Hollow Bones (Special Agent Caitlyn Tierney)

by CJ Lyons

  Because, as she told Carver later that night, trying to make a joke of the weird vibe Maria’s parents left her with, wouldn’t that be terrible, getting stuck in Cozumel?

  “Have a margarita on me.” His chuckle sounded wistful. She wished he were here as well. But of course she didn’t admit that. Not to Carver and not to herself. “Yates is authorizing you to go with them to Guatemala?”

  “Wants me to find the girl, keep the parents out of trouble, and save his career. Not necessarily in that order.” She stretched out on her bed and stared at the tasteful black-and-white photos of seashells that adorned the wall.

  The Alvarados had chosen an expensive, upscale hotel, so everything was in black-and-white with a hint of silver thrown in. Forget that right outside the window was a stunning palette of blues and greens and gold. The message the art deco style furnishings sent was that they were too classy to indulge in such commonplace beach decor.

  “All this fuss for some college kid run off on an adventure?”

  “I hope that’s all it is, but I don’t think so. Too much just doesn’t feel right. This Prescott kid—I can find his name and a superficial Web presence but nothing that goes back past a few months ago. It’s too late now with the time zones, but first thing in the morning I’m calling Cambridge to see if I can talk to Professor Zigler. He’s definitely real enough, tons of publications and appearances.”

  “E-mail?”

  “It seems the good professor lives off the grid. I can’t find any contact info for him other than a mailing address in care of the university.”

  “The plot thickens.” He paused. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  She squirmed, trying to get comfortable. Apparently rich, art deco furnishings also meant uncomfortable; it was the hardest damn bed she’d ever been in. “The parents. I’ve dealt with tons of grieving parents, parents of missing kids, but these two. Cold, aloof, clinical one moment, then suddenly distant, like they’re hiding something.”

  “They’re forty years older than Maria. They just don’t get it, why their kid could run off, need a little space, find herself.…”

  “Maybe.” Doubt filtered into Caitlyn’s voice. “But everything changed after I told them Maria left the ship in Guatemala. Especially with Hector, the dad. He totally clammed up, wouldn’t answer any questions about his past, said it was none of my concern.”

  “That got your Spidey senses tingling?” Carver believed in the magical properties of Caitlyn’s intuition even more than she did herself. Maybe because it had saved their lives a few months ago. “Want me to check into them?”

  “Sounds like you’re bored.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. Cleaned my guns—and yours—so many times, I’m getting high on the fumes. Hey”—his tone brightened—“want me to come down? A little Caribbean sun might be just what I need.”

  She blinked. Imagined her and Carver on a beach. Couldn’t help but smile at the thought. But aloud she said, “Don’t you dare. The AUSA will have you locked away as a material witness.”

  His sigh rattled through the airwaves. “Okay, okay. I won’t come down. You said the parents were from Guatemala. Maybe something in their past?”

  “If so, I haven’t been able to find it. Looks like everything is on the up and up. They left Guatemala when Maria was two months old, started their biotech company in Miami, got rich, became U.S. citizens. Nothing pops on their background checks.”

  “Maybe you’re just not looking in the right place.” She heard the grin in his voice. Carver loved a challenge. “A forensic accountant might be just the person you need on this case.”

  “Maybe. But it will have to be off the books. These guys are too well connected. Any hint of trouble, and they could fry all our asses—including Assistant Director Yates.” Like it or not, Yates was her key to job security. No Yates meant no Local Law Enforcement Liaison.

  “No problem. I’ll be like the wind. Invisible.”

  She gave up on the bed and rolled to her feet. It was too dark to see the ocean from the sliding glass doors leading onto her balcony, but still, she pressed her hand against it, looking out. To the side she could see the lights of a cruise ship dancing over the water—she wasn’t sure if it was the Caribbean Dream or not.

  “I can’t stop hoping that we’ll get there and find her having the time of her life. Digging in the dirt, finding lost treasure, whatever. Just enjoying her freedom.” She sighed. “God, it makes me feel so old. I barely remember being that young.”

