“I’ve put together a list of all trucking companies within twenty miles of I-10 from L.A. to Jacksonville. I’ve weeded out the large national companies, but we’re still looking at an extensive list. I considered that he’d want independents, so divided the list between independent trucking companies and small chains. Commercial sales are trackable, but not necessarily up-to-date. And I don’t have the name he’s buying under. It’s not his own. He would likely have a shell corp, nothing that would connect to him or whoever he’s working with. But since we know he’s moving into Texas, I’m focusing in-state.”
“He’s been doing this for awhile, correct?” Lucy asked.
“Bella’s been undercover for a year,” Kane said. “She got in through one of his trucking companies.”
“Is there a way to sort the data by sale date? If he started on the west coast and is now moving east, wouldn’t it make sense that the first companies he purchased are in California? Then we can look at a pattern and maybe identify the shell company that way.”
Sean nodded. “It’s possible. The problem is that every state reports the data differently, so I need to match up the fields. I only have the raw data. I’ll let Kane fly and work on sorting the data manually.”
“Sean will send you a list of locals for you and Nate to follow up,” Kane said. “But do it incognito—no cop persona.”
“Got it.” Lucy cleared her plate and rinsed it. “When will you be back?”
“Hopefully tomorrow,” Sean said. “I’ll call when I can.”
“Be careful, both of you,” Lucy said. “I need to get ready for work.”
Sean followed her upstairs. “You okay with all this?”
“Of course.”
“I contacted Mona Hill. She’s going to call you today to set up a meet. I told her neutral territory. I don’t think she’s going to do anything, but bring backup.”
“Why are you worried?”
“I’m not.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You sound worried.”
He sat down on the bed and pulled her down next to him. “First, I always worry, but that’s par for the course. But Kane’s worried, and that freaks me out. Kane is always cool as a cucumber.”
“He’s worried about JT, and this undercover operation of Bella’s is dangerous.”
“Partly. It’s like when you were missing last fall—he almost benched me because I couldn’t focus. So Kane’s concerned about JT’s judgment regarding his sister, but I think he’s more worried about Bella and how deep she’s gotten. He cares a lot about both her and JT. Undercover work is difficult, but undercover work when you’re not a cop? She has no backup. If anything happens to her—JT will lose it. Kane isn’t concerned about the repercussions with Hirsch and his people. But Simon Egan has a lot of friends—powerful people who help him behind the scenes. We can’t go to war with him.”
“You mean war figuratively.”
“If anything happens to Bella, it will get bloody, and a battle between Egan and RCK is going to force high-level people to take sides. It’ll be a mess. That’s what Kane is trying to prevent. He reached out to Brad Donnelly—Donnelly said the SSA in the El Paso DEA is solid, so he’s getting us a sit-down with her. We need someone local to work with. Just wanted to let you know in case something leaks—I don’t want it coming back to bite you.”
“I’ll be fine. Just keep my head down and do the job. If Kane’s watching JT’s back, you need to have his.”
“I do.” He kissed her. “Be careful with Mona.”
“I can take care of Mona Hill.”
“Don’t let her get under your skin. She’s good at that.”
Sean kissed Lucy again and left.
* * *
Bella was up early. Hell, she hadn’t slept more than a couple hours a night in months. She made a pot of coffee in the stained coffeepot and stared at it, waiting for it to brew. The beat-up house they were in was bank owned—a torn, faded foreclosure sign was nailed to the door—but it was dated three years ago, and if there had been a For Sale sign posted anywhere, it was long gone. The house had once been a meth lab—remnants of the tools of that disgusting drug trade were littered throughout the place. But they either had been arrested or OD’d because they hadn’t been here in months, based on the layers of dust and grime.
They’d only been here a couple days, since they bailed out of Phoenix, but Bella was antsy and the longer she was out of contact with people, the more depressed she got.
Where was Penny?
Where had Hirsch sent two of Desiree’s girls last night?
Why did Damien seem depressed?
Was Hope alive?
Laura had once called Bella the “most optimistic pessimist” on the planet. Bella believed Hope was alive because she needed to believe in order to keep her cover, especially as the weeks turned into months and being a part of this life was eating her up inside. Now … she was beginning to doubt Hope had survived her ordeal. Fifteen months in this life … no matter how strong you were, fifteen months was enough to break anyone, especially a young girl.
Bella had almost broken so many times. If JT hadn’t saved her when he did, she would be dead by now. Laura, who had the patience of a saint, had never wavered from her belief that Bella would have survived. That Bella was somehow special.
She wasn’t. She was no more special than Hope or Christina or Penny.
Voices outside jolted her out of her trance. The coffee had finished brewing, she must have been standing here for ten minutes or more just feeling sorry for herself.
Who was outside this early?
She looked out the window. Desiree and Bam-Bam were standing by a car talking in hushed voices. Desiree never woke up before noon—it wasn’t even seven in the morning—she must be as on edge as Bella. She almost laughed that she had something in common with the bitch of a madam. But while Desiree was a violent predator, she was street smart. She thought something was awry, and that confirmed Bella’s suspicions.
