“Brownies,” Tech said.
“Lemon poppyseed muffins,” Tyler said.
“Banana nut bread,” Lisa said.
Tweedle looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m not picky. A distraction is a good idea, though. I brought home the Miami case files.”
“You’ve gone through those files a million times,” Tech said, glancing sideways at me. “I know Uncle Hank asked you to take a look, but let’s focus on our backlogged cases first.”
“Fine. Just give me a case to take my mind off things.”
Tech and Bridget gathered our other laptops and started them up. Tech pointed me toward a file that Kemp had created for quick-glance service requests that had been emailed to us. I took the oldest request and started working.
Chapter Ten
Ten minutes later, Jackson entered through the front door, turning to Reggie who was behind him. “No! I don’t want to hear it. I don’t need to know what you did. I know you—and I know Kelsey. Whatever you did, it had to have been pretty bad for her to unleash that level of retribution.”
“Babe, I swear I was in the right.”
Jackson shook his head and looked at me. Everyone else was staring at Reggie, or more precisely, the artwork all over his face.
“Does he know yet?” I asked Jackson.
“Not yet. I need a drink. You?”
“No. You’ll need to skip the booze, too. Stick to strong coffee. If we get the call the guys are in trouble, I’ll need you to go to Mexico with me.”
Pops stood and walked over to place his hands on the breakfast bar as he glared at Reggie. “What in Sam Hill did you do this time?”
“Nothing,” Reggie said, walking around Pops and into the kitchen.
Pops pointed at Reggie. “Your forehead says otherwise!”
Reggie raised an eyebrow, then glanced at his reflection in the microwave. “Shit!”
“No,” Katie said, walking over to read Reggie’s forehead. “It says idiot.” She looked back at me with a smirk.
“I like the picture of the little boy peeing on his left cheek,” Tech said, dumping a pile of files on the table.
“The cat whiskers are cute,” Tweedle said, grinning as she poured a bag of chocolate chips into a batch of cookie dough.
“It’s part of the theme,” Wayne said before taking a drink of his coffee. “Look at his chest.”
Reggie opened his shirt which was still unbuttoned. The word pussycat was written in big block letters.
“It was a struggle to keep our art rated PG,” Wayne said, chuckling. “We had to adapt so the kids wouldn’t see something inappropriate.”
“This will wash off, right?” Reggie asked.
I shrugged. “Eventually.”
“I know better than to ask,” Jackson said, shaking his head. “But what did he do?”
“Blake Foster is a young and barely trained guard of Aces who had an obsession with his long-lost missing teenage crush. Reggie was supposed to ensure Blake didn’t leave Headquarters, but instead he flew him to Indiana on my dime. They arrived on scene right before the property was to be swept and our suspect questioned.”
Jackson turned to face Reggie. “You’re lucky she only had you tranquilized!”
“It wasn’t fair. Poor Blake had been searching for Allie for years. You should have heard him.”
“He was too emotionally involved!” Jackson stormed into the living room, rubbing a hand over his head. “Wayne, I want the expenses billed to Reggie. He’ll cover the cost of the plane and anything else he spent.”
“Now, let’s not get carried away,” Reggie said, walking over to hold Jackson’s hand. “Kelsey can afford it.” Reggie pouted at Jackson, batting his eyelashes dramatically.
With the catlike eyelashes and whiskers, even Jackson was having a hard time keeping a straight face. “You’re paying the money. I don’t care if it empties your bank account.”
“Fine.” Reggie stomped toward the basement stairs like a petulant child. “I’m going to shower downstairs.”
Jackson turned to me. “Are you sure I can’t drink?”
“The guys ran into trouble in Mexico,” Wayne said. “We’re waiting to hear from them.”
Wayne filled Jackson in on what little we knew.
“How long has it been?” Jackson asked.
“Half an hour? Maybe a little longer,” I said.
“I need a burner phone.”
Katie went to the credenza and opened the bottom drawer. “Charged and ready.”
