“I’m on it, Boss.”
“This is what you gave up the force for?” Garcia asked with a funny look on her face. “I figured that a place like this would have people to do that sort of thing for you.”
Seth shrugged. “We’re a small foundation. Everyone washes the floor.”
He dodged her incredulous look. He wasn’t enamored with the minutiae any more than she was, but it had to be done, and there was no one else to do it.
“Who is running the Human Trafficking Unit?” Seth asked.
“Jenna Harris. Why?”
“I want to pass along the info I’ve gathered on Rico’s uncle.”
Garcia shot him a narrow glance.
“Okay, but I’m sure she has better things to do than listen to your half-baked theory.”
“We can’t afford to be wrong about this, Linda. Four lives are depending on us.”
“I will not have you undermine my case against Maddox.” Linda’s expression remained as hard as granite. “I know you flooded Maddox’s Twitter feed with his secret cache of porn. If I find one shred of evidence, I’ll have you up on charges so fast . . .”
Henry said nothing. He folded his hands and smiled as Linda stormed from the office and slammed the door.
“You outed Maddox?”
“Not really. It was already out there. He gave up his right to privacy the moment he posted pictures of those girls.”
“That’s not your decision to make.”
Henry rolled his eyes. “Spare me the lecture on morals.”
“Maddox is a scumbag. We both agree on that. It’s a matter of legalities.”
“You’re no longer a cop, Seth.”
“And your reckless disregard for the law is going to get this foundation sued. If Evan is too blind to see that—”
“Whatever.” Henry dismissed Seth and turned his attention back to the laptop.
This was everything that was wrong with the foundation.
“Fine. Fuck it.” Seth grabbed his coat.
“Where are you going?”
“To see if I can track down Jenna Harris.”
If he didn’t leave now, he might well strangle Henry.
Chapter 21
Suzie Norwood awoke. Something wasn’t right. She could feel it in her bones. Like that morning she woke up at the party surrounded by strangers.
Monitors squawked like crows on a power line, and Suzie looked up. Bright lights burned above. She squinted her eyes. Tried to focus.
A hospital?
No.
Suzie tried to remember.
The redhead. The contest. The woman said they were going to the clinic to get pictures taken of all the contest winners.
She remembered the car. A bee sting of pain. Neighborhoods flashing by in a colorful blur of houses until everything went black.
Panic hummed like an electrical current through her.
She had to move. Get out while she still could. But liquid lead flowed through her veins. Every movement rendered hard by the sheer weight of her limbs sucking her down.
Suzie rolled to her side, swung her legs over the edge. Sat up.
A wave of dizziness crashed over her. She clung to the bedrail and held on hard to the thin thread of consciousness connecting her to reality. A cold sweat rippled across her skin. She gulped the cool air and waited for the nausea to pass.
Her feet touched the ground.
A vague pinpoint of pain jabbed the inside of her elbow. She looked down. An IV strung taut like a plastic leash tethering her to the bed, pumping God-knows-what kind of chemical storm into her veins.
With all the dexterity of a stumbling drunk, Suzie seized the plastic tube and ripped it from her arm. Tears of blood oozed onto her skin.
She stood. Swayed. Grabbed the bedrail for support.
The baby kicked frantically inside her, as if in he was urging her to run. She placed a hand on her belly and staggered toward the door.
Two steps felt like two miles. Four. She was halfway across the room when the door flew open.
She expected to see the redhead from her apartment, but what she saw was way worse.
He wasn’t a big guy. Medium height with a wiry build. Light glinted off his wire-rimmed glasses.
And those eyes.
He surged toward her. Suzie tried to dodge to the side, lost her footing, and tumbled. She crashed into a medical cart. Equipment hit the ground in a cacophony of shattering glass.
Gathering the last of her strength, Suzie lurched toward the door. His spidery grip, strong as steel, wrapped around her arm and yanked her toward the bed.
“Let go,” she cried.
“Go on, scream,” he spat through gritted teeth. “No one can hear you.”
He shoved her back toward the bed. Suzie fell. She cracked her head against the metal frame. Stars exploded behind her eyelids in a bright flash of white light. Blood sheeted down her forehead, stinging her eyes.
Suzie wailed. She lashed out at his face, fingernails scraping any skin she could find. Fighting for her life. Fighting for her baby.
He hauled her up by her arms and pushed her onto the hospital bed. He pinned her shoulders flat, reaching for something. Suzie drove her knee into his side.
Her attacker let out a sharp breath. The wire-rimmed glasses flew from his face.
His weight shifted off her. Hope swelled. Suzie pitched her weight forward, lunged off the bed. Her gaze locked on the door. If she could just get there . . .
He grabbed her and yanked her back. He thrust his forearm against her chest and pinned her down. In his free hand, he held a needle. He uncapped it with his teeth. Stabbed it into her arm.
Trapped beneath the weight of his body, all the fight left Suzie. She slumped into the mattress. He glowered down at her. Blood welled from the angry red scratches on his cheek.
Then all at once, it happened. Suzie’s heart jolted like it had been hit with a megawatt of electricity. She gasped.
Her throat closed. She couldn’t breathe.
