⋆° დ ༄ RISKY BUSINESS
chapter forty four. you never know who's who.

"There is no way you cooked this, Maxie. This is really good" Adam said, taking a bite of his food, where Maxine had invited him over for dinner at hers and mavericks house.

Maxine scoffs and hits his arm, "I so did. Maverick may have helped a little bit"

Adam looks over at Maverick who mouthed, a lot, making the officer laugh. Maxine grabbed her phone that was ringing from her pocket to see a text from Erin saying to meet the team at an address, "it's Erin. Gotta go"

"Wish I could go" Adam sighed. Maxine pats his shoulder, "well, now it's a good time for you and Mav to really get to know each other" then she goes over to her boyfriends and leans in for a kiss, "bye baby"

"Bye my love. Be safe"

Maxine walks up the stairs to her room to get changed and grab her gun. Maverick looks at Adam and says, "we need to talk"

🪩🪩🪩

The intelligence team slowly walks into the house of the victim that Burgess and her partner fell upon at a park with their guns drawn.

"Hey, check this out" Maxine said as she and Erin find a steel door and a keypad. Kevin prys the door open and the team walks in to find tactical gear, pictures with diplomats, guns and lots of money.

"This guy was someone important" Erin comments.

"I'm looking at a million dollars here" Jay said, aiming his flashlight at the pile of money when the automatic lights go on.

"Back up generators" Dawson says.

Voight goes to hit the button that was on the wall across from them and another steel door opens. Antonio turns the light switch on and to their surprise, there was thousands of guns.

"Whoa" Max said.

"What the hell"

🪩🪩🪩

Maxine walks onto the unit from the back staircase downing an energy drink and goes to sit at her desk. She slides her chair over to Jays desk and takes his favorite energy drink from her coat pocket and sets it on his desk and he looks up at her.

"I'm sorry for whatever I did"

As Hank walks onto the unit, Adam gets up from his desk and says, "Hey boss. Any uh, word on my case? Cause I'm kind of climbing the walls here"

"I made a few calls, trying to pull in a favor with the chief. In the meantime, give mouse a hand with those guns we seized"

Adam nods his head and as he walks away, Maxine gives him a fist bump.

"Alright, what do we got?" Hank asks. Antonio hands him a paper and says, "Victor Cullen, five years ago he founded Peregrine. It's a corporate security firm. Before that, his work history is blank for several decades."

"The M.E is performing the autopsy as we speak" Jay says, "and from his preliminary findings, Cullen was dead for at least a week"

"Yeah. Patrol working the union park beat says Cullens SUV wasn't there when they made their sweep the night before, so someone drove his body there and left it"

"neighbors say he was extremely private. No family in the area. He had a long time girlfriend named Jainie Saunders." Erin says, reading from a file.

"Wait, Cullens been dead a week, and his girlfriend doesn't report it?" Hank asks, as Maxine picks up her ringing desk phone, "She's suspect number one. Find her and bring her in"

"Uh, Hank. We don't have too" Max says, taking the receiver away from her ear, "Jainie Saunders is downstairs with her lawyer" Hank then points to her and Jay.

~~~

"After this morning's news segment, my client wanted to voluntarily come in" Jainie's lawyer says, once Maxine and Jay had brought them into interrogation, "she's an emotional wreck, and she's only willing to admit to improper disposal of human remains."

"Alright, well, until we get the autopsy results in, we can't rule out foul play." Jay says, leaning on the blue cement wall behind his partner who was sitting at the silver table.

"I did not kill Victor" Jainie states, "he had arrhythmia. I begged him to get treatment, but he refused. He just kept popping aspirin"

"So, what happened?" Max questions.

"We were at home. One minute having dinner and the next...he collapsed. A heart attack"

"So, instead of calling 911, you did what, exactly?" Jay asks.

"I put him in the garage, then last night, I drove him to the park"

"Jainie, you have to imagine how this looks on our end. Victors been dead a week, yet he turned up in the park last night" Max says, sitting forward in her chair, "we searched his home and we found an Arsenal and a million dollars cash in the basement."

"You think I don't know how this looks? I loved Victor. I loved him. I just did what he told me to do."

"Which was what?" Jay asks.

"Jainie, you gotta help yourself out here." Maxine says, as Jay takes a seat next to her. Jainie looks at her lawyer who shrugs, indicating for her to go ahead.

"Victor said that if he ever died, I should leave his body in a public place and the agency would find him" Jainie says.

"Agency?"

"Victor, he was CIA"

Max and Jay look at each other in disbelief and shock and confusion.

🪩🪩🪩

"They forced their way in, attacked me. It happened so fast" The M.E explains to Voight, Halstead and Dawson as they watch the video of three men who were stealing Cullens body from the morgue.

"They move like pros" Jay comments.

"Yeah" Hank agrees, "you got anything on the parking lot cams?" He then asks the security officer.

"One of them caught a black SUV speeding from the lot. No plates" he answers.

"Wonder if Victor Cullen was as interesting alive as he is dead" Antonio says, as he, Jay and Hank head towards the elevators.

"His girlfriend said the CIA would want his body, right?" Jay asks, "who else would take it?"

"Look, secret operation or not, you can't commit murder and steal bodies with impunity" Voight says then answers his phone, "Yeah"

"Hank, we got a hold of DMV records" Maxine says, leaning on Erin's desk, who was writing in her notepad from looking at the computer screen, "In addition to the SUV that we found Cullen in, hes registered three other identical vehicles, all purchased through his company. All four of Cullens SUV's were outfitted as bulletproof by a car armoring company on Pulaski."

"So, we got three armed offenders driving around the city in custom tanks"

"The thing is, Cullen never picked up any of the SUVs. One of his employees did, a guy named Ryan Bergstrom. We're gonna send you his LKA now."