  “You’re only thirty-five. Wasn’t that long ago.”

  “Feels like forever.”

  “What kind of crazy things did a kid like you, growing up with your Quaker grandparents, do when you got to college?” He didn’t mention her mother, Caitlyn noticed.

  She thought back. A smile warmed her face despite her fatigue. “Guess I was a lot like Maria. Did a ton of stupid shit.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like meeting a guy at a party and we both realized we’d never seen New York City, so we took off right then and there in his car. No one knew where I was or who I was with; I didn’t know anything about the guy, but it just felt right. Some kind of grand adventure. Like I was in charge of my own life.”

  “Obviously he wasn’t a serial killer or anything.”

  “Nope, just a kid from Hagerstown. We ended up hitting the city around two in the morning, drove all around because we didn’t have enough money to park the car or stay in a hotel. Saw Times Square—tons of people even in the middle of the night—and Broadway, that pretty triangular building that’s in all the pictures—”

  “The Flatiron.”

  “Right. We passed a lot of parks, but I don’t think any of them were Central Park. Ended up watching the sunrise parked at a loading dock near the river until some angry truckers made us leave. Realized we barely had enough money for gas, so we turned around and drove back home. No one even knew we’d gone.”

  A sigh as she remembered the freedom. No rules or regulations, no boss to answer to, no lawyers trying to discredit her. She felt a little envious of Maria for having the courage to take a risk and choose her own path as she had. Given the girl’s overbearing parents, it couldn’t have been easy.

  “How about you?” she asked Carver. “An accounting major at Kansas State, I’ll bet your idea of a good time was tipping cows.”

  “Very funny. We did tons of crazy shit. Once I even moved a decimal place for the heck of it.”

  “Hah. CPA humor. You never messed with a decimal point in your life.”

  “Okay, you got me. Well, our RA was really strict about no girls overnight, since our floor was guys only. Guess it got the religious types riled up or something. We used to penny the doors to other guys’ dorm rooms. Lock them in with the girls they’d smuggled in the night before.”

  “Penny?”

  “Yeah. There’s a gap when you shut the door. Fill it with pennies and you can’t open it from the inside—do it right and you can’t open it from the outside, either, not without a screwdriver or chisel to get the pennies out.”

  “Locking guys inside their rooms with their dates, that was your idea of a good time?”

  “Does kind of sound lame now that I think of it. Probably helped that we were drunk.”

  “And obviously without dates yourself.”

  “Go ahead, rub it in. What can I say, I was a late bloomer.”

  A yawn overtook her. “I still have work to do before I hit the sack.”

  “Get some rest,” he said. “Call me if you need anything.”

  “Thanks, Carver. Good night.” She hung up the phone. Suddenly the room seemed so empty. Hell, her entire life did. She’d fought so long and hard to get where she was with the FBI, but what did it really matter if her life was simply traveling from an empty apartment to empty hotel rooms and back again?

  She pushed the thought aside and opened her laptop. Her life was just fine, thank you very much. She had plenty to
fill it. Didn’t need anything else jumbling things up.

  Especially not Carver. At least that’s what she told herself. But it didn’t stop her from wishing he was holding her when she finally crawled into bed an hour later.

  *

  Jake hung up from Caitlyn feeling more energized than he had in weeks. He grabbed his laptop and began digging into the Alvarados’ and BioRegen’s finances. Even as a privately held company, there were still a lot of public filings, not to mention all the info relating to its biomedical products.

  Turned out BioRegen specialized in tissue procurement. It had started almost twenty years ago as one of the few places where scientists could legally obtain stem cells for research. It also hosted a stem cell bank for private individuals wanting to protect their children’s futures. It had grown to now provide tissue to medical facilities and laboratories all over the world, expanding from research into the burgeoning plastic surgery and orthopedic markets.