Jackson called a number from memory. Based on the number of digits he’d entered I knew the call was out of the country. He spoke in rapid Spanish so I only understood a handful of words. Wake. Trouble. Soon. Be Ready.
“Care to enlighten the class?” Katie asked.
Jackson shrugged. “We have an acquaintance with medic training less than two hours from their last known location. I gave him a heads up that the team was on their way and to have them call home.”
“Can this acquaintance be trusted?” I asked.
“Yes. He’s ex-army. When he got out, he gave a big F-you to the government and moved to a quiet beach town in Mexico. He’s helped us out a time or two. He might hate the U.S. government, but he’s a soldier through and through, even if he spends all his time these days mixing margaritas.”
“He’s an alcoholic?” Tweedle asked.
“No,” Jackson answered. “He’s a bartender. Who are you?”
“Reel’s wife.”
“Who?”
“Reel and Ryan are the same person,” I explained. “Back to the call. So, we should hear from them in an hour or two?”
Jackson nodded. “Once Shipwreck gets everyone patched up, he’ll find them a boat. He has a few connections in the smuggling world.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Not human smuggling,” Jackson said, shaking his head. “Mostly weed. Okay—a lot of weed. His only involvement in human smuggling is calling Donovan if he hears about a holding location for sex traffickers. Donovan calls Homeland Security. Shipwreck doesn’t trust the government to call them himself.”
“Am I the only one who wants to know why this guy’s nickname is Shipwreck?” Katie asked.
“The locals named him by accident,” Jackson said, sliding into the chair next to Katie. “A storm crashed his sailboat into the shore. They kept pointing and saying naufragio, the Spanish word for shipwreck. He didn’t know Spanish and thought they meant him. It was months before someone translated what was being said. By then, the nickname had stuck.”
“As fascinating as that story is,” I said rolling my eyes, “If we’re not going to hear back for an hour or two, some of you should go back to bed.”
“No way,” Anne said, pointing to the files. “Put us to work. None of us will be able to sleep anyway.”
“You sure?” I asked, looking around.
Everyone nodded.
I turned to Tech, who was typing on his laptop. “What do we have that they can work on?”
“I have some minor cases that could be researched, but nothing heavy. Most of what we have in backlog requires your eyes.”
“What about your Miami case?” Lisa asked. “The one Uncle Hank wants you to solve.”
“A fresh set of eyes might be just what that case needs. Hang on,” I said, leaving the table to retrieve hard copies of the files I had in my bedroom.
“What do we know?” Bridget asked when I returned and dumped the files on the table.
“Uncle Hank noticed a pattern of prostitutes disappearing in the upper west side of Miami. We know of eight, but there’s talk on the street that the numbers are even higher. A lot of crimes against prostitutes are never reported.”
“Isn’t disappearing prostitutes pretty common?” Jackson asked.
“Sure, if they turn up dead or in a hospital, but these women dropped off the face of the planet.”
“International sex trafficking?” Bridget asked.
“Likel
y,” I said, nodding. “What’s odd, though, is that Uncle Hank can’t find anyone who knows anything about the disappearances. Not even someone who’s too scared to talk.”
“Did you reach out to Mickey?” Anne asked.
“He put out some feelers and got nada back. He’s puzzled, too. He asked me to keep him in the loop.”
“Someone’s stupid enough to do business in Miami behind Mickey’s back?” Jackson asked, laughing. “Total death wish.”
“Who’s Mickey?” Beth asked.
“Trouble,” James answered. “He’s a crime boss in Miami. He’s friendly with Kelsey and Grady, but for us mere mortals, if you saw him walking down the sidewalk, you’d likely piss yourself.”
James leaned back in his chair, extending an arm over the top of Beth’s chair. Storm sat up and growled at James. James slowly pulled his arm back. Storm settled back on the floor, and I swear the dog snorted. Beth winked at me.
I shook my head. “Mickey lives in a world of violence, but I trust him.”
“It doesn’t matter if you trust him, if he can’t help us find the women,” Beth said.
