Her One and Only Hero

by Sharon Hartley

  “There has been a recent development that piqued our interest.” The agent typed on his keyboard again. “Here it is,” he said with a nod. “We got a relevant tip yesterday from a CI.”

  “A tip?” Fran asked, leaning forward. “What kind of tip?” This was the first time there had been even a hint of good news.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Agent Rivas cautioned. “It might be nothing.”

  “But the information is worth checking out?” Dale asked.

  “In my opinion, yes,” Rivas said. “This CI has always been reliable.”

  “What is a CI?” Fran asked, her hopes billowing despite the agent’s words. And why did governmental agencies, both Italian and American, insist on speaking in codes and acronyms?

  “A confidential informant,” Dale explained.

  “Oh, mio Dio. Someone spotted a girl that resembles Bella?” Fran demanded. “Where was she?”

  “Calm down, Fran,” Dale said. “Let Javi explain.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” Dale’s friend said. “A Miami special agent received information from one of her confidential informants about an abandoned warehouse near the airport where children are being housed in pretty rough conditions. The CI believed the kids were from Central and South America, a few from Asia. Nothing about Europe, but maybe he didn’t see everyone.”

  “And would he even be able to distinguish her from the other kids?” Dale added.

  “Exactly,” Agent Rivas said. “The intel indicated the children were being used for slave labor, although he spotted a camera in another room and sometimes there’s a crossover with pornography and prostitution. If Zarco couldn’t get your daughter out of Miami, he might have sold her to another trafficker.”

  Agent Rivas caught Dale’s eye and nodded. Dale nodded back. What was that about? Something had been left unsaid.

  Fran blew out a breath, her brief moment of optimism quenched. When would she learn?

  “Slave labor,” she repeated. Was her beautiful Bella being forced to do manual labor?

  “There are two facets to human trafficking,” Agent Rivas said in a kind voice. “Slave labor and the sex trade.”

  “I am unfortunately quite aware of both problems,” Fran said.

  “Fran’s been studying human trafficking since her daughter’s disappearance,” Dale said.

  “Good.” The agent’s tone held approval.

  “Although I never read about these ‘types’ that clients want,” she said.

  “But you’ll be prepared for what we might find when we raid the location.”

  “I imagine the conditions are deplorable,” Fran said.

  Rivas nodded. “The CI indicated the place smelled like a sewer, that there were no toilet facilities, only a bucket in the corner. No real beds, only rags to sleep on.”

  Fran closed her eyes against the horror.

  “What kind of an animal would treat kids like that?” Dale wondered.

  “Unfortunately, a human animal,” Rivas said.

  “You mentioned a raid. So you’ve decided to act on the information?” Dale asked.

  “Yes,” Rivas said. “It’s Agent Navarro’s tip, and she assembled a team for a friendly visit this afternoon. We’re waiting on a warrant.”

  “Can I accompany the team?” Dale asked.

  “Are you off duty? You’re not in uniform.”

  “Actually, I’m on leave.”

  Agent Rivas’s brows shot up, but he nodded. “Yeah, you can accompany. I don’t see a problem with that.”

  “I want to come, too,” Fran said.

  Both men turned to look at her.

  “That’s not a good idea, Fran,” Dale said.

  “We don’t know what we’ll find,” Agent Rivas added.

  “But what if you find Bella?” Fran demanded. “She does not know either of you or any other members of this team. She will be terrified, in need of her mother.”

  The agent folded his hands on his desk and looked down. Fran suspected he was formulating a polite way to refuse her request. But she did not want to wait in the hotel. She wanted to see where Bella might be. Where other lost children were being held against their will.

  “It could be dangerous, Fran,” Dale said. “Men who treat children like animals are desperate.”

  “So I will wait in a vehicle until you say it is safe. Please. I want to see where these children are being held.”

  “Why do you want to see something so horrible?” Dale asked.

  “You have no idea what my mind has conjured up. What is real cannot possibly be worse than my imagination. I need to know the conditions, no matter how horrific.”

  The men remained quiet.

  “Please,” Fran said again. She fisted her hands, resenting that she had to beg. “Did you not read the memo from the Italian state department requesting cooperation? It is mentioned in your report.”

  “Yeah, I saw that,” Agent Rivas said.

  “We would not want to create an international incident,” Fran said. “Would we?”

  Agent Rivas leaned back in his huge leather chair with a sigh. He leveled his gaze on her. “You’ll stay in the car until we say it’s clear?”

  “I swear.”

  “What do you think, Dale?”

  “I think it’s a bad idea,” Dale said. “But what the hell. Let her come.”

  “Thank you,” Fran said. She released her fingers. She hated feeling powerless. She had not begged since the miserable days of her pregnancy. She had learned to take what she wanted.

  But now circumstances had changed, and she would do anything to save Bella. Whatever it took.

  “You guys can wait in the cafeteria, and I’ll meet you there when we get the warrant,” Rivas said. Probably around fourteen hundred hours.”

  Fran glanced at the time. In twenty minutes she could be on her way to find Bella.

