Page 4 of Under Fire

Sheppard placed his hand on Karl’s shoulder. “No thanks needed, Karl. I never expected every young man I mentored at Glenworth, and then later at Delvers, to turn their lives around. Some have, and some haven’t. And for those who haven’t, I refuse to give up on them. I consider you as one of my surrogate sons just as I do the others.”

From Karl’s expression, everyone could tell the impact Shep’s words had on him. After recovering from what Sheppard had said, Karl then glanced back at the three men staring at him. “Do you believe my story?”

Macayle answered honestly. “Sheppard believes you, and that’s good enough for us.”

Karl’s gaze moved from one to the other when he said, “I would never lie to Sheppard, any more than the three of you would.”

That statement said a lot. Sheppard Granger’s surrogate sons held him in high esteem. He was the one person in Glenworth who had stood up for them, believed in them, and, more importantly, made them believe in themselves. He had been a father figure for those who hadn’t known their own father, or, like Karl, whose father had not been a role model of any kind.

“Tomorrow I will request videos from that café where you first met Murray. I’m not sure what we can obtain from that place where you met the two of them since it was a rural road,” Locke said. “Don’t be surprised if the café’s videos have miraculously disappeared. In fact, I have a feeling more than those two men orchestrated the setup. Things were too precise and calculated for it to be otherwise.”

He paused a moment and then said, “Also, you will be meeting with a sketch artist soon. Try to remember as much about Murray and Altmann’s features as you can. Identify any facial moles, tattoos, or anything that might have stood out. In the end, we will uncover more than the truth. We will be seeking justice.”

CHAPTER 2

Hollis Calloway sat at her office desk and scanned her iPad for any interesting news as she sipped her cup of coffee. It was a beautiful day in April, and for a moment she considered going sailing on the Bay. However, the stack of bills in the inbox tray reminded her that she was a private investigator who needed another case to start working on.

The last three had been cases where one spouse had suspected adulterous activities of the other. Unfortunately, in all three cases, they had been proven right. In one of them, not only had she discovered cheating but also bigamy. Because she had once been the victim of a cheating spouse herself, she found those types of cases disheartening. Why people didn’t just end the marriage instead of becoming unfaithful was beyond her.

With her own marriage, she and Ryan hadn’t been together for barely two years when she began questioning his fidelity. He honestly thought she would not suspect him of cheating. He should have known better. After all, they were both FBI agents, and investigating fraud and corruption was a way of life for them.

Since their divorce eight years ago, her and Ryan’s paths rarely crossed, as he worked as an agent in Seattle and she as an agent in D.C., until a few years ago, when she was fired due to DOGE budget cuts after ten years of dedicated service. But then, deep down, she believed, although there was no way she could prove it, that her firing had been the result of her exposing corruption within the Bureau, where several agents were convicted.

Instead of rewarding her, the first opportunity the FBI got, they let her go. Granted, she hadn’t been the only one released due to budget cuts, but she honestly believed she had been deliberately targeted. With no reason to remain in the nation’s capital, she had returned to her hometown of Tampa, Florida, and worked independently as a private investigator.

Now she spent her days and nights becoming an expert at catching cheaters instead of doing the work she was really good at. Namely, investigating organized crime, financial fraud, public corruption, and cybercrime…just to think of a few. It bothered her to no end that her investigative and technological skills were being wasted. This was definitely not how she envisioned her life at thirty-three.

She was about to turn off her iPad to check her appointment log when the caption of a news article caught her eye:

DONNIE BARCOS DEAD!

Hollis proceeded to read the article. Anyone living in Florida for any length of time had heard of Donnie Barcos. Over the years, the mobster had gotten a name for himself for being involved in just about every illegal activity there was ─ drugs, trafficking, money-laundering, gambling ─ just to name a few.

She had known FBI agents who had tried to bring him down for years, but he had remained elusive. Even after being arrested a few times, he had walked because of a procedural error or a violation handled through a motion to suppress.

She was about to stop reading the article when the next line caught her attention. FBI denies involvement, although man arrested claims it was a federal sting operation.

Something cold suddenly slithered up her spine, and her fingers tightened on the iPad as she continued reading. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but the details sounded way too familiar. Every instinct she’d developed as an FBI agent was sounding an alarm. A very loud one.

Local police had arrived on the scene instead of federal agents. No surveillance or listening devices had been recovered. The names the arrested man provided of the agents indicated no such agents existed within the Bureau.

Hollis lowered her iPad to the table, stood, and began pacing. This could merely be a coincidence. She had worked as an agent long enough to know similar facts didn’t necessarily mean similar crimes. She knew of agents who made that mistake, and she had never wanted to be one of them. Each case had to be investigated on its own merit. That wasn’t just her rule, it had been the Bureau’s.

However…

She stopped pacing, picked up her iPad again, and re-read the article. Her stomach tightened. According to the man arrested, the gun used to kill Barcos had been given to him by a federal agent to defend himself if necessary during his meeting with Barcos. If that was true, then Barcos hadn’t been the target of a sting, but the mark of an assassination. In other words, somebody wanted him dead and not captured. Why?

She set her iPad back down, telling herself she was thinking too fast, jumping too far ahead. Maybe she was. But she had done such a thing before five years ago…and she had been right, after uncovering that four FBI agents were running unauthorized operations under the cover of legitimate Organized Crime investigations. The four were still serving time, which means the Bureau might very well be dealing with copycats.

Or…there might be a reason for it. Maybe Barcos had something on a couple of federal agents, and they’d come up with a plan to eliminate him altogether. Nobody would miss Barcos, and chances were the man who was framed was someone with a criminal record, no family, and no connections. A man who would be the perfect fall guy.

She picked up her iPad to keep reading. Holy shit! She stared at the names of the attorneys who had taken the man’s case. Dangerfield, Duke, and Wasilla. The three, in their mid-thirties, had built a reputation for taking on cases other attorneys wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Cases seen as hopeless and unwinnable. Yet they had won them all.

The article further stated the three attorneys were friends with the man arrested since the four had once served time together in Glenworth Penitentiary. She then remembered reading that those three attorneys were former convicts. She slid back down in her seat and took a sip of her coffee, not caring it had turned cold.

If what she was thinking about the case was true, then all she had to say was that whoever set up the fake sting had made a grave error by selecting someone they deemed insignificant. Things were about to get significant pretty damn fast. Not only were those three attorneys known for injecting reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury, but in most cases, they were able to expose the true villain before the case even came to trial. She smiled at the thought of that.

Hollis took another sip of her cold coffee. Beneath the article was a photo of the three attorneys. All good-looking men. It said Locke Dangerfield would be lead counsel. She looked at the article, left to right, to determine which of the three he was. The moment she looked at him, something shifted within her.