Brie started to lay the blame all on him, but the truth leaked out. “Both. But mostly his.” Yeah, she shouldn’t have stolen the car or hit the officer, but at the cost of losing a lead on her sister’s murder, she’d do it again. Cuffing her to a damn desk when the person who attacked Carlos was running free was too much.
“You’re honest. I like that. I say if you can’t learn from your mistakes what’s the use in making them.” Mildred paused. “Did you learn anything?”
Brie met the woman’s gaze. “What I did wrong, was for the right reason. You ever do that?”
“Maybe, but it didn’t land me in handcuffs.” She grinned. “Except that one time in the sixties.”
Brie almost smiled. “Don’t feel you have to share.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t.” Mildred laughed.
Brie decided under different circumstances, she might have liked this woman.
Right then, Brie’s phone rang. She reached for it in her purse, forgetting she was cuffed. The metal jingled, then she went for it with her left hand.
“I don’t know if you should answer.” Mildred put her hand on Brie’s purse.
“Please?” Emotion leaked into her voice. “My friend’s in the hospital. This could be about him.” When she hesitated, Brie added, “Would Detective Pierce have let me keep my purse if he didn’t want me to answer my phone?”
Mildred hesitated, then nodded. “Since you said please.”
“Thank you.” Brie pulled her phone from her bag and saw it was Eliot. Her stomach knotted, and fearing the worst, she sent up a little prayer.
“Everything okay?” Her voice rang a little too high-pitched.
“Yes,” Eliot said. “Tory just arrived, they let him go back to see Carlos. Right before he showed up, the doctor came out. He said Carlos’s blood pressure has risen. He’s stable.”
Brie’s shoulders slumped and her eyes stung with relief. “Thank God.”
“And I just hung up with the assistant to the governor.”
“About me?” she seethed.
“About them possibly arresting you. I also spoke with a buddy of mine who has connections to—”
“How many times have I told you not to interfere with my job?” Brie’s jaw clenched.
“It isn’t your job. You’re on leave. And I’m not going to stand by and see you arrested for trying to find your sister’s killer.”
“I haven’t been arrested.” Yet.
“Another buddy is putting a call into the Anniston mayor and—”
“You have to stop,” she snapped. “I’m an adult.”
“I could tell that detective was going to be a problem,” Eliot said.
Her phone dinged with a text. “Call me if anything changes.”
“I will.” He hung up.
The text was from Agent Calvin saying that he and Agents Bara and Miles had just landed. Earlier he’d said he wouldn’t be coming. Did this mean he was taking the possibility of the leak seriously?
“Everything okay?” a deep voice asked.
Targeting her frustration on the owner of that voice, she looked up. And up. The man was so tall and big he made her feel…small and something else she refused to put a name to.
“Just dandy.” She rattled her cuffs.
He pulled the key from his pocket. Leaning over, his face came within inches of hers, and she couldn’t help but stare at his five o’clock shadow, those long lashes that shouldn’t be on a man, and the emerald of his eyes.
Then she realized that she wasn’t the only one looking. Gazes locked, she shifted to reclaim her personal space.
“Let’s go talk to my partners.” He glanced at Mildred. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” Mildred smiled at her, then said to Connor, “Play nice.”
“I always do,” he said.
“Please.” Rubbing her wrist, Brie moved from behind the desk.
He glanced at her hands. “I only did it because—”
“Because you’re a small-minded, presumptuous ass.” She followed him into the cramped office, which held three desks littered with dirty coffee cups, one filing cabinet, two other tough-looking detectives, and enough testosterone to blow the building.
“I think you all know each other…” Connor did a quick introduction then pulled a chair from against the wall and centered it in front of the empty desk in the room. “Have a seat.”
Brie remained standing because his order annoyed her. His attitude annoyed her. His good looks annoyed her. She nodded at the two other men, then focused on Connor. “Can I offer you a piece of advice?”
