“Two? Only two in a city the size of San Antonio? I don’t believe you.”
“They’re the biggest, I’m telling you, and the ones more apt to branch out. There’s a prick named Gutierrez who runs Latinas, but he went underground when the feds shut down his network.”
Lucy hadn’t heard about that. Could it have been collateral damage from them taking out the Mexican pipeline last year? Small blessings. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t looking to get back into the business.
“Look—I’m going to give you one more name, but you can’t burn her. You burn her, I don’t care what your husband threatens me with, I will take you both down.”
“Do not threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat.”
Lucy stared at her. She saw Mona Hill for who she was. Last year when Lucy first met her, she’d let her attitude and the jibes get to her. No longer. Lucy may have spooked early in her career, but she’d learned to let the ice flow in her veins and it worked to her advantage here.
Mona assessed her with narrowed eyes, then slid a folded paper over to her. “One of my girls, Victoria, put together her own small network like I did in Houston. All legal age, no bullshit. Straightforward. Girls who know the score. If there’s anyone making a move into Eli or Jugger’s networks, she’ll know. She’ll also know if there’s a brand new player working the streets, someone who came after me. You’re a good girl, you don’t understand what girls like Victoria and I went through to get here, to be in charge. This is her life—you understand, chica?”
“I’m looking for a fourteen-year-old who was sold into this life by her stepfather,” Lucy said in a quiet voice. “And the people who bought her are moving their business east. They may reach out to you.”
“I can promise you, Lucy, I will never cut a deal with anyone. The first time was with that bastard Tobias and look where it got me? The second was with your husband. And I feel like I’ve made a deal with the devil both times.”
Mona stood up.
“Odette,” Lucy said sharply. She hadn’t realized how angry she was until she spoke.
The woman scowled at her.
“You may not want the deal, but I shouldn’t have to tell you sometimes you’re not given a choice. I like you a lot less than you like me—but if they come calling, I may be the only one who can save your ass.” Lucy rose and handed Mona a napkin on which she had written her cell phone number. Then she walked out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Milo Feliciano’s trucking company was closed for the night. The place was dark and deserted and even the security lighting was poor. That wasn’t a bad thing, JT thought.
“I should have traded you for Sean,” he mumbled when it took Kane an insane amount of time to analyze the security.
“Ouch,” Kane said.
When Sean left RCK a year and a half ago, JT hadn’t realized how valuable he’d become to the business. His tech skills were second to none. JT’d been more than happy when he convinced Sean to return—though he suspected Jack Kincaid had been the more persuasive partner. Jack had been an asset to RCK from the minute he signed on. He provided an even-tempered, common sense balance among the principals. He was a lot like Kane, without taking undue risks.
“No trucks here.”
Kane nodded. “I smell fresh oil and gasoline. They moved out recently.” Kane gestured to the semi-hidden security.
“There’re two security cameras, one on the main gate and one on the door of the office. Probably one inside.”
“We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way,” JT said. He considered first the cameras, then the fencing. “The system appears basic, we shouldn’t have a problem.”
The chances were that a place like this—since it was most likely owned by a sex trafficker—would have a private security company to handle any alarms. If Sean were here, he could disable the system. JT wasn’t an amateur—he’d picked up too much from Sean and the other Rogan brother, Duke. But they didn’t have time for JT to try his disarming skills.
The fence wasn’t electric. They walked around to the back and cut a hole, then slipped through. Kane immediately located the main fuse box and blew it. They might have ten minutes or they might have an hour depending on the type of response. And sometimes, power outages didn’t automatically trigger an alarm.
They didn’t hear an alarm, but that might not mean anything.
Kane pointed to JT and gestured to the office; Kane himself went into the garage.
JT picked the lock with ease—it was a standard lock, not an electronic keypad or even a dead bolt. The company was a new acquisition for Hirsch, but JT would have made security his number one priority, especially if this was a front for human trafficking.
They could be wrong—Milo Feliciano may not have any dealings with Hirsch. Sean was running a background on the company, but online sales reports were often delayed. He’d have to go to the county or city business office in the morning to find out if there had been a recent change in ownership.
The office was small and cramped, but not cluttered. There were no chairs for people to wait, and four could stand in the area if they didn’t mind getting close. There was a phone, a computer, and notepad on a single desk. Forms were sorted in bins along the wall. An old-fashioned school clock ticked off the seconds, a sound that couldn’t be heard except in the deep silence of the night.
A wall of glass, blocked by metal blinds, separated the front office from the back. A short hall led to that office door, a storage room, and a tiny bathroom. The office door was locked, and JT picked that as well.
They’d blown the power so they couldn’t check the computer. That might not have been the smartest move. He said into his radio. “Can we get power back?”
“Give me a few minutes.”
