sector.
But those cases were not his passion. They were just his job. As another rumble of thunder passed through the room, he looked at the framed photo on his desk. The girl who looked back at him from a face framed by blond curls appeared to be just on the cusp of womanhood, entering the awkward stage of life where her smile was the impish one of childhood mixed with the almost-sensed mysteries of adulthood. Elena. Resident forever in his heart, an ache that would never end.
He’d known he wanted to be a cop from the time Elena had disappeared. He’d been sixteen then, six years older than she was. Family tragedies hit in a lot of ways. His sister’s abduction had sent his mom into an alcoholic spiral and his dad into a withdrawal from which he’d never fully emerged.
After Elena disappeared, all that remained was the silence.
It was his father’s sudden, overwhelming sense of powerlessness that had energized Jerrod. He decided he would become a cop. He would step in for fathers whose invulnerability had been irretrievably shattered. He would rescue his father, even if he never found Elena.
That had led him into the army’s military police program, the fastest way to get into uniform and on the job, and a way to pay for the college education he would need in order to work for the FBI. His rugged athleticism and quick, keen mind had attracted the attention of recruiters in the special-ops community, shadowy heroic figures who’d told him he was destined for better things than waving cars through the front gate.
Six years later, he’d passed through the revolving door that led from special operations into private military contracting, where the pay was better and the missions even farther from public awareness. The company he’d worked for had specialized in overseas personal security, protecting U.S. businessmen and key employees in parts of the world where a U.S. passport was all too often irresistible bait for rebels who financed their operations with ransom money.
It was there, in that dark, shadowy world, that he’d learned what happened sometimes to those little girls and boys who disappeared. It was the first time he’d learned that there really was a white slave trade.
He’d become an expert in finding the missing, sniffing out clues that others might miss, able to project complex networks of informants, sources and dark alliances onto a screen in his mind. He followed links that seemed obvious only in retrospect, guided by intuition, supported by a twenty-hour-a-day work schedule when he was on a case.
And then he’d blown the whistle himself.
Ultimately, the case had gone nowhere. He knew what he knew, but too much of what he knew lay in inferences he had drawn from that screen in his mind. The investigator who had worked the case couldn’t verify any of Jerrod’s claims, at least not enough for prosecution.
But it had pushed him out of the private sector and into the job he’d always wanted. He’d joined the FBI. And he’d joined with a résumé and a passion that had quickly turned into a specialty.
He worked all kinds of cases, but Special Agent Jerrod Westlake had quickly emerged as the go-to guy on abductions. A photo album in his desk drawer was filled with the faces of kids he’d found. The bulletin board over his desk was also covered with photographs, those he hadn’t yet located.
And on his desk, surrounded by a simple white frame, was a photo of Elena.
He looked at her now, sensing more than hearing the rumble of thunder that reverberated through his window, strong enough to feel in the arms of his chair.
Elena, as sweet as a spring morning, a tiny little elf of a girl who had come into the world one day after his sixth birthday. His mom called her a surprise gift from God. His dad just plain doted.
And it still pained Jerrod not to know. Despite all the resources he could call on, he could find no trace of Elena Westlake. Not even among the hundreds of Jane Does who filtered through morgues and into anonymous plots of ground provided by cities, counties or states.
His reputation now preceded him, and he claimed a network of friends and allies throughout law enforcement who kept him abreast of new cases. When local authorities wanted help, they asked for him by name. And whatever field office he was working from, his special agent in charge would book him on the next flight out.
Twenty-two years ago this week. That was when Elena had disappeared. A ten-year-old girl waiting for her school bus had been yanked into a car by a dark-haired, middle-aged man of medium height and build, driving a late-model blue sedan. The recorded story of Elena Westlake ended on that cold February morning, the description of her last known moments dragged out of the terrified boy who had been awaiting the bus with her.
He knew Elena must be dead. Still, he hadn’t given up. One day he would find his sister’s body. At least his mom and dad would know what had happened.
The storm rumbled again. Georgie Dickson appeared in the door of Jerrod’s cubicle and placed a Starbucks coffee on his desk. Then she sat in the chair beside the desk and sipped her own coffee.
She was a beautiful woman, her café-au-lait skin shining with the good health that came from being physically fit. Georgie had no vices, although the rest of the crew was always trying to find one. It had become a game. Did Georgie ever have a drink? Did she eat meat when she thought no one was looking? Did she really go to church every Sunday?
Georgie knew about it, and Jerrod was sure she enjoyed every moment of being a mystery.
She was also one of his best friends in the office.
As if she’d been reading his mind, she leaned over and picked up Elena’s photo. After a moment, she sighed and put it down again. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.
“Big storm,” she remarked.
He nodded, glancing toward the window. There was an ugly swirl to some of those clouds now, the kind of swirl that might portend a tornado. “Has anyone listened to the weather?”
“The usual. Severe storm warning, tornado watch. Were you expecting something else?”
Almost in spite of himself, he chuckled. Georgie was good at dragging him out of his brooding.
“So how did it go, testifying in the Mercator case?”
“Pretty well, I thought. I hung around afterward to listen to some of the other testimony. I got the feeling there might be another whistle-blower, one we never identified.”
“Is it worth looking into?”
He shook his head dubiously. “I honestly don’t know. This was the stupidest case of fraud I’ve ever worked. The prosecution won’t rest their case until next week, though, so I guess we’ll hear about it if they want us to look any further.”
Government fraud cases were as varied as the human mind’s capacity for dreaming up ways to root a few extra dollars from the public trough. Jerrod divided them into three categories: the sinister, the slick and the stupid. The sinister were the most dangerous, occurring at the junction of policy and profit. The slick were the most clever, often using one set of regulations against another, tucking away sometimes obscene piles of money, so close to the legal line that they were often impossible to prosecute.
The Mercator Industries case, on the other hand, was in the category of the stupid, a case where the acts were so obvious and the payoff so small that you had to wonder why they’d even bothered.
