Nameless (Sinister Secrets Book 1)

by Candle Sutton

  Her lower lip trembled. Tears burned in her eyes. She couldn’t help it. She looked down at her hands in her lap.

  “Ava.” His voice was harsher now. “Eat the cranberries.”

  She looked up to find him still staring at her. She swallowed hard.

  “Now!” He slammed his palm against the table top, rattling the silverware and making her jump.

  She didn’t want him to get mad at her. He was scary when he was mad.

  She picked up the spoon and scooped up a bite of the cranberries.

  The tart fruit curled her tongue. She forced herself to chew a few times before swallowing.

  “See. That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Jax’s tone indicated he expected no answer as he resumed eating.

  Ava forced herself to take another bite. Only about four more to go, then she’d be done.

  She wanted to be done with this whole awful place. Why couldn’t she go home?

  ₪ ₪ ₪

  “Thank you for yesterday.” Kevyn greeted Dak as she walked into the office.

  He felt like he ought to be thanking her. Man, had he gotten his brothers good yesterday. And she was skilled on the basketball court.

  Sure, they’d still lost, but they’d given Caiden, Blaze, and Pete a run for their money.

  “We were glad to have you there. And those cookies–”

  “Biscuits.” Kevyn corrected. “Not cookies.”

  He smiled. “I don’t know. They tasted more like a cookie to me.”

  “Well, we Aussies call them biscuits.”

  “Okay, those biscuits were great. You’ll have to bring them again next year.” Suddenly he really hoped there would be a next year, that she wouldn’t decide to move or make other plans next Thanksgiving. She’d been a great addition to their dinner crowd. And he knew his mom and Leslie had enjoyed having another woman around. “Or at Christmas. What are you doing for Christmas?”

  She laughed. “One holiday at a time, okay?”

  A pause lengthened.

  Unless he missed his guess, she had something on her mind.

  “Your family…” She seemed to search for the right words. “They’re different. All of you.”

  “It’s God.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve known Christians before. That’s not it.”

  “Actually, it is.” How did he explain this without sounding judgmental? “There are people who treat Christianity like a title. There are others who treat it like a lifestyle.”

  She tilted her head. “So, what’s the difference?”

  “It’s action. A lot of people believe in God, but without action…” He shrugged lightly. “The book of James in the Bible tells us that faith without action is dead.”

  “Believing in God isn’t good enough?” Her eyebrows drew together.

  “It’s a start, but James also points out that even demons believe in God. There has to be something that sets us apart. That something is belief in Jesus, and acting on that belief.”

  “Hmmm.” Removing her gun from the holster, she set it on the edge of her desk, her fingers lingering on it before turning back to him. “My mom believed in God. She got into church and everything a few years before she died. She was the real deal. Like you and your family.”

  “And what about you?” Good thing HR wasn’t here. Asking someone, a subordinate especially, about God was hardly acceptable.

  But she’d brought it up.

  “I believe in God. I’m undecided about the rest.” She settled in her chair before booting up her laptop.

  If that wasn’t a clear ending to a conversation, he didn’t know what was.

  Besides, they still had a job to do.

  “So, this morning we’re going to question Mays. When he doesn’t give us anything–”

  “You don’t expect him to talk either, huh?” Kevyn’s tone indicated that she was in agreement.

  “Nope. Which is why I’ve already put in a request for a warrant for the rest of his offices. We’ll turn his financials over to one of our accountants while we look for anything suspicious.”

  Kevyn nodded. “I’d like to take a crack at Wally. Now that we’ve found the lab, I think I might be able to get him to talk.”

  Well, the night shift supervisor was on their list for today, too. “You want him, you got him.”

  The phone on Dak’s desk shrilled. Even as he answered it, he knew what it would be about.

  Their suspects had arrived for interrogation.

  It was time to get some answers.

  ₪ ₪ ₪

  “You’re going down for this.” JD’s words echoed in Kevyn’s mind. She was sure they echoed in Wally’s mind, too.

  A repetitive twitch made Wally look like he was winking. Little color existed in his pasty cheeks and his thin lips curled downward.

  “Unless.” JD let the word hang for a second past comfortable. “You give us something.”

  Wally’s tongue flicked over his lips and his breaths came in quick bursts. “Like what?”

  “Who’s behind this?”

  Wally looked away. His chest heaved.

  “Wally.” Kevyn softened her tone, a sharp contrast to JD’s firm approach. “We know you aren’t the guy behind this. You’re only doing what you’re told.”

  Wally’s head bobbed. “I’m doing my job. Run the night crew.”

  “Give us the man behind it and this will all go better for you. Cooperate, and the prosecutor might cut you a deal. You don’t want to go down for this, do you?”

  His breathing thickened. “You don’t get it. There’s no talking. They’ll kill me. My family.”

  “They might kill you if you don’t.” JD leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his neck. “Face it. They don’t know you haven’t talked. They could come after you to keep you from talking. You’re a loose end, my man.”

