Book ‘Em Bridget: Iron Badges

by Danielle Norman

  “Thanks again, Eli, this was very thoughtful.”

  “That was nice,” Piper whispered next to my ear. “I’ve never seen Eli actually be nice. A dick? Yes. Rude? Hell yes. Nonchalant? Yep, that, too. But so nice that he was bordering on sweet and I’d almost call him human? No to the fuck no.”

  “Don’t be so mean, Piper.” Sadie smacked Piper’s arm. “Can’t you see our girl here is smitten?”

  “Yeah, but Eli is always such a smart ass,” Piper defended her earlier stance.

  “Pot, meet kettle,” Sadie said, and we all laughed. “So, Bridget, Eli came out just to see you? Hmmm.”

  I held the black box with pink bow, resisting the urge to hug it to my chest, and said, “I doubt it. He was just being sweet. Eli and Callum are best friends, they’re always hanging out together. It’s probably just out of respect for my family, Ma treats him like he’s one of her own boys. Don’t read more into it than there is, I’m sure he’s just being a big brother, stopped to give me a gift, hell, he didn’t even make it in time to see the ceremony.”

  “Let’s avoid any freak factor here, but your brothers do not look at you like that,” Kat stated.

  “Like what? You all are being ridiculous. He’s eight years older than I am and sees me as a sister.” Of course, what I didn’t say was that the last thing I wanted was for that man to see me as a sister. All six foot something of well-honed, muscled body had fueled my every fantasy.

  “If you say so.” Harley smirked. “Come on, let’s go. I’m starved, and I know that your ma has some food lying around and will probably feed me.”

  “Ha ha, I know about the party. She threw one for each of my brothers as well. It was a surprise, she left early, when they arrived, everyone was waiting. Da already reminded me to hurry and not make her wait too long.”

  We all laughed because everything in my family was very predictable. We hopped into Harley’s old Ford Bronco and headed across town to my folks’ place.

  When Harley pulled into Tuskawilla, the neighborhood where my parents lived, I began gathering my shit. When I leaned over to pick up my duffle, my markswoman award, my diploma, and my purse, I dropped the box that Eli had given me. Leaning over, I scooped it up and realized there was a card.

  Something about my demeanor must have changed because, when I glanced up, card squeezed in my hand, several pairs of eyes were on me. “What’s that?” Sadie asked.

  “Looks like a card to me.” Kat was eyeing it as if she were trying to read what was written inside.

  “Yeah, haven’t read it yet. Didn’t even know I had a card.”

  “Who’s it from?” Kat asked.

  “I’m assuming Eli, it fell out of the box.” That must have been why he kept glancing down to the box. I felt like a total doof.

  “Open it and be sure,” Kat said.

  I huffed and then tugged the card from the envelope.

  * * *

  Sorry I couldn’t celebrate with you. I owe you one celebratory dinner. - Love, Eli

  * * *

  “Well?” Kat waited for me to tell them.

  “It’s from Eli and he says sorry he couldn’t be there to celebrate with me.”

  “That’s all? How boring.” Kat snapped her fingers and held her hand out.

  I thought that I was saved by Harley pulling into my parents’ driveway. I flung the door open and would have run if the seat belt hadn’t pulled me back. “It would help if I unbuckled, huh?”

  “My oh my, that card sure did get you into a fluster.” Kat smirked. I flipped her off. Piper, Harley, and Sadie cracked up laughing.

  Before I could run, a hand grabbed hold of mine and held firm. “Not so fast little missy.” Kat smirked. “The card, the truth, give it.”

  “Or I’ll ask you about it in front of your family.” Harley folded her arms and waited. She knew damn well that she had just thrown the winning ultimatum.

  “Fine. All it said was that he’d like to take me to a celebratory dinner. Are you happy now?”

  “Do you have a date set?” Piper asked.

  “No. I just got the fucking card.”

  “Then we aren’t happy,” Kat commented.

