by Margaret Kay
She was surprised he knew. She wondered what all Cooper had discussed with him. The thought was unsettling. “Well, yes, that helped too.” She took a second to pull her thoughts together and forced a brave front. “Did you send him?”
Joe Lassiter laughed. “No. I wish I could take credit for thinking of it, but I didn’t.”
They sat in silence for a minute. Lassiter’s gaze remained focused on her.
“So, now what?” She asked.
“Do you think I should clear you for duty?”
“Of course, I do,” she replied with a smile.
Lassiter laughed. “So do I.”
Relief washed over her, freeing the hundred-pound weight that sat on her chest.
“We’ll meet again before you go out on the next mission.”
She knew she would agree to meet with him whenever he wanted if it meant returning her to full and active duty. That meant everything to her. Knowing Doc had been cleared, she would have felt embarrassed if she had not been. And the two days away from work had been excruciating. How much she wanted this job became clear while she was off. She knew she would approach things with a different focus.
“Thank you.”
“Madison, that doesn’t mean that if you want to talk with me before then, you can’t. I encourage you to reach out to me beforehand if you have anything to discuss.”
“I will, I promise. You really gave me a lot to think about over the last two days. And it occurred to me how much I wanted to be a member of this team and what that meant.”
“I’ll make my report to Shepherd, but you are officially cleared to return to full duty.” Lassiter smiled and stood.
Madison came to her feet as well and gave him a quick hug. “Thanks.”
Madison paused at the open doorway to Cooper’s office. He sat at his desk, clicking away at the keys on his laptop. Without looking up he said, “are you coming in, or what?”
She stepped into the room. “Lassiter cleared me.”
Cooper nodded, still typing. “Give me a second to finish this. And close the door.”
She closed the door and approached his desk. He pointed to the couch off to the side. “Almost done.”
She was nervous as she sat, waiting for him. He finished and stepped over. He sat across from her, elbows on his knees. She tried to keep herself from noticing what he wore and how well it hugged his body, the glint in his eyes, and the attractiveness of him in general.
“We have an Ops briefing with Shepherd and the team in fifteen minutes,” he said.
“Yes, it’s on my calendar.”
His lips twisted into that smirk of his again. “We’re compressing the training for this next Op into one week. Plan on fourteen-hour days with the team, me, Doc, and Jackson. Garcia is flying out to join another mission in progress at the Silo after the Ops briefing.”
She nodded. “I’m curious, what’s changed the timeline?”
“Thanksgiving is less than a month away. Shepherd wants to actually give people some time off over the holidays. We’ve all been hitting it pretty hard for over a year now. He figures everyone is due some time.”
“That’s nice of him.”
He got a playful look in his eyes. “I think we should explore what we talked about at your place the other night.”
“What was that?” Panic at what he meant hit her. The talk about a fuck buddy to relieve her stress was all she could think about.
“A group vacation to the Caribbean for most of the team. I thought I’d mention it to Shepherd. Maybe he’d even want to come.”
“And Angel and Jackson,” she added. He nodded. “That would be fun.” Oh, thank God, that was all he meant.
“It would give us all a chance to relax and for you to get to know the team in a different setting.” He sat upright and then continued. “I’ve given this a lot of thought Madison. After being at your place the other night I realized I fucked up as your SO. I missed an important step in your onboarding and training.” He shushed her as she tried to argue with him. “I forgot that trust comes through shared experiences and personal connections, something you hadn’t had a chance to forge with the team because of the express onboarding we did with you. Normally, as I said, a new hire would have several days with each group, to get to know them personally. You didn’t get that luxury.”
“It’s okay Cooper. I understand. The Inverness Academy job was pressing. It was important that we got to it as quick as we did.”
“Yeah, it sure was. Anyway, welcome back to full duty.”
She smiled, feeling much better about things. “Thanks again for bringing the pizza and beer by the other night. I thought about this job and the team a lot yesterday. I like being a part of this and I do feel like I belong here.”
Cooper smiled and nodded. Mission accomplished. Now if he could just keep his arousal in check around her. That was one mission that was a big fail. Even now, his eyes scanning over her features, he remembered how soft her skin and hair were when he had caressed over her the other night.
Garcia rushed to get to the conference room fifteen minutes before the Ops briefing as directed by Shepherd. He had a sinking feeling that he wouldn’t like what it was about, which was confirmed when he entered, and Lassiter was also there.
“Fuck,” he cursed as he closed the door.
Shepherd nodded.
Garcia dropped into a chair beside him, across from Lassiter. “This is about Juan Carlos.” He didn’t need to ask. Somehow, he knew.
“Yes,” Shepherd confirmed. “The Lear is on standby. You’ll leave right after the briefing. Lambchop reports an impasse with Juan Carlos. He needs you at the Silo.”
“Fuck,” Garcia repeated, his eyes to the ceiling. He drew in a deep draw of air and then his eyes settled on Doc Lassiter.
