Fatal Secrets (19 page)

“He’s not dead, is he?” Noel hoped. A dead “brother” would force her to take time off.

“He’ll be released tomorrow, according to my source at the hospital.”

“Find out where the parents live, where the brother lives, where Sonia lives. I want to know her best friend, her worst enemy, where she eats, the make and model of her car, and where she’ll be every fucking minute of the day. I’m going to kill her, I swear, and when I find this Chuck Angelo I’m going to slowly pull out his intestines and strangle him with them!”

Noel was livid. When he looked at his face in one of the numerous hotel mirrors this ridiculous suite had, it was beet red.

“Mr. Ling, send a team to check on the merchandise and make sure it’s being delivered from storage exactly when it’s supposed to be. If they’re five minutes late, kill them all. I’m not in a forgiving mood. I want our best people—except you—sitting on the whores. I want a patrol. I want no surprises. When the buyers arrive, I want a nice, clean transaction, and then we’re out of this fucking country.

“We’ll have our money, a permanent new distribution
channel, and ICE agent Sonia Knight will be dead. Then I’ll put a headstone with her name in my backyard and bury another whore in it and dance on her
fucking
grave. If I had known that bitch would have been such a problem, I would have put a bullet in her head when I had the chance.”

Ann was still in surgery, so Sonia slipped into Riley’s room. He was awake, sitting up in his hospital bed, looking both in pain and antsy.

“Hey, sis. It’s about time.”

“I was here last night.”

“They had me on so many painkillers I didn’t know my own name. John Black said the guy who stabbed me isn’t talking, but they I.D.’d him as Johan Krueger, a German national with a work visa for Omega Shipping.”

“Omega?” The shipping company Jones contracted with to bring illegal immigrants into the country to sell to his “clients.” Once again, their name surfaced. “Black didn’t call me.”

“I’m sure he plans to. He’s been waiting for word on Ann’s surgery.”

“She’s still in there. Dean’s observing now.”

“Dean?”

“Dean Hooper, the FBI agent I mentioned yesterday.”

“Dean?”

“Excuse me?”

“Not Agent Hooper?”

It took Sonia a moment to realize that Riley was teasing her. “Oh, leave it alone, it means nothing.”

“I’m just joshing you. Not much else I can do. Did Mom tell you I’m stuck on leave for two whole weeks?”

“Yeah. I’ll make you cookies.”

“Please don’t. You’ll burn down your house. Or worse.”

“It’s the thought that counts.”

“Then think up some chocolate cupcakes from Free-port Bakery …”

Dean stepped into the room. “Sonia, I’ve just spoken with Detective Black. They have an I.D. on the man who tried to kill Ann. Johan Krueger. He’s—”

“From Germany and works for Omega Shipping.”

“You heard.”

Sonia pointed at Riley and made quick introductions.

Dean continued. “Omega is one of Jones’s—”

“Clients?”

“At his lobbying firm.”

“Omega is also the shipping company that Greg Vega confirmed is responsible for transporting Jones’s human cargo.”

“This is our first solid connection,” Dean said. “I don’t want to pull you away, but …”

Riley waved them off with a frown. “Go catch the bad guys without me. I’ll live vicariously through your stories for years to come.”

Sonia kissed him on the forehead. “I love you, Riley. Take it easy, okay?”

“Be careful, Sonia. I don’t have to tell you how ruthless these people are.”

“You don’t,” she said, “and I’m always careful.”

Riley didn’t look one hundred percent convinced.

Dean spoke up, “I’ll keep an eye on her, especially after last night.”

“What happened last night?” Riley said.

“Thanks, Dean,” Sonia muttered.

“I assumed you told him. I’m sorry.”

“I should have.” She said to Riley, “Charlie paid me a visit last night—”

“He sought you out?” Riley was outraged and tried to sit up.

She gently pushed him back down on the bed. “Relax, you’re not supposed to be up yet.”

“Did he do that to you?” Riley pointed to the small bandage on her cheek. “I swear, Sonia, that guy is a ticking time bomb. He should have been locked away after what happened in Costa Rica.”

“Riley,” she said quietly, “it’s okay. I had Dean get him a message that I needed to talk to him. We argued, he has a selective memory. But he shared some interesting information that we’re pursuing.”

