Deadly Justice Read Free

shadowy blobs moving away.  One of them was Webster, escaping with the rest of Chavez's crew, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do.
    “You'll pay…I swear…you're gonna pay…”
    The slamming of car doors was the last sound Carpenter heard before surrendering to the blackness. 

 

Chapter Two
    Three years later, Dallas, Texas
    F or a war room, it lacked a little panache.  The window above the back corner booth of the Coffee & Crullers shop was rimmed with dust and grime and a greasy layer of heaven only knew what else.  The dark maroon plastic bench sported two pieces of duct tape placed in an overlapping X shape in a vain attempt to hold in the stuffing where it had split open.  The L-shaped bench seat held four men squashed into the tightly confined space.  Carpenter pulled up a wooden chair with a padded green seat, turned it around so he straddled it, his elbows resting along its slatted back. 
    His gaze missed nothing, glancing around the table, eyeballing each man.  These were his handpicked, select employees, integral to accomplishing his mission without alerting either the media or the feds.  If the alphabet squads descended, everything would go to hell in a hand-basket before he ever got within a mile of Richard Webster.
    Thinking about his ex-partner had him unconsciously clenching his fists.  The moment he noted it, he casually unfurled them, hoping the others hadn't spotted the nervous gesture.  This was his op, though many higher ups in the government probably considered it a personal vendetta, but he'd be damned if anybody would stop him from bringing down the turncoat bastard who'd been responsible for his disgrace and summary dismissal from the DEA.  Only a team of hotshot and extremely high-priced attorneys had kept him from doing life in prison.  Money did have its privileges. 
    “Boss, this gonna take long?  I need to get back to the data I'm running on the Russian job.”  Stefan Carlisle had one of the finest brains in the Western Hemisphere, and his nimble fingers could dance their way across anybody's internet connection with the skill of a sharpshooter zeroing in on the bull's eye. 
    “Pipe down, geek-boy,” Nate Blackwell retorted, smacking Stefan on the back of his head.  “He'll brief us when he's ready.” 
    “Sheesh, gimme a break.  I've got three different caseloads running simultaneously back at HQ, and I'm damn close on the Sokolov case.”
    “Push Sokolov to the back burner, Carlisle, we've got bigger fish to fry.”  He pulled out a folder and laid it precisely on the tabletop before him.  Inside was the key, the integral puzzle piece to finally catching Richard Webster.  After months of dead-ends and a multitude of blind alleys, one itty-bitty blip on the World Wide Web had brought his nemesis to the surface.
    “Richard Alexander Webster.” 
    Groans rose from a couple of the men seated at the table.  They'd heard the man's name until they were blue in the face.  Knew exactly how much time and effort, not to mention money, Carpenter spent tracking the former DEA agent.  The man was a traitor who'd betrayed the United States government, absconded with millions of dollars in cash, marijuana, and a fortune in illegal weapons.  Somehow, he'd managed to disappear without a trace. 
    “We have a lead.”  Carpenter pulled open the folder and slid a glossy eight and a half by eleven inch photo into the middle of the table.  Carlisle let loose a wolf whistle at the woman smiling up from the picture. 
    She was gorgeous.  Not in the fashionable sense of stick-figured professional models or Hollywood starlets.  Instead she looked like every man's fantasy woman.  Dressed in business attire, the dark charcoal gray suit did nothing to overtly emphasize her silhouette, but her pencil skirt highlighted and displayed curvy hips, the material pulled tight across her ass as she bent over a file cabinet.  She was partially turned toward the camera, as if