  Wally’s face turned gray. “You’ve gotta protect me. That’s your job, right?”

  “If you tell us something, yeah. If not, well… you’re on your own in prison. Good luck with that.” JD shook his head slowly.

  “What about witness protection? Can you get me and my family in that?”

  “Absolutely.” Kevyn nodded firmly.

  “Maybe.” JD shot her a raised-eyebrow glance. “That’d be the Marshals’ call, not ours.”

  Yeah, okay. Maybe she’d jumped the gun. But they needed this guy to talk. Besides, the Marshals would surely put him under protection, if this was as big as he indicated.

  Wally wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “The cartel’s involved. I need more than a maybe.”

  JD rose. “Lemme see what I can do, okay?”

  As JD left the room, Kevyn turned her focus on Wally. “I saw that you have two daughters. Are they into sports? Music? Art?”

  Wally’s breathing evened slightly. “The older one plays sports. Every sport. She’s good, too. My younger girl likes to draw. Especially animals. You should see the detail on some of the faces.”

  “That’s amazing. The only thing I can draw is a stick person.”

  Wally chortled. “Me, too. But she’s got some talent.”

  “I bet you’d do anything to protect them.”

  His lips tightened and he nodded.

  “Do you know what those drugs that are being produced are typically used for? They’re used to dose people, usually young girls, so that the person using the drug can do whatever he wants to them.” She let the words hang, let his mind fill in the gaps. Sometimes it was what she didn’t say that was most powerful.

  Wally swallowed hard.

  “That drug was used on me.” Another pause for emphasis. “Thankfully, someone saw it happening and stepped in. I was lucky. The next person might not be. Think about the victims for a second. They’re someone’s daughter. It could even be your daughter.”

  “No!” He shook his head fervently. “No. I taught them better than that. They know better than to get in a situation–”

  “I was attac
ked walking down the street.” She kept her tone calm, even as her heart thundered. “I wasn’t drinking. I wasn’t in a bad part of town. I was doing nothing wrong. And a man jabbed a needle filled with a drug, the drug you watched people prepare for distribution, into my neck.”

  Silence surrounded them.

  A chill wrapped around her. Memories of waking up in the hospital with no memories, of being told what had happened to her, of realizing what could have happened, haunted her.

  This man had enabled her attacker, their unsub, to continue his reign of terror.

  As much as she wanted to rail at him, she knew that would be counterproductive. She had to remain calm.

  “I-” Wally cleared his throat. “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “No. You just oversaw the manufacture and distribution of the drug that he used.” Okay. That came out a little sharper than she’d intended.

  She pulled in a deep breath.

  “You knew what those drugs could do. You had to have known the most common use for them.”

  “I didn’t ask questions. It’s better that way.”

  “Better for whom?” They both knew the answer to her rhetorical question. “Do your workers sell the drugs directly?”

  He pressed his lips together.

  “I need the name of your dealer. To prevent this from happening to any other girls. To protect girls like your daughters.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Stop saying that.”

  She was pushing the right buttons. Whether or not it would elicit the results she wanted remained to be seen. “It’s hard to admit that your daughter could be a victim of the very drug you’re funneling to the streets.”

  “No! That would never happen to them.” A hint of desperation lined the words, as though he was trying to convince himself it was true.

  “Everyone thinks that.” She stared him straight in the eyes. “It happened to me. An FBI agent. Trust me when I say it can happen to anyone. If you won’t tell me the dealer’s name because it’s the right thing to do, do it for your daughters.”

  Several seconds ticked by.

  His shoulders slumped. “I don’t know their names. I don’t even have any dealings with them.”

  Now they were getting somewhere.

  Maybe.

  “They? There’s more than one?”

  “I’ve seen three guys. There’s a schedule.” He swallowed hard. “I don’t set it up. I’m told the day before they show up and we have to have a shipment ready.”

  “So you know they’re coming but don’t have their names?”

  “Never asked.”

  The response didn’t surprise her. “But I bet you could describe them.”

  A long pause. “Probably. If my family and I are protected.”

  And they were back to the protection angle. Did he realize that being in WITSEC was not a vacation? That his girls would have to give up their hobbies? That he and his wife would still have to work for a living, but would have to learn to do something new?

  Unlikely. It seemed most people thought that they’d get to sit back in a cushy house on a beach while the government supported them.

  Well, education wasn’t her job.

  “When the guys show up for the shipments, do you give them the drugs or does someone else?”

  “Usually one of the guys working security. I’ve seen them, but never talked to any of them.”

  Not too surprising. The security guys were likely in so deep that they knew all the details that Wally had been too chicken to ask. “So, no one else comes for the drugs? Just those three guys?”

  “Just them.” He hesitated. “Well, there was this time about a month or two ago. It was a small amount, about a dozen vials, but this girl picked them up.”

  “Girl?” Everything about that was weird. Only a dozen vials. Being picked up by a girl. Sounded like something that would go through a dealer, not the distributor.

  “Yeah. Young thing. Frail. She seemed scared. Edgy.”

