Constant Craving (Task Force Hawaii #3) Read online

  “No. I just got off the phone with my bank about it when you walked into my lab. I only had time to pick out what instrument to use on the bastard.”

  “Whoa, what did I miss?” TJ asked.

  They all turned to face him. She hadn’t expected him to show up this early in the day. His presence was a soothing balm to her agitated nerves. Still, Emma’s personality must have rubbed off on her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He chuckled. “Well, that’s a sweet welcome.”

  “We have a situation here,” Drew said.

  She internally sighed. Since Friday night, Drew had softened toward TJ. Sunday at the beach had solidified his friendship with TJ. She just hoped when all this was over, TJ and he stayed friendly. She wasn’t sure where they were going, but right now in Drew’s life, he needed people who would be there to back him up.

  “What happened?” TJ asked his smile fading.

  “Someone was messing with my credit. Trying to make it look like I plan to flee the country.”

  She explained what happened and what they thought about it.

  “Well, one thing I know is that it isn’t Foley. Especially if it was done in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Why do you say that?” Del asked.

  “Because, according to the FBI and Europol, Edward Foley is dead.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The stunned silence that filled Del’s office didn’t surprise TJ. The ticking of the clock was the only sound in an otherwise rowdy office. It was a little eerie. Of course, that had been the same reaction he’d had when he’d gotten the notice just a half hour earlier.

  “Do you want to repeat that again?” Del asked, carefully annunciating every word.

  “He’s dead, or at least a man with his fingerprints is dead.”

  Del shook his head, then stood. “Call everyone in. We need to do this all at once. I need all hands on deck.”

  Drew had his phone out before Del was done talking. TJ forced himself to look at Charity. For the first time since he had known her, there was no expression on her face. He didn’t know what more to say.

  “Dead, dead?” she asked.

  He couldn’t get a read on her, and that was troublesome. He would say she was shocked, but that might be an understatement. Truth is, he would rather she be furious.

  He shrugged. “I’ll go over it all when everyone gets here, but I will say that I’m not convinced it is the man. You should have a report by now. It went out to all the agencies on the island.”

  “That’s not normal,” she said frowning.

  “I’m sure it isn’t, but it’s the way I do things. Or, at least, the way I do them now.”

  She smiled. “Yeah?”

  “Of course, it makes sense,” Emma said, pushing herself out of her seat. He wasn’t sure, but she looked like she had grown in size just since he had seen her the day before. “You sent it out to all the agencies who have cyber crime units, which is everywhere these days. That way, we can have the info without alerting whoever is doing this. You didn’t single us out, and you didn’t break any rules. You’re smart.”

  Emma spoke to him like she was his mother. “Thanks.”

  “For a fed.”

  Charity chuckled, as Emma and Del left the office.

  “Did she just insult me?”

  She shook her head. “No. That is high praise from Emma.”

  “Not very high when she says fed in the same tone people use for Ebola.”

  She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. He studied her for a long second. He knew there was something wrong. Outside of everything else that was happening, something had happened since he had seen her off to work that morning. “What happened?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “You looked distressed when I came in. In fact, you were talking about hurting people, so I know there is something off.”

  “You got that from just looking at me?”

  TJ shoved his hands into his pockets. It was hard to explain to the woman he loved—especially since she didn’t know he was in love with her—that he would always be able to look at her and tell when something was wrong.

  “Yeah. Something happened this morning before I showed up.”

  “Oh, that. Someone tried to hack into my accounts. They were using them for one way tickets, or tried to. My bank put a stop to it.”

  Something cold danced over the fine hairs of his neck. It sent a chill racing down his spine and into his blood. “Don’t brush it off.”

  “It’s pretty commonplace.”

  “Yes, and that’s why people report it to their bank and then go from there. But, it’s so simple, it could be part of the plot to frame you.”

  She frowned and studied him for a moment. “But you said Foley was dead.”

  He shook his head, as he started to think what had happened in the last few hours. “We can’t dismiss it. And we don’t know for sure he was Foley, or if it is just one person. We always thought it was, because of a set of fingerprints at one of the murders, but I can’t rule out that it’s a team.”

  She sighed, then nodded. He hated the expression on her face. She felt as if she had done something wrong, that somehow she should have prevented what was going on. She had done nothing to put herself in this situation.

  “It’s going to turn out okay.”

  “You think?” she asked.

  He stepped closer and slipped his hand into hers. “Hey, you have a kick ass team, and one hell of an FBI agent to help you. The bastard behind this doesn’t stand a chance. We’ll figure out what the hell is going on.”

  Drawing in a deep breath, then releasing it slowly, she nodded. The smile she gave him this time was genuine.

  “Come on. I’m going to pull up the report someone at the FBI sent.”

  He followed her out, and noticed that the team members were making their way in. They weren’t a big force, but they were a strong one. It was something he had been missing since he had gotten here, that Ohana feeling everyone talked about in Hawaii. They had it here in TFH, and, as Del took his seat, he realized they had adopted him—at least for the moment.