  Given the company’s rapid expansion and skyrocketing net worth, apparently human tissue was a hot commodity. BioRegen leased a fleet of jets and planes to transport the fragile, time-sensitive tissues like stem cells and bone marrow, and had also established local procurement centers partnering with funeral homes, allowing the deceased to donate their tissues and still be allowed an open-casket viewing.

  How noble. Except that all those families thinking their loved ones’ bodies were going to aid medical research probably didn’t realize that most of the donated tissues ended up being used as filler for breast augmentation and other plastic surgeries. Given that it was illegal to sell body parts in the United States and that all the tissue donations were made voluntarily, that meant BioRegen operated with little up-front costs, leading to a very tidy profit from each body entrusted to its team of “tissue procurement specialists.”

  Good business, but he didn’t like the ethical shadow land BioRegen occupied. During his time undercover with the Reapers, Jake had forgotten how cutthroat corporate America could be. At least with the outlaw motorcycle gang they’d had a sense of honor, commitment to each other.

  The more he read about BioRegen’s business and filled in the blanks behind the public documents, the more he sensed another type of gang: greedy bastards out to fleece grieving families and honor the bottom line.

  He closed down his computer and thought about it. When he was with the IRS, he’d never gotten emotional about a case. Yet here he was, ready to accuse the parents of a missing girl of fraud and questionable ethics.

  He blamed it on Caitlyn’s influence. Her sense of justice didn’t tolerate shades of gray—not even when it came to her own mother.

  BioRegen hadn’t broken any laws, the best he could tell. In fact, if it was a public company, it’d be praised for enhancing its stockholders’ profit margins. Yet, no matter how he tried to look at the company’s business plan from an objective point of view, he couldn’t get over his distaste and distrust. There was something shady going on behind the healthy profits; he was sure of it.

  He was sure of it because his gut told him so. He chuckled out loud, glad Caitlyn wasn’t there to see it. Not exactly sound investigative procedure, especially for a forensic accountant.

  Jake grabbed his phone. Lynn never went to bed before midnight. And he needed a second opinion. A cold, detached, completely unemotional second opinion.

  Who better to ask than his cold, detached, completely unemotional ex-wife?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Caitlyn woke at six, grabbed a quick shower, and packed. After several disastrous trips when she first started this new job, she’d developed a routine that had led to the rebirth of an obsession with camping gear, large zipper-locked freezer bags, as well as clothing that was versatile and easy to wash in a hotel sink, quick to dry. Just like her summers in college spent as a river guide, always in search of clean, dry, comfortable clothing.

  Since they might be following Maria into the jungle, or at least off the beaten track, she exchanged the lightweight dress boots she’d worn yesterday for her tactical boots. Decided on khaki cargo pants, a navy Under Armor T-shirt, and her favorite travel jacket: a windproof, waterproof, breathable parka with tons of secure pockets inside and out. Thank you, REI.

  She went downstairs to the lobby, where she checked out and worked on her computer while eating breakfast. The worst thing about travel was no time to exercise, and after five days on the road, her muscles were crying for a good long run. But Alvarado’s pilot had said he hoped to be cleared to leave by eight o’clock and that he’d pick up Caitlyn and Maria’s parents by seven thirty, so she’d have to skip another day.

  While she was clearing the most pressing items from her in-box, Caitlyn’s phone chirped with a text message. Vicky, Maria’s friend, the one who had been the sole voice of disapproval about Maria’s adventure.

  Caitlyn waved to the waitress for her check as she dialed the girl. “Caitlyn Tierney here.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize you’d call back so soon,” Vicky stuttered.

  “I have to leave in a few minutes. Did you hear from Maria?”

  “No. But I think I know where the professor’s research site is. The temple Maria found. I thought that might help.”

  “Absolutely. Can you e-mail me the info? How did you find it if Maria didn’t contact you?”

  “I’m the only one of us who brought a laptop, and she was using it before she left. The history was all there, so I followed her tracks and found a Google Earth search with GPS coordinates for an area not far from Santo Tomás.”