Bella poured herself a mug of coffee and walked out the side door, where they couldn’t see her, and hugged the side of the house until their voices were audible. It took her a few seconds to catch on. Desiree was upset, and Bam-Bam was trying to calm her down.
“Don’t tell me they’ll be back, Thad! He took two of my girls, not his. Diaz took them without paying a fucking red cent!”
“Shh.”
Two girls … the girls that she was pissed off about last night? The freebies?
“Don’t shush me. We need to go back to L.A. This is fucked.”
“We made a deal.”
“I’m losing control.”
“Look, let’s just go with the flow, okay? We’re tapping into a shitload of money.”
“And losing everything. He’s not right in the head.”
Another thing Desiree and Bella agreed with.
They exchanged a few words that Bella couldn’t make out, but then Desiree became agitated again and her voice rose.
“Look what he did to that whiny white bitch.”
Bella froze. Desiree had always called Penny the whiny white bitch. What had Hirsch done with Penny? She’d come to El Paso, according to the other girls, but no one had seen her at the house. Had he sold her? To Diaz? To someone else?
“None of our girls are going to die,” Bam-Bam said. “That little whore brought it on herself.”
Penny was dead? No, no that couldn’t be.
“I have a contact in San Antonio. Someone who can give Hirsch a run for his money,” Desiree said. “We bail there, I’ll get us protection until we’re clear.”
“I dunno.”
“I do.”
Bella could barely focus on Desiree’s plan of switching sides. Penny was dead. It had to be because Christina and Ashley escaped. Had Penny been caught? Is that how Roger died? Or had something else happened after Roger went back inside for Penny?
Anger, fear, and deep, deep sorrow coursed through her veins and she went back
inside the house. She had to risk exposure—she needed to get out of here. If Penny was dead, Hope was certainly dead, and Bella had been a fool to think otherwise. A total idiot.
She went into the room Desiree and Bam-Bam were sharing. It reeked of sex and liquor. She grabbed a phone, she didn’t know whose, and slipped back outside, toward the barn.
She kept her eye on the house through one of the broken slats and dialed Simon’s direct line. She didn’t care that it was five in the morning in California.
Simon hadn’t been sleeping. He answered on the first ring. Like her, sleep was the enemy for Simon Egan.
“It’s Bella.”
“Thank God. Are you okay?”
“I need to get out.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Simon—did you hear me?”
“Is your cover blown?”
“No.”
“What happened? After the text last night you said you wanted to stay. What’s going on with you?”
She realized that she’d changed her mind on a daily basis since Monday morning when Damien came for her. Leave, stay, leave. Of course he would think she was losing it. Maybe she was.
“They killed Penny. Roger’s dead, and now Penny—the girl who was supposed to leave with Christina and Ashley—is dead, too.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t think Hope’s alive. I’m here to find Hope, and I don’t think I can.”
“Do you have proof that she’s dead?”
“No, but—”
“Bella, we knew this would be a long-term assignment. I’ll get you out, if you really want to leave. But we still have Hope’s videos.”
“They’re nearly a year old!”
“Another group surfaced. We’ve dated them three to six months ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We just learned of them. We’re working on finding more. She’s out there, you know it in your gut.”
Bella didn’t know if she could trust her gut anymore.
“Something big is going down with this guy Diaz that Hirsch is trying to negotiate with. Desiree is worried that Hirsch is giving her girls away.”
“That’s not our concern. You’re there to find Hope and safely extract girls like Christina and Ashley.”
“I know.” She stared through the slat in the barn. Desiree and Bam-Bam were still talking, but it had lost the intensity of their earlier conversation. Planning. Plotting. Up to no good.
“You knew this wasn’t going to be an easy job. Are you in for the long haul? Are you up for it?”
Was she? Could she keep doing this? She was losing her humanity. When Damien Drake—a sociopathic brute—was her only friend, and she actually felt safer with him than with anyone else, she knew she was tumbling off the edge, the avalanche of bad decisions and deep cover lies weighing her down.
“Yes,” she said. What else could she do? If Hope was really alive, and she bailed now, she would never forgive herself. She’d never backed down before when things got hard. Why now? Because of one dead girl? She’d seen the dead before. She’d buried the dead. She had to block it out. Block it out until she slept.
If she ever slept soundly again.
“Good,” Simon said. He sounded relieved. “Thank you, Bella. We couldn’t do this without you.”
“I think their next stop is San Antonio. A few things I overheard—and I suspect Desiree is going to bail. It’s not going to end well for her.”
“He’s moving fast. Give it two, three more weeks. If we’re no closer to finding Hope, we’ll turn everything over to the authorities.”
Though he said the words like he meant them, she didn’t believe him. Simon didn’t like giving anything to the authorities.
“Do you have any physical proof?” Simon asked.
“Some.” It was nearly impossible for her to document anything. “I’ve given Declan names, photos, a few high-profile johns the cops can flip. And my word—I can’t keep a journal, but I’ve given notes to Declan when I’ve seen him. We have Christina and Ashley. Christina will testify—I’m pretty certain of that. I have three more I think will walk.”