His bright green eyes grew suspicious. “Offer away.”
“Before you cuff someone, check to see if they’re carrying!” She looked at the other men. “If you’ll allow me.” She reached into the waist of her jeans and pulled out her gun, keeping it pointed downward, then placed it on the desk.
She heard disguised chuckles from the two other detectives. Detective Pierce didn’t laugh. Much to her disappointment, he didn’t appear pissed off, either. She’d just have to try harder. Because yeah, right now she wanted to be a pain in his ass, like he was hers.
“Frankly, I wasn’t worried about you shooting anyone, just leaving.” He said it with such straightforwardness she almost believed him. “Now sit down so we can figure out how we can help each other.”
“You can help by letting me go.”
“And that’s our plan,” Detective Mark Sutton said, pulling her attention to him.
Had she heard that right? “I’m not being detained?”
“No,” the detective said, “but before you go, you need to fill us in on a few things.”
She looked back at Pierce. “See, he’s reasonable.”
Now Connor appeared pissed. “Just sit down.” He dropped down behind the desk.
“Maybe I want to stand.”
“Why would you want to stand?” he snapped back.
“Because I’ve been stuck in a chair, fracking cuffed to a desk!”
“Fracking?” He smiled, but it was the kind of smile meant to dig in someone’s crawl.
And consider her crawl dug into. “Excuse me. Fucking cuffed to a desk.”
He stood. “Well, maybe I would’ve trusted you if you hadn’t lied to me about being in Florida!”
“Please, I’m sure this wasn’t the first time someone lied to you.”
“You’re right. What was I thinking? I should’ve expected it from an FBI agent.”
Detective Sutton cleared his throat. Both Brie and Pierce looked at him. “How about you two schedule this little party for later. We should concentrate on the case.”
Chapter Six
Sorry,” Brie said to Detective Sutton. She dropped into the chair, unsure and slightly embarrassed that she’d let herself get distracted.
Detective Sutton took over the conversation. “Connor has given us some details but we’d like to hear it from you.”
“First, I heard you went to the crime scene. Did you find anything?” Brie slipped into full FBI mode.
“It appears the shooting took place elsewhere and he was dumped there.”
“Any witnesses?” she asked.
“Not that we found, but there’s evidence that some of the homeless hang out there,” Sutton offered.
“You should be looking for witnesses instead of sitting here—”
“We need some facts, Agent Ryan.” Sutton’s tone was firm, but not insulting. “Then I guarantee you we’ll be looking into all of this. Tell us, exactly, what brought Agent Olvera to town? We were told it’s about your sister’s murder.”
Brie pushed back her impatience. “Yes.” She started by giving them the bare facts. The date Alma had gone missing and when she’d learned of her sister’s death.
“Are there records of your sister leaving the U.S.?” Sutton asked.
“No. We checked. She didn’t even have a passport.”
“We heard Agent Olvera was looking into a sex trafficking case
. Is this tied?” Sutton asked again.
“Yes. Most victims are taken to the Middle East, but some end up in countries like Guatemala and Venezuela.”
“When your sister was found, did they come across any others, dead or alive?” Detective Juan Acosta asked.
“No, but her body was found where prostitution was ongoing.”
“How was she killed?” Sutton asked.
The question yanked at Brie’s heartstrings. “She’d been beaten and stabbed. There was also a large dose of heroin in her system.”
“Is it possible your sister got into drugs and left the country willingly?”
Brie reached into her purse and pulled out a charm bracelet. “My father admitted she’d had a drug problem in the past, but he thought she’d gotten clean. I think he was right. The only thing I got back with her body was this bracelet. One of the charms on it is an AA ornament celebrating one year sober.”
“Do you know where she attended meetings?” Sutton asked.
“No. I’ve checked the local AA groups, and no one recognized her. But she could’ve gotten this earlier.” She looked at the bracelet, the half-heart charm caught the light and glittered up at her, bringing a spark of pain to her chest.
