Her first posting, to the Los Angeles FBI field office, had quickly hardened the starry-eyed Montana girl — and dispelled the notion that she’d be out hunting bad guys all day. When she wasn’t interviewing people with foreign names who’d signed up to take flying lessons, she was helping senior agents prep evidence for court cases or sitting in a telephone closet listening to wiretaps. It took her three years to escape L.A. and get a spot in Dallas — where she immediately volunteered to work the Internet Crimes Against Children squad. The ICAC was not a particularly sought-after job, so she was able to take on a lot of responsibility early in her career. By five years in she was second-in-command at the CAC Task Force. Two years later she’d doubled the number of agencies involved and sent the stats through the roof. Her success came at the expense of a personal life — but she was still in her thirties and decided she could have one of those in the future. Someday. Maybe.
In a stats-driven bureaucracy like the FBI, Kelsey Callahan became a shooting star. Her task force saved kids and made arrests at a near superhuman rate. The special agent in charge kept her in Crimes Against Children, long after she’d reached the normal time allotted to rotate out of such a soul-crushing job. There was no doubt that the sadness and grind of it all were taking their toll. It was impossible to work a job where you might find some kid’s head in the freezer and not have it affect you.
Then this Dominic Caruso guy showed up. What a breath of fresh air — even if he was a spook. There was something about the easy way he carried himself, as if he’d been on a break from the byzantine politics of the FBI. Even now, as she drove them toward an interview of their second former child prostitute who’d fallen back into “the life” after adulthood, he stayed off his phone and nodded his head in time to some tune he hummed inside his head. Her dad hummed inside his head when he was thinking — and that habit alone put Caruso up a notch in her book.
She’d been awake since before five, and the last cup of coffee sloshing around in her gut was causing her stomach to rebel. She’d caught Caruso early at his hotel room with his scary-looking friend, John the mystery man, so she figured he was probably ready for breakfast as well.
He caught her looking at him and grinned from behind a pair of extremely sexy Wiley X sunglasses. Of course this one would be spoken for.
“You doing okay?” Caruso suddenly asked.
The question caught her off guard. As the CAC Task Force commander, she was responsible for checking on the well-being of her team, but it was a rare moment when anyone, particularly a stranger, checked to see how she was holding up. The toughen-up-buttercup culture was changing, and the Bureau had programs to be sure, but FBI agents weren’t exactly the type of individuals to admit weakness.
“I’m fine,” she said, her words automatic and unconvincing, even to herself. “Why do you ask?”
“Well,” Caruso said, as though he’d thought this through while he was humming. “You gotta see some of the worst shit imaginable.”
“Sometimes,” she said. “But I’m not sitting around boohooing myself to sleep or anything.”
“I wouldn’t even suggest that,” Caruso said. “But you must be taking in more evil than some kind of sin-eater.”
“We save a lot of kids,” Callahan said. “Makes my petty problems seem small.” Talking about herself had always made her uncomfortable. “You hungry at all?”
Caruso nodded. “I could eat.”
“There’s an IHOP off—”
The cell phone in her pocket began to hum.
She grunted hello, then listened, her chest tightening with each word.
“What?” Caruso asked, after she’d hung up, looking over the top of the Wiley X shades.
“Somebody found Matarife’s place before we did,” Callahan said. “Johnson County got an anonymous tip. They’re already on scene and the Texas Rangers are en route.”
“Barricade?” Caruso said.
“No.” Callahan shook her head. “A homicide. Multiple, in fact.”
She pounded the flat of her hands against the center console. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with the Rangers, least of all the one who she knew would show up at this scene.
They were already in South Dallas, so a quick hop over to State Highway 67 courtesy of Callahan’s lights and siren took them straight down to the sleepy little town of Alvarado, which was situated along the I-35 corridor, a favorite route for traffickers of narcotics and humans.
Caruso was grateful for his sunglasses because Callahan had not stopped interrogating him with her eyes from the moment she’d gotten the call. It only got worse when she pulled around the circular drive in front of the big red-brick house and no longer had to focus on the road. Three Johnson County SO cars were parked on the grass, along with two black-and-white Texas DPS Highway Patrol sedans, an ambulance, and a blue Expedition.
“Damn it!” Callahan muttered under her breath. She’d parked behind the other cars on the front lawn so as not to disturb any possible tire-track evidence. “He beat us here.”
“Who beat us?”
A brawny man with a white straw hat stepped around the corner of the house. He wore navy blue dress Wranglers and a starched khaki shirt. The silver cinco peso badge of a Texas Ranger was pinned to his left breast pocket, over a kettledrum chest. The silver horseshoe buckle caught the light of the morning sun and a 1911 pistol rested in a tooled leather holster over his hip. Caruso guessed him to be in his mid-forties. He smiled and tipped his hat when he saw Callahan, revealing a full head of curly blond hair.
“I’m guessing you know him,” Caruso said.
“You might say that,” Callahan grumbled. “We were married once. Worst ten minutes of my life.”
The man hugged Callahan, then gave Caruso what could only be taken as a serious case of stink-eye.
“Lyle Anderson,” the Ranger said, taking Caruso’s callused paw and pumping it up and down like an overgrown Bamm-Bamm Rubble on The Flintstones.
Caruso, not one to measure his manhood, said, “Easy there, hoss, I shoot with those fingers.”
Ranger Anderson’s face spread into a wide grin. “You and I are gonna get along,” he said. “Except for Kelsey, I never met an FBI agent that wasn’t worthless as tits on a boar hog. But I do respect a man who says what’s on his mind.”
Callahan fished a wad of blue nitrile gloves from her vest pocket and peeled them apart. She handed a pair to Caruso.
“What have we got?” she asked, nodding toward the back of the house, ready to move on.
“I’ve been doin’ pretty well,” Anderson said. “Thank you for asking. Good to see you, too, Kelsey.”
Callahan just stared at the Ranger, playing a game of nonverbal chicken.
Anderson finally flinched and flipped open his notebook. “According to Johnson County,” he said, “an anonymous male called in and advised that there were girls out here being held against their will — oh, and, by the way, a few dead bodies to boot.”
“How many girls?”
“Live ones?” the Ranger said. “Two. I’m guessing that neither of them is over fifteen. We’re still waiting for someone to get here who can say more than ‘put your hands on the car’ in Spanish. Paramedics are giving the girls fluids now. They were both recently branded and have been on the receiving end of some pretty nasty whippings. Nothing appears to be broken.” The Ranger shuddered at some memory. “Physically, at least.”