“That’s not our mission. It’s likely the women are either dead or have already been transported to another country.”
“What’s our mission then?” Bridget asked, not looking up from one of the profiles she was reading.
“To find out how the women were taken unnoticed and, if possible, who is taking them. If we can answer either of those questions, we can stop more women from disappearing.”
“What do we know?” Lisa asked.
“We know they weren’t nabbed off the street. We’d have witnesses if they were. We know they had different pimps, worked different corners or hotels. We know they have different backgrounds, education levels, appearances, habits. What we don’t know is what they have in common. I found two girls who lived in the same building, but so far, that’s the only link between any of the victims I can find except, astonishingly enough, none of them were addicts.”
“None of them?” Anne asked.
“None of them. No one could even claim they smoked cigarettes, let alone did any illegal drugs.”
“I’m not up on my prostitute education,” Beth said. “Why is that a big deal?”
Jackson leaned forward so he could see Beth at the other end of the table. “A lot of pimps hook their girls on drugs before forcing them to work the streets. Calculate in that most prostitutes start off as runaway teenagers from abusive homes, and you have a workforce nearly three-quarters of whom are addicts.”
“The lack of drugs has to be a clue,” Bridget said. “But to what?”
“I don’t know. These women didn’t have the education and background to work high-end establishments where they could be easily abducted. They were corner-level prostitutes. They had pimps. They had coworkers who kept an eye out for each other and talked about sketchy johns. I can’t visualize how being drug-free would make them easier targets. From a trafficking standpoint, though, taking girls without addictions to heroin or oxi means higher profits.”
Katie looked at me sideways, narrowing her eyes. “You’re itching to go to Miami and talk to the hookers.”
“I was planning on flying down Monday,” I admitted. “Grady had agreed to watch Nick if I waited until after the tournament.”
“You’ll have to postpone your trip or send someone else,” Wayne said. “With the cartel threat, we need you here.”
“I know.”
Anne grabbed a notebook and pen from the credenza. She started writing a list of some kind. I moved over to look over her shoulder.
“I can go,” Bridget said.
“Wouldn’t work,” Jackson said. “Kelsey has street contacts in Miami. She’s a local hero for taking Pasco down. It would take you months to gain that level of trust. And while you were building that trust, it’s likely the perp would hear about you and have you snatched or killed.”
Bridget paled, looking over at Jackson. “Never mind.”
“What about Charlie?” Katie asked.
“No!” came from Pops, Jackson, Reggie, and me, simultaneously.
I chuckled at how protective my Texas family had become over Charlie. “Charlie has a cop vibe. She also doesn’t have the street contacts I have from when I worked undercover. Besides, when I called her earlier to warn her, she said she was with Kierson in Atlanta. They were playing house together for the week to see how it went.”
Hattie chuckled as she walked around the table refilling coffee cups. “That has disaster written all over it.”
“You don’t think she can settle into a relationship?”
“Charlie can’t pretend to be someone she’s not. She’s not the stay-at-home wife type. She needs a job. She needs to be as busy as Kierson, or it won’t work.”
“With him flying all over the country for the FBI, it’s not easy for them to find time to see each other.”
“Doesn’t matter, dear. Look at you and Grady. You rotate who stays and who goes. You tried the stay-at-home thing too, remember?”
I cringed, remembering the panic attacks I’d had trying to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. Hattie was right. Charlie and I were alike in that way. We both needed to have something more in our lives. Maybe we were adrenaline junkies. Maybe we had a death wish. Maybe our childhoods robbed us of any chance to be normal.
As if reading my thoughts, Hattie sighed and patted my shoulder. “There’s nothing wrong with either of you other than a stubborn streak of independence.” She filled Anne’s cup as she read her list over her shoulder. “What about doctors’ appointments?”
“Good one,” Anne said, writing it down.
“What are you doing?” Tech asked.
“She’s writing a list of everyday places you might go,” I answered for Anne. “Grocery store. Liquor store. Dry cleaners. The mall.”
