up enough of her life because of the monster Moretti. She wasn’t about to sacrifice another piece of her soul to the disgusting man and his powerful ring. She brought him down, and that’s where he’d stay.
She clenched her hands into fists beneath the table. She needed this job. She needed this new position to work out. Her undercover work hadn’t gone as planned. The last thing she wanted was for this new gig not to work, and she’d potentially be relegated to desk duty for the rest of her career.
“I’ve got her back if any threats come her way,” Nick said, his dark eyes unfathomable as he held Lara’s gaze.
“We all have her back,” Mei said. The same sentiment rang out from everyone around the table.
Lara might have been grateful if these weren’t all new teammates, if she’d developed a trust with any of them. But she hadn’t had time to build any confidence in them, and ultimately knew that at this moment, she could only depend on herself.
Victoria looked at her again, a question lingering in her eyes.
“I’m here to stay,” Lara said with a grim firmness, even as her heartbeat accelerated. Although Moretti was in prison, even while she’d spent so much time in the safe house in the darkest, deepest recesses of her mind, she’d always known somehow that it wasn’t finished.
The horrendous nightmares that had plagued her over the past year or so would continue to haunt her, but they were reminders that she’d survived the deadly Moretti web once, and, if necessary, she was determined to again.
She consciously willed the self-doubts away. New job. New start. Moving forward.
“There’s been no indication that the syndicate is even operating anymore,” Cass said. “The FBI has been monitoring the situation since Moretti went to prison. Nothing has come up to even suggest that they’re back in business. That’s why it was approved for Lara to come back to New York and join this task force.”
“Then that’s good news, right?” Mei said. “Maybe with Moretti behind bars the whole operation fell apart.”
“That’s been the general belief of all of the agents who worked the case in Chicago,” Victoria said.
“Maybe Lara’s not in any danger from anyone,” Xander said. “Maybe by cutting off the head of the snake, the rest of the snake died.”
“And I hope it was a slow and painful death,” Lara muttered under her breath. That case had forever changed her. She thought she’d been prepared. All that training...instead the case had destroyed any innocence that she might have had left from her lonely, crappy childhood. It had made it difficult for her to trust anyone and had ripped out a chunk of her heart that she would never get back.
Victoria looked at Lara. “Right now I’d like you and Nick to continue to investigate Dunst and his murder. Talk to his friends or any family he might have. Find out what connection he had to you and why a low-level criminal would warrant a sniper shot between the eyes.”
She turned her focus to encompass the others at the table. “The rest of you will make sure the Moretti ring has been out of business since their boss went to prison. This will give Lara and Nick the freedom to investigate Dunst and close the case quickly. Cass, see if you can get hold of a list of any visitors Moretti has had in the past year and a record of any of his phone calls. If there is no movement, then Lara is safe here in New York working on this team. Also find out if a phone was on Dunst when he was killed.”
“On it,” Cass replied.
Before Victoria could say anything else, Lara’s cell phone rang. “Sorry,” she murmured as she pulled it from a clip on her belt. “It’s an officer from the scene at the hotel earlier,” she said when she saw the caller ID.
She punched it on speaker and set the phone on the tabletop. “Officer Cruz, this is FBI Special Agent Lara Grant.”
“Agent Grant, I just thought I’d call to let you know that we found something odd on Sean Dunst.”
“First, let me ask you a question. Did Dunst have a phone on him when he died?” Lara asked.
“Negative, no phone was found.”
“Then make sure your men do a thorough sweep of the hotel room to see if he left one there,” she said. “Now, what did you find on him?”
“A black ink pad and a wooden stamper.”
Lara frowned and looked around the table at the others. An ink pad? She stared back at the phone. “What did the stamp look like?”
“I just sent you a photo.”
Lara quickly checked. The past collided with the present, creating something close to madness inside Lara’s brain. “Thanks for the info,” she managed to say and then ended the call.
The photo showed a letter M superimposed over an upside down M. She turned to show everyone the image. Everyone except Victoria looked at her expectantly. “That’s the insignia of the Moretti crime organization.” Lara’s voice was flat, not reflecting the raging turmoil that twisted her gut. “Everyone who worked for Moretti or who was trafficked by him had that symbol either tattooed on their arm or someplace else on their body. Dunst was connected to Moretti.”
“Why would low-level Dunst have something like that in his pocket? Did he use it on the little girl?” Ty asked.
“Negative,” Cass replied. “According to the autopsy report Tina had nothing like that on her body when she was found.”
Lara barely heard the conversation of suppositions and possibilities as it swirled around the table. An icy chill had taken over her entire body.
She feared that the ghosts she’d dreamed of chasing her in her nightmares were now very real monsters, and they had finally found her.
Getting to Brooklyn from Manhattan was a bitch at just after five o’clock in the afternoon, especially if you didn’t take public transportation. Lara rode shotgun in Nick’s company-issued black sedan, and for the first five minutes in the car neither of them spoke.
Lara was still trying to process the shock of the ink pad and stamper found on Dunst, and Nick’s sole concentration was on maneuvering in and around whizzing taxis, belching buses and the honking horns of tourists who had no idea how to drive in the snarl of vehicles at rush hour.
When they hit the Brooklyn Bridge, Nick cast her a sideways glance. “We spent almost an hour this morning talking before you were called away, and you never mentioned that you were instrumental in taking down members of the Moretti crime syndicate?”
There was a tone in his voice that made her believe he might have already pegged her as either being arrogant or secretive. While the first was definitely false, the latter was partly true. She did have secrets that only a handful of people would ever know, but that had nothing to do with her partner relationship with Nick or the job they now worked.
She stared out the passenger window. “It was a tough job, and after that I went into lockdown for a long a time. That was equally
