The Intelligence Unit Series
The Grifter Chapter 26

Frankie looked at the case board in the Intelligence office, her belly fully of pancakes and her brain going full speed ahead. She knew they had to base their next steps on facts and likelihoods. Things they could substantiate with concrete evidence. She also knew

that all of said evidence so far pointed to Alfie overdosing in a sad and poorly timed accident.

But Frankie had seen that look in Beck's eyes when Alfie had challenged him, just as she'd seen all the unspeakable things he'd done to others who had tried to cross him. Even though her instincts didn't qualify as concrete or factual, she knew what they were

telling her. Beck had done this.

"Okay," Sinclair said, fixing the team with a steel-blue stare from the back of the open office space. "Talk me through what we've got so far."

"Hollister and I didn't turn up anything significant in the area around where Alfie was found," Hale said from behind her desk. "There were a few signs of squatters on the ground level of one of the warehouses-some trash and a couple of sleeping bags. But it was hard to tell how long it had all been there, and there was nothing else out of the ordinary. No one around who might have seen or heard anything. The place was a ghost town."

"Alfie's digital trail is a dead end, too," Capelli said, frowning. "No calls or texts after the meet two nights ago, no activity on social media, and no credit card use, either. The last ping from his cell was at two thirty-seven AM yesterday morning. It traces back to the block where he lives."

"So, the phone was turned off over a day ago?" Frankie asked. That could be something.

"More likely, the battery died," Capelli said, and so much for that. "But yes, it's possible that it was turned off."

Frankie asked her next question even though she had a bad feeling she already knew the answer. "Which means we can't track it, right?"

Capelli shook his head. "Not even I am good enough to track a signal that doesn't exist."

"It's probably still at his house," Hollister ventured.

But then, Shawn voiced the exact question that had been lurking at the back of Frankie's mind. "So, he left his phone at home and went out to the pier to get high? That seems a little weird, don't you think?"

"Maybe not," Garza said. "He could've just forgotten his phone by accident, and he was an addict. The getting high part isn't really that much of a stretch, is it?"

A beat of silence ricocheted through the office before his dark eyes widened. "Sorry," he said to Frankie. "I don't mean to be insensitive, but-"

"You're working the most likely scenarios, which is how we solve cases," Frankie said, shaking her head. If she took any of this personally, they'd never get anywhere. The facts were the facts. "And you're also not wrong. Chances are pretty good Alfie did exactly that." Isabella lifted her brows at Frankie, reading between the lines like the kickass detective she was. "But?"

Frankie lifted her hands. "But it does raise some questions. His car wasn't anywhere near where he was found, so how did he get there? And why go out to the middle of nowhere to get high? Why not just go to Bang or Houlihan's?"

"Both excellent questions," Sinclair said. But before any of them could roll up their mental sleeves and start speculating on the answers, Sinclair's cell phone chimed.

"Preliminary tox screen results are in from the ME," he said, tapping his way across the screen. "Capelli, can you put them up on the board?"

"Of course." Capelli began to type at lightning speed, and Frankie turned to Shawn, unable to hide her surprise.

"Damn. Intelligence doesn't sleep on anything, do you?" she asked under her breath. It would've taken her sergeant three freaking days to get anything out of an ME, and that was if luck was on his side. Which it usually wasn't. One corner of Shawn's mouth twitched in a smile, smoothing the edges of Frankie's frayed nerves. "Sinclair is pure f*****g magic," he said, quietly enough to keep the words between only the two of them. "None of us knows how he does it, but we don't question." "Whoa," Capelli said, grabbing everyone's attention as he gestured to the toxicology report now displayed on the center monitor over his desk. "Ketamine, Oxycodone, heroin, fentanyl...this guy wasn't just high. He must've been utterly incapacitated." Frankie scanned the report, her heart thumping against her breastbone. "Those amounts are..." Enough to kill a three-hundred pound lumberjack. "There's no way Alfie would've knowingly taken that much." That amount of heroin alone had the capability to be lethal.

"Heroin cut with fentanyl is Beck's MO in Atlanta," Shawn said quietly. "Not to mention he's got obvious access to both Oxy and ketamine."

Hale gave up a rare frown. "Yeah, but Alfie's dealer probably does, too. And anyway, even if Beck did supply Alfie with all of it, that doesn't prove anything other than a low-level drug deal."

