by Mary Calmes
“We gotta go see Han, okay?” she pleaded.
“Sure thing, honey.”
“And you won’t let them get us again, right?”
“No, you know I won’t.”
She nodded. “I knew you wouldn’t. I told Mrs. Cullen to let me call you, but she wouldn’t. I told her we weren’t going to school, but she said for Chinese girls to miss studying wasn’t a big thing because I was just going to be a maid anyway.”
My stomach roiled, and the anger swept through me, but I kept my voice calm, solid, matter-of-fact for the trembling girl. “You’re going to be a doctor like your father was.”
She lifted her head and gazed at me with wounded, terrified eyes. “Can I still be a doctor after what those men did?”
Fuck. “Absolutely,” I assured her, confident in my answer, letting her hear the certainty in my voice as I tucked her head back against my chest.
Glancing over at Eli, I saw him swallow hard, watched his jaw clench, and knew, like me, he was holding on by a thread not to tear James limb from limb.
“Oh, don’t you guys worry,” Ching said, darkly certain, a cold grin on his face that was by far the scariest expression I’d ever seen on him. “Prison’s gonna be a blast for this one, I’ll make sure.” I remembered that just like some of Dorsey’s family, some of Ching’s were serving time as well. “No one likes guys who hurt little girls.”
I had always heard that but didn’t know it was a real thing until I started putting people in jail for a living. It was, without a doubt, a true statement. Scary prisoners locked up for life had daughters too.
“Take me to Han,” I told the fourteen-year-old girl in my arms. “Let’s go see your little sister.”
It was one of the longest walks of my life.
MOST PEOPLE, if asked, probably thought the number of people who went into WITSEC every year was in the thousands, but it was actually far less. From when witness protection became a program in the 1970s to today, the number hovered somewhere between ten and eleven thousand, depending on what report you accessed or who you asked. Of that number, most were married or there was a significant other, some had families, and some were underage.
Because kids who had seen a crime committed—normally the death of one or both of their parents—could not be turned over to relatives unless they too entered WITSEC, most of them went into foster care. In Chicago there were, at the moment, a hundred and twelve underage kids placed with the Department of Child and Family Services, and while that agency was in charge of them, the caveat was that, along with their case manager/social worker, a liaison from the marshals’ office supervised them. So while DCFS struggled with the same things as every government agency—the deplorable lack of funding, the chronically understaffed clusterfuck, and widespread unreliable reporting—for the kids in WITSEC, it was supposed to be better because they had someone from the marshals’ office advocating for them. Sadly they dropped the ball on Wen and Han Li, whose parents, Dr. Herman Li and his wife, Jia, had been killed in a home invasion in Jacksonville, Florida.
It was a mistake. Gil “Piston” Baker, head of a local meth ring who had ties to a biker gang that was big in Florida, thought he was killing a rival when he was, in fact, killing a gifted cardiologist. In the dark, hopped up on meth, having mixed up the numbers of the address, he shot first, murdering the doctor and then his wife, who charged down the stairs after Dr. Li. The girls saw it all from the second floor and ran to their room, locked the door, and then climbed out the window and up onto the roof, cell phones in hand, before Baker even figured out what he’d done. Jacksonville PD caught him before he pulled out of the driveway.
Baker would have remained strong and not rolled over on the motorcycle club, but facing the needle for murdering the Lis, he turned on everyone he’d ever called friend. It was a long, arduous process, dismantling a gang that had ties to a cartel with fingers in prostitution, drugs, and guns. And because everything had to be disclosed, Baker’s gang knew all about Han and Wen, so they were placed into protective custody until the entire trial concluded—which was still years away—or Baker died. Since Baker was in fine health and had basically put out a bounty on each girl, WITSEC was their only option. Five months ago, they had been brought to Chicago. Ian and I did their intake paperwork and took them upstairs to Custodial WITSEC, run by Sebreta Cullen and overseen by new Supervisory Deputy Darren Mills.
Normally there was red tape. Normally there was a process and things took time—if and when an individual or a department was investigated, that would move at a glacial speed. The difference in this instance was the office faced a PR nightmare of biblical proportions that could effectively cripple the Northern District. It would blow the reputation of the marshals’ office to kingdom come. But more important than all of that was we were talking about underage children. Kage was so furious he wasn’t even yelling, which was a very, very bad sign. Heads were going to roll.
The problem was new because Mills put Cullen in her position after Maureen Prescott retired, and he was not required to run his pick by Kage. Because of that, and because Kage had his hands full with everything else, he hadn’t checked in on Custodial WITSEC.
I went with Kage to confront Cullen because I was the guy who’d called him. He charged into that office at four in the afternoon like the wrath of God.
He rattled off directions to his team, the accountants—because there were fiscal concerns if people weren’t watching the kids—then the social workers from the DCFS who would know what they were looking for, and of course, Prescott, who’d worked for Kage for years before retiring and still came when called. Kage brought some of the guys up from Judicial Security too, four total, and positioned them around the room so that when he told everyone to get up and walk to the conference room—he was clearing the area before he spoke to Cullen—no one hesitated. They just got up from their desks and moved.