Chapter 22
A powerful gust of wind swept off Puget Sound and across the warehouses and cargo containers on Harbor Island. The small manmade island was located in the mouth of the Duwamish River, where it emptied into Elliot Bay. A thick cover of clouds shrouded the misty sky and cast a gray light over the crime scene as Seth approached.
He had lost count of the number of murder scenes he’d presided over during his tenure on the force. While the years eroded the shock value of seeing a human being lying dead at his feet, it never fully anesthetized him to the sadness he felt at witnessing another wasted life.
Detective Jenna Harris wore the grim expression of a seasoned detective as she surveyed the scene laid out before her. Seth bent to duck under the crime scene tape, but a patrol officer blocked his path. Big. Young. Only a year or two out of the Academy, Seth would have guessed. His face was all business.
“This is a crime scene.”
“Obviously,” Seth said stepping back behind the police tape. “I’m here to see Detective Harris.”
“Do you have ID?”
Seth knew what he was asking. Did he have a badge or some other credentials that would allow him access to the scene? He couldn’t use his former police connections to get him in this time. He was going to have to wait.
“Could you tell her that Seth Crawford is here?”
The kid took his sweet time relaying the message. Seth waited in the bone-chilling cold as the investigative team wrapped things up. He was nearly shivering by the time Jenna cast a quick look over her shoulder to where he was standing. She nodded—a sign of recognition, and after a few parting words with the medical examiner, Jenna strode across the cracked asphalt and ducked under the yellow tape to join him.
“Thanks for agreeing to see me, Jenna.”
“Coffee’s on you,” she said, blowing into her cupped hands and setting a blistering pace back toward the parking lot. “It’s cold as fuck out here.”
Seth followed Jenna along the stretch of road that paralleled Alki Beach. Million-dollar condos lined the west side of the street. To the east lay the beach, and beyond it, an obstructed view of the Seattle skyline. He used to come here when he was in college. Bonfires on the beach. Friends. His guitar.
But that was a lifetime ago.
He wasn’t the only one who had changed. West Seattle had once been a haven for hippies, and while a few of them stubbornly held on to the beachside shacks they could still afford, the coffee shops were full of sharped-dressed professionals taking over the neighborhoods.
They grabbed their orders and headed to a table in the corner.
“I hear congratulations are in order,” Seth said, taking a seat across from Jenna.
She had the freckled face of a Midwestern farm girl, and the shrewd mind of a lawyer, but what Seth admired most about Jenna was her wry sense of humor.
“Or condolences, depending on your perspective.”
“You’re the right woman for the job.” Whip-smart and politically savvy, he wasn’t the least bit surprised she’d risen through the ranks quickly.
“So what’s this I hear about you quitting?”
Seth shrugged. “You know what they say, all good things come to an end.”
“Not you, Seth. You’re a lifer—like me. The fact that you’re here tells me that you’re not quite ready to let go.”
“What was I going to do? Become a life insurance salesman?”
“Ha! That I would like to see,” Jenna said. She took a sip of her coffee and cast her gaze over the slate-gray waters of the bay. “Garcia says you have some kind of crazy theory you wanted to run by me.”
Crazy theory. The words burned like acid on his skin. If that’s how Garcia viewed him, he was surprised she had bothered to contact Jenna. But what did he expect? He was an outsider now. He could only hope that Jenna was more open-minded than Garcia had been.
“I’m looking into the disappearance of Rebecca Kincaid.”
Jenna’s look was sharp. “That’s Garcia’s case.”
“Right. There’s a second pregnant woman missing. So, while Garcia’s sweating Nathan Maddox, I’m taking another angle.”
Jenna cocked her head. “Such as . . .”
“What if the mothers are not the primary target? What if it’s the babies?”
Jenna emitted a low whistle, her freckled face serious. “What are you thinking?”
“What if it’s an illegal adoption ring? You see anything like that?”
Jenna’s gaze stretched across the bay to the skyscrapers crowding the downtown core. A frown line burrowed deep between her eyebrows as she considered his question. The job was aging her before her time.
“Not so far. I’ve heard of cases where babies have been abducted from other countries—China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and sold state side. Not white babies from the suburbs. Most of the cases I deal with involve children being sold into prostitution, like that girl at the scene this morning. Eleven years old. She was being brought to the US in a shipping crate by a relative, probably setting her up with family friends,” Jenna said, her fingers forming air quotes in the sky. “All for a promise of a better life.”
Like Rico, Seth thought.
“Hard to believe this shit happens in Seattle.” Seth glanced out across the choppy waters. He could see the base of the Smith Tower from where he sat. The white pyramid that housed the foundation’s offices was engulfed by the low clouds. Photos of the missing women flashed into his mind. Taped to his whiteboard—they were a constant reminder of the lives that were at stake if he failed to solve the case. “I suppose enough money buys you anything you want.”
“Including children,” Jenna agreed. “Portland and Seattle are gateways for human trafficking. Illegal immigrants come in by the ship-full. Migrant workers harvest the crops. Hell, we’re almost at the Canadian border—the largest unguarded international border in the world. We’re ideally situated to move people in and out of the country.”