Frankie blew out a breath. As much as she hated it (and oh, she really f*****g hated it), Hale was right. There was nothing definitive that proved this to be anything other than an OD. Still, Beck was smart to the point of paranoia. If he'd had anything to do with Alfie's death, it wasn't as if he'd be sloppy enough to leave definitive proof.

But she'd have to table the weird feeling in her gut, for now, at least until they had more than a preliminary report. "So, where does that leave us with the case?" she asked.

"We'll have to play things right in order to keep the deal with Beck alive," Shawn said, and Isabella shook her head from behind her desk.

"Beck did all of his communicating through Alfie, so really, we don't have any way to contact him to play things right."

"So, we'll have to play dumb," Frankie said. Shawn Pritchard and Frankie Burton wouldn't have any reason to believe anything had happened to Alfie, and they couldn't lose the one chance they had to take Beck down. "I could text Alfie, asking him for details on the deal we set up the other night. There's a chance Beck has access to Alfie's phone, or at least maybe his contacts, and he'll reply."

"I doubt Beck would leave all the contact with us to Alfie without having backup," Shawn agreed. "He's probably got your number as a failsafe. And it's very possible that he really wants to do this deal."

"So we cover our bases and wait," Sinclair said with a nod. "We'll keep tabs on the scene workup and Alfie's autopsy, in case it gives us anything we can work with. In the meantime, let's do what we can to get Beck back on track for this deal. He said he'd deliver. We're not going to give him any reason not to."

A chorus of "copy that"s rippled across the Intelligence office. Frankie propped her elbows on her desk, sliding her fingers over her temples as she took a deep breath.

"Hey. You okay, Frankie?"

The question came not from Shawn, but from Hale, and it made Frankie blink.

"Yeah, I just..." Her throat tightened, and ugh, there was no point in trying to jam a lid on her feelings when she was in a room full of detectives, with a literal genius in the mix, besides. "I really want to make sure this case doesn't go pear-shaped, is all." Hale nodded, reaching out to squeeze Frankie's forearm. "Let's make sure it doesn't, then."

She settled in with Frankie and Shawn, and the three of them constructed a text to Alfie, then sent it from Frankie's burner phone. Frankie was shit at waiting-patience had never been one of her virtues-but thankfully for her sanity, the burner phone pinged with a response a few hours later.

Need to talk. North Point pier. Thirty minutes.

"Damn," Garza said, reaching for his jacket as they all kicked into motion. "This a*****e sure knows how to keep us on our toes. It'll take us a good twenty minutes just to get there, let alone scope out our options to back you up."

"It's the middle of the day," Shawn pointed out, "and he chose a public spot. Beck may be a sociopath, but he's far from stupid. I highly doubt he's going to try to hurt us in broad daylight."

"You're still going in armed," Hale half-questioned, and Shawn arched one black brow at her.

"Hell, yes. I'm also far from stupid."

Frankie and Shawn headed down to the locker room, making the world's fastest change into street clothes and surveillance equipment. The trip to North Point passed in a flurry of comm checks and fast plans, and by the time Shawn pulled up beside the crumbling curb a few blocks from the boardwalk leading to the pier, her adrenaline was pumping, full force.

Of course, Shawn read her with just one glance. "We've got this, Frankie," he said, and his steadiness reminded her to breathe.

"I know," she said, tempering the whoosh of her pulse with the certainty that they knew exactly what needed to be done. They were both good cops, and they made a great team.

And neither of them would stop until they'd salvaged this deal and taken Beck down.

Garza's voice slid into Frankie's ear through her comms. "I have eyes on Beck. Black jacket, far end of the pier. He's alone."

She knew Garza had set up in the parking lot at the edge of the boardwalk, in the surveillance van with Capelli. The vantage point gave them a decent view of the pier with binoculars, albeit less-than-great proximity if Beck got squirrely. Of course, he was early to the party, and Frankie double-checked the Glock at her hip beneath the bulk of her oversized sweatshirt and bomber jacket.

"Let's do this."

