by Karen Rose
She blinked up at him. ‘Well then, don’t fall.’
He was laughing as the guard outside opened the front door. But his laughter was abruptly extinguished at the sight of Diesel Kennedy’s face. The man was sheet white, the tattoo on his neck standing out in stark contrast.
Decker’s attention was briefly diverted by Hope taking a giant sliding step to plant her body in front of his, her little arms folded across her chest, her chin lifted as she stared up at the tattooed mountain.
Decker laid his hand on top of her head. ‘It’s fine, honey. He’s got tats, but he’s a nice man. You don’t need to worry about him.’
Diesel looked down, having just noticed Decker’s pint-sized bodyguard. ‘You Feds are hirin’ ’em awful young now, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not an agent,’ Hope informed him archly. ‘Who are you, please?’
‘Hope!’ Bailey came in from the bedroom that Dani had slept in, her arms filled with boxes of bandages, her eyes wide and alarmed at the sight of Diesel. Decker held up his hand slightly to tell her it was all right. Bailey continued to approach, but slowly.
Hope didn’t budge. ‘I said “please”, Mama.’
‘Yes, ma’am, she did.’ Diesel went down on one knee so that he could look Hope in the eye. ‘My name is Diesel Kennedy. I’m a friend of Agent Davenport’s. I’ve brought him something for his case. May I come in?’ His tone was respectful and serious, as if he was speaking to a peer rather than a nine-year-old girl.
‘Do you work at the FBI too?’ Hope asked.
‘No. I work for a newspaper, the Ledger.’
Hope brightened. ‘Do you know Miss Scarlett? I mean Detective Bishop.’
Diesel’s mouth curved. ‘I call her Miss Scarlett too, sometimes. Yes. I like her. I think she likes me too.’
‘Are you Marcus?’
Diesel coughed. ‘No. She doesn’t like me, like me. She just, you know, likes me.’
‘So she’s your friend.’
Diesel cleared his throat. ‘Yes. That is correct. So you know Miss Scarlett?’
‘She’s friends with my mama and my aunt Meredith. This is my mama. She’s a nurse.’
‘I’m Bailey Beardsley,’ Bailey said quietly. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Mr Kennedy. Hope, it’s time for you to come with me and let these gentlemen speak.’
‘Okay, Mama.’ Hope turned to look at Decker. ‘You’re sure you’ll be all right?’
‘I’m sure,’ Decker said soberly. ‘But thank you.’ He watched as Hope walked to the bedroom with her mother, then turned back to Diesel, who hadn’t moved. He was still on one knee, frowning after the mother and daughter. ‘I’d offer you a hand up,’ Decker said dryly, ‘but I can guarantee that will not end well.’
Diesel scrambled to his feet. ‘Why do you have a nurse? Where’s your doctor?’ He blurted the words like an accusation.
‘Dani had to go into the clinic for an emergency.’
Diesel’s shoulders bowed out, his pale face flushing red with sudden anger. ‘By herself? You let her go by herself?’
Decker took a wobbly step back. ‘One of the agents drove her to her car, but yes, I think she’s working alone. I told her not to go without an escort, but she said it would be fine at the shelter. She said she’d be back later, that Bailey is her friend. Bailey’s background checked out. Her kid is cute. That’s all I know, man. So chill.’
‘Sorry.’ Diesel calmed himself. ‘I brought you something.’ He looked away. ‘I kind of . . . didn’t tell all the truth yesterday at that meeting.’
Decker lifted his brows. ‘Should I sit down for this?’
‘No, but I should. Where?’
‘I’m set up in the kitchen.’ Decker walked back to his computer and sat down, then waited for Diesel to do the same.
After staring at the chair for almost a minute, Diesel dug a flash drive from his pocket, tossed it on the table between them and dropped into the chair so hard it creaked.
‘What is it?’ Decker asked without picking it up, because Diesel was glaring at it like it was a cobra, coiled and ready to strike.
‘The contents of McCord’s hard drive. The real one that was hooked up to the Internet that night I hacked in.’
Decker stared at him. ‘What the fuck, Diesel? Why didn’t you mention this yesterday?’
