Justice and Lies Read online

  justice and lies

  the cassie morgan series

  book three

  Laura Teagan

  contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Acknowledgments

  Reviews

  Also by Laura Teagan

  Coming Soon

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2022 Laura Teagan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  * * *

  All rights reserved. Media and rights inquiries: [email protected].

  Cover Design by GetCovers

  To my little sister, Amy. You continue to amaze me with all you do.

  Justice and Lies

  chapter one

  “Are you ready, Cassie?”

  Of course, I am. After months and months of waiting for this moment, we’re finally pulling up outside of the hotel. Months of following him and trying to speak to him online, months of keeping our distance and trying to connect the financial records we have, tonight is finally the night we arrest him and bring him in.

  “Yeah, let’s do this. I’m ready to go,” I say.

  The van comes to a spot, having finally found our parking spot. If I weren’t in the van, I would probably be jumping up and down, trying to get some of the energy out. I don’t want to say I’m pumped, but I am more than ready for this to happen.

  I’m obviously not the only one in the van or the only one involved in the process, with Savannah driving in the front. Here in the back of the utility van with me, I have Rachel and Mason, two of my other teammates. Inside the hotel, I have one more team member, waiting and watching in the back of the bar, Isaiah. Our senior agent, Juan, stands at the front desk, ready to set us up with a room if needed.

  While Rachel stays here for communications, Savannah and Mason will sneak out to go to the hotel’s security room to keep eyes on us.

  That just leaves me: the woman who’s going to make the magic.

  “Here, check your makeup one more time before we kick you out,” Rachel says. She pulls a compact out of her shirt pocket and hands it to me.

  “I’m always paranoid I’ll get lipstick on my teeth,” I say, taking it from her, and popping it open to check.

  No lipstick on my teeth but it is red lipstick, as bright as my hair (almost) and I worry that I will leave it on everything. The wine glass, a tooth, my hand if I accidentally wipe it, maybe on him….

  I check the rest of my face, like my eye makeup, just to make sure everything is set. I think I have more makeup on than I’ve worn in the last two months combined, but this man likes his women to be covered in makeup.

  That’s when he likes women and not young girls. That’s what brought us here, to the hotel, to meet him tonight. His love of young girls, teenagers.

  We have evidence, and we have an arrest warrant, so now we just have to arrest him. Easy enough, right?

  And bonus points for me if I get a confession out of him.

  While we have plenty of evidence, this kind of evidence is always a smoking gun. A confession on tape that we can play over and over again in a trial would be the end of him.

  I just need to get him drunk enough to spill his guts. The more I can get, the better off we’ll be when he stands trial. I just hope when I do, I’m not as drunk as he is.

  “Are you ready, Cassie?” Juan asks.

  “Yes.” I readjust my heel, making sure it won’t pop off when I get out of the van. I’ll head out first to hit the hotel bar and meet him there. “Is he in there yet?” I ask.

  “Nope, still half a mile away. You’ve got time to go in there and settle in. Maybe have your first drink, too.”

  Thank goodness. It’ll give me some time to get a feel for my surroundings.

  “Let’s do this,” I say. I hand Rachel her compact back before I open the door to the van and slide out.

  The door closes behind me, closing the opportunity to go back. This is my job, though, this is what I train for. Taking a moment, I smooth my dress out, making sure to give him some eye candy in the cleavage department. I just need to make sure he doesn’t see the microphone taped in there, too.

  With a deep breath, I walk into the hotel. It’s one of the old hotels in downtown, several diplomats stay here on a regular basis. It’s upscale and classy, a place where you only meet a prostitute if she calls herself a call girl or an escort.

  I give a quick nod to the receptionist, pointing to the bar off to the left to indicate that’s where I’m going. She looks to Juan, and I catch him nodding to her. Looks like we’ve decided to give the staff the heads up tonight. We don’t always do, but since this man is well known, I’m guessing Isiah told the receptionist and her manager.

  Based on Mason’s tracker in the van, Daniel Hayes is currently about half a mile away, so I have plenty of time to get situated.

  As I walk into the bar, I see Isaiah sitting at a booth in the corner, just where he should be. He gives a nod of the head to me, acknowledging that I’m here and he sees me. I just look at him while he does, another nod could give us both away.

  The agreement online was that I’d meet Hayes at the bar. There isn’t anyone at the bar, given it’s a Wednesday night. No one wants to hit the expensive bar in the middle of the week if they’re not here for business.

