“Which means someone’s been pulling the wool over my eyes the entire fucking time.”
“I know how you feel. Jacob did the same thing to me.”
I groaned as I raked my hands down my face. Holy fuck. My mind was swirling with so many possibilities, and it was hard to settle them all into place. I had to stick with what I knew. I had to deal with the facts and not the possibilities.
But first, we had to deal with the obvious.
“I think my relationship with you has caused unnecessary risks,” I said.
“You’re not pulling away from me now. We’ve been through too much,” Derek said.
“Doesn’t matter what we’ve been through. I’m speaking with you as your employee now. Not as your lover. I’m not making sound decisions anymore because of our relationship.”
“I’m not letting you go, Sam. I didn’t on that boat, and I won’t now just because a couple of dickhead FBI agents want to pit us against one another.”
“I’m taking unnecessary risks that are putting your life in danger. Your luggage was supposed to be checked before it even got into my hands. That was the plan. And I made the mistake of not checking myself. I don’t know why, but I think John was right.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“John and I had a conversation about a week ago about us staying on this case too long and getting soft. I’m getting soft. I trusted my team too much and didn’t do a last check on my own. Had I done that before your luggage got to the ship, I would’ve found the bomb easily if it was in there. It was negligence on my part because I’m trusting my team too much. I never trust my team that much.”
“But you have to. That’s what a team is for. That’s why we didn’t see it coming with Jacob. And Griggs, apparently.”
“But I should have. That’s my job, Derek. Don’t you see that? All of this is my job. It’s my job to see what you don’t, not to rely on your fucking opinion and go with it. You're rubbing off on me and in a way that’s going to cost your life,” I said.
I beat my fists into the cushions of the car as Derek sat there, staring at me with wide eyes. I was pissed. My instincts were kicking into full gear now. It was the only damn thing that made sense. There was a protocol that went into checking that luggage. I picked very specific people to rifle through it and make sure nothing was out of place. I made sure a chain of command was in place to make sure nothing like that made it onto his yacht that night.
And since the FBI confirmed the presence of a bomb on the ship, that meant someone in that chain of command had planted that fucking bomb.
Holy hell. Someone on my team was corrupt.
“I think we should set up a trap,” Derek said.
“What?” I asked.
“A trap. To catch whoever on your team isn’t doing their job.”
I nodded silently, trying to allow that truth to dawn on my mind. It all made sense. The attack on the security guard. The placement of the bomb. The handling of the luggage. It would explain the attack on Jacob in the garage. I confirmed it was the same assailant, but it never crossed my mind that Jacob could’ve paid someone to attack him. The same person that attacked that security guard on the yacht. Griggs on his payroll would’ve given Jacob access to his house and his personal schedule, but Jacob paying someone on my team a kickback would give him personal access to a private event like the Fourth of July celebration Derek threw for just the two of us.
I swallowed thickly as I nodded my head.
“A trap. Okay,” I said. “I can do that.”
“I think we should also keep it beneath the FBI’s radar,” Derek said. “You know, until we can confirm things. Prove our theory. The last thing we need is them pinning something on you that you haven’t done. No one’s ripping you away from me, Sam. No one.”
I felt his hand curl over mine as I closed my eyes. A trap. I could set a trap. A trap to lure out the snake that had slithered into our midst. I started running the names of everyone who had handled that luggage down in my head. Men I’d worked with before. Men I’d trusted with my life on several occasions. Men I’d garnered reputations with and hired on for multiple jobs before this.
One of them had turned their back on me.
And they weren’t going to get away with it.
Chapter 21
Derek
I WAS STANDING IN MY office, looking at a gun Sam had left for me to use to defend myself. Over the course of the past couple of days, we had been formulating a plan. If we wanted to keep it under the heavy radar of the FBI, it had to be simple. There couldn’t be any elaborate steps, and we had to get the entire team in one place. I was insistent that we only had to target the chain of command Sam had set forth for handling the luggage that went onto the yacht, but she didn’t want to rule anyone out.
She was nervous that she was slipping, so I let her have the win.