Chapter Two
Dean
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I GRIPPED THE WHEEL of the car, staring out at the sidewalk in front of me. It was quiet out there. Too quiet. And I didn’t like it.
Ian was in there right now, and I had no idea how much longer I should wait before I went in after him. I was meant to be a driver, a little back-up if things went south, but he hadn’t called me in yet. Had something happened to him? There was no way I was going to blow this. I had just gotten into the inner circle, and I needed to stay there. No matter what.
Eight months. That was how long I had been living as Dean Madrigal, gangster. One of Terence Schwindel’s men. When I was first put on the case, nearly a year ago, I had been chomping at the bit to get out there and join them – there was something about him I knew I could get close to, something about his front that I saw beneath. I had been trying to get my boss to put me on the case in person for months before he finally decided I was ready, and I had thrown myself in at the deep end.
It started out in Chicago, where Terence had been head of the drug trade for at least ten years. They’d pretty much eliminated the competition in the city and had routes running all over the Midwest, but that wasn’t enough for him – no, he had decided he wanted New York too, and he soon started heading out East to take control of as much as he could down here as well.
I had started out as not much more than a bit of muscle to back up his usual squads, but with some string-pulling and good luck, I had managed to meet with him a few times. He was a suspicious man, naturally cautious, but he seemed to let his guard down around me and filled me in on some of his plans. I kept them to myself, sure they were nothing more than a test to make certain I wasn’t going to share the future of the syndicate with anyone else.
It was the strangest thing, being cut off from the rest of the men I had worked with most of my policing career. I had joined the academy when I was barely twenty, working my way up from the bottom, and it hadn’t taken long until they singled me out as a good fit for undercover work.
Rafael Gallarga, the head of undercover operations in our unit, was the one who had first picked me as a decent option to send out for a smaller mission in rural Kentucky, helping bring down a small drug ring that had started to try to expand. Coming from the South myself, I fit in pretty easily, and it didn’t take long for me to worm enough information out of the men at the top to undercut their sense of safety and send them sprawling.
From then on, I had become addicted to this side of the game. It fit me perfectly. I didn’t need to be myself, I could slide into the role of someone else, invent a whole new person, and spend my time crafting and perfecting them until I was in the inner circle of some notorious criminal gang. Yes, it was high-stakes, but it was the highest kind of reward as well, a chance to make a real difference, feeding information back to the people who needed it and the ones who could pull the trigger on the serious, city-wide justice we needed.
This had been by far the hardest case. I had expected it to be, of course, what with how suspicious Terrence was, but damn, when I started to inch closer to him, it was like being on some sort of high. I knew he would never have suspected we’d send someone in, risk the life of one of our men by getting close to him, and if he worked out who I was, I would have been dead as a doornail. But for now, I held all the cards, gathering all the information I could to get where I needed to go.
And, as I sat in that car, I knew I was closer than ever to getting where I needed to be. Terrence had handpicked me for this mission, the first time I had been his prime selection to go out and negotiate with some of his new potential dealers. We were at the hideout of Los Vogons, a multi-ethnic New York group who had ties to Chicago, a good opening point for Terrence to get into New York, and by the time Ian came back from this meeting, I would have enough to pass onto the bureau to shut down their ops before they got started.
I had wanted to attend this meeting with Ian, but the Vogons waiting outside had made it clear they weren’t going to let more than one of us in at a time. I had watched from the car as Ian was patted down for weapons, and wondered if I should have pushed to go with him. It would have given him an extra layer of safety, but they didn’t know much about me and might have held back vital information I needed to take them and Terrence down. A new base of operations was a good place for us to start our attack on their strength, as it would be weaker and less established than everywhere else they had already laid claim to. This was our best bet to unseat him, and it might be our only chance, too. If he was successful in expanding his business to New York, he might be too big for us to stop, and I refused to let that happen.
It had been a long time since I was in NYC, and the bustle of the city was making me a little uncomfortable. There was something about being far from my base that made me feel as though I was unseated, as though something might happen at any moment. I wanted to be able to tap into my contacts any time I needed them, but I was out here on my own and I didn’t care for that feeling at all.
I kept my eyes pinned on the door. I needed to be ready to make a break for it, and fast. If something went wrong, Ian was relying on me to get him out of there. We had become decent friends since we started working together, even if the version of me he knew wasn’t entirely honest, and I didn’t want anything to happen to him. I wouldn’t let it. Confidence from a man like him was invaluable and I refused to let it slip through my fingers.
Suddenly, the door burst open, and Ian came rushing out to the street. I flung the car door open for him and he practically fell on to the seat beside me. I looked down to his hand, which was pressed against his side, and saw a dangerous amount of blood leaking through his fingers.
“Get the fuck out of here!” Ian snarled at me, pulling the door closed behind him and squeezing his eyes shut before I slammed my foot on the break and started moving.
In the rearview mirror, I could see men streaming out of the building, ready to give chase. Ian must have moved pretty damn fast to get out of there before he was shot dead – he didn’t look in good shape now, but he was alive, and that was something.
“What the fuck happened in there?” I demanded as I sped through the streets. I didn’t have a clue where I was going, I just knew I needed to put as much distance between us and whatever had happened as possible.
“Go north,” he told me. “Get to the hotel.”
“What hotel?” I demanded. He shook his head. It was clear he was in enough pain it was clouding his ability to think or talk properly, and I couldn’t get much out of him.
“Ian, come on, what hotel?” I demanded again, louder, and he seemed to snap out of it.
“Grosvenor,” He groaned. “Up north. There’s someone there who can help us.”
I nodded, tapped the name into the GPS, and noticed my hands were shaking as I did so. Shit. I needed to pull myself together. I had known this was a possibility from the moment I was sent on this mission, and I would have been a fool to pretend any different.
I slammed my foot down and started to drive. I could see people drawing in behind us, and I would be damned if I let them get any closer. I was the one in charge here, I was the one holding all the cards, and nothing was going to change that.
I focused my eyes on the road ahead while Ian panted in the seat beside me.
“Should we go to a hospital?” I asked.
“Terrence will kill me if this fucking bullet doesn’t,” he replied, through gritted teeth. I didn’t even understand how he was still talking. The amount of blood leaking through his hand, it seemed a miracle he could keep his head up.
He closed his eyes and I kept driving, heading north until we were a ways out of the city. We were closing in on the Grosvenor, not far now. Who was there who could help us? Certainly nobody I was aware of, but maybe that was on purpose. Ian held his cards close to his chest, and for good reason. And he trusted me enough to show me this one. I felt a stab of guilt, but pushed it down. Now wasn’t the time to start second-guessing what I was doing. I needed to get out of here, and then I could have all the moral crises I wanted.