“Not now—it’s too risky after Phoenix.”
“One of them is suicidal, I’m worried about her. In San Antonio—if Desiree makes a scene or gives me the opportunity, I’m going to slip them out. Send Declan there—I’ll handle El Paso.”
“Are you sure?”
No, she wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
From her hiding spot, she saw Damien step outside. He stared at Desiree and Bam-Bam. He didn’t look happy.
“I have to go.” She ended the call, then wiped the history from the phone. She’d have to slip it down the back of the couch when no one was looking.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t been to this rodeo before.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As Lucy rode shotgun in the FBI sedan with her partner for the day, Jason Lopez, she had moved from angry to worried then back to angry. It wasn’t fair to either of them that their boss had Jason following her and reporting back. That didn’t instill support among agents, especially when Lucy had to depend on Jason to watch her back. It wasn’t fair to Jason to put him in the position of being a spy.
She remained silent most of the morning as they confirmed information from the cold case files. For three hours they’d gone from place to place to make contact with witnesses and victims and update information. They only found one of the dozen people they tried to speak with, an elderly woman with no family who had been moved to a nursing home. She had her faculties, but didn’t have anything to add to her statement, and her doctor informed Lucy that she was probably not going to live until the end of the year.
At lunch, she was melancholy. The woman may never live to find out who killed her grandson. While murder was not generally an FBI case, they’d been assisting the San Antonio PD because the murder happened on a college campus and there was evidence of a larger crime—but nothing had panned out at the time, and it went cold.
She didn’t want to eat with Jason, but they didn’t have much of a choice. They were an hour south of the office and still had a list of people to locate and speak with.
“You’re quiet,” Jason said. They were eating at a food truck off Interstate 37 near Three Rivers. It was a pleasant afternoon, and if she were here with Nate or Ryan or Kenzie or frankly almost anyone else, she would have enjoyed the break and cool breeze.
“I have nothing to say,” she said.
“Ouch.”
“Okay, how about this—why did you follow me to lunch yesterday and then report back to Rachel who I was eating with?”
At first she thought he was going to lie to her. That would have angered her even more. He bit into his taco, chewed, swallowed, sipped water.
“She asked me to.”
“So she’s having you follow me. You did a good job. I didn’t know I had a tail.” Her tone was far less complimentary than her words.
“Don’t shoot the messenger.”
“You’re not the messenger. Don’t do it again.”
“I can’t promise that. Look, I’m sorry. I don’t like this anymore than you do. Rachel is a good agent. I think you’re a good agent.”
“How would you even know considering I’ve worked zero cases in the last two months?”
“People talk.”
“Why is she having you follow me?”
“I don’t know—and it’s not all the time. If I had to guess, I think she’s still ticked off about San Diego.”
“You know about that?”
“Well, yeah. Who doesn’t know? Besides, I just got here a month ago. Someone mentioned something, I dug around, talked to people, read the file. It was great work. But—well—Rachel doesn’t like mavericks, and she’s labeled you such.”
“So she said yesterday.”
There was more to it than that—there had to be. Two months in the doghouse. But it wasn’t just the last two months. B
efore San Diego, Rachel had been hypercritical of her work as well.
“You talked to her about it?” He sounded surprised.
“She knew about my lunch with Kane—which she got from you—and has been monitoring everything I do. She believes things that aren’t true and I don’t know what to say to fix it. So I’m just going to leave it alone.”
“You mean about the baby in Mexico.”
She didn’t respond to that question. “Don’t dig around into my life, Lopez. All you really need to know about me is that I’m a good agent and I will always have your back. What bothers me most is that I don’t know if you’ll have mine.”
That surprised him. “Of course I do.”
She wanted to believe him, but she didn’t know much about him. She didn’t want to feel this way about anyone she worked with.
“I want to give you the benefit of the doubt,” she said.
“But you don’t.”
“My own boss is having me followed during my lunch break. That doesn’t say a lot about her, or about her trust in me. It was lunch.”
“Why’d you tell me you were having lunch with your husband?”
“Because I didn’t want to have lunch with you.”
“Double ouch.” But he didn’t seem too bothered by her admission. Either he truly wasn’t concerned about what she thought of him, or he had a great poker face.
“You wanted honest.”
“Fair enough.”
He seemed to be waiting for more, his body language practically screaming I’m just pretending not to be interested, but I really want you to spill everything. But Lucy had no intention of sharing anything personal with him. She was angry about being followed, and she was frustrated that Rachel had put her colleague in this position. She realized she’d have to take it up with her boss directly if they were ever going to get beyond this.
Her phone rang. The number was blocked. “Kincaid,” she answered. She had legally changed her name to Rogan and used her maiden name as her middle name, but for work she still used Kincaid. It was easier that way.
“I heard you want to talk to me.”
Mona Hill. Or Ramona Jefferson. Or Odette. Or whatever she wanted to be called today.
“Yes,” she said.
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