“Are you sure he’s not sending you on a wild goose chase so he can go about whatever it is he’s planning without your interference?”

Sonia knew Riley was being overprotective, but she didn’t like her judgment put into question, especially in front of an FBI agent, even one she was getting along with. “I’m not blind.”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

She continued. “We’re closer than we’ve ever been—Dean has boatloads of intelligence and we’re comparing notes. Charlie knows more, but he’s working his own fool mission. However, he witnessed Xavier Jones’s murder.”

“What?”

“We haven’t found the body yet, but there’s evidence that Charlie is telling the truth. We’s keeping it quiet for now.”

“Who am I going to tell? So Jones is dead?”

“I think so.”

“Well,
damn
. What does that mean? A new leader in town? Turf wars?”

“I have no idea,” Sonia said, “but it’s somehow connected to our investigation into the shipment of young Chinese women. Jones knew his killer, voluntarily met with him and didn’t appear concerned until the moment he was shot. I’m thinking it’s a rival taking over, but we really don’t know.”

Her cell phone rang and she excused herself and left the room.

Dean smiled at Sonia’s brother. Riley Knight was a likeable guy. “I’m glad you’re okay. Sonia was really worried yesterday.”

“Thanks. Now what really happened with Charlie last night?”

“He broke into her house at three-thirty in the morning. Woke her up.” Dean didn’t want to worry Sonia’s brother needlessly. “You can see she’s no worse for wear.”

Riley wasn’t convinced. “He just walked in?”

“It won’t happen again, I assure you. I’m putting a couple of agents on her house. I haven’t told her yet, so …”

“I gotcha.” Riley relaxed and smiled. “You seem to know my sister pretty well.”

“Well enough to know she won’t like the idea of two FBI agents babysitting her.”

“Do you believe the story Cammarata fed Sonia? About a meeting that ended up with Jones dead?”

Dean had been skeptical, but so far Cammarata’s story held up. “I don’t know. So far the evidence confirms
everything he said, but they’re still searching for Jones’s body. No one on his staff has seen or spoken to him since yesterday evening.”

“Could be that Cammarata killed him, dumped the body, and ran to Sonia with the story of three suspects. He didn’t give a name?”

“No. Claims he didn’t recognize anyone at the meeting, but he was hiding.”

“Bastard. I can just see him pulling this off. Fashions himself a vigilante, but he’s nothing but a killer. Probably thinks he’s doing Sonia a favor by killing Jones.”

“Why?” Dean said. “He apparently wanted information from Jones.”

“Maybe he got it. Killed him. Made up this story to divert Sonia’s attention from him, so he can slip away.”

Dean hadn’t actually considered that Charlie Cammarata had killed Jones and the unknown victim, though his story of what he claimed happened certainly seemed incredible. The evidence should prove it one way or another.

Sonia walked back into the room. Her face was pale, her eyes in shock. “The Vegas are dead. They were tortured and murdered in their home early this morning.”

I’m too old to rough it in the wilderness
.

Charlie’s bones creaked and his muscles protested as he trekked out of his makeshift camp near the Pardee Reservoir outside of Mokelumne Hill, a small town with a population of less than a thousand. He’d hidden his car near Highway 49 and Electra Road, camouflaged it, hiked in to further separate himself from his vehicle in case anyone came looking for him. He watched for clues
that someone else was in these deep woods, using his tracking skills to avoid a predator instead of finding one. But when it appeared no one was following him, he had time to regroup and finish what he’d set out to do.

After leaving Sonia’s house early that morning he didn’t dare go back to his cabin on Jones’s property. Either the bad guys would kill him, or the good guys would arrest him. Neither option appealed to Charlie. So he opted to go camping. He’d certainly endured far worse conditions than one summer night in the wilderness.

He felt shitty about scaring Sonia last night, but he hoped she’d realize that he’d risked everything to give her the information about Saturday. She was smart, she’d figure it out. She had most of the information she needed; it was a matter of trusting her instincts and taking those leaps of faith he’d tried to teach her. But those leaps often coincided with breaking the rules and the law, and Sonia wouldn’t go that far.

