Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 76309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Craig sits back. He stretches his back, grunting, and continues. “We thought the Russians just made them, but then another guy gets caught. My fucking partner. One day, we’re joking around together at the office, then the next I get a text, a fucking picture of him strung up in some empty-looking room, hanging by his wrists from an overhead pipe, with a warning. Send over my list of undercover agents, or my partner loses a finger for every hour I don’t respond.”
Lanzo interrupts. “Why you?”
“I’m the undercover liaison,” Craig says with a wry smile. “I’m supposed to be the guy protecting them. The guy that does whatever needs doing to keep them safe.”
“You didn’t give Burian the names,” I whisper, a slow creep of horror falling over me.
Craig nods sharply. “And don’t you fucking judge me for it.”
“I don’t,” I say, trying to imagine the agony of that decision.
“Ten hours later, I got a box on my doorstep.” I glance at Lanzo. His face remains utterly composed. “Fingers. Ten of them. Then I got another message, saying I’d better head into the office. That’s when I heard my supervisor got killed. Some fucker bashed his brains in with a brick at a goddamn carnival.” He laughs, sounding unhinged. “Can you imagine that?”
“No,” Lanzo said, deadpan. “Can’t imagine it at all.”
“Turns out, his former partner was missing, a good agent. Dependable kind of guy. Still working cases at an advanced age, but not everyone gets moved up, you know? The guy has kids, a wife, all that shit. Gets abducted by this psycho.”
Lanzo interrupts again. “You’re telling me Burian has two federal agents in his custody?”
“That we know about.” Craig sounds miserable.
“How is this not an all-out manhunt?” I ask, looking between the two men. “There are multiple dead undercover FBI agents, a dead FBI supervisor, two kidnapped agents, one of which was seriously maimed. Why aren’t there a thousand feds swarming Dallas right now?”
Craig looks pained. He rubs his face a few times, scratching at his forehead, before speaking. “When Howard got that brick smashed into his head, that fucked it all up.”
I try not to make a sound. Howard was the guy that tried to strangle me. Hard to give him my sympathy right now.
Craig continues, “The higher-ups are freaking out. Like you said, we got lots of bodies and two kidnapped agents. This is embarrassing as fuck for the FBI, probably the biggest fuck-up in decades, if not ever. My bosses want a win, they absolutely fucking crave a win, and they decided that bringing home our two missing agents is going to be their top priority.”
“Which is why you’re not swarming,” Lanzo says, nodding as if it makes sense.
“You’re trying not to scare Burian?” I shake my head. “That’s crazy. You need to chase him out. Who knows if those two guys are still alive.”
Craig’s face stills. His fingers twitch together in front of him. “One of those guys is my partner,” he says, his tone barely steady.
“Sorry,” I say quietly.
“That’s why I’m here. My bosses are being too tentative. They’re gonna get Frankie killed.” Craig pulls at his thinning hair. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t just sit around, waiting for this psycho Russian guy to send me more of Frankie’s parts.”
“We can help,” Lanzo says, sitting up straight. “But you need to tell me everything you know.”
“It’s not fucking much,” Craig admits. “You’d think the entire might of the bureau would be dropping down on this guy, but the top brass are terrified. They’re hiding in their shells like a bunch of old turtles.”
“Just point me in the right direction,” Lanzo says. “I think we can help each other.”
Craig’s quiet for a few seconds. He seems to deflate again, rubbing his face, sighing. Finally, he nods. “I’ll give you what I have,” he says, taking out his phone. “I’ve got an email set up. Just need a place to send it.”
Lanzo rattles off a random-sounding email address to a server I’ve never heard of before. “Encrypted,” he says. “Just make sure it’s encrypted.”
“Done.” Craig taps at his phone. “Carmine said if anyone can stop Burian, it’s you. He swore this was legit. I want to believe it, but I’ve got ten reasons to think my partner’s already dead.”
“If he’s still alive, I’ll find him.” Lanzo stands up. “Now, agent, I need you to go back home and pretend like this conversation never happened. If I need you, I’ll be in touch.”
Craig stares up at him. “That’s it, huh? I break all the rules, send you some serious classified documents, and you send me on my way?”
“That’s it,” Lanzo confirms, face hardening. “Burian’s mine and mine alone, and I’m going to kill him.”
Chapter 35
Renata
Buried inside of that cache of documents Craig sent over is an address, which happens to show up in the data Lanzo scraped from the calls Burian kept making to my phone.