“What about babies?” Seth asked, refocusing her on his request.
Jenna raked her shoulder length brown hair back with her fingers and secured it behind her head in a ponytail. “So you’ve heard of China’s one child policy?”
Seth nodded. “China’s answer to overpopulation.”
“Right. China recently changed their policy so that families can now keep two children. Doesn’t sound like much of an improvement to us, but it does have an interesting effect on overseas adoption.”
“Meaning their new policy is creating a shortage in the market?” Seth surmised, tracing the line of Jenna’s logic.
“Right,” Jenna said. “And with women waiting longer to have babies, demand for infants is on the rise. Nature abhors a vacuum. So, while I haven’t stumbled across the side effects yet, nothing would surprise me. So, let me ask you this, if they’re selling the babies, what are they doing with the mothers?”
There was no good answer to the question. All the theories Seth came up with were the stuff of nightmares.
“Selling them into prostitution?” Seth asked.
“How old are we talking?”
“Late teens. Early twenties.”
Jenna’s mouth puckered like she’d just tasted sour milk. “You know what the prime age for that sort of thing is?”
Seth winced. “Don’t tell me.”
“Thirteen.”
God, just the thought of it made him sick.
“Welcome to my world, Crawford.” Jenna drained her coffee cup and slid back her chair. “As much as I’d like to sit here and shoot the shit with you, I should get back to it.”
“Jenna, is there any chance I’m right?”
She offered him a pained look. “I don’t know. The thing you’ve got to ask yourself is: why these women? Why these babies?”
#
He was still mulling over his conversation with Jenna by the time he made it back to the Smith Tower. The foundation’s offices were as quiet as a tomb. He strode down the empty hallway to his office.
With Elizabeth Holt at the helm, the place had been buzzing with activity—phone lines ringing with tips, legions of volunteers posting missing persons flyers across the city. Press conferences. Daily updates. Action.
Now that Elizabeth was gone, they were down to a skeleton crew. Just him, Henry, Marissa, and Evan. They were operating without leadership, without a rudder, and they were failing.
One week until Rebecca Kincaid’s due date and they were no closer to finding her than they had been the day they took over the case. And Rebecca wasn’t the only woman missing. Two women. Two babies. What good was he doing here if all he had were crazy theories and not a single shred of evidence? Short on resources and without a network, it felt like he was wasting time—time the two missing women didn’t have.
Still thinking through Jenna’s advice, he racked his brain trying to figure out how the perpetrator had honed in on the two women. The sky had turned from gray to black by the time he rose from his chair.
He’d gotten so caught up in his day, he hadn’t dropped in on Marissa, or apologized for not returning last night’s text. He found her in her office, frowning at her computer screen. She looked like she was having the same kind of day he was, which wasn’t saying much.
“It can’t be that bad,” he said.
She started at the sound of his voice. She looked up, and for the first time all day, he smiled.
“Wanna bet?” Marissa rubbed her eyes.
This case was taking a toll on both of them. Makeup couldn’t hide the dark circles beneath her eyes. Stress showed in the rigid caste of her shoulders and the tense lines around her mouth. No doubt he looked worse.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Do you know anything about financial models?”
Seth glanced over her shoulder at her computer screen. What he saw were rows and rows of numbers and information he couldn’t begin to understand.
“I’m n
o good to you. I failed high school accounting.”
“At least you finished high school.”
It was easy to forget everything she gave up to raise two kids on her own. She earned her GED while she was working fulltime, struggling through night school. For him, high school and college were givens. His future had always seemed clear until now.
“You’ll figure it out.”
She made a noise—half laugh, half snort that might as well have told him that he was full of shit. She wasn’t the only woman to think so—Garcia and Jenna both thought he was nuts.
“I doubt it. If I spend any more time today staring at these numbers, I’m going to go insane. What do you say we get out of here? Head home.”
Home. She said the word so easily that it almost felt as if she meant it. And maybe she did, but Brooke was another matter.
“I should stay. We still don’t have any viable leads.”
She pursed her lips. He didn’t need to be a cop to know that he’d just pissed her off. Again.
“Then go.” She looked away, dismissing him from her presence and focusing back on her screen. He let the awkward silence build until she was forced to look at him. Anger sparked in her eyes.
“Why do you always do that?” Seth asked.
“Do what?”
“Hold what you want to say inside, let it fester. You’re clearly upset, but you won’t tell me why.”
“I would, but you’ve got work to do.” Seth’s head snapped back, like he’d been slapped. She knew what he was doing—how important the case was. “You told me once that cops make lousy partners, and I guess this is what you meant. You’re unavailable.”
“We talked about this, Marissa. Brooke needs space.”
“Convenient,” she said. The barb bit deep, and he held his tongue. As tempting as it was to lash back at her, escalating the argument was stupid. It wasn’t like he was trying to avoid her. The case took precedence.
“It has nothing to do with us.”
Marissa gave a bitter laugh. “Could have fooled me, Seth.”
There was no winning with her. All he’d wanted was to smooth things over, and he’d gotten an ass-chewing instead. With a shake of his head, he strode from the office and flopped down behind his desk.
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