And because she wouldn’t, she’d never be able to stop predators like Xavier Jones. It was a war. She had to start treating it like one.

Charlie wasn’t heartbroken over one predator taking out another. If he could find a way to get all of them to fight and kill each other off, ICE might finally be able to make some substantial inroads into the vast enterprise of human trafficking.

It pained him to think that Sonia thought so poorly of him. He wasn’t willing to sacrifice the girls from China, but he had to find Ashley Fox first. There was no reason he couldn’t do both. Rescuing Ashley was his job; he was focused on saving the one. He couldn’t afford to
think too hard about the many who died of AIDS and syphilis and beatings and suicide. He didn’t have to think about the mistakes he’d made and how he’d hurt people he cared about because of this drive to do anything to help the weak and innocent.

On one level, he realized that he had crossed the invisible line between right and wrong, but really, wasn’t that line arbitrary? Who decided which law to follow and which to abandon? They played fast and loose with the laws every day, it was just a matter of getting caught. This was war, and in war the rule of law could be suspended. People talked about the moral high ground, but the moral high ground meant a whole lot of nothing if you were dead.

Charlie stopped his brisk walk through the forest and leaned against a tree, a sharp pain in his chest making him want to cry out. It wasn’t his heart, it was the pain of being unable to stop it. What he’d seen in his lifetime was enough to break anyone. The mass graves in Central America. The brothels of women and young girls all over the world. The “tourist sex trade”—predominantly men who traveled from developed countries into third-world countries where child sex laws were lenient or nonexistent. The money they spent to indulge in their perversion … Charlie harbored no guilt in stopping them, even if he’d broken not only the law but the Ten Commandments. No one else was willing to do it, and frankly, Charlie wasn’t going to wait around for Satan to claim his own. He’d send the bastards down to the pit early, maybe saving one child in the process.

Head in hand, sitting in the dirt and pine needles, memories roared to life. The sight and stench of the dead, the dying, the desolation. There were so many, too
many, and still he moved forward, doing what he could. If he did less, he couldn’t live with himself. The law didn’t matter to him. He’d paid lip service to it as a young, idealistic recruit in the former INS. He’d been in ROTC, did his time in the Marines, came into the job with the idea that he would help people and feel good about it. The only son of a man from Costa Rica with a green card and a woman from California who’d met after World War II while working in a factory. Good people who raised him to help others. He’d been an altar boy, a football player in high school, believed in the American Dream.

The American Dream that predators used to lure those who had nothing into their deadly web.

The sheer mountain of corruption and hate, of slavery and despair, and Charlie was a small nothing compared to all the evil in the world.

He wasn’t sure exactly when he snapped, when he decided working within the law wasn’t helping. There had been crime scenes he would never be able to forget, that came to him not only when he slept, but when he was awake. The prostitutes with syphilis who were shot and buried in a mass grave—unmarked and unremembered. The young teenage boys kidnapped and forced to fight in wars they had no hand in creating, in countries not their own. How many of these child soldiers had Charlie buried? But the one pivotal moment, when he knew they’d lost the war, was in New Mexico on a scorching August afternoon.

The big rig had been left by the side of the road when it broke down on Highway 10. It was a refrigerated rig that had air holes drilled into each corner because the truck wasn’t being used to transport food. It held thirty-six
women, young and old, who had been left in the hot sun while the driver fled because he’d brought them into the country illegally to work in a sweatshop in Southern California. Charlie knew that because he’d tracked down the driver and extracted the information from him.

When the truck broke down, so did the cooling system. The compartment became an oven. Eighteen hours in a slow cooker. The coroner said they’d suffered for eight to twelve hours before dying. While alive they endured heat stroke, their core body temperatures quickly rose to over 110 degrees, at which point they suffered brain damage and hallucinations, and severe—fatal—dehydration.

The hot, moist environment sped up the rate of decomposition and insect activity. Their bodies were fully bloated with bacteria and gases, and the skin had begun to slough off.

The cop who opened the back of the truck and first witnessed the morbidity quit that day.

Charlie couldn’t stop them, and when he thought about the masses of people who were bought, sold, tortured, abused, and murdered each and every day, he couldn’t breathe. So many times he had wanted to kill himself, moments when the burden of memory stripped him of all sanity.