  He glanced at Charity, who was tapping on the laptop pulling up the memo he had sent out. It came up on the screen.

  “They say the fingerprints match,” she said.

  “Yes, but not much else. We know that the real Foley knows how to get people to fix things like that,” he said. “Plus, Foley wasn’t his real name, or assumed it wasn’t. This man was living under the name, but I have a feeling that this isn’t the man at the top.”

  “Why?” Del asked.

  “As I said, Foley was made up. It wasn’t a real name. So, it would make sense he picks some idiot, slaps the name on him, then kills him when things heat up.”

  “He would be that coldblooded?” Graeme asked.

  TJ nodded. “Money is his main objective. If this isn’t the man we think is Foley, he’s just someone the real criminal used.”

  “Oh,” Charity said.

  “What?” he asked. When he looked at her, she was on her computer.

  “Something just popped up. His name wasn’t Foley. It was Jacob Heller, and he was an accountant at the FBI.”

  “Another tie to the FBI,” Emma said. “Sounds like your house is quite a mess over there, Callahan.”

  He didn’t disagree with her. For the last year, he had regretted ever being assigned to the Foley case. He had been growing obsessive with it before the shooting. When he saw his chance, he walked away. But now, he was thinking that might have been a mistake. He was FBI, but he also knew that not everyone in the FBI was a good person. A lot of agents didn’t want to admit that. By heading off to Hawaii, he might have allowed Foley to expand his influence and get someone in his old department to help. “We never thought Foley was his real name.”

  “But here’s my main problem with it,” Charity said. “Someone tried to buy tickets with my bank account. A place with no extra
dition treaty with the US. The UAE is very particular about letting the US government take people.”

  “None of this is making sense. What is the man after at this point?” Adam asked.

  “That’s a good question,” Charity said. “Right now, I can’t understand why I would be singled out. No identities were stolen, right?”

  “No. No cover ops were revealed, just someone tried to get in. Even if they did get the information, they didn’t act on it.”

  “Please. There would be no try if I wanted to get that information.”

  “Charity, I try my best to pretend we are on the up and up, and you say this in front of the fed,” Del admonished.

  “Nothing but the truth,” TJ said, smiling.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “It’s a set up,” Emma said.

  Charity shrugged. “We knew that from the beginning though. Foley was going to use me as the fall guy on this job.”

  “No, this is different,” Emma said, turning to TJ. “Right?”

  He was already starting to think. It was different. Foley had never been caught so early and in such a way that would have them actively looking for him. Before, they always seemed to be three moves behind him. Now it seemed he was signaling each move.

  “He changed it up this time.

  Foley’s MO had always been that he would use someone, connect with them. Then, he would kill them, or leave them to pay the price. It now felt as if Charity was the person in question.

  “It’s a different kind of set up,” he said.

  “His final set up,” Emma commented, and he nodded again.

  “What do you...” Charity frowned and looked down at her computer. “This is odd.”

  “What?” He leaned over her shoulder and saw an email from Jacob Heller. “Don’t open it.”

  She looked at him, then back at the screen. “You think it might be a virus?”

  “Or another trap of some sort. Leave it alone and we’ll deal with it.”

  She nodded. “I’ll run a check on it. Emma can help me with that, right? Either way, whoever this is is trying to make it look like I’m involved.”

  “You’re Foley,” Emma said.

  “What?” Charity asked.

  A sense of dread coursed through him, as he started really listening to Emma. She wasn’t piecing it all together at once, but now it was hitting him what it might mean.

  “You’re Foley,” TJ said.

  Charity looked at him, then to Emma, then back at him. The expression on her face told TJ she thought they had both lost their minds.

  “I am not Foley.”

  “But he’s trying to make it look like you are,” Drew said shaking his head. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.”

  “And making me look like Foley does what?”

  “When did the problems with Foley start? Not now with Charity but overall?” Emma asked.

  “Dammit. Three years ago, when you were at CIA, Charity.”

  “But I never had a hand in it.”

  “He wanted someone like you. Someone with connections on the island—for what reason, I don’t understand. He needed someone who had an association with DC, but not with the FBI. Your time at the CIA was perfect. Your reputation as a hacker helped out even more. He could be fixing you up to be the fall woman for his final job.”

  Before she could respond, TJ’s phone buzzed. He looked down and saw Remington’s number.

  “Damn.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Remington.” He turned off his phone. “There’s something really off about all of this.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Listen, more than likely, that was Remington calling to say they found a link between you and Heller. That was too fast. Someone has to be feeding him information.”

  “And you turned your phone off, why?” Adam asked.

  “I don’t want to answer and ping off a cell tower here. I also disabled the GPS.”

  “They let you do that?” Charity asked.

  “My personal phone. I left the work phone back at the office.”

  “So, we think that the bastard is trying to stack the deck against Charity,” Adam said. “Buy why?”

  “He’s done.”

  They all turned to look at Emma.