  “My oh my, she sure is testy, isn’t she? All over a little card.” Harley chuckled and then strode off, Kat following close behind. I was left standing there fighting the urge to scream at them for being so nosy and yet so flippin’ funny.

  “There’s Ryan’s car. I’ll meet you in back,” Sadie said as she headed around to the backyard. Ever since meeting Ryan and his adorable daughter Callie, Sadie had been wearing rose-colored glasses and believing in the fairytale and happily ever afters.

  I walked through my childhood home and straight to the backyard. The moment Ma saw me, she began singing and everyone jumped from behind bushes and joined her. “For she’s a jolly good fellow, for she’s a jolly good fellow . . .”

  In a natural reaction, I raised both hands and flipped everyone off. Everyone needed to count their blessings that I didn’t lose my shit on them for doing something so totally asinine as singing that friggin’ song. Who still sang “Jolly Good Fellow” anymore?

  “For she’s a typical bitch, for she’s a typical bitch—”

  “You two stop that, it’s your sister’s day,” Ma scolded my brothers. With the way we acted, an outsider would think that we were in high school, but no, I was the baby at twenty-six and my brothers were thirty and thirty-four years old. I think the problem was they were both single and hadn’t had to really grow up yet. When Ma turned her back, I smiled and flipped them both off again.

  “Bridget Ann McGuire,” Ma’s voice snapped at me.

  “Oh, come on, there’s no way you saw that.”

  “Nope, but I know you. I’ve raised three of Patrick McGuire’s children, and you’re all alike.”

  Okay, I really shouldn’t, but she started it. “Ma, if you’ve raised three, then who raised the rest of them?”

  “Don’t be cheeky with me, I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.”

  “You know that you left that wide open for one of us to grab. Really, Ma?”

  “Are you giving your ma a hard time?” I glanced up at Da.

  When Da finally retired, he said that with three of his kids working for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, we would be able to fill the shoes he was leaving behind. Ma said that it was because the department couldn’t handle four McGuires. Whatever his reason, I knew he still missed it sometimes. I leaned over and gave Da a peck on the cheek before hugging Ma.

  “You know that I love you more than . . .” I pretended to think for a second.

  “More than that badge you worked so hard for?” Ma asked.

  “Wow, go straight for the jugular, why don’t you?” I laughed and then squeezed her again. “I love you more than anything, and you know it.”

  “Ah, that I do. Now, go say hello to your guests.”

  I grabbed a beer and took a seat. There were several deputies sitting around. “Now, Bridget, remember that if you are ever in a bind and can’t remember what to do, just check Facebook,” Max, a motorcycle deputy, said. “There’s always someone on there telling us how we should have done our job, because they know so much more.”

  “Amen to that,” several deputies said and clinked their beers.

  “Let’s not forget Haley Loles—” Sadie had started to say but I cut her off.

  “Oh, you mean Haley from Channel Nine news?”

  “Yes, that one.”

  “I’m Haley Loles from Channel Nine news,” I said, making my voice a bit deeper and more serious.

  Sadie chuckled. “Yes, stop doing that.”

  “What? I’ve got to remind you who I am and what station you’re watching, you know, just in case you forgot. I mean, my name and news station are way more important than the actual friggin’ news. This is Haley Loles with Channel Nine news.”

  “You’re an idiot.” Sadie shoved me but everyone was laughing.

  “God, i
sn’t it the truth though?” Max asked.

  “On a more serious note, truthfully, how much of what you learned in the academy have you had to use?” I asked.

  Everyone fell quiet, but then Grady leaned forward. “I haven’t had to use terrorist attack yet since I was hired after the Pulse shooting.”

  “Bond enforcement haven’t used that yet,” Sadie said.

  “Thank god, we probably won’t. Huh, Finn?” Sadie looked over to one of the SWAT members.

  “Nope, we get most of that shitty stuff,” he groaned. “But you are the eyes and ears on the road for drugs and theft.”

  “Then we have to come and clean it up,” another member of SWAT said.