  “Can you describe her?”

  “Really pale. Like she never gets out in the sun. Really light hair.” He shrugged. “She’s never come back. But I was told to give them to her myself. They didn’t want the security guys to be part of that one.”

  “Why the break in protocol? If you don’t normally have anything to do with delivering the drugs, why her?” Something about this whole thing felt significant. Definitely worth looking into further.

  “Don’t know. Like I said, I don’t ask a bunch of questions.”

  The timeframe fit with when their unsub began his abduction spree. It could be coincidence, but her gut told her it was related. “Did she say anything to you?”

  “Not really. Just asked if I had a package for Jack, I think it was.”

  Jack. Could that be the unsub’s name?

  If so, who was the girl? One of his first victims, maybe? If that was the case, why would she help him?

  “Do you have any idea who this Jack guy is?”

  “Nope. Don’t even know for sure that it’s his real name. The girl seemed anxious to get the drugs and get out of there.” He stretched out the neck on his shirt. “Look, could I get a pop or something? I’m parched.”

  She wanted to pop him all right. Force him to give them something they could really run with.

  Instead, she forced a smile. “Sure, I can get you a soft drink. What kind?”

  She’d never heard soft drinks referred to as pop until she’d moved to Washington. It was another of the state’s oddities, like the need to have a coffee stand on every street corner.

  Dak met her outside the door. “Sounds like you got a bit of good information out of him. Nice job.”

  “Might want to hold off on congratulating me.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if any of that will amount to anything.”

  “That last thing, about the girl and Jack, feels important.”

  She nodded. “I thought so, too, but trying to find a guy named Jack in a city this size…”

  She didn’t need to finish the thought. They both knew that it felt like an insurmountable task.

  “I’ve got Felicia and Sid in with Mays, who’s not talking. Let me see if the name Jack means anything to him.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “You mean the lawyer’s actually letting him talk?”

  “Intermittently.” Dak’s mouth curled downward. “But if the name Jack means anything to him, maybe he’ll let something slip.”

  They could only hope. They needed more to go on, and they needed it now.

  Twenty

  Kevyn watched as agents hauled box after box of potential evidence away. Behind the police tape stood some of the fish packing plant’s employees, watching as their office was essentially dismantled from the inside.

  Whether or not any of the boxes contained anything useful remained to be seen. It could be nothing more than a waste of the bureau’s resources.

  But they’d never know if they didn’t look.

  She surveyed the surrounding area.

  Workers from the import and export business next door stood behind the tape line, also. She scanned the group. A lot of people, watching like they were at the movies.

  She glanced at the time on her phone. About three-thirty. The crew must be on break.

  And evidently didn’t have any better way to spend it than watching FBI agents do their jobs.

  “Okay, crew. Break’s over. Time to come inside.” A man’s voice drifted over her shoulder.

  Time to come.

  A buzz filled her head.

  Time to come.

  Her pulse pounded.

  Time to come.

  The words kept replaying in her head as her stomach rolled.

  A gasp broke free. She whirled around.

  That voice! She’d heard it before. The night of her almost-abduction!

  Time to come home, sister.

  She scanned the heads, her gaze darting back and forth, bouncing from one head to the next.

/>   The man who’d abducted her, the one who’d abducted at least five other people and killed two of them, was here!

  She swayed slightly, her suddenly unsteady legs threatening to give out.

  Where was he?

  “Kev? You okay?” Dak’s voice sounded behind her.

  She kept scanning the heads, looking for anyone who seemed familiar. Anyone who resembled the sketch.

  “Kev?” Dak moved around to stand in front of her. “You look half a step away from passing out. What’s going on?”

  She swept past him, her gaze roving the people. “He’s here! I heard him!”

  “He?”

  She glanced at Dak in time to see recognition dawn.

  “The unsub? You’re saying he’s here?”

  She nodded emphatically. “Yes! I heard his voice.”

  The group reached the import and export company’s warehouse and filed inside.

  The door slammed shut behind them, as did any hope she had of seeing the man who’d tried to abduct her.

  She whipped around to face Dak and flung a pointing finger at the warehouse. “He was in that group! A manager or supervisor or shift lead or something! He told everyone to go back inside.”

  “Are you…” Dak stared at her intently. “Are you sure?”

  “YES!” She tried to calm her frantically pounding heart. “I heard him. I know it was him. He said ‘time to come inside’ and our unsub said ‘time to come home, sister’ and it sounded the same.”

  Dak rubbed the back of his neck, his eyes listing toward the import and export company.

  She sounded crazy. She did. But she knew what she’d heard.

  “Dak.” She waited for him to look at her before continuing, “It’s him. Trust me.”

  Finally, he nodded. “Okay. But you know as well as I do that it’s going to take more than that to get a warrant.”

  “Maybe we won’t need one. You said that the owner was accommodating last time you were there. Maybe he will be again.” Unless he was on edge because of everything going on with the fish packing plant.

  Or unless he had something to hide.

  ₪ ₪ ₪