  “What do you mean?” Del asked.

  “This guy is done. He’s going to take all the money he has earned and ride off into the sunset.”

  “It isn’t that much money, is it?” Marcus asked.

  “Over four billion estimated,” TJ said. “That is our estimate on how much he made off of selling secrets. Lord only knows what else he did.”

  “But he might not be disappearing forever. Just reinventing himself. This identity has gotten too hot, so he kills himself off, produces another frame job, then poof, he’s gone. I’ll be left holding the proverbial bag,” Charity said.

  “You won’t though.”

  She glanced up at him. “Is that a fact?”

  “Bet on it.”

  She nodded. “So, what do we do now?”

  “I need to head back to the office, get hold of Remington. We need to find out where that email came from.”

  “We can handle that,” Charity said. “I’m an expert, but Emma outranks me.”

  “Of course I do. I have a genius IQ, and it isn’t a title like they give to the people who work in the Apple stores, either,” Emma said.

  “Are you sure? You have to make sure you don’t let it get into your computer.”

  She snorted. “I think you have just offended Emma and me.”

  He smiled, then leaned down to kiss her. “I’ll call as soon as I hear anything.”

  She nodded. Del rose. “I’ll walk you out.”

  Damn, that sounded ominous.

  “No problem.”

  Drew watched as Callahan and Del walked out the door.

  “Oh, I hope he doesn’t go all big brother on TJ. He had to know we were involved,” Charity said.

  Emma shrugged. “Like it or not, he sees himself as the patriarch of the TFH family.”

  “I don’t even want to think about what they are talking about. Wanna go to my lab to work?”

  Emma nodded.

  “See y’all later.”

  As soon as they turned the corner, money started exchanging hands. “So, who had the bet on Callahan and Charity, and when did it exactly happen?” Graeme asked.

  They all looked at Drew. “Hey, I don’t know when they started sleeping together.”

  “But they are sleeping together, right?” Cat asked.

  “Yeah, from the way they were acting this past weekend, I would say yes.”

  “Elle, you’re holding that bet, right? I think until we get date confirmation, we don’t do anything,” Cat said.

  She nodded. “And, I call today as the day to pick the birthday of the first TFH baby. She is due exactly a month from today. Oh, and who is going to ask Charity the date?”

  Again, they all looked at him. “I am not asking one of my best friends when she bagged the agent.”

  “Emma is your best bet to ask rude questions like that,” Graeme said. “And everyone let’s her get away with it.”

  “I’ll talk to Emma later, ask her to ask Charity,” Elle said. “This shuts down the baby pool.”

  “I have seen none of this, but you have my bet, right?” Adam said.

  Elle nodded. “All we have to do is wait.”

  TJ slipped his sunglasses on, as they stepped out of the building. Del did the same thing. He glanced at the commander. He knew Martin Delano’s background. Former special forces, chest full of medals, and now head of the Task Force Hawaii. All that he knew from reports. But, in the last few weeks, he had seen that he was more. If TFH was a family, this was the head of it.

  “So, is this where you take me out behind the building and beat the shit out of me?”

  Del glanced at him and waited until some people passed by them

>   “No. Charity has many hidden talents, and one of those is being able to take care of herself.”

  “So, this talk is about what?”

  “In a round about way, it is about the same thing.”

  “Damn, I thought FBI people were good at code. Yours is so cryptic, I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”

  The smile came fast and dissolved faster. “First, if things go wrong, you don’t really have to worry about physical harm.”

  At first, TJ smiled, thinking he was joking. Del just stared at him. “Well, that’s good because the FBI usually doesn’t like it when their agents are threatened.”

  “Emma will just ruin you financially if you hurt Charity.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, but my wife lost her family a few years ago, and she sees Charity as part of her Ohana. Emma will ruin you if you intentionally hurt her.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just like that?”

  TJ shrugged. “My family can be a little cut throat also.”

  Del nodded. “Now, the other thing I want to talk to you about is your job. This might put it in jeopardy.”

  That much was true, but he had never thought about that. Not really. When he realized Charity was innocent, he couldn’t let her get caught up in something she had nothing to do with. Before, he might have gone to higher ups and fought his position, but with Charity, he would give everything up to protect her.

  “I know that part of it is worth it for you. Charity is a special woman.”

  “I know that.”

  “Yes, I see that, but I think you might be special to her. See, men don’t last long with Charity.”

  “We haven’t been going out that long.”

  “But for Charity, it is. Men rarely last long with her because she gets bored. Or they ask for more than she wants to give them. The fact that you are still hanging around tells me you’re different. She feels something for you, and don’t get me wrong, I know you feel something for her. But I want to make sure you’re doing this for the right reasons outside of your relationship with Charity.”

  “She’s enough of a reason.”

  Del nodded. “Yeah, but take it from someone who fell in love with his wife while working a case, some of the feelings you have for her will be wrapped up in this case. You need to make sure that after this case, if you should go your separate ways, that you did this for other reasons.”