~~~

"This is Maverick Connors, I can't come to the phone, obviously. Leave a message"

Maxine was confused, he always answered her calls. "Hi baby. Guess I missed you. Um, call me back"

Maxine sighed and slid her phone in her back pocket and walked out onto the bullpen when she heard Antonio say, "Finally got access to Cullen's financial records. His security firm was well funded, but not by the government. His mother. She owned a huge soybean farm downstate, passed away five years ago. When it was sold off, Cullen inherited over 30 million" making everyone raise their eyebrows in shock, "his bank statements indicate Cullen was withdrawing large amounts of cash the last few years. Seems he was paying Bergstrom and his other operatives 15 thousand a week."

"Damn. I wish he was still hiring" Kevin says, making everyone chuckle.

"Guys, this is Dr Charles" Erin says, walking onto the unit with an older man behind her, "Dr Charles, welcome to intelligence."

Dr Charles takes a look around and says, "So, this is it. The infamous black site I've been reading about all these years."

"Not everything you read is true" Antonio says.

"I asked Dr Charles if he could dig up Victor Cullens medical history for us, maybe shed a little light"

Dr Charles takes a Manila folder from his bag and says, "So, Cullen indeed has a psychical condition, heart ailment, dating way back. But it's his psych file that's fascinating. He suffered from something called delusional disorder. People suffering from delusional disorder continue to function and present as perfectly normal. Hence Cullens remarkable ability to recruit people into his soldier of fortune universe. To him, it was all absolutely real. Which is why it felt real to others"

"Doc, we got somebody else who needs to hear this" Hank says, referring to Bergstrom who was still in interrogation.

~~~

After talking with Bergstrom, the team heads down to the roll up where Cullens massive amounts of guns were being stored at the moment and where Al was going undercover as Mr Jacobs, another one of Cullens figments that he made up.

"Alright, listen up. Bergstroms reaches out to the other two operatives. Why don't you tell them" Hank says. Antonio takes the cuffs off of Bergstrom who says, "I left a coded message on Craigslist. Missed connection board. It's how Cullen would reach out to us. Everyday, we'd log on and read it, and if there was mention of the 39th floor, we knew to meet at Wabash Tower. He would lease the 39th floor. It's where we'd meet and plan our operations. Me, John and Clay. We never shared our full names."

"Wabash tower, there's a lot of civilians, in and out" Jay says, "I assume your pals show up packing."

"We'll set up a perimeter and grab them before they enter." Antonio says.

"That could turn into a shootout on Wacker Drive." Maxine says, resting her hands on her hips.

"No. We let out CIA handler get their guard down, he'll lure them out" Hank says, "we take them down without any incident."

"Once they hear the sound of my voice, they'll follow the Piper" Al states.

~~~

After the meet had gone sideways, and al getting shot, the team is back on the unit, resting. Hank walks onto the unit and over to Antonio and says, "hey, that was a good shoot. You had no choice."

"Yeah" he sighs, "any word from med?"

"Yeah" Hank says, then turns towards his team, "Bergstrom is in critical condition, but he'll live. More importantly, Al is gonna be okay. Okay? Got a couple of cracked ribs, no internal damage."