When she was six years old, she and Alma had become best friends when they’d both visited their paternal grandmother for two weeks. At the time, they’d been told they were second cousins. The bracelet and charm had been a gift from their grandmother. Brie had been given the other side of that heart on an identical bracelet, but when she was seven, after her father had left and she’d learned the truth of Alma’s identity, she’d thrown it away. Hating her grandmother for lying. Hating Alma because their father loved her best.
Pulling herself out of the past, she dropped the bracelet back into her purse and looked up. “Before my sister went missing she called to talk to me about something she was worried about.”
“What was it?” Detective Acosta asked.
Guilt twisted Brie’s stomach like a wet rag. “I don’t know exactly. I never called her back.”
Her answer was met with a pregnant pause until Detective Acosta spoke up again, “Why not?”
“I wasn’t in my sister’s life. I only met her once when I was a kid.” She paused.
Sutton rubbed his chin with two fingers. “Then why would she have called you?”
“She told me my father suggested it. He’d heard I was with the FBI.”
“Did she tell your father what she wanted with you?”
“He said she alluded to the fact that someone was missing. He got the feeling it was someone from her work.”
“Wait.” Pierce jumped in. “Was she working at the Black Diamond at the time?”
“No.” Now she was getting into some of the reasons why the FBI wouldn’t take the case. Would these detectives feel the same? “She’d quit a month before, and there’s no record of her being employed after that.”
She went on to explain about Armand and how Carlos found out that Armand wasn’t even supposed to be in the States.
Detective Sutton picked up a pencil and turned it. “If he’s traveling under a fake passport and visa, why don’t we have someone pick him up? We could question him about your sister then.”
“We don’t have his prints in the U.S. Carlos was planning on requesting a copy of them from Guatemala. And unless you can find a reason to hold him while you wait on his prints, he could leave the country and we’d lose any chance of catching him.”
“Do you have any proof to back up your human trafficking theory?” Sutton asked.
“There have been three other women who worked at the Black Diamond and fell off the face of the earth.”
“What?” Disbelief echoed in Acosta’s tone. “We investigated the Black Diamond when working another missing person case and we never learned of any other missing women.”
“They quit their jobs before going missing. Linda Kramer was the most recent. She was my sister’s roommate and was interviewed in my sister’s case. She’s disappeared now. The other two, Kathy Logan and Tammy Alberts, worked there two years before. I’ve spent the last three months searching for them and found nothing.”
Officer Sutton spoke up. “Is it possible they just moved?”
“I think I would’ve found something on them. Just like my sister, they worked at the Black Diamond, quit, then turned up missing. Don’t you think that’s too coincidental?”
“It’s suspicious.” Sutton adjusted his chair.
“And this wasn’t enough to convince the FBI to open an investigation? Why?” Pierce asked.
She hesitated. The answer weakened her case and was the reason even Carlos hadn’t felt it was enough to take to Agent Calvin. “I originally went to Carlos with the names of eight girls I couldn’t locate. He found five of them and discovered they were using aliases and fake Social Security cards to hide from warrants.”
“So chances are these three aren’t really missing, just living under different identities.” Acosta put it out there.
Brie’s shoulders tightened. “We don’t know that. And I still think it’s too coincidental.”
“I agree with her.” Pierce came to her defense.
She met Pierce’s green eyes. In spite of their earlier butting of heads, he seemed willing to help her. She regretted her earlier attitude. A little.
She refocused on Acosta. “As soon as I get home, I’ll send you everything I have on the missing women.”
Sutton nodded. “Back to Agent Olvera. If the FBI hadn’t officially opened a case, why was he here?”
“Armand has eaten dinner at the same place every night since he arrived. Carlos drove into town yesterday and was going to the restaurant to get Armand’s prints and prove his identity, so we could show he’s been coming to the States under his cousin’s name.”
