“We aren’t talking to you,” Kreed blurted, flashing an intimidating gaze toward the man as he started to walk the alley toward the street. Mitch followed. He’d been through these things with Kreed for years. Kreed had an innate ability to flesh out a situation. His expertise was unprecedented, and Mitch had called him more times than he could count to run things past him, see what he was missing.
Kreed walked slowly, undoubtedly checking for any holes, any way the roof might have been used. Once he got to the street and retraced his steps to where they’d started, they’d lost the owner. He’d vanished. Kreed started to push the Dumpster toward the wall.
“Help me, I want to get up there,” Kreed said. Mitch grabbed an end and helped roll the Dumpster to the back wall. First Kreed, then Mitch, hoisted himself up onto the roof. The surface was flat, with an awning stuck out from the front making it appear angled. Kreed walked the entire length as Mitch went for the canopy. He’d seen this area before. They’d actually wiped it down for fingerprints and DNA, but he checked again, trying to find anything that might help them with this case.
“He’s lying,” Kreed whispered and scared the shit out of Mitch. Kreed had that way of just being quiet all the fucking time. Mitch supposed that was from all those years as a Navy SEAL.
“How do you know?” Mitch asked.
“Gut,” Kreed turned to him and shrugged. “Did we background check him?”
“You read the report.” Mitch sat down on the roof and looked out over the building. What were they missing?
“No, I mean your online guy. Did you send this through him?” Kreed’s brows knitted together, and he let out a long sigh as he sat down beside Mitch.
“I don’t know, maybe. I put so much in front of him,” Mitch answered honestly.
“Get him to dig. That man’s hiding something, I’m sure of it.” Kreed nodded his head toward the coffee shop.
“We could bring him in, but, man, there’s absolutely no good-cop, bad-cop types here. Can you see Connors playing bad cop?” Mitch laughed at the thought. “We wouldn’t get much more out of him.”
“No, and we don’t need to bring him in just yet.” Kreed lowered his voice. “You need to bug his office tonight. His house today.” Mitch rolled his eyes. Of course, he’d be the one that had to do it. “And don’t get caught,” Kreed added.
“I don’t ever get caught, ass,” Mitch hissed quietly.
“Stop looking like that. I know he’s hiding something. We’ll get a direction out of this, I guarantee it,” Kreed said before getting up and strolling across the roof. Mitch was slower. He’d never hesitated on doing things like this. Hell, he and Aaron did some shit that would have earned them both jail time if they’d been caught, but in those cases, he’d been pretty damn sure of what he was dealing with. Not this time, though, but Kreed had never let him down before. So invasion of privacy, here they came.
Chapter 33
Mitch had three objectives. He needed access to the coffee shop’s incoming and outgoing calls on his cell phone. He needed DeGeorge’s phone tapped, and he needed the information from the man’s computer at work, as well as at his home. Thank god they lived in a time where most of those objectives could be achieved without setting foot outside the FBI building.
His only problem? He didn’t want to involve the director to achieve any of those goals. Nor did he have anything other than Kreed’s gut to go on. Definitely not enough to convince anyone in this building to possibly take someone’s civil liberties away.
He had two choices. Mitch had developed some pretty decent relationships with a federal judge who now sat on the FISA court. Not allowing himself the overthink this, he palmed his phone and sent a message to the judge, praying for an expedited approval on wiretap for DeGeorge’s office, shop, and home. He quickly and efficiently bullet-pointed the information the judge might need to pull this together as soon as possible. To his surprise, the judge responded back immediately that he’d have approval back to him in the next hour. Mitch gave himself a mental high-five. One obstacle down, another to go.
Second, Mitch had to call Anne into their secret plan. She had bureau clout. Being the administrative assistant to the top guy gave her a certain authority around the building. Anne was smart, sharp as a tack, and beautiful. On a very firm second decision to not overthink things, Mitch grabbed his suit coat and tossed it over his arm, ready to slide it on if needed. He entered the elevator, pushed the fourth floor button, and swiped his tag to gain entrance to the elite floor.
Every eye in the room stopped what they were doing in order to look his way as he walked past. The disapproving looks were still right there on their faces. After all this time, he actually got used to the stares and even laughed now because envy had to crawl up their asses that he got away with things and they couldn’t.
He rounded the corner and saw the director’s door closed. Thank god for small favors. He stopped in front of Anne’s desk.
“Hi, Mitch,” Anne said, never looking up from the computer screen as she typed.
“How’d you know it was me?” Mitch was impressed.
“If I said cologne, would you believe me?” she questioned, finally turning her smiling face up to his.
“What’s the real reason?” he asked skeptically.
“The room always becomes quiet when you walk through. I’ve thought it’s because you’re such a good-looking guy, but today I suspect it’s the shirt without the required jacket on, not just close by.” Anne pointed at his shirt and suit coat hanging over his arm.
“It’s a cool shirt,” he defended in a mock tone of shock, ignoring the jacket comment. He was past tired of that stupid rule.
“Ass Bandit. Really, Mitch? You know you do it on purpose,” she said, all attention on him now as she held laughter in her eyes, and a growing smile.