“You’ve got this,” Lassiter said. “I’ll ride along, and we’ll formulate together what Razor’s demeanor should be after years in custody. You’ll have one shot with Juan Carlos. We need this. He hasn’t given anything up.”
“DEA believes they have an in with either someone at border patrol or a major customs facility. The shit is getting in, quantities unlike they’ve seen in decades,” Shepherd said. “And their distribution network operates like a well-oiled machine. What they seized at that warehouse in Compton was small potatoes. The facility was set up to handle quadruple the amount that was there at the time of the raid.”
“So, the shipments had already gone out,” Razor said. Yes, he knew all too well how these guys operated. Once cut and packaged the product would be shipped immediately.
Cooper and Madison made their way to the conference room. Jackson stood near Angel’s desk. They both glanced up at her and smiled when she approached.
“Hey, welcome back,” Jackson said. “I heard the good news that Lassiter cleared you.” His eyes swung to Doc who leaned against the wall nearby. “You both.”
“Yes, and thanks,” Madison replied a smile to them both. Her eyes flitted across the hall to Doc momentarily. “It’s good to be back.”
The conference room door swung open, Garcia’s frame filling the opening for a second before he moved back to his seat. Everyone filed in. Just as Jackson was about to close the door, Yvette rushed in. Madison sat her cell phone to the table between her and Cooper, beside his.
Shepherd cleared his throat and got down to business. “I invited Joe and Yvette for reasons that will be apparent in a moment. First, great job on the Inverness Academy Case. I got a briefing from the FBI regarding the child pornography ring we helped bring down. The two suspects you arrested, Patricia Bodean and James Dawson gave up their partners and they too have been arrested. The cybercrimes division of the FBI had been investigating a pay per minute streaming video of two young girls playing doctor in a bedroom, trying to ID the location or the kids.”
“Molly and Ava?” Yvette asked.
Shepherd nodded. “For an additional streaming subscription, the fuckers, specifically Patricia Bode
an, taught the girls adult sexual behavior that she convinced the girls was acceptable, cool even. The video with the playroom set we found had just appeared a week before Molly Corbin died. They made a bundle on it. That activity had just been discovered by the team investigating it, but they still couldn’t ID who or where.” He paused and shook his head. “I saw some of the footage and believe me, none of you want to. It’s disgusting, Bodean teaching the girls to go down on each other.”
The team at the table sat stunned and sickened by the depravity of it and the adults making a profit on it.
“I should have let you beat the shit out of them both,” Cooper said to Madison.
“If I still felt bad about the beat-down I gave them, this would have changed my mind.”
“I wish I would have gotten a few blows in too,” Jackson said with a head nod to Madison. “Tell me you hurt them at least a little bit.”
She flashed him a wan smile. “Don’t worry. I did.”
“Good, pedophile-bastards,” Jackson remarked.
“So, how’d Molly Corbin end up in that fridge?” Garcia asked.
“The night Molly died, one of their best paying clients, one Charles Howard, the man you fatally shot, Doc, was on site. He’d paid big money to play with the girls. Molly said no and when they tried to strong arm her, she ran and hid. They found her and when she wouldn’t lick his dick as he wanted, he stuffed her into that fridge, several times, took her out with the sexual demands, back in when she said no.”
Madison thought she was going to vomit. “Oh my God, that poor little girl.”
“And the Bodean woman did nothing to stop him?” Yvette asked.
“Nope,” Shepherd answered. “It gets worse. Howard was back on site for a final big payday for Dawson and Bodean. He had paid to do whatever he wanted with Ava on that set. From what we can determine, it doesn’t look like either girl was actually molested, except for Bodean’s tutelage on the finer points of oral sex. They were planning to stream it to thousands of pedophile-scumbags around the world who were paying top dollar to see it. And then Howard was going to take her with him. He paid Dawson and Bodean to have her. They were shutting down shop and planned to disappear with enough to live on the rest of their lives. We prevented that from happening.”
“You did good work, folks,” Lassiter piped in. “You saved Ava Grier from that, and with the equipment seized, the FBI should be able to track down these subscribers and arrest them for possessing and participating in child pornography.”
“I’d call this a huge win for the team,” Shepherd said.
By the silence around the room no one would have guessed it was a win. Madison figured they had to all be as shocked as she was. If she had any doubts she belonged here, this would have convinced her. Had she not taken this job, they would have gotten away with it and little Ava would be in Charles Howard’s hands right now.
“Yes!” Madison exclaimed, unable to contain her pride. “We saved Ava Grier and brought down that whole ring. We got justice for Molly Corbin and saved countless other kids.” She flashed a smile at Shepherd. “This is a huge win.”
“I’m glad I killed that bastard,” Doc said.
Jackson, who sat beside him, clasped his shoulder and flashed him a supportive expression with a head nod. This didn’t go unnoticed by Madison.