  “But you will use a lot of it immediately. Don’t think just because you’re new that they are going to take it easy on you. That’s Hollywood. If we were going to let people slide and only do the easy shit, then we would let the detectives handle it,” Aiden said as he fought to hold back a laugh.

  “Fuck you,” Callum snapped back.

  The noise at the table raised several octaves as my brothers argued over whose job was harder.

  “Of course, you will write a ton of reports for accidents or arrests, but where you will help everyone is by running plates and just keeping your eyes open. It seems like Amber alerts are going out more frequently,” Finn said, and then he looked over at Callie.

  Sadie pulled Callie close to her. “He’s talking about you, squirt,” Sadie whispered.

  “Me? Why? Don’t they have enough to talk about?” I laughed because that girl had given the whole department not one but two heart attacks when she wandered off. If she had any idea how long that had been a topic of conversation, she would rethink those bright ideas she had.

  “Yes, they do.” I leaned over and ruffled Callie’s hair. “But they are talking about missing children and I know a little girl who ran away twice in the last year.”

  “Not anymore. Sadie found me.” Callie looked up and Sadie squeezed her tighter. I loved seeing my friend so happy, but a part of me was jealous that she had found the one to spend her life with, because I wanted that so much.

  “Hey, Bridge.” I turned my attention to my brother Aiden. “You know how our vehicles in the county are white lights, Orlando Police have the red and blue lights, you know why?” Several people were already laughing at whatever he was going to say.

  “So, they know which side of the car to get into.”

  “Ha ha, fuck you.” A detective with Orlando Police Department, who was a friend of Callum’s, flipped Aiden off.

  I wasn’t extremely close to all of these people, but they were all good friends with a McGuire, so when there was a McGuire party, anyone who worked in our district and was off duty showed up.

  “Here’s to hoping that my first few weeks are like all of y’alls and that I’m not forced to recall everything.”

  “Here, here,” everyone agreed, and we clinked beers.

  Chapter 2

  Eli

  What was I thinking? I drummed my hands against the steering wheel as I drove back to my office while Guns N’ Roses sang on about welcoming to the jungle. Callum was going to kill me for leaving an open invitation to take his baby sister to dinner. She wouldn’t call anyway, so I had nothing to worry about. But something about that thought bothered me.

  Pulling into the parking garage, I turned down the radio and flashed my ID to the guard. After he made eye contact with me, he raised the gate and waved me through. I drove up to the next level and was shocked by how many cars were there on a Saturday. Usually, there were only a few of us around, but the last week, every division seemed to be working god-awful hours.

  I pulled into my parking spot and grabbed my badge before locking up and heading toward the entrance. The smell of spilled oil and exhaust fumes seemed to always linger in the air. It smelled the exact same the day the parking structure opened, so maybe they poured the smell right into the concrete.

  Inside the reception area, I nodded to the guard, scanned my badge, and pressed my fingers to the touch pad. The final door opened into the main area, and I made my way down the hallway to my office. It wasn’t exactly a corner one, but it wasn’t anything to turn my nose up at, either. At least I had a door, which was more than most of my department members could say.

  I was just getting ready to sit when there was a knock on the door. “Grey, you’re back. Let’s meet in the debriefing room,” Perone said. He was my supervisory special agent and lived for the job. He wasn’t married, didn’t have any kids, and as far as I knew, he had no life outside the office at all. This made him exceptional at his job, but it also made him forget that not everyone in this department wanted to eat, breathe, and sleep work. He met every stereotype for an FBI agent—severe haircut, shiny polished shoes, a button-down shirt with coordinating tie that could be purchased from any box store for the bargain price of twenty-nine ninety-nine.

  “Be there in five.”

  He huffed and left the door open when he left, and I just shook my head as I slid the file into my bag and headed to the break room.

