In A Fix - Mary Calmes Page 0,30

is one of Suárez’s crew to roll on him so that he, in turn, will give up the others. They’re looking to implicate and jail the members of the cartel, not Lane.”

“No?”

“If Lane makes a deal, will she receive immunity?” I wanted to be clear on that for Brig’s sake.

Dallas nodded.

“There you go,” I said to Brig. “Lane explains her part in this mess, she gets off, you get to be the hero, and Stanton-Downey is free and clear.”

“Is that true?” he demanded, his gaze riveted on Dallas.

Dallas smiled at him like a lion eying an impala, narrowing his eyes and nodding. “It is, yes. As long as you play along.”

Brig turned to me. “What do I have to do?”

“I suspect that this is where Digby Ingram comes in,” I said, trying to think of a way to explain all of this to Jared Colter. Somehow, and I couldn’t think of how at this exact moment, this was going to end up being my fault in my boss’s mind. And even though I’d made the decision to quit, going out on a low was never good.

“You’re a clever man,” Dallas complimented me.

But at the moment, I was just tired. “How long has Digby been a CI for you guys?” I asked to at least get the full picture in my head. “That’s a confidential informant,” I clarified for Brig.

“Two years,” Dallas replied, pushing another picture over to me. “And he’s a CI for the DEA, not the FBI. Let’s make that clear.”

Digby was naked in bed with three girls who looked very young. I glanced up from the photo and into Dallas’s dark gray-blue eyes. “They look maybe fifteen.”

“Close,” he said sarcastically. “They’re all sixteen.”

My stomach roiled.

“Oh God,” Brig said as I slid the picture over to him. “Tell me he didn’t have sex with little girls.”

“It was supposedly a casting event for a new series on the WB, but that was the cover. The producer used it as a setup to have sex with underage girls.”

“And Digby was invited because he had the drugs,” Brig said, the picture, I was sure, now fully formed in his mind of who his friend really was.

“You’re gettin’ good at this,” Dallas said, with a sneer aimed at the three new pictures he pushed across the table to him.

Lots of older men with girls who should have been at home doing homework sitting on their laps. “Tell me the DEA busted this party before any of these little girls were assaulted.” I was hoping that the cavalry had showed up on time for once.

“Oh yeah.” I could hear the righteous glee in his voice. “I was working a joint task force with them, and we turned the booker six months prior, so as soon as she was contacted to provide the additional entertainment, she let us know and we were ready.”

“And busted the party all to hell.”

“Yep. The girls with parents or legal guardians—who all claimed not to know where the hell they were or what they’d been up to—went home, and the rest of them were processed through child welfare and placed in temporary foster homes.

“The kids were taken care of, the escorts were cut loose, and that left high-powered men on an exclusive client list.”

“Who you threatened to expose if they didn’t cooperate.”

“We got a lot of great intel that day, but the FBI got especially lucky, because Digby Ingram fell into our lap. He moved a lot of drugs to cover a lifestyle that had spun way out of control.”

“And he knows Suárez, or someone below him?”

“Someone way below him, but it was the DEA’s way in.”

“Was?”

“Well, the FBI took over the operation two weeks ago, when Suárez got ahold of Lane, and we needed Digby to get to you because the contact needed to be seamless. If I was in tight with you before Suárez reached out, no one would have given me a second thought. I’d be just another frat brother in the entourage.”

I turned to Brig. “Did you know that Digby was a drug dealer?”

“I knew he was the guy that people in our circle went to if they wanted something, but I had no idea he was buying and selling beyond that.”

“And you’re more or less right,” Dallas assured him, pushing his messy copper mane back from his face. “He’s not technically a drug trafficker, because he only sells to an exclusive clientele, namely his closest friends, but we could still put him away for five