"Isn't this like number seven or eight of Al's nine lives?" Kevin says, "we should send him something, right?"

"I mean, at least a bottle of Bordeaux and a party cup" Jay jokes. Hank walks over to the whiteboard and says, "Alright, we got an ID on this dead operative?"

"Yep. Clay Carlson" Erin says, getting up from her desk to tape up his picture, "pulled his prints, got no priors. He did eight years in the marines. Got discharged two years ago, spotty work history ever since."

"Disenfranchised ex military. Needed a job. He's the perfect guy for Cullen to recruit" Jay says, leaning back in his chair.

"You hear from Al?" Adam asks as he and Burgess walk onto the unit from the roll up. A gun being carried in Kim's hands.

"Yeah. He's gonna be fine" Hank says, "what do you got?"

"About halfway through cataloging Cullens arsenal, we got a hit on this thing" Kim says, leaning the gun on Jays desk, "an M24 army sniper rifle, the only one so far that came back stolen."

"Came off an army reserve base out in Arlington Heights." Adam continues, "the suspected thief is a reservist by the name of John Lee Radigan. He was an army ranger, joined the reserved two years ago when he got back from Afghanistan. Went AWOL from reservist training six months back."

"Ladies and gentlemen, our third operative, a trained killer" Maxine comments.

"The colonel on the base said it was an internal matter, but he did give us Radigan's LKA, an apartment in Oak Park" Kim says.

"Send us the Address" Hank says, as he lifts himself off the desk and heads out followed by the team.

🪩🪩🪩

"Alright, this guy is heavily armed. So watch your backs" Hank says over the walkie, "we got eyes on Radigan"

"Question is, has he got eyes on us?" Antonio says, sitting passenger to Voight.

"We're a minute out with squad, should we move in?" Jay asks over the walkie as Maxine drives fast down the road.

"Negative. He's in a bulletproof, bombproof vehicle. He's probably sitting in the safest place in the city. Just be ready to pursue"

Hank and Antonio watch as Radigan just sits in his car, not moving. "What the hell is he doing?" Dawson asks.

Radigan then takes off, tired screeching on the pavement. "Squad 2051 in pursuit of Radigan vehicle" Voight says into the radio, as he chases down Radigan car, "Max, he's taking a left on Damen"

"Got it" she says, backing up and turns the car around to take a right on damen, being as she and Jay were on the opposite side of Voight and Dawson.

Maxine stops the car as Radigan turns his around, "Voight. He's coming back to you"

Dawson and Voight park and get out with their long guns, "shoot out the tires!"

Dawson shoots at the tired and the two get back in the car and start chasing after Radigan again.

"Atwater, you in position?" Voight asks.

"Yes sir"

"Take him, now!"

"Copy that" Kevin says then steps on the gas and Hauls ass driving into Radigan car with a huge truck, knocking the car over.

Kevin gets out with his long gun and says, "hey. Cpd. Don't move"

"You're making a big mistake" Radigan says, raising his arms.

🪩🪩🪩

"Alright, so, Jay. I'm not usually the matchmaking type of guy, but my wife wants to set you up with somebody." Herrmann said, setting. Beer down in front of the detective.

Jay smiles, taking a sip of his beer. "Whoa Herrmann, what's wrong with me?" Will asks.

"Slow down" Jay chuckles, "who is it?"

"She's a great gal. She's cute, you know and she's in my wife's bridge club"

Will laughs and says, "i take it back. Jay, you can have her" then he gets up and walks away and sits with Penelope, Kelly and Honey.

"Shut up" Herrmann sasses. Jay chuckles and says, "thanks"

🪩🪩🪩

Maxine walks into her house, hanging her keys on the key hook. Maverick walks out of the kitchen and smiles seeing his girlfriend and walks over to her and leans in for a kiss, "hi baby. How was work?"

"Crazy. Like usual. Um, I tried calling you earlier"

"I know, I'm sorry. I meant to call back but I just piles and piles of paperwork to fill out" he said, resting his hands on her either side of her face, "I was gonna watch a movie, I made some popcorn. If you wanna join me"

"I think I'm just gonna head to bed. I'm tired" she said, walking towards the stairs.

"Maxine, is everything okay?"

"Yes"

"Are you taking your medication?"

Maxine sighed, "yes. I'm just tired, okay?" Then she continues up the stairs to their room.