“And Ava Grier is now living with the Physical Education teacher, Vanessa Michaels and her husband. Vanessa was summoned to the hospital when it all went down and Ava’s father has agreed to let them have physical custody of her. She’ll get all the therapy she needs and will live in a loving home from now on,” Lassiter said.
“As I said, good job team,” Shepherd repeated. “What was going on makes us all sick, but we stopped it. Washington and specifically Senator Corbin, appreciates us.”
“If anyone wants to talk further about this, you know how to make an appointment with me,” Lassiter said. “If anyone finds themselves unable to move past this, I expect to see you.”
Shepherd flashed a grin at Lassiter. Yes, that’s why he was on the payroll. “Next order of business, Garcia will be leaving after this meeting for the Silo to join Delta Team.” His eyes flashed to the others. “He won’t be involved in the Van Joosten case. Yvette, you’ll take lead in the Ops Center.”
Yvette nodded and then flashed a supportive grin at Garcia. She knew how apprehensive he was about going back under as the motorcycle gang leader, even in the limited capacity it would be. She didn’t know all the particulars of his time undercover while with the DEA, but she did know he worked through a bunch of shit and became a different person since he had come on board.
“We’re going to fast track it to start one week from today,” Cooper jumped in. “Yvette, you’ll remain here while we’re on site, but I have a lot of prep assignments for you to get to work on.”
She nodded, understanding. He’d already given her a heads up on it.
“The client is a good friend of mine, Ben Van Joosten,” Shepherd began.
Just then a phone vibrated on the table. Everyone’s eyes went to their phones. It was Madison’s, a text from her mom. “Call me ASAP. Dad had a heart attack this morning. In CICU, surgery scheduled tomorrow.”
Her eyes met Cooper’s as she glanced up. He’d also read the text.
“You’ve all seen the particulars of the case,” Shepherd continued.
Cooper waited a beat to see if Madison would speak up. When she did not, he did. “Excuse me, Shepherd.” His eyes went back to Madison. “You need to step outside and call your mother.” His eyes went back to Shepherd. “She just got a text from her mother telling her that her father had a heart attack this morning and is scheduled for surgery tomorrow.”
“Madison, of course,” Shepherd agreed.
“Thank you,” she said as she came to her feet. “I would have waited till after the meeting.”
“No, not for something like this,” Shepherd said.
She stepped into the hallway and slipped into the kitchen. Now that she was alone tears burned her eyes. Her father had always been healthy. A heart attack? How was that possible? She hit dial and took a deep breath.
Back within the conference room, Cooper spoke up. “We’re going to have to push this Op back a few days to a week. She’s going to need to leave for Arizona right away.”
Shepherd nodded. “Have Angel get on the reservations. She’s going to have to fly commercial. If the Lear didn’t need to shuttle you,” he said, his eyes on Garcia, “to the Silo, we could fly her to Arizona.”
“I’m sure she won’t mind.” Cooper came to his feet and quickly left the room. He followed the sound of her voice into the kitchen.
“Mom, I just started a new job. I can’t get away.” There was a pause. He entered the room and viewed her back. Her eyes were fixed out the window. “I know I didn’t tell you. I’ve been here less than a month. Mom, I can’t take off.”
Cooper came up behind her and took the phone from her hand. “Mrs. Miller, this is John Cooper, Madison’s supervisor. She will be there by this evening. No ma’am,” he said replying to her mother’s inquiry if Madison’s coming to Arizona would be held against her. “We are a family friendly organization. Work-life balance is important here.” His eyes met Madison’s outraged glare. He smiled. “You’re welcome ma’am. I’m going to give the phone back to Madison and then we’ll get her booked on a flight.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cooper,” Madison’s mother’s voice carried into the room from the phone.
“Okay, Mom, I guess I’ll be there by this evening. I’ll text my flight info to you from the airport.” She paused and listened to her mom ask if she needed to arrange a car to pick her up. “No, Mom, that’s okay. I can rent a car at the airport. Give Dad a hug for me. Love you, Mom.”
Cooper stepped back to the door. “Angel, I need you to book Madison out on the first flight to Phoenix, nonstop, and arrange a rental car. Make it an open-ended ticket for return. I need it ASAP.”
> “You got it, Cooper,” Angel replied and then logged into Google Flights to search.
He turned back to Madison.
“John, what about the Van Joosten case?”
He could see she was shaken up. He crossed the room and wrapped her in an embrace. “It’ll wait. Family comes first, Madison.”
She relaxed into him, appreciating the physical comfort. “Dad has always been so healthy. I can’t wrap my mind around this. They’re doing a triple bypass tomorrow.”
“Then you absolutely have to be there.” He felt her nod against his chest. “You got everything you need in a go-bag here?”
“Yes, I can make do with it. I won’t be gone too long, as soon as he’s out of the woods,” she said.