  I poured a cup of molasses, okay it wasn’t really molasses, but it looked like it. We still used the old-fashioned Bunn coffee maker, where the pot sat all day on an open burner. Since we operated on little sleep, we made our coffee strong. We weren’t doing ourselves any favors. With my cup in one hand, my stack of file folders in the other along with my laptop, I moved into our strategics room. The FBI was divided into nine divisions, but we combined them into four in the Orlando office. My unit was a combination of organized crime, white-collar crime, and violent crime. The main reason was that, most times, crimes of these natures fell into multiple categories. The perfect example was Al Capone. He was an organized-crime kingpin but was eventually convicted of tax evasion, which was white-collar.

  “Have a seat,” Perone ordered. I grabbed a chair around the large faux-wood table. No matter which side I sat on, I was facing a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, the only difference was whether I wanted to look into the office or outside. I chose outside. “I’m sure everyone’s heard the latest news, a third woman has gone missing just this month alone.” We all nodded. “I’ve sent a team over to Brevard County to work with their investigators, but I want to make sure that everyone in this room is up to speed on each of the cases.”

  Perone grabbed a dry-erase marker and moved to the giant white board. “Grey, tell me what you have.”

  “Lola Richardson, nineteen years old. She has blonde hair, blue eyes, and is five foot five, hundred-twenty pounds. She was visiting Orlando with three friends and was last seen at Siesta Key Hotel. Video surveillance from the hotel shows a black Chevrolet Suburban entering the parking lot at or around the time of her disappearance. We see the driver and one passenger rolling out a laundry cart. Unfortunately, the vehicle does not have a plate and neither the driver nor the passenger looked toward the camera. The hotel did not have hallway or stairwell cameras. Earlier that evening, she attended a street party down on Wall Street.” I passed around still images from the camera feed to everyone in the room, which was our normal team plus three other agents that I knew, we had worked together on a few cases but since they dealt primarily with civil rights and public corruption, we were generally working on different things. “Next is twenty-two-year-old Salina Jeffries, five foot three, blonde hair, blue eyes. Her intended destination was Daytona Beach Spring Fling, but she never arrived. Her car was found abandoned at a rest stop on I-95, and there was no indication of struggle, but her purse and phone were recovered. There were no witnesses or surveillance cameras in the area, but according to the timeline we can piece together, we can assume she was taken some time between eight and ten o’clock at night.” I passed an image of Salina that I had received from her mother around the table and then turned to Special Agent Chiu.

  “Two girls, one age nineteen and the other twenty. Both blonde hair, blue eyes. Last seen outside of a convenience store in Destin. Th
e two girls set items on the counter to purchase then ran out to their car when one realized she forgot her wallet. They never returned. At first the clerk thought they had just driven off, but on his smoke break he realized that their car was still there, and the driver’s-side door was open. The Pensacola office is in the process of obtaining a warrant for the surveillance footage from the store and will forward us a copy once they have it.”

  “So, it’s pretty safe to say they have either changed or expanded their victims to include blondes with blue eyes. Six months ago it was brunettes with green eyes,” Perone stated.

  “Cicily Barlow has light brown hair and blue eyes,” I added.

  Perone added Cicily to the list on the board and then turned to us again. “None of the women have been recovered and no ransom demands have been made, so can we all agree that we aren’t looking for an extortionist.”

  Everyone in the room made some type of noise indicating agreement.

  “I don’t want to take serial killer completely off the table, but I think we should consider that we’re dealing with a sex-trafficking ring. Thoughts?” Perone tapped a dry-erase marker against the board, waiting for us to call out answers. I hated this part, it always seemed sophomoric, but this is part of the process that keeps us all apprised of the investigation.

  “Serial killers don’t generally change their MO. These cases overall do have similarities, but the victims across the board don’t have a common thread. There was only a sign of struggle in one instance, which was the Destin scene, and unless the surveillance comes back saying differently, it doesn’t seem as if there was any indication the girls were taken by force.”

  Kevin stepped in. “There is also a lack of physical evidence. You’ve already mentioned that none of the women have surfaced, so either the perpetrator is holding them somewhere, which doesn’t really fit a serial killer profile, or we just haven’t found them yet.”