“Why?” Tyler asked.
Anne looked up from her long list to answer. “I figured if we have a list of places they might have gone, we might find out where they crossed paths with the perp.” Anne’s nose wrinkled as she smiled. “That’s fun to say—perp. I feel all badass.”
Tech looked confused. “None of them had bank accounts. We don’t have a way to figure out which grocery store or which doctor they went to.”
“Not electronically,” I said. “They worked in a cash-based business, so we’ll have to narrow the list geographically. These women didn’t have cars. They would’ve stayed local for most of their needs.”
Tech nodded. “I’ll start with mapping their addresses and seeing what pops up near where they live.”
“Add their business locations, too,” Bridget said.
“Their business locations?” Tech said, grinning. “You mean the street corners they worked?”
“Where they sold their bodies, yes,” she said, grinning back. “This one worked a dive hotel parking lot.” She slid the file she’d been reading to Tech.
“Once you get their work and home locations entered, we can search for each business type on Anne’s list,” I said.
“I’ll help Anne with her list,” Bridget said. “Lisa and Beth can help Tech pull the addresses from the files.”
I settled back into my chair and focused on the profile cases. I was itching to work the Miami case with everyone else, but Tech was right. I’d studied it for hours and made no headway. Hopefully, their fresh eyes would turn up a lead.
Chapter Eleven
I had moved to the floor, leaning against the wall with my laptop balanced on my thighs. My ass couldn’t take sitting on the wooden dining room chair anymore. The thickly padded carpet below me now was a welcome relief to my tailbone. Everyone else was scattered between the dining room table, the breakfast bar, and the living room, working on the Miami case. Tech kept shaking his head at all the paper being passed around the rooms. So much for his paperless initiative.
The ringing of a cell phone caused me to startle, toppling my laptop to the carpet.
I looked up as Jackson grabbed the burner phone. “Hola.”
I stood, abandoning the laptop, as I watched Jackson’s face for traces of concern.
“Si.” He paused, glancing up at me and nodding. “Si. Senorita Kelsey. Si.”
The room was quiet enough that we could hear the other person on the other end of the phone speaking rapidly in Spanish, but not clear enough to make out any of the words. The sound of gunfire was very clear though. I dropped to my knees as the phone went silent, disconnected on the other end.
“Shit,” Jackson cursed, slamming the phone down. He turned to Wayne first. “Alert our contact with the Coast Guard to be ready just outside international waters for a pickup. Have them keep it quiet, though. The boys will need help getting back into the U.S.”
Jackson walked over to me, lifting me up and settling me in a chair before he crouched in front of me. He lifted a hand and wiped the tears from my cheeks.
“Grady?”
“He’s alive. Shipwreck patched him up enough to be moved again. Bones is the same blood type, so they did a direct blood transfusion. Grady was still groggy but conscious. Shipwreck was arranging for a boat when the call was interrupted.”
“Interrupted by gunfire,” Tweedle whispered, standing a few feet away, holding a plate of cookies.
She swayed to the side but was too far away for us to catch. Reggie lunged forward—grabbing the plate of cookies—as Tweedle fell. Bridget dove across the living room, catching Tweedle’s upper body before it slammed against the floor.
I looked at Reggie, glaring.
“Oops,” he said, grinning.
“Nice save, Reggie,” Katie said as she stole the plate of cookies.
Tech stole a cookie from the plate. “Have to admit, the cookies were my first thought, too.”
“No concern for the woman left in our care?” I asked.
“Please,” Tech said before taking a bite. “Tweedle has fallen down the stairs, been shot with a nail gun, and was almost decapitated by a fricken battle axe. Fainting onto padded carpet is nowhere near threatening her nine lives.”
“He has a point,” Whiskey said, snagging a cookie. “On the other hand, gooey chocolate chip cookies would’ve been a bitch to clean out of the carpet.”
Hearts and Aces (Kelsey's Burden Series Book 7) Page 9