I followed him into Cullen’s office, where he didn’t knock. He shut down her assistant with a sharp word that sent her scuttling after the others, strode to Cullen’s desk, took the phone out of her hand, and hung it up.
Cullen was a short blonde woman with a medium-length bob with bangs. She shot up out of her chair. “How dare you—”
“No.” He punched a button on the phone so it was on speaker. “Marshal Kenwood.”
“Kage,” the US Marshal for the Northern District answered.
“I’m here with Sebreta Cullen, sir.”
“And is Prescott there?”
“I am, sir,” she answered, moving around to stand beside Cullen.
“And who’s taking over in the interim?”
“Deputy US Marshal Miro Jones, sir,” Kage replied smoothly, leaving me stunned and staring, gulping like a fish on dry land. “He’s the one with the commendation from the State Department and the Spanish consulate for the recovery of a cultural attaché’s children.”
“Oh yes, excellent,” he agreed quickly. “Sounds like you have it well in hand. Have the DOJ get the investigation done to find out if it’s criminal or merely gross negligence. Make sure she’s escorted from the building after Public Affairs meets with her and reminds her of the agreements she signed when she was hired.”
“Yessir.”
“Do you have a team at her home now?”
“I do, sir.”
“Excellent. I’ll expect a report in two hours.”
“Yessir.”
When he hung up, I looked back at Cullen and noticed she was shaking. She had to step aside as Prescott plugged into her computer a flash drive I knew from experience gave her immediate access to the desktop.
“What the hell is going on?” Cullen shrieked, and I noticed her peaches-and-cream complexion was steadily pinking with anger.
“Well, that’s what we’re going to find out,” Kage explained, scowling.
“I don’t understand. My record is impeccable with—”
“White middle-class kids,” Prescott interrupted, her fingers f
lying over the keyboard. “But with black kids, Asian, mixed, gay, bi, transgender—your record is for crap, Ms. Cullen.”
“I don’t—that’s not true,” she shouted, banging her hand on the desk. “I’m a Christian and—”
“You hypocritical piece of crap,” I snarled. “How could you—”
“I won’t stand for—”
“You will stand for it!” Kage roared, and holy crap, was he loud. I forgot sometimes, considering how good he was about keeping his tone modulated, that when he wanted to, he could bounce his voice off the walls. But it made sense. He was massive with muscle, his arms, shoulders, and chest built like a tank, so when he wanted to yell, Jesus Christ, he could. “No Christian I know treats a child—any child—with the willful disrespect, disinterest, and disdain you’ve shown.”
“I—”
He turned and pointed at two women and a man, all in suits, who stood just inside the office door. “These people are here to advise you of your rights, place you on administrative leave for the duration of the inquiry, and take your statement about the welfare of the children who are supposed to be cared for by the department you manage.”
“You cannot expect me to take care of the bad children like I do the good ones,” she told him, her voice rising a second time. “Many of those kids have serious mental issues, or they’re juvenile delinquents or—”
“They’re children,” Kage said, his voice so hollow and cold I could feel the chill. “It’s your job to protect them. You failed.”
“I can’t be expected to help the black boys, because they hate me, and those horrible kids who don’t know if they’re boys or girls, or the dirty little faggots—”
Prescott gasped, which snapped Cullen from her tirade, prompting her to cover her mouth with her hand.
Instantly I thought of Josue and Cabot and Drake, all young men, not children, but still in need of direction, guidance, and protection. A few years younger and they would have been treated to Sebreta Cullen’s icy indifference and possibly may have gotten as lost as Han and Wen. I was nauseated thinking about what could have happened to my boys—or even me—in a different time and place. I was gay and in the foster care system, but I never faced anything like Cullen. She looked into the hopeful, needy eyes of children turning to her for salvation and shelter, care and concern, and threw them away like garbage. The surge of disgust was visceral, and I had to breathe through my nose not to vomit.
Kage turned his head to the suits in the room, focusing on one woman who was clearly in charge. She got on her phone as another man strode forward, folder open while he wrote frantically.
“Done,” the woman on the phone said to Kage, looking up for only a moment before returning to her conversation. I saw her badge before she started closing the blinds in the office, Department of Justice easy to read above her name: Rhonda Taylor. She was tall—at least six two—a stunning woman with long blonde hair who looked more like a model than a DOJ lawyer.
Kage turned back to Cullen. “Sebreta S. Cullen, you are hereby dismissed from your position as director of Custodial WITSEC here at the Northern District of Illinois.”
“But I didn’t mean—”
“And off the record,” he said icily, “you’re a vile human being, and I will personally make certain that criminal charges will be filed against you.”
“You won’t find—”
“Oh, we will,” Prescott assured her, her voice and hands shaking. “We most certainly will.”
“Come with us, please,” Taylor directed, now off the phone, lips pursed, eyes blazing, utterly rippling with barely controlled anger.
Cullen moved around her desk and stood before Kage. “This is a witch hunt because you’re gay and you’ve hated me from the start.”