She and Shawn got out of the pickup truck, with Capelli going dark on their comms. The sky was a cold, gloomy gray, the water beyond dark and iron-colored to match. Their boots thumped out a steady rhythm over the worn planks of the pier, and Frankie coached herself into character with each step. By the time they were a dozen paces from the end, with Beck in plain sight, her undercover persona was fully in place. He stood facing the water, the hood of his jacket up over his head-a bold move, letting the two of them approach him from behind. Then again, they were supposed to think they were meeting Alfie, so as soon as Beck turned to reveal that it was him, not his cousin, standing there waiting, it gave him the element of surprise. Or, at least, it would have in the scenario Beck thought he'd cultivated.

Frankie made herself stop short, sending her eyes wide in her best effort to sell it. "W-where's Alfie?" she asked, spinning her gaze over the empty dead-end of the pier. "He texted me and said to meet him here."

"He didn't text you," Beck said, his mouth set in a grim line and his eyes as frigid as the water behind him. "I did."

Shawn's hands became fists at his sides, and God, he knew exactly how to slide into his role with perfect ease. "What the hell, man? What are you trying to pull? Where's Alfie?" "Alfie's dead."

Frankie's gasp came more easily than she'd expected it to, the sting of tears burning her eyes. "He's...what?"

"He's dead," Beck repeated, his voice devoid of emotion and his eyes devoid of a soul.

"How?" Shawn asked quietly, even though they were far from being within earshot of anyone on the mostly deserted pier.

Beck kept his hands stuffed in his pockets, which put Frankie on edge. But then, he turned slightly, his sights set on the water, and okay, yeah. This, they could work with.

"Overdose. He never did know when to stop." Beck shrugged. "I always had a feeling he might end up this way. He was such a f**k-up, it was really just a matter of time."

The words pricked at Frankie, but she fought the urge to bristle. She had to stay steady, no matter how badly she wanted to scream. Still, he might've had something to do with Alfie's death, so she took a shot in the dark.

"But he was just talking about getting sober," she said, and Beck laughed in reply, cold and sharp.

"He always did at about this time of year, but he could never follow through. Guess this time, he hit it a little too hard on the rebound. Poor bastard."

"I just...I just can't believe it," Frankie said, the wobble in her voice all too genuine.

Shawn balanced it out with perfection. "So, where does that leave us with this deal?" he asked, and Beck's brows lifted toward the dark cotton of his hood, clearly surprised.

"Shawn," Frankie chided, and he cut her a chilly look.

"What? I'm not exactly the sentimental type when this much money's on the line, and we've already wasted enough time."

A muscle in Beck's jaw tightened, making Frankie's pulse trip and her instinct howl to put herself between them, to protect Shawn at any cost.

"You might want to watch your tone. Alfie was my cousin," Beck said slowly.

Steady,Shawn's gaze told her. "I know who he was, just like I know who you are. You're a businessman. You texted us to meet you here. I'm guessing that wasn't to invite us to the funeral. So, like I said. Where does that leave us with this deal?" Beck rocked back on his boot heels, eyeing Shawn through the cloud-darkened daylight. Anyone else would've flinched at the pure menace in Beck's stare, but not Shawn. God, he was a good cop.

Finally, Beck shrugged. "It leaves us without a middleman, which is goddamned inconvenient. Now that Alfie's not in the picture, I need to rely on the people I have to move as much product as possible. Ty and Cade can't handle more than they've got. So, as much as

I don't like it, you two"-he turned to Frankie, his smile making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end-"are going to get what you wanted. We'll move forward with the deal we set up the other night. It's still going to take some time for me to get that kind of weight, but once I do, you'd better be ready to move it."

"We've been ready," Shawn said. "We're good for it."

"How long are we talking, here?" Frankie asked, and God, even if he said fifteen minutes, she'd do anything to make it work.

"A week," he said, and both she and Shawn knew better than to push. The extra time might drive her crazy, but it would let the team prepare for every possible scenario. It was a win, even if waiting would tap every last drop of her patience. Frankie nodded. "Okay."

"Good." Beck turned toward the side of the pier that led to the boardwalk, dismissing them. "Same meeting place as last time. One week from today. I'll text you the time."

He began to walk away, pausing after a few steps to look over his shoulder and nail them with a grin that was nothing short of pure evil.

"Make sure you're there, and that you don't f**k around. I plan to get exactly what I want out of this deal, too."