‘Because I wasn’t sure if I actually had it. I didn’t want to give your boss ammunition he might use against me later if the tides ever changed. Not without being sure that I actually had something to give.’
‘Okay,’ Decker said slowly. ‘But now you’re sure?’
‘Yeah.’ Diesel nodded grimly. ‘I checked.’
Oh. That might explain the whiter-than-death face. ‘So why were you not sure if you had it or not?’
Diesel dropped his chin, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. ‘When I finally cracked through all of the layers of security on McCord’s computer, I realized I was under a time crunch. His network security was continually resetting itself. So I downloaded everything I could before I either got kicked out or discovered.’
‘So at one point you had the entire contents of his hard drive. Not just the documents.’
‘Only for a few minutes. I opened the first picture and . . .’ His swallow was audible, his whisper not so much. ‘I got sick. I . . . I have . . . experience with this.’
Decker’s heart cracked, right in two. ‘As a victim?’ he asked, very gently. Diesel gave him a silent nod. ‘My sister,’ Decker said. ‘Also.’
Another audible swallow and Diesel raised his head. ‘I’m so sorry, man.’
Decker nodded. ‘Me too,’ he whispered, because his voice wasn’t working. ‘Her attacker killed her. He was . . . fierce.’
Diesel’s eyes grew shiny and he dropped his chin again. ‘Fuck. Fuck all of this. Fuck.’
‘Yeah.’ Decker took the flash drive in his hand, squeezed it tight in his fist. ‘So after you got sick, you deleted everything you’d downloaded except for the documents?’ Another silent nod. ‘Where was your backup?’
‘External hard drive.’ The words were muffled. ‘Set to auto update. I wasn’t sure when it had. If it had. I wasn’t thinking at that moment. I only wanted to get rid of those pictures.’
‘I understand,’ Decker said evenly. ‘You’ll get no judgment from me.’
A shudder shook Diesel. ‘And then we had to bury Marcus’s little brother, and that . . . that was hard. Kid was like my own brother too, y’know? Afterward, we were all on autopilot. This was nine months ago, and Marcus had gotten shot and almost died and we were running the Ledger without him and not doing any . . .’ An unsteady sigh. ‘Extracurricular investigating. And then it was New Year’s.’
‘What happened on New Year’s?’
‘I visit my safe deposit box the day after.’
‘And?’ Decker prodded gently.
Diesel’s shoulders lifted with the deep, careful breath he drew, but he still didn’t look up. ‘Every New Year’s, I take my external hard drive to the box and leave it in there and then I come home and start a new drive. Clean out everything from my laptop that I don’t need anymore. New year, new start. Clean hard drive backup.’
For a moment Decker envisioned that safe deposit box, filled with hard drives and other things that Diesel Kennedy chose to leave behind when he started a new year. But he let it go, needing Diesel to focus on the mission before them and not the ghosts in his rear-view mirror. ‘That’s where you went today?’ he asked. ‘To your safe deposit box?’
‘Last night. I . . . I couldn’t sleep, so I went last night. Had to drive a while to get there and back. Then I had to make myself look at what was on there when I got home.’
Decker opened his palm, stared at the flash drive. ‘So these are the real victims?’
Another head-down nod, so weary. ‘Most of them foreign. Southeast Asian. South American. Indian – from India, I mean.’
‘These were kids that McCord purchased through Alice and her father?’
‘Yeah. I guess so.’ Diesel had started to tremble and Decker wasn’t sure what to do for him, so he went with his gut and clamped his hand over the back of Diesel’s neck, holding on when those big shoulders heaved, tightening his grip when a sob barreled up from Diesel’s chest.
Diesel didn’t struggle as he cried, didn’t say a word. He simply fell apart. So Decker kept that hand on him, hoping to hold him together just a little, so that he didn’t completely lose his shit. But it was hard. So hard to watch a big man – a man like me – laid flat. Flayed open. There was nothing soft about Diesel Kennedy, especially not his sobs. Quietly harsh, they sounded like an animal in such great pain that it couldn’t even howl.