The filing cabinets were locked. JT popped the lock and looked at the folders. They were all customer records, invoices, truck maintenance reports. Feliciano was extremely organized. Based on the files, the company owned eight moving trucks—two large haul trucks that would require a commercial license, four smaller trucks that were sufficient for most residential moves, and two four-wheel-drive pick-up trucks. He also owned a trucking company in San Antonio. JT took photos of the information on the trucks as well as the name and location of the sister company in San Antonio. He sent it to Lucy.
Possible connection to Hirsch.
JT heard a beep and he immediately had his hand on his gun.
Over the radio, Kane said, “Power restored to the office.”
“Roger,” JT said. He turned on the computer. Password protected. He hooked up his phone and ran a program that Sean had written, then left it to do its job while he finished searching the file cabinets.
His phone beeped once. That was fast. He scrolled through the files on the computer. Nothing jumped out at him. He then opened the email program.
Bingo.
A copy of a signed contract between Milo Feliciano and a company, West-East Transport, from two weeks ago. The contract was signed by a lawyer on behalf of the company. Likely a shell corp, but now they had a name, and JT had confidence that Sean could ID the backers.
Better, if they could find solid evidence of a crime, he’d send all of this to Rick Stockton in the FBI, and Rick could open a white collar crimes investigation. Sometimes, the only way to shut down a criminal enterprise was by cutting off their money supply or their ability to launder money.
“Got something,” Kane said over the com.
“I’ll meet you in the garage.”
JT copied the data, then left everything the way he’d found it. The owners might realize there was a breech—they definitely would if they found the hole in the fence—but they might not know when, why, or who.
JT left the office cautiously, made sure the door locked behind him, and crossed the yard to the garage. Kane was in the shadows, emerging only when he saw JT. Kane led him inside.
While there were no trucks stored outside, there were two
inside—the two large commercial trucks that JT had identified in the records. The smell of fresh paint coated JT’s sinuses.
“Within the last twenty-four hours they painted over the old logo. They’re now unmarked, but they can put anything on them,” Kane said.
“That’s it?”
“No.”
JT followed Kane to the far side of the garage. A smaller moving truck was there, this one older and with Arizona tags. Other smells assaulted JT’s senses. Feces, urine, and death.
His heart froze.
“There’s a body in there.” It’s not Bella. It can’t be Bella.
“Young female, dead about forty-eight hours.” He showed JT a photo he’d taken on his phone. The girl’s face was bloated and barely recognizable, but definitely not his sister. She looked more than forty-eight hours dead, but with the heat and enclosed space, decomp worked faster.
“We need to call Rick.”
“I planted a tracker in the cab. They’re gonna have to dump the body, Rick’s people can catch them in the act.”
“We’ll leave that up to him. I can’t just leave that girl rotting in there. Anything else?”
“Signs that all the trucks had been painted, not just those here. There are slots for ten more.”
“There’s eight on record in the office—these are two of them.”
“I planted trackers on them as well, but these trucks are no good for human trafficking. Too often they have to pull over for weigh stations, they can’t go down every road. They’ll stick with the small moving trucks like the one the dead girl’s in.”
Kane was far more compassionate than he sounded, but the brutal truth hit JT hard. Bella had been working for these same people who had killed that girl. Had she known? Was she even alive?
They left the way they came. “How’d she die?” JT asked.
Kane shrugged as he pulled their vehicle out of a hiding spot. “No signs of blood, though from the evidence I suspect there were a dozen or more people transported in the back of that truck. Could be she had heat stroke, they left her there and planned to clean up later. Or she tried to run and they killed her as an example. Any number of things. We’ll find them.”
He said it with such quiet confidence that JT believed him.
His phone rang. It was Jack. “News?”
“We have eyes on Bella.”
“Where?”
“I’ll send you the address, but stay clear. Something’s going down. Sean and I have cover, but if you come in—”
“Dammit, Jack, I have to talk to her.”
“We have a plan.”
“Where’s Declan?”
“Outside the bar, out of sight. We can’t risk having Hirsch or his people spot him. You can come if you want, but stay hidden, okay?”
JT wanted to go—he wanted to see Bella with his own eyes, make sure that she really was okay. But he knew that if he went in, all bets were off.
“Is she safe?”
“For now. I’m not taking my eyes off her, JT.”
JT trusted Jack.
“Kane and I will finish up here then head over, contact Declan, and stay out of sight. You need us, we’ll be there.”
“Roger.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
For two hours Bella was certain that Martin Hirsch knew she’d been the one who’d helped Christina and Ashley escape. For two hours she plotted how she could slip away. Declan should be in El Paso by now, but it wasn’t going to help her if he had no idea where she was. She wished she’d called him instead of Simon; Declan would never try to talk her out of an extraction.