  “Good work.”

  “It’s even more remote than I thought. I checked and there’s no towns or anything for miles around it. Just a clinic of some kind. She could be lost for days in the jungle and no one would ever know.” Fear strained her voice. Vicky struck Caitlyn as the kind of high-strung person who always found something to fear in every situation, but this time she might be right.

  “Also, she didn’t log out of her Gmail account. There are a few emails from Prescott—I hope it’s okay that I looked.”

  Damn it, why hadn’t the girl thought of the computer yesterday? “They might be very helpful. Do you know how to expand the header to show the original info?”

  “Wait. Okay, yes, I see.”

  “Do that, then copy that info into a text file and forward it along with the originals so I can examine them.”

  “I hope they help.”

  So did Caitlyn. “Thanks, Vicky. I’ll let you know as soon as we find Maria.” She hung up and glanced at her watch. Still a few minutes before the pilot would be here to take them to the plane. No sign of the Alvarados yet. She did the math; early afternoon in Cambridge. She dialed the number she’d found for the archeology department. “Professor Zigler, please.”

  “I’m sorry, the professor is unavailable,” the clipped British accent of a secretary replied.

  “I understand he’s not there at the moment. I’m a FBI agent calling from America,” Caitlyn explained. “It’s important that I speak with the professor regarding his current research project in Guatemala. Could you please give me his contact details?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m afraid the information you have been given is incorrect. The professor isn’t in Guatemala. In fact, he retired several years ago.”

  “I was told that he returned for a final project. Perhaps it isn’t sponsored by the university?”

  “You don’t understand.” The woman paused. “Professor Zigler had a massive stroke three years ago. He’s been in a nursing facility in a vegetative state ever since.”

  Caitlyn froze. Damn it, her gut instincts had told her there was something more going on. “I see. Could you tell me if you have a student there by the name of Prescott Wilson? I believe he’s American.”

  “Oh yes, Prescott. Delightful boy. Do you want to speak with him? His office is just down the hall.”

  “He’s there? Hasn’t left?” So, definitely not the guy who met Maria two days ago.r />
  “Of course he’s here. He has responsibilities. I’d know if he missed a class or practicum. But he’ll be leaving to teach class in about five minutes, so if you want to speak with him—”

  “No. Thank you very much. I’ve gotten everything I need.” Caitlyn hung up. There was no reason why Maria would actually call the department—in fact, an undergrad like her, not even an official participant of the research project, only a volunteer, she’d probably avoid talking to administration for fear of being kicked off the team.

  The first of Prescott’s e-mails to Maria arrived in her in-box. They appeared to come from the university’s IP address, but that was easily spoofed. She’d have the techs back at Quantico work their magic on the original code and see if they could trace where they actually came from.

  Whoever was behind this had created the perfect trap for a girl like Maria. Caitlyn headed for the small business center in the lobby. She printed out the maps Vicky had forwarded to her. They traced a route from the port at Santo Tomás north into a remote mountain area. A river twisted east to west, originating near the coordinates marking the temple. The only other landmark was someplace called Clínica Invierno on a lake with the same name in the foothills. According to the map’s legend, the clinic was only a few miles from the archeological site if you could cut across the mountains and hills in a straight line, but was at least three times as far if you traveled the faint lines that indicated single-lane roads.

  Switching to satellite view, all she saw was trees, hills, mountains, and clouds. The occasional glint of silver from the river where the gorge widened enough that it was visible amid the tree cover. The only sign of humans was a cluster of buildings along the north side of the lake: the Clínica Invierno. Talk about back of beyond.

  Why would someone pretending to be Prescott lure Maria to such a remote area? Definitely not to go digging for a lost Mayan temple, that was for sure. It had to have something to do with the parents’ past—maybe the area meant something to them? She glanced around the lobby. Still no sign of the Alvarados or their pilot, and it was twenty to eight.