Sutton sat up straighter. “Why didn’t you just get the prints?”
“I’m not supposed to be here, remember? And with my family ties to the case, and being on leave, it might make a judge question the evidence.”
Sutton nodded. “So Agent Calvin knew Agent Olvera was here?”
“Yes. Carlos told Calvin he wanted to check and see if there was any merit to my theory of what happened to my sister. But Agent Calvin thinks I only arrived here since Carlos was shot.” She swallowed her emotions as images of her partner in the hospital bed filled her mind.
“Why didn’t you tell Calvin?” Acosta asked.
She exhaled. “He wouldn’t approve. I was reprimanded for not dropping the case when I was on the payroll. If he knows I’ve been here this whole time and Carlos was helping me, it wouldn’t just be my job on the line. And…”
“And what?” Sutton asked.
“He would’ve ordered me to stand down. I won’t do that. Armand’s here. My job at the club is the best chance of getting him.”
The three guys looked at each other. “Okay, so what happened in the Sala case that made you suspect a leak?” Sutton asked.
“It was an easy bust that went bad. Guns were being moved out of Baton Rouge in an eighteen-wheeler heading to Mexico. The informant was someone we’d used before. Someone good. We contacted the ATF, and it became a joint investigation. Three weeks later, when the guns went on the move, we pulled the truck over. It was filled with butterfly valves for an oil factory. We suspected someone from ATF had leaked it, but weren’t able to prove it.”
Brie hesitated. “The next day my informant was murdered.”
“Did you find out who did it?”
“No.”
They sat there, digesting the information. Sutton spoke up again, “And Agent Olvera never told you his suspicions about the internal leak?”
“I’m guessing he planned on telling me when we saw each other. It’s not something you’d talk about on the phone.”
“We have Olvera’s phone, but not his wallet,” Pierce said, pointing to the bag he’d brought in.
“This wasn’t a robbery,” Bri
e spoke up.
Sutton frowned. “We have to look at every angle.”
Brie nodded.
Sutton placed his palms flat on the desk’s surface. “I’ll get the clothes over to the lab and see if there’s any blood on them besides Olvera’s.”
“Let’s go to Olvera’s hotel first.” Pierce was looking at her. “Maybe he brought something with him that will shed light on his suspicions of a mole.”
“What does he drive?” Sutton asked.
“A black Honda,” Brie answered.
“If it’s not at the hotel,” Pierce said, “we’ll get a BOLO out on it.”
She sat up straighter. “Fine. I don’t work at the club until eight. If Armand comes in tonight, and I can get his prints, will you run them?”
“You think going in to work is a good idea?” Acosta asked. “I mean, if there’s a chance your cover is blown, whoever went after Agent Olvera might come after you.”
“It’s not blown. I told you, no one at the FBI knows I’m working at the Black Diamond. I’m this close to getting this guy. I’m not backing off.”
Sutton brought up the fact that her apartment was broken into. Detective Pierce explained about the nanny cam and her recognizing the man.
Sutton ran a hand over his face. “What do we do about this guy?”
“Nothing,” Brie said. “Let him by with it. Now that Dunn has his car, he’ll probably drop it.”
Sutton frowned. “And if he doesn’t?”
Pierce spoke up. “Why don’t we talk to Dunn and just mention to him about the gang stealing cars out of Houston. Let Dunn make some assumptions that she didn’t take the car.”
“Yeah.” Sutton’s gaze shifted back to her. “If we get the least little hint that your cover is blown, you quit.”
She nodded.
The office door swung open and slammed against the wall. Brie looked back. She half expected it to be Agent Calvin. Instead, an older, heavy man, stood there in a dark suit that looked a little snug. A red tie rode the mountain of his gut. His gaze shot to Brie then to the detectives.
“Can I have a word with you?” He motioned to Detective Sutton. “And you?” he pointed to Detective Pierce.
Pierce leaned his elbows on his desk. “What is it now?”
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