure you write the rules down,” Ethan said. “They’ll save your ass when you’re dealing with most situations.”

Greyson agreed there.

“So, I’m betting we’re the pick-up team,” Gene said. “My friend, who is also an agent, played reindeer games in Colombia. These drugs are bad. We have to do what we have to do so an out-of-control despot and a rape drug don’t hit the streets.”

Amen to that.

Then, something occurred to Ethan.

“I’m going to ask you a question, Corbin, and I need an honest answer. All of us here are your family, and we wouldn’t make you relive it if we didn’t have to.”

He tensed.

“What?” he asked.

Moving to sit next to Corbin, Gene picked up his hand and held it in his, as his partner tried to be delicate. They knew he’d been through it, but Corbin didn’t say what had happened.

Blackhawk went there.

“Did you have an overwhelming desire to have sex with any of them when they took you?”

Instantaneously, he went pale, and his hand went clammy.

“Hey,” Gene said, knowing why Ethan was asking. When Corbin looked down, he lifted his chin, so he was focused on them. “It’s okay. If you were, it’s not your fault.”

The tears filled his eyes.

“No. I remember all of it,” he whispered. “I begged them to stop, not to give me more.”

Ethan wiped his tears with a paper napkin.

“Okay, good,” Gene said. “We needed to see if they used the drug on you since they branded you to be trafficked. It’s all good. We’re done asking.”

He slowly nodded but held onto Gene’s hand like he was a lifeline back to sanity.

They all saw how rattled he was.

“I wish I saw this coming,” Corbin whispered.

They felt horrible for him.

“Unfortunately for you, Corbin, you got pulled into the mess,” Greyson said. “If the US government is trying to run an operation, you might have hit walls because they didn’t want you behind them. You wouldn’t have seen it coming.”

That helped.

A little.

Greyson was honest.

“Gene and Ethan will have a better chance of seeing what is being hidden. We’re Feds and play this game. You’re a cop, and the rules are different.”

That was accurate.

Now that they knew that Corbin hadn’t been dosed, they continued so they could wrap this in time to go.

“We know that the victims were picked up somehow, and then passed off to a drug supplier. What we don’t know is if the trafficker and the abductor are the same people, or if there are more,” Gene said.

Ethan agreed.

“Or how the bikers fit into this. Are they getting the drugs and forcing the men to be mules, or is it being done another way?”

Greyson considered it.

“If this person is rich, they won’t want their hands dirty. They might grab the victims, and get the bikers to do the dirty work.”

Corbin was curious.

“How are they being muled?” he asked.

Gene explained.

“They fill balloons with the drug, and then tie them off. They dip them in oil, and make the victims swallow them. That might be how the three men died. Balloons rupture. They don’t have the drug until they ship them out.”

That sounded horrific.

“They never mentioned packing you full of drugs?” Ethan asked.

“I was in a lot of pain. At one point, I passed out,” he admitted.

They let that go.

Gene and Greyson had seen the mattress, and they knew where the blood came from.

Ethan postulated how it went down.

“When we went to Bull’s , we knew they were trafficking humans, but we couldn't break cover. I’m going to say the person taking the victims is supplying the drugs. That puts the victims in the biker’s hands to have some fun,” he said, watching Corbin.

He flinched.

Gene knew what they needed to do.

“If we take down the bikers, that will likely make the supplier panic, and if the FBI is watching someone, and they likely are, we might be able to find them easily, but only if we interview them first and they up and bail.”

Corbin was confused.

“Will the FBI tell us who it is?”

Greyson was honest.

“It might not be the FBI who is watching. It could be the CIA,” Greyson admitted. “If CIA operatives are working it, the FBI is getting minimal information. They don’t play well together.”

Corbin was REALLY confused now. That sounded stupid for two agencies not to work together.

“I don’t understand,” he admitted.

Gene kept teaching.

“This takes us to rule four, Corbin. The CIA doesn’t work in the US, but the CIA absolutely does work in the US.

They just can’t let anyone know what they do.

They help the FBI out all of the time, or they cock block them, depending on the director in charge.

If they like the guy, they are copesetic, and in good order, then they’ll be helpful. ”

Corbin was honest.

“Why does the US government now scare me?” Corbin asked.

And that led them to rule five.

“Always be afraid of the government,” Gene said. “If you’re not, you’re going to get burned.”

Well, that was terrifying.

Ethan was to the point.

“Anyway, what we have to do tonight is eliminate one part of the cycle, and it might stir it up enough that someone pops out as the lead suspect on who is handling the drugs coming into the country. Because if our government is damn sure it handled the drug pipeline in Colombia, that might mean that someone still has access to the supply line, or it’s already here. ”

Corbin just listened.

Saying nothing.

Gene had a sneaking suspicion that it was going to be interesting tonight.

“If Gabe wants us to have an alibi, that means Ethan and I are about to do sketchy shit.”

Ethan grinned despite how dangerous this was likely going to be.

“I love sketchy shit. It gets the heart pumping,” he joked.

Gene just shook his head.

Ethan was probably the only one who liked it. What he knew was sketchy shit was dangerous.

And danger might get them killed.

* * * Blackhawk & Cantrell * * *

Her Apartment

Same Time

Sasha was getting worried. She was trying to hold onto Greyson simply because she needed to stay in the loop. It had been golden, but then, all of a sudden, he was pulling away.

That freaked her out.

She had to find a way to keep the information flowing. With Gabe, he’d want to know everything, and she couldn’t just say, ‘It’s all fine’ .

That wouldn’t fly with him.

What wouldn’t she give to just come clean with the men?

Honestly, she missed having friends. For those days where she was included, it had been nice.

The night before Christmas Eve, when they’d been able to have pizza, wine, and work, had been the best day she’d had in this miserable city.

And now it was slipping through her fingers.

What wouldn’t she give to go home?

All that Sasha knew was that if she didn’t give Gabe exactly what he wanted, she was screwed.

The only way she could see it happening was to keep sleeping with one of them.

So, as she sat in her apartment, she came up with a plan. If she didn’t get into someone’s pants to take in the intel, there was no doubt that Gabe would make her life so miserable.

He’d been perfectly clear on his directive when he sent her there.

Be his spy or she was shit out of luck.

She’d made one mistake in her life, and she regretted it. Now, she was on the cusp of making another.

Only, she had no choice.

Gabriel Rothschild owned her.

Career.

And.

All.