The muscles in his jaw corded, and really, I knew he’d never hit a woman, but if he did, no one in that room would have said a word. “Madam, before today I had no earthly idea who you were or that you were not doing your job, and that’s my failure. I trust others to oversee different departments in this building and have recently been reminded that, unless I pick the supervisor myself, I can have no real confidence in the reporting. Had you done your job, you would never have seen me. As things stand, you’re terminated with charges pending a formal inquiry. You will remain on house arrest until we complete our investigation.”
“You can’t do—”
“He can, he has,” Taylor informed Cullen, her voice brittle. “And had he not, I would have, so come with us, Ms. Cullen. We need to go over the expectations of you during this transition time, and the limits of your travel to and from your home.”
“I’m not a criminal!”
“You certainly are,” Kage intoned, turning his back on the room, clearly done speaking to the horrible excuse for a human being, purposely breathing in slowly, I suspected, so he didn’t explode.
After Cullen was removed, we stood quietly for a few minutes as a team in coveralls came in and started dismantling the office in front of my eyes, taking photographs and paintings from the walls, packing up framed awards and certificates, boxing up tchotchkes and candles, the pens on her desk, and pictures of her family. It was so cold and impersonal to watch.
“Oh, Sam,” Prescott said, taking a halting breath.
He turned to look at her.
Elbow braced on the desk, her face was in her hand as she stared at the screen, trembling, her eyes filling fast. “You need to have Jones meet with a lot of these kids right now—yesterday—or we’re going to have more—oh God.”
“Tell me,” Kage demanded.
She took a shaky breath, hand over her mouth for a moment, moving her fingers as though tiny shocks were moving through them before she straightened and put her palm down on the desk with what seemed like considerable effort, getting herself under control before she addressed him. “You’ve got a boy in the morgue right now.”
“How old?”
“Sixteen.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry, but I need you to come back for at least three months. I need you to tell me who’s good, if any, in this department, and supervise here on-site while Jones conducts the field interviews. It’s a two-person job until we can get all the current, as well as the incoming, kids accounted for and situated.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“And he needs an assistant.”
“For an interim position?”
It appeared their eyes locked, like they were sharing a brain for a second, and I felt like I was witnessing that silent communion I’d read about but never seen in real life. A moment later, they both turned to me.
“Sir?” I asked Kage.
“Get him an assistant,” he told Prescott before he turned for the door.
“Mills?” she asked.
“Mills,” he echoed as he walked out.
I watched him leave, his retreating back holding my attention.
“Jones.”
All my focus returned to Prescott.
“That man has all the faith in the world in you. You get that, right?”
I tried not to grimace because… was she serious? Me? All he had? All Sam Kage had? Anyone in their right mind would leap at the chance to be the one he called upon for anything because if he had any kind of trust in you at all, it was worth the world. But I wasn’t his go-to guy; I couldn’t be. There were others so much more qualified than me. “I think I’m all he’s got at the moment.”
She shook her head. “I worked for him a long time, and he’s never unprepared.” Quick breath. “You need to give yourself some credit here. If he didn’t think you could do the job, he’d never put you in charge.”
I let that sink in. What I knew of him and what a dumbass he always treated me like were at odds with her words. Could it possibly be that Kage did not think I was a complete doofus? And I knew he didn’t because otherwise I wouldn’t be on his team, but would it have killed him to tell me that? To say, even in passing, “You know, Jones, you don’t totally suck.�
�� I could only imagine what being his child must be like. Strong and silent was all well and good if you knew you were loved, or in my case, respected.
“On the other hand, you have to realize that this is not a glory job.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that this is not the job for an adrenaline junkie. This is a small office in the corner of the monolith, and when you’re outside with your badge, no one really looks at it. They’re much more interested in the lanyard around your neck. You still carry a gun, but in all my years on the job, I only drew mine twice.”
“That’s good. I’d prefer never to have to pull my weapon,” I answered woodenly, saying what I thought I should at the moment instead of screaming.
She spoke like I was done in the field doing what I knew best and backing up Ian. It sounded so normal coming from her, like this was of course my new path and not at all the life-and-death decision it actually was. I couldn’t imagine not being a member of Sam Kage’s team, not being Ian’s backup, not doing what I had been for the past five years. The idea of something new, of change, was terrifying, but instead of arguing, I shoved down the fear because, at the very same time, there were aspects of the job I was doing now that I was better at and a huge piece of what she was talking about. Maybe the nurturing side of me, the part that wanted to help and not punish, was something Sam Kage could actually see.
“Jones?”
“I’m listening,” I advised her because I was just processing at the same time.
She nodded. “Once you take this job, Jones, your power isn’t about heroic feats anymore. There won’t be any news articles or photos ops, instead simply quiet moments where kids thank you before they go off to college.”
I crossed my arms as I looked at her. “There’s nobility in that.”
She scrutinized me. “But you don’t care about that.”
She said it like she knew already, and I shrugged.
“You’re not a glory hound, are you, Jones?”