Sinclair Justice (11 page)

Yancy’s fallback with him was the same one that had saved her from many a beating or being auctioned off to the highest bidder: guarded honesty. “I’m sorry, but you know how worried I am about her . . . Do you think maybe we could cut back on her meds?”

His smile became rueful. He shrugged elegant shoulders. “My son insists, and she is his. . . .” He trailed off.

Yancy said bitterly, before she could stop herself,
“Puta.”

His smile dropped away clean, as if she’d sliced it off his face. “I’ve been too lenient with you,
mujer.
You want to see how a
puta
is really treated?” Grabbing her by the hair, he pulled her into the living room and slammed the door. He ripped her dress down to her waist and shoved her scant bra up to suckle harshly at her nipples, bumping his erection into her as he shoved her back on the couch. He fumbled at his pants.

Usually, she suffered his attentions with feigned enjoyment, but this time worry for Jennifer and fear that her delicate dance was about to come to a violent end combined to make her temper flare. Teeth bared, she leaped back up as he unzipped and kicked him in the shin with her stiletto. She would have preferred hitting him higher, but even in her anger she knew better than that.

His high cheekbones flushed with either rage or lust—she didn’t know or care—and he caught her foot in his hand and used it for leverage, shoving her off balance over the plush arm of the couch. He tilted her hips up, moved her scrap of underwear aside, and took her there, more brutally than she could remember, calling her
puta
all the while. And to her horror, she heard him chuckling as he did so, and realized her defiance had only inflamed him.

She hated him then, as never before. She tried to shove him off, but he was far larger and stronger, harder than he had been in some time, and finally she subsided.

But this time she made no pretense of response.

This time, with every brutal stroke, she counted the ways she would kill him when she had Jennifer safe.

E
mm was still asleep the next morning when her cell phone rang. Yawning, snapping awake from yet another bad dream, she grabbed it. “Hello . . .” She cleared her husky voice and tried again. “Hello.”

A brief silence on the other end was broken by the rich male chuckle she recognized. “I always knew you were a dilettante.” Ross waited. As usual, he was goading her.

She bolted upright. “What do you want?”

“Cranky before we have our coffee, are we?”

How did he know that? She looked at the clock beside the bed and was shocked when she saw it was almost eleven. “I didn’t realize it was so late. I couldn’t fall asleep last night.”

“I can call back later.” Now he sounded genuinely contrite.

She put her feet on the floor. “No, I need to get up anyway and finish some docs for my boss. What can I do for you?”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday and I’ve decided to take the day off. I was . . . wondering if you’d like to go with me to meet a couple of my friends. I think you’d like Jasmine . . .” He sounded almost hesitant, unusual for the arrogant Ranger captain.

She was touched and wary at the same time, but she was so eager to see him again that she agreed before she realized it, “Sure. When and where?”

“I’ll pick you up at eleven in the morning. My friends, the Fosters, have a ranch outside town and they’ve invited me—that is, us—for lunch. They have a new baby boy I thought you might enjoy meeting. See you soon.” He hung up.

Emm slid the bar across her phone, disconnecting the call. She stared into her sleep-puffy face in the mirror, her heartbeat accelerating at the knowledge she’d soon be seeing him again, and this time in an entirely social setting. What happened to his maxim, “Just business?”

Idiot, why didn’t you tell him no?
And why the heck was he even asking her to such an intimate luncheon with what were obviously some of his best friends?

 

That entire day crawled for Ross, but in between administrative tasks such as disciplining one of his men, assigning two others to new cases, and adding new DEA-sourced evidence to the human trafficking case file, he couldn’t stop thinking about Emm. He’d invited her to join him for lunch on impulse, partly because he knew Jasmine and Chad would finagle a meeting if he didn’t, but also partly for a far more basic reason: He had to see how she was around little Trey.

Despite what he’d told Jasmine, Ross badly wanted kids. His father was still sharp as a tack well into his seventies, but Ross knew he needed to start a family soon if he wanted one at all. And he still did...

Most women were instinctively nurturing, but Elaine had been sadly lacking in that area, even going so far as to inform him she wasn’t sure she wanted kids. That had accelerated the knock-down, drag-out fight that led to their breakup, but as devastating as it had been at the time, now he was glad he’d not been caught in a doomed relationship; plus his unhappiness had partly led to his first trip to Texas.

Now, over twenty years later, another pampered rich girl had quite literally roared into his life in a 100k sports car driving 125 miles an hour. Since she’d revealed her sensual side in her hotel room, he’d started wondering—could she be the only woman since Elaine he could contemplate spending his life with? The thought scared him, but something drove him to find out anyway. She came from an even richer, more influential family, but her sincere concern for her niece indicated she must have a close relationship to the girl. Yet bearing and raising an infant and being an aunt to a teenager were two different things, so he’d decided to go through with this little test.

She’d be livid if she found out why he’d invited her, but he certainly wouldn’t tell her. He only hoped Jasmine didn’t figure it out and let it slip. . . .

He was packing up his desk a number of hours later when his assistant buzzed and told him Abigail Doyle had arrived and asked for a brief meeting.

“Send her in.” He rose and offered a warm hand as she entered. As usual, she was dressed conservatively, this time in a brown pant suit with a white blouse. Her thick brown hair was pulled back from her severe face, but he wondered if she realized the hairstyle only emphasized her penetrating gray eyes and aquiline nose.

After they shook, she moved forward to the edge of her chair, hovering there, and his curiosity increased. Hesitation was unlike her, but whatever she