Decker swiped at his own wet face with his shoulder as Diesel’s grating sobs gouged into his chest like dulled knives. He remembered the pain from watching his sister die, but he hadn’t been the one attacked. He couldn’t imagine having to live with that all this time.
He heard a noise behind him and turned to find Bailey standing in the kitchen doorway looking helpless, tears on her face as well. Decker shook his head and she disappeared, giving Diesel the privacy he needed to grieve. To be angry. To just be.
When Diesel’s sobs had finally quieted, Decker got up, splashed water on his own face, then wet a clean dishcloth and dangled it over Diesel’s shoulder so that he could take it without turning. Then he made up an ice pack and pressed it to Diesel’s face, giving him something to hide behind while they finished their conversation.
‘Why me?’ Decker asked quietly. ‘Why trust me with this?’
Diesel shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I guess I just figured I could.’ He shuddered out a breath, holding the ice pack against his eyes with both hands. ‘I was disappointed that Dani wasn’t here, but now . . . Shit, I’m glad she’s not. Sucks enough that you were here.’
Decker didn’t take offense. ‘I won’t tell her.’
‘What about the nurse?’
‘You knew she was there?’
Diesel lowered the ice pack enough to give him a sarcastic look. ‘I was in the desert too. Rangers. I know when someone’s sneaking up on me.’
Rangers? ‘I guess you do. But Dani trusts her. I think we can trust her to be discreet.’
‘All right.’ The ice pack went back against Diesel’s eyes. ‘What happened to the fucker that killed your sister?’
Decker’s jaw tightened. ‘He’s dead.’
A nod, accompanied by a grunt of approval. ‘Good. Hope you made him hurt.’
‘He hurt,’ Decker said quietly. ‘A lot.’
Diesel huffed a mirthless laugh. ‘Love how you Feds answer a question without ever incriminating yourselves.’
‘And you newspaper guys don’t do the same? But yeah. He hurt. Best part is that he’ll never do it to another girl. Or boy. Neither will McCord. Nor will his partner, because we will catch him. We won’t catch them all, but we will catch this one, Diesel.’
‘Thank you.’ He tipped his head back, keeping the ice on his face. ‘What will you tell your boss about the flash drive?’
Decker looked at the little piece of plastic and metal in his hand. ‘What you told me. That your backup system made a copy that you didn’t find until you went back and looked. He doesn’t need to know where the drive was kept and that you have more of them.’
‘You sure you’re a Fed?’
‘Last I checked. Thank you for this. Finding out who McCord’s victims were will hopefully help us find his partner.’
‘If any of those kids are still alive.’
‘I pray they are, but even if they’re not, we might find patterns leading us to the partner.’ Decker sure hoped so. The victims of Alice and her father’s trafficking who’d been saved by Scarlett and Deacon a week ago had all been sold for labor. None had been photographed or sold into the sex trade.
Diesel stood up on legs that wobbled. ‘Shit, I got a headache now. But the ice helped.’
‘There’s ibuprofen in that big bottle over there. Kate went a little crazy at the store last night.’ And then she went a little crazy on me. She’d be coming back soon. And maybe she’ll do it again. Maybe even more. And maybe he’d better stop thinking about Kate, because his sweats weren’t hiding a thing. Again.
Diesel’s lips twitched. ‘You do realize that Deacon considers Kate to be his sister?’
‘Glad to hear it.’ Decker got two bottles of water from the fridge and tossed one to Diesel, mostly so that he could surreptitiously adjust himself before closing the fridge door. ‘Because I do not consider her to be my sister.’
Diesel’s laugh was a little bit evil. ‘This is gonna be fun.’
Decker grinned, but then his cell phone rang and he sobered in a second. It was the antique store. ‘Cross your fingers,’ he muttered, then hit ACCEPT. ‘This is Agent Davenport. Did you check me out?’
‘I did,’ the owner said. ‘Your boss says I should give you my full cooperation. So this is what I found: a woman brought in a clock to be repaired at the end of February, but her name wasn’t Alice. Our surveillance only goes back three months and then gets recorded over, so I don’t know if she matches the description of the woman you’re looking for.’
