past her co-workers, she sensed their furtive, darting looks and wondered what they were thinking.
Did they all still just consider her a rule-breaking loose cannon? Had she gotten any grudging respect for taking down a child-abducting killer? How long would being the only female detective in the squad make her feel like a permanent outsider?
As she walked past them all in the hustle and bustle of the station and eased herself into her desk chair, Keri tried to control the pit of resentment rising in her chest and just focus on the work. At least the place was packed and as chaotic as ever, and in that reassuring way, nothing had changed. The station was crowded with civilians filing complaints, perps being booked, and detectives on the phones, following up on leads.
Keri had been limited to desk duty since her return. And her desk was full. Ever since she got back, she’d been awash in a sea of paperwork. There were dozens of arrest reports to review, search warrants to procure, witness statements to evaluate, and evidence reports to examine.
She suspected that because she wasn’t allowed to go out on cases yet, all her colleagues were pushing their busy work on her. Luckily, she was supposed to be allowed to return to the field tomorrow. And the secret truth was that she didn’t mind being office-bound for one reason: Pachanga’s files.
When the cops searched his house after the incident, they’d found a laptop. Keri and Detective Kevin Edgerton, the precinct’s resident tech guru, had cracked Pachanga’s password, managing to open his files. Her hope was that the files would lead to discovery of multiple missing children, maybe even her own daughter.
Unfortunately, what had seemed at first like the mother lode of information on multiple abductions had proven difficult to access. Edgerton had explained that the encrypted files could only be opened with the proper code-breaking cipher, which they didn’t have. Keri had spent the last week learning everything she could about Pachanga in the hopes of cracking the code. But so far, she’d come up empty.
As she sat there reviewing files, Keri’s thoughts returned to something that had been eating at her since she’d resumed work. When Pachanga kidnapped Senator Stafford Penn’s daughter, Ashley, he’d done it at the behest of the senator’s brother, Payton. The two men had been in communication on the dark web for months.
Keri couldn’t help but wonder how a senator’s brother had managed to get in touch with a professional abductor. It wasn’t like they traveled in the same circles. But they did have one thing in common. Both men were represented by a lawyer named Jackson Cave.
Cave’s office was high atop a downtown skyscraper, but many of his clients were far more earthbound. In addition to his corporate work, Cave had a long history of representing rapists, kidnappers, and pedophiles. If Keri was being generous, she suspected it was simply because he knew he could gouge such unpleasant clients. But part of her thought he actually got off on it. Either way, she despised him.
If Jackson Cave had put Payton Penn and Alan Pachanga in touch, it stood to reason that he also knew how to access all their encrypted files. Keri was sure that somewhere in that fancy high-rise office of his was the cipher she needed to break the code and discover details on all those missing children, maybe even her own. She resolved that one way or another, legally or not, she was getting into that office.
As she started to think how that might be accomplished, Keri noticed a twenty-something female uniformed officer walking slowly in her direction. She waved her over.
“What’s your name again?” Keri asked, uncertain if she should already know.
“Officer Jamie Castillo,” the young, dark-haired officer answered. “I only just got out of the academy. I was reassigned here the week you were in the hospital. I was originally at West LA Division.”
“So I shouldn’t feel too bad for not knowing who you are?”
“No, Detective Locke,” Castillo said firmly.
Keri was impressed. The gal had confidence and a sharpness in her dark eyes that suggested keen intelligence. She also looked like she could take care of herself. Easily five foot eight, she had a sinewy, athletic frame that suggested tussling would be unwise.
“Good. What can I do for you?” Keri asked, trying not to sound intimidating. There weren’t a lot of female cops in Pacific Division and Keri didn’t want to scare any of them off.
“I’ve been covering the station’s tip line for the last few weeks. As you might suspect, a ton of them were related to your run-in with Alan Pachanga and the statement you made afterward about trying to find your daughter.”
Keri nodded, remembering. After she’d rescued Ashley, the department held a big press conference to celebrate the happy outcome.
Still in her wheelchair, Keri had praised Ashley and her family before co-opting the conference to mention Evie. She’d held up her picture and begged the public to offer any information that might help in her search. Her immediate supervisor, Lieutenant Cole Hillman, had been so pissed at her for using a department victory as a tool in her personal crusade that Keri thought he would have fired her on the spot if he could have. But since she was a wheelchair-bound, teenage-rescuing hero, he couldn’t.
Even when she was stuck in the hospital, Keri had heard through the grapevine that he was annoyed when the department started getting inundated with hundreds of calls daily.
“I’m sorry you got stuck with that assignment,” Keri said. “I guess I just wanted to make the most of the opportunity and didn’t think about who would have to deal with the fallout. I assume all the calls were dead ends?”
Jamie Castillo hesitated, as if wondering whether she was making the right decision. Keri could see the wheels turning in the younger woman’s head. She watched her calculating the right move and couldn’t help but like her. It felt like she was watching a younger version of herself.
“Well,” Castillo finally said, “most were easily dismissed as being from unstable people or simply pranks. But we got one call this morning that was somehow different. It had a straightforwardness that made me take it more seriously.”
Almost immediately, Keri’s mouth went dry and she felt her heart start to race.
Keep cool. It’s probably nothing. Don’t overreact.
“Can I hear it?” she asked more calmly than she’d thought possible.
“I’ve already forwarded it to you,” Castillo said.
Keri looked at her phone and saw the blinking light indicating she had a voicemail. Trying not to look desperate, she slowly picked up the receiver and checked it.
The voice on the message was raspy, almost metallic sounding and hard to understand, made even more difficult by a banging noise in the background.
“I saw you on TV talking about your girl,” it said. “I want to help. There’s an abandoned warehouse in Palms, across from the Piedmont Generating Station. Check it out.”
That was all there was to it—just a gravelly male voice offering a vague tip. So why were her fingertips tingling with adrenaline? Why was she having trouble swallowing? Why did her thoughts suddenly flash on potential images of what Evie might look like now?
Perhaps it was because the call had none of the earmarks of the standard hoax calls. It didn’t try to draw attention to itself, which was what clearly got Castillo’s attention. And that same element—its straightforward blandness—was the quality currently making beads
