Dead Heat by Allison Brennan Page A

wanted to ask him, but now was not the time. While Donnelly was working out details with Ryan, she sent Sean a text message.
    If you’re not busy, can you look up something for me? Donnelly lost a fellow agent in the line of duty, a rookie DEA agent. I don’t know when or where. I’d like to know what happened.
    Only a few seconds later, Sean responded.
    I’m at the gym. Will do when I get back.
    She smiled. He always answered his messages, even at the gym. Might as well have his phone implanted in his palm.
    Thanks. Love you.
    “Ready?” Donnelly asked.
    She followed him down the hall, out the back, and into the adjoining building, which housed the county jail. They signed in, turned over their weapons, and were escorted to a room generally reserved for lawyers and their clients.
    “Can you give me a heads-up about what you want from Mirabelle?”
    “I want Jaime Sanchez,” he said, “but I doubt she’ll give him up. I want you to watch her. Assess her reactions. She’s not going to talk, she’ll have her lawyer here, but I’m going to try to get her to slip, to do or say something that’ll give us a direction. If you see an opportunity, take it. If I discipline you, don’t take it personally.”
    “I won’t. It would help if I knew what you were looking for.”
    “I don’t know,” he admitted. “She knows where Jaime is, I’m certain of it, but she’s not going to tell me. So I’m going to talk around it. Ask about the boy. See if she’ll spill something about him. About Jaime’s plans. I’m winging this right now. We have nothing, and I won’t tolerate having nothing.”
    Donnelly pushed himself as hard as his team—or harder. And here, now, she saw it clearly. He was beating himself up, either because George was dead or because Jaime got away. But there was something else under the surface, a deep craving to stop Jaime that went a lot deeper than an active warrant sweep. She’d seen it earlier, and now she didn’t know how she’d missed it from the beginning.
    “Jaime Sanchez was more than just part of the sweep, wasn’t he?”
    He glared at her. Angry. Then he sagged against the wall, a moment of weakness showing more than a hint of frustration. “I put them on the list. I wanted to take them down big because that’s the only way to keep them in a cage. Jaime Sanchez is a vicious gangbanger. He’s gotten away with drug running, kidnapping, attempted murder, conspiracy, and more—and I’ve never been able to nail him. We don’t have him on murder one, but I know he’s responsible for hits on rival gangs, likely pulled the trigger himself on several, and thinks he’s invincible. And dammit, he has every reason to think that because nothing sticks to him. It’s like he has a fucking evil angel getting him off, like disappearing before the sweep this morning.”
    “Could he have been tipped off?”
    “I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “I don’t think so. I put him on the list at the last minute because, like you said, he’s more than just a guy who skipped bail.” He ran his hands through his short hair, locked his fingers behind his neck. “Last year, someone in his gang was killed in a shootout that also took the life of an innocent fifteen-year-old girl walking to her grandparents’ house for dinner. The hit was in retaliation for Jaime stealing fifty thousand in heroin from his rival. And that’s not the first time people have died around him.” He hesitated. Lucy knew there was something more, but Donnelly didn’t continue. Instead he said, “The violence isn’t going to stop until we stop people like Jaime Sanchez.”
    The door opened and Donnelly pushed off from the wall.
    Mirabelle came in wearing handcuffs. Her lawyer, a short, older white male, walked in after her. “Agents,” he said, shaking their hands. “I’m Keith Glum, Ms. Borez’s counsel. I’ve spoken to Ms. Borez, and she’s distraught over her brother’s death. I’m sure you can