No, you don’t. You knew going in that this was going to be dangerous, but it was the only chance of finding Hope. You called Simon because you wanted to be talked out of leaving.
Bella was on edge. She’d been in too deep, too long, and she didn’t know if she should trust her instincts. Yet … if Simon wasn’t bullshitting her, Hope was alive three months ago, and that meant she’d survived whatever ordeal Hirsch and his people put her through. That meant Bella could save her.
Two hours sitting in a sweat-stained bar with Damien watching the door had her realizing that a traitor was the last thing on Hirsch’s mind. For all she knew, Hirsch had forgotten the girls even existed.
There weren’t many people around—an old couple who looked half-asleep at the bar nursing draft beers and not talking. A Mexican cowboy in his forties with a couple days’ growth of beard slouched in the corner. He’d come in thirty minutes ago and ordered tequila and beer. Probably just got off work and spending half his money on alcohol before going home to his wife. He made her a little twitchy because he had hard eyes and his clothes were a little too clean to be a laborer, but everything was making her twitchy these days. A group of men pulled together a couple tables, all working stiffs, drinking beer like water and telling bad jokes and tall tales.
And Damien’s men.
It was a dive bar, perfect for a drug deal or clandestine meeting. The bartender and one employee manned the place. Probably had a shotgun under the counter. His employee, practically a kid, came over with two more beers for Damien and Bella. Damien slipped him a twenty and he walked away. She nodded thanks.
Damien hadn’t said much to her, but she’d picked up on enough of his earlier conversation with Hirsch to know that Hirsch was antsy about the expansion, that it hadn’t been his plan to work this fast, but he had committed. This elusive Z was expecting El Paso to be locked down before they moved on, and El Paso wasn’t cooperating.
There was something else going on, something Damien wasn’t saying. She tried to get him to talk, but he was more tight-lipped than usual—and he had never had loose lips.
It struck Bella that Hirsch might be shutting down his own cells and turning them over to local pimps in exchange for exclusive transportation of their human product. It would be more profitable for him with less risk because he wouldn’t be managing the women day-to-day. Smart business move—if they could bribe or bully the local players into going along with the idea.
The one thing Bella had picked up over the course of the day simply by being in the right place at the right time was that the El Paso organization, run by a prick named Raul Diaz, wasn’t budging. Evidently Hirsch had offended him, and he wanted Hirsch and everyone associated with Hirsch gone.
Hirsch wasn’t leaving. Now Bella understood why Damien was worried. Up to this point, everything had been relatively easy for Hirsch—other than losing a few girls. He’d successfully bought up several independent trucking companies, he’d merged his organization seamlessly through Los Angeles and Arizona with other networks, and though she hadn’t been to Albuquerque with the group, Damien had told her they’d locked down the players there months ago and already had a base of operation in San Antonio and New Orleans. They were working on a couple of waystations, as he called them, between those two cities, and Z had already secured everything east of Louisiana. Texas was the big deal because recent law enforcement crackdowns had resulted in chaos.
It was a damn lot more than she’d known on Sunday when she helped free Christina and Ashley. Had she realized how deep Hirsch’s expansion ran, she really might have gone with the girls—because at this rate, she didn’t know how she would find Hope when there were so many places left to look.
“I’m worried,” Bella admitted to Damien. “I have a bad feeling.” That wasn’t a lie. But she wanted Damien to talk, and he might if she acted nervous.
It’s not an act. You are nervous.
“We know what we’re doing.”
“What did you do with the girls?”
He gave her an odd look. “Not important right now.”
“It’s just you sent them off with Desiree—you know how much I distrust her—and I haven’t seen Penny in days.”
Damien glared at her. “Shut the fuck up, Doc.”
She hit a sore spot with him. Why? She pushed—carefully, but firmly. “Why am I here, D? You know this isn’t my expe
rtise.”
Damien didn’t answer her right away. He was watching the door. Bella recognized his four goons in the room, two at the bar and two near the front door, but Desiree and Bam-Bam weren’t here. They’d taken the girls … where? East? That had to have been Plan B. The original plan was to leave them in El Paso with the group Hirsch contracted with, but if there was no contract there would be no girls.
And if there was no contract, Hirsch planned on retaliating.
None of this was good.
Damien said, “Reach under the table. I have something for you.”
Bella hesitated, on alert.
“Do it,” he snapped, his voice low and threatening.
She reached under the table and Damien shoved the butt of a gun in her hand. By the feel of the grip it was likely a .45 semi-auto. She immediately slid it under her thigh. “I don’t do guns,” she said through clenched teeth.
“You do now.”
“I’m a doctor. I can’t.”
“It’s for your own protection. I wanted you to go with the others because I can’t protect you here. But Mr. Hirsch wants you at the negotiation.”
Nothing could have surprised her more.
Breaking Point Page 14