  Our team has spent thousands of hours over the past year looking into him, and we know more about him than he probably does.

  What we don’t know is the why behind it all. Why does he want little girls when he can have women? He could have them with the amount of money he has, and he does sometimes. Not often though.

  Working for the FBI, I’ve dealt with my fair share of criminals. Mostly white collar, but in the past few years, I’ve been focusing more on bigger crimes. That’s how we got to Daniel Hayes.

  That’s how I got to Brent Rossett, almost five years ago. That’s a story for another time, though.

  This is how it often works. Months of research, following suspects around, engaging with them online, and building a case. Tonight is the night we finally seal the deal so we can prosecute Hayes while he is behind bars and save those girls.

  I sit up in the bar and take a look at the menu. The bottles of wine are a few hundred dollars, getting up into the few thousands. Knowing I need to make it splashy, I order a glass high off the list and wait for the bartender to serve it up. Just the price tag alone makes me anxious.

  Of course, if Hayes doesn’t pick up the tab for all the wine, I’ll get reimbursed for it. However, we all expect he
’ll pick up the tab. With that kind of money, especially since he’s new money, he’ll want to flaunt it.

  After the first sip, I let my mind wander back to the flirting aspect. As a kid in school, I was never one of the little girls interested in flirting with the boys. I wanted to be out tackling them in football and making them cry, not flirting with them.

  My flirting skills are pretty rudimentary, but I know one move the boys love. Readjusting my shirt, I give it a little tug so my cleavage looks bigger.

  After all, we did tell him that I’m a woman who peddles teenagers to gross men like him. The sad thing is that Daniel Hayes is a rather attractive man, he could have any consenting woman he wanted. He’s young and rich, too. He’s got the resources, too, if he wanted to pay for a woman of age. I can’t seem to move past that fact in my mind. He could have any woman (well, almost any) and not commit a crime. He has everything going for him, why fuck it up like this?

  Instead of playing it safe, he preys on girls who have no business being involved with a man. There is an age of consent for a reason.

  With another sip of my wine, I look up at the TV on the wall above the liquor shelf. There is no sound on the TV, but there’s closed captioning at the bottom. One name catches my eyes: Brent Rossett.

  The TV doesn’t show him, so I assume there’s a little bit of delay to the captioning. If I had to guess, it’s probably about the trial that’s about to start.

  Just thinking about what that will be like, sitting on the stand, to tell my story. To tell my story knowing it will be broadcast over news stations across the country, unfortunately.

  I do look forward to the moment when I take the stand and see Rossett sitting behind the defendant’s table. He’ll have no choice but to listen. He’ll have to absorb all the details I give about the investigation, about when I realized he was following me, and the night I went into my apartment and found him there waiting for me.

  I take a deep breath and try to push Rossett out of my head, put him back in the past, at least for now.

  I don’t need that clogging up my brain tonight while I’m trying to work the magic on Daniel Hayes.

  “Want another?” My bartender asks, pointing to the empty glass in front of me.

  “Sure,” I say. Two glasses before Hayes shows up is flirting with danger. Not that I’ll be drunk, but if I drink them both fast, I’ll be a little tipsy.

  The bartender brings the glass to me and then looks behind me.

  I don’t have to turn around to know exactly who is standing behind me.

  chapter two

  “Liz?” Daniel Hayes asks.

  When I turn around, I offer my hand. “I prefer Elizabeth,” I say. “You must be Will.”

  “I am,” he says. “Do you mind if I sit here?”

  “Please, join me,” I say. I almost try batting my eyelashes, or I would try if I thought I could get away with it. However, I’m pretty sure that’s a talent you’re born with, not one you learn.

  He climbs into the bar stool next to me, and waits for the bartender to appear again. “I’ll take whatever she has,” he says when he orders.

  “Date night?” the bartender asks, pointing at the two of us. He has a name tag on his shirt, but it’s entirely too dark to read the tiny print.

  “Something like that,” Hayes says.

  “How did you two meet?”

  “Online,” I say.

  The bartender nods, almost like he doesn’t believe that the two of us would meet online. However, he takes the answer at face value, and leaves us to help someone else down at the end of the bar.

  “Nice place to meet someone for the first time,” I say to Hayes once we’re alone. I turn my body so I’m almost leaning into him and graze my knee with his, so he can feel me right next to him.