  Dale rose. “Thanks,”

  “How long are you on leave for?” Agent Rivas asked in a far too casual fashion.

  “Two days.”

  “You guys must have been very good friends.”

  Fran held her breath as she waited for Dale’s answer. Agent Rivas suspected something and was fishing for information. Would Dale admit the truth to his friend? Had he even admitted it to himself?

  He shot her a look.

  “You might say that,” Dale said. “I found out yesterday that the missing girl is my daughter.”

  * * *

  DALE TURNED AWAY from the satisfied expression on Javi’s face. The man was a first-class investigator. No doubt Javi had intuited the truth the second he and Fran had entered his office. They might be furious with each other, but the spark of desire between them hadn’t gone away. Even after a decade, that electricity had to be palpable to anyone in the same room with them.

  He’d sure felt a jolt when he touched her shoulder. Had she felt anything? No. He was nuts to think so. Fran was too miserable and obsessed with finding her daughter to notice anything else going on in the world.

  And it was inappropriate for him to even think along those lines.

  One thing for sure. The fact that he was a father was now out there. Speaking it aloud, admitting it to Javi, made that fact real. Concrete. He couldn’t take it back now even if he wanted to.

  Did he want to do a rewind and pretend yesterday didn’t happen?

  He’d never intended to be a father, didn’t want the responsibility that went along with that title. He’d done enough daddy duty. Plus his job was dangerous and all too often left a kid with only one parent.

  But he had fathered a child, a daughter, thirteen years ago. Her existence changed everything. Maybe he hadn’t known about Bella, but he was responsible for her.

  Dale held out his arm for Fran to exit the office first, inhaling h
er soft fragrance as she moved past.

  With his gaze glued to Francesca’s back, he decided watching her enticing walk was one of life’s great pleasures. She paused and turned, brows raised.

  “The cafeteria is on the fourth floor,” Javi said. “Turn right when you exit the elevator.”

  “Thanks,” Dale said.

  Neither of them spoke until the elevator doors had closed.

  “So you accept that Bella is your daughter?” Fran asked, staring straight ahead.

  “Yes,” Dale said.

  “You do not require a DNA test?”

  “I believe you, Fran.”

  She faced him then. “You did not believe me last night. What has changed?”

  “It took me a while to process the news,” he said. “I’m sorry, but it was a bit of a shock.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Imagine my shock when I learned I was pregnant.”

  “Let’s not do this again, Fran.”

  “Do what?”

  “Rehash what happened thirteen years ago.”

  “Rehash? What does this word mean?”

  Dale shrugged, suspecting she knew exactly what he meant.

  She placed both hands on her hips and muttered in rapid Italian.

  “Speak English, Fran.”

  “I told you that I was unable to contact you.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you said.” He was sorry for the words the minute they left his mouth.

  She faced front again. “You do not believe me about that but you believe Bella is your daughter.”

  Dale shook his head. He believed her, felt horrible about what had happened to her daughter—which wasn’t her fault—but was he truly expected to forgive her for keeping the truth from him without even blinking?

  He needed to change the subject. He could feel the agitation flowing off Francesca. She was a mother in crisis over the loss of a child and might combust at any moment.

  She whirled on him and began shouting in rapid, loud Italian. He stepped back, out of range of her flailing arms.

  The elevator doors burst open in the middle of her tirade. Fran didn’t notice.

  But four male suits carrying to-go food from the cafeteria waited to board the car. Their chins dropped, all four men wearing expressions he would have laughed at under any other circumstances.

  Apparently they’d never before witnessed an enraged Italian bombshell in full-on, pissed-off mode.

  The doors started to close without anyone entering or exiting, so Dale stepped into the gap to hold them open. His movement captured Fran’s attention. She stopped ranting.

  Her gaze swept the waiting suits. She tossed her head and swept past them into the hallway. The men parted, allowing her to pass.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” Dale said, and followed her into the cafeteria.

  She marched to the food line and poured a cup of coffee into a white ceramic mug. Dale did the same, paid for both beverages and joined her at the table where she had found a seat.

  “I hope you got that out of your system,” he said.

  She paused in raising her coffee to her mouth and gazed at him with steely eyes through the steam that rose from the mug. He needed to be more sympathetic in the way he spoke to her. For a second he feared she’d toss the hot liquid into his face.

  But she took a sip and immediately made a face of disgust. “Bah. Why can’t Americans make decent coffee?”

  “Sorry about that,” he said.

  She lowered the cup. “I suppose it is not your fault.”

  Relieved Fran had settled down from her previous rage, he tasted his own coffee. Tasted fine to him, but had she just offered an olive branch? He had to find a middle ground. It’s what he’d been trained to do.

  “Can we call a truce?” he said quietly, touching her arm.

  She jerked away as if he had burned her.

  “A truce?” she repeated, like she’d never heard of the concept.

  He sat back with a sigh. “A cease-fire. Let’s stop with the blame game and work together to find your—” He shook his head and swallowed hard. “Our daughter.”