‘She might have used an alias. Can you give me a second?’ He muted the phone and snapped his fingers rhythmically, trying to remember the aliases Alice had used. ‘Troy said yesterday that she used a fake name at the gym.’
‘You muttering about Alice?’ Diesel asked.
‘Yeah. I need the name she was using.’
‘Allison Bassett,’ he said without blinking. ‘That’s the name she gave Marcus when she sat with him in the hospital, then stalked him when he got out. She wanted to make sure he wasn’t reopening the McCord case, I guess. Now we know why.’
‘Yeah,’ Decker said grimly. He unmuted the phone. ‘Was it Allison Bassett?’
‘Yes,’ the woman said with relief. ‘I would have given it to you anyway, but I feel so much better doing it since you had the right name. She left an address so that we could deliver it when the repair was complete. Do you want it?’
Decker’s smile stretched his face. ‘Yes, ma’am, I certainly do.’
Cincinnati, Ohio,
Friday 14 August, 1.55 P.M.
Mallory parked the car in front of the Home Store, but didn’t turn off the engine. She felt sick. Dammit. Just do it. Get it over with. And then?
And then accept the consequences, whatever those are. As long as Macy was okay.
I’ll talk to the lady cop. I’ll tell her everything. After she goes to Gemma’s house and removes Macy into protective custody. The cops could do that. She’d seen it on the television once. A documentary, not one of those fictional cop shows. The man on the documentary had gotten protection for his wife and son in return for giving the cops valuable evidence.
Saving four kids from a life of making Internet porn seemed like a valuable trade.
She got out of the car, weaving slightly on her feet when the heat smacked her in the face. In the documentary, the man and his family went into the witness protection program and were given new identities and a new home. If she got to move, she’d move far away from this city with its frigid, gray winters and unbearably humid summers. Maybe Maine. Or Seattle. Or maybe somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where no one would recognize her as Sunshine Suzie.
Stop stalling, Mallory. Go into the store and ask the manager if you can use the phone. Use that phone to call the nice lady at the police station. Just do it.
She locked the car and forced her feet to move. One foot in front of the other. She s
tarted walking, looking over her shoulder to scan the lot. She’d felt like she was being followed for a while, but there had been no one behind her until she’d reached the highway.
You’re being paranoid. But better safe than sorry. Or dead. Like JJ.
She’d slowed down as she’d passed the motel parking lot where she’d left JJ’s remains early that morning. JJ’s car was gone. Just like he knew it would be. That’s why he told me to leave the keys in it. Either he’d sent someone to dispose of it – and JJ – or someone had stolen it. Either way, Mallory’s fingerprints were all over it.
He’d set her up. He’d made her complicit in murder. So? He’d already made her complicit in child abuse. Why not murder too?
Suddenly the idea of telling the cops everything wasn’t sounding as good. If the cops find those suitcases, I’m going to jail. She paused, half turning back to the car.
But if she said nothing, four more human beings would become Sunshine Suzies.
So she kept walking toward the store. Which had a pay phone! She’d never looked in front of this Home Store before, only in front of the grocery stores. She quickened her step, and was ten feet from the phone when she heard a voice behind her.
‘Mallory! Sweetie!’
Dread mixed with anticipation in Mallory’s gut. Dread because it was Gemma and nothing good ever came of being near the woman. Anticipation because Gemma would have Macy.
Mallory turned, disappointment smacking her harder than the heat had. Because there was no Macy. Gemma was alone, a too-bright smile on her face.
‘Mal, how are you, girl? It’s been a dog’s age since I’ve seen you. What a coincidence.’
No, not a coincidence. It couldn’t be. Gemma was looking her up and down critically.
Mallory wondered what he’d told his sister this time. ‘I’m fine, Gemma,’ she said politely, because if she was rude, he’d make her sorry later. ‘How are you?’
‘Never better!’ Gemma sang.
The dread in Mallory’s gut grew exponentially. Gemma’s smile was too bright, her eyes too sparkly. Oh God. The woman taking care of Macy was high. ‘Where’s Macy?’