  “It’s a classy institution,” he says. Taking a sip of his wine, he watches me over the rim of his glass. We’re both taking a look at each other, sizing each other up. “When you make your life out of nothing and into something, you want things to be nice and classy.”

  I hear a snort in my ear, and I just know it’s Mason that’s snorting. He’s probably eating all of this up, knowing that I’m stuck with this dude.

  “Well, Liz, maybe we can work together and you can afford a life like this, too, soon. I take care of the people I do business with.”

  “If you do, you’ll knock it off with ‘Liz.’ I’m Elizabeth,” I say.

  I can even hear Mason’s unspoken comments in my head, or maybe Savannah, they both tend to be peas in a pod. Even undercover, Cassie’s a snob.

  It’s not true, I’m not a snob, but as a woman undercover, who is running a sex trafficking ring, I’d think Elizabeth would expect for people to call her Elizabeth. No cute nicknames, her full name, said with respect.

  Then again, I’ve been carrying Cassie since I was a kid, even if it doesn’t always feel like it fits me in life now.

  “Noted, Elizabeth,” Hayes says, “a woman who stands her ground. It’s refreshing in my line of work.”

  Read that as: “I prey on girls who can’t stand up for themselves, so this is new.” I just hope it’s not exciting for him, we don’t need that.

  “A woman who knows what she wants and refuses to accept anything less? That’s refreshing to you?”

  Hayes smiles. “I have money, and money brings you power. People who don’t have those are willing to do a lot of things to get on my good side in hopes of getting a little of that money and power. ‘No’ is a word people don’t really use around me.”

  Such an asshole right here. “I’m capable of making my own money. Enough to live comfortably. If you can’t respect that, I can take my business elsewhere.”

  Clearly the whole “let’s get flirty” idea is falling apart. I’m not a flirt, I’m a fighter. Even as a kid, I felt a fist got the point across better than my words could.

  “Noted, I can respect that.” As he says that, he lets his hand linger down to my thigh, his finger dancing around the edge of the skirt.

  I had planned to wear pants tonight but was talked into a skirt by Rachel and right now, it seems to be paying off. It’s riding a little higher than I wanted it to be, but it’s working.

  Instead, though, I decide to go off instinct and grab his wrist. “You have to earn the respect before you go climbing up the legs,” I say. That’s when I notice he is starting to get excited. What is up with men where two seconds of “sex” as a thought and they’re ready to go?

  “Fine,” he says, leaning back.

  I realize I may have pushed too far, and if he gets up and leaves, we might ruin this operation. At least catching him without making a scene. The team is outside, he’s not getting out of this hotel alone.

  “Well, maybe we can revisit that later on, after we get to the business proposals. You said you know people.”

  “I do. I have my own resources for people. Tell me though, why should I trust you with my business?” Why should my imaginary little girls go to you? That’s the question I really want to ask but can’t.

  “I’m discreet when it comes to the women I associate myself with. There are rumors about what I enjoy, but I’m careful. They have no proof and anyone in my company will have access to whatever they want - food, clothes, money, as long as they stay with me.”

  As long as you can use them all day and night.

  Men like him get away with shit like this because no one pays attention to them in a criminal light. Tonight, we’ll fix that for him though. As soon as we walk out the hotel, it’s all over for him.

  “Exchanging a cushy life for desires?” I ask.

  “A man has needs,” he says, shrugging, like we’re not talking about a predatory fetish.

  Just the thought of that is enough to make me want to gag, but I don’t. Instead, I nod back, trying to get him to think I agree.

  “Women do, too. Men think they’re unique in having needs, when they aren’t. You just like to talk about it more.”
br />   Not what I want to be talking about tonight, our “needs”. Seriously, gag me again so I pass out and don’t have to listen to this anymore.

  Dude might be rich, but he’s boring and unoriginal. He can’t flirt and his moves are a turn off. I say that as the woman who turns to insults as a flirting mechanism, so what do I actually know? This is all just his lame attempt to use his money to get into my pants and then my imaginary girls’ pants.

  “Hey, there are two men in black suits, looking awfully suspicious, standing outside of the bar,” Isaiah says.

  “How do they look suspicious?” Savannah asks.

  “They look like they’re bouncers,” Isaiah says. “They weren’t there before Hayes showed up.”

  Well, that does seem a little suspicious and I find myself struggling for a moment to focus on the voices in my head instead of Hayes’ hand in the wrong place.