  She lifted her chin, eyes flashing fire again. So maybe she wasn’t quite over her mad.

  He tried again. “We’re tearing each other apart with our anger, and that’s not doing either of us any good. And it definitely won’t help us find Bella.”

  She lowered her gaze and sipped her coffee. She clutched the ceramic mug so hard her knuckles showed white.

  “At this point, what does it matter what happened thirteen years ago?” he asked.

  “It matters to me,” she said so softly he could barely hear her.

  “I understand now that you were hurt, but so was I, Fran.”

  She chewed on her bottom lip, wanting to object so badly he could almost see the thoughts leaping across the synapses in her brain. Fran believed she’d been more horribly wronged than him and damned well wanted him to admit it. Hell, maybe that was the truth. He’d been devastated, but he hadn’t been saddled with a kid to raise.

  A kid that had to have been a constant reminder of him. Of what she perceived as his betrayal of her.

  Maybe after they found Bella they could have an unemotional conversation about the past. But he wondered about that. Could either of them forgive the other for old wounds?

  First they had to locate their daughter.

  He leaned toward her again. “Can’t we just agree that we disagree on what happened all those years ago and go forward from there?”

  Her eyes bore into his. She was trying to read him, ascertain his sincerity.

  “Can you really do that?” she asked.

  “We’re good to go,” Javi said, dropping two Kevlar vests on the table.

  Fran jerked back. So did Dale.

  “If you want to accompany the team on this op,” Javi said with a nod toward the vests, “you’ve both got to wear protection.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WAITING IN THE passenger seat of Dale’s vehicle, Fran folded her arms across her chest, an awkward feeling because of the bulky protective vest Agent Rivas had insisted she wear. Dale had left the engine on to keep the air-conditioning running, and the temperature had turned frigid. Shifting her focus from the door the team had disappeared into, she reached forward and turned the fan to low. Even with the extra padding of the vest, she had grown chilly.

  She wanted to get out of the vehicle but had promised not to.

  Rubbing her hands together, she glanced at the digital clock on the dash which read 4:00. The team of about twelve, led by Agent Navarro, a tall blond no-nonsense female, had been gone for almost an hour. They all wore their own vests and jackets with “FBI” in huge white letters on the back.

  She’d heard no gunshots. No one had exited the building. She’d heard no shouting. What was going on?

  Had they discovered any children inside the warehouse? Was Bella among them?

  Fran longed for information, but understood she was lucky to be here and hardly a priority for notification.

  She uncrossed her legs, and then crossed them again. It was torture to remain seated in this vehicle knowing Bella might be close by. She tried not to think about the possibility that she could soon hug her daughter, but that was all she could think about.

  Had Bella been harmed?

  Sending another prayer toward heaven, Fran again stared at the boxy two-story building in front of her and settled back against the seat. The structure had peeling paint and crumbling concrete corners. The second-floor windows had been boarded over with plywood. Probably so the children couldn’t break the windows and scream for help. How old were the children locked in there?

  Would Dale recognize Bella if she were here? He had never laid eyes on his daughter.

  Thinking about Dale was not much easier than thi
nking about Bella and the conditions she might be living in. He was right, though. If they were going to work together to find her, they needed to bury old wounds and get along.

  But maybe they would find her today and she need never speak to Dale again. She would hold on to that slim hope. Yes, if they found Bella today, she could take her daughter back to Rome tomorrow.

  But how could I do that to her? That would not be right or fair. Bella had risked much and suffered horribly to find her father. Unless of course her daughter wanted to go home immediately. Then they would leave.

  She was going crazy with these disorganized thoughts. Someone had to come out and talk to her soon.

  Something had been left unsaid in Agent Rivas’s office this morning. He had suggested if Zarco couldn’t get Bella out of Miami, he might sell her to another trafficker. Rivas and Dale had communicated in some nonverbal fashion about another possibility, a possibility that Dale had agreed to without saying so out loud. Whatever that might be gnawed at Fran.

  She sat up straighter when the door the team had entered opened. Dale emerged. Her heart pounding, she opened the car door and stepped out into the heat as he approached, his face grim. What did that mean?

  “Did you find her?” she demanded.

  He held up both hands. “No. I’m sorry, Fran. She’s not here.”

  Fran collapsed against the vehicle. She felt deflated as all her hope escaped like air leaving a balloon.

  “You are certain?”

  “Yes. This was a long shot. You know that.”

  The metal of the car felt too hot against her skin, so she pushed herself to stand. “Are there young children?”

  Dale nodded. “Quite a few, from Central America, mostly Honduras. DCF is on the way.”

  “DCF?”

  “Department of Children and Families, the state agency in charge of at-risk children. Come on. I’ll take you back to your hotel.”

  “No,” she said. “I want to see.”

  “No, Fran, you don’t. It’s depressing in there.” He looked over her shoulder, his beautiful green eyes full of sadness. “Ugly.”

  “I need to see that ugliness,” she insisted. “I have explained to you why.”