life.
What would she do if she were in these refugees’ place? she wondered. Spend her savings for a one-way ticket to another country? Risk everything to cross the Florida Straits? Put her life in the hands of men who might take her out into a desert somewhere and kill her for the fifty dollars she carried, or who thought she was attractive enough to sell to the highest bidder?
Then she made the connection. The girl’s face, her features—they looked like the girl in the ancient photo her mom used to pull out and show her at Christmas. The one of her grandmother, who hadn’t survived the trip to a better life, either.
Nikki stifled a sigh, grabbed her clipboard and started the interviews.
Chapter 2
That evening Nikki settled back in her home office desk chair while staring at the e-mail messages coming in. One of them, sent from the mysterious Delphi, churned in state-of-the-art decryption software Dana Velasco had given her. While Nikki waited, she absently finger-combed her curly hair, damp from her long shower.
The dead girl’s face still flashed in her mind every so often, taking her unawares—while getting into her Jeep, when she opened her modest town house’s front door, while she stood under the pounding hot water. Her job could be a bitch sometimes, not for what she did or had to do, but for what she had to face.
In the meantime, maybe the e-mail from Delphi would take her mind off the girl.
Seconds later, the decryption software spat up a simple message:
Signal broadcast from 25° 37’ 33.94” N, 79° 38’10.18” W. What vessels passed through these coordinates on April 27 at 4:30 p.m.?
Stand by for contact.
Nikki sat forward as she read. Decrypted, but cryptic, just like the message back in February about watching her back.
So the signal had come through just two days ago. And that location was definitely within her jurisdiction, in the commercial shipping lanes just outside the Port of Miami. Ever thorough, she double-checked the lat-longs against the navigational chart hanging on her office wall for confirmation.
Staring at the chart’s looping blue depth lines, she frowned. Dozens of container ships, tankers, cruise ships and tugs passed through those lanes on their way to and from the Port of Miami every day. That bay was heavily trafficked at all hours.
Fortunately, she knew just who to tap. Two-Finger Jimmy owed her a favor or three. Time to pay up.
Nikki flipped through her mental Rolodex and pulled up Two-Finger Jimmy’s pager number. Jimmy Delano worked on the clerical side of the Port of Miami, which meant she and Jimmy went back a couple of years comparing notes on port traffic for Homeland Security. Last year she’d spent her off-hours helping him track down his niece, who had disappeared in Little Havana. After a week of searching, they’d found her on a ritzy yacht anchored near South Beach. She’d had a heroin buzz and a nasty case of VD. Considering she was only fifteen, the authorities had not looked kindly on the sleazy television producer who’d introduced her to high-dollar whoredom under the guise of making her a star.
Within minutes, Two-Finger Jimmy’s number flashed on her ringing cell.
“James!” she said.
“What have I done now?”
“It’s what you’re going to do for me.”
His voice dropped, got husky. “You know what I’d like to do for you.”
Nikki laughed. Two-Finger Jimmy had a jockey’s physique, was happily married to a woman roughly the size of a wall and was old enough to be her grandfather. “Yeah, I do know. You’d like to look through the port logs for a vessel that might have passed through a waypoint I’m going to give you.”
Jimmy chuckled. “That’s second on my list. How’ve you been?”
She shot the breeze with him for a few minutes before cutting to the chase and giving him the lat-longs and date and time information. “Think you can track down the ships that might have passed through those coordinates?”
“Are you kidding? I have technology on my side. You’re still filling out forms in triplicate, aren’t you? On a Smith-Corona?”
“Screw you,” Nikki retorted good-naturedly.
“Why, look here, chica, I’ve got the goods.”
She grabbed a pen and pulled a legal pad close. “Hit me.”
“You’ve got two ships going out and one ship coming in that could have hit that waypoint around that time. The one coming in was an oil tanker out of Saudi.”
“Talk to me about the ones going out.”
“One’s Maersk-Sealand—their regular shipment. The other’s an outfit called ‘SHA.’ S. H. A.”
“What were they carrying?”
“You don’t ask much, do you?” Two-Finger Jimmy huffed but Nikki also heard the speedy clicking of the typing technique that had earned him his nickname.
“Maersk-Sealand was routing long-haul trucks to Australia.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“SHA was…” He trailed off, then grunted. “It’s hard to tell what these clowns were shipping. Uno momento.” His off-key whistling set in.
Not a good sign. It meant he was puzzled, and a puzzled Two-Finger Jimmy usually meant trouble.
“Textiles,” he said finally. “Handwoven.”
“Textiles?”
“Ye-a-ah.” He drew the word out nice and slow. “Big bolts of cloth.”
“I know what textiles are, James. Aren’t they going in the wrong direction?”
“Most textiles come in, but we do ship out occasionally. Problem is, this is about a half load.”
“Doesn’t sound very cost-effective.”
Jimmy grunted. “It’s not. SHA’s losing its ass on that container ship.”
“Nothing but big bolts of cloth?”
Keys clicked. “Nothing that shows on the electronic manifest. Hang on. Let me check the hard copy.” Papers fluttered. “Okay, a last-minute load. One container.”
“Contents?”
“Not listed.” Jimmy whistled. “Someone at SHA has been a ba-aa-ad boy. All container contents are s’posed to be logged and checked by customs twenty-four hours before loading. Looks like this one got loaded up after the rest of the ship’s containers were inspected.”
“Could that container have bypassed a customs inspection?”
“Only if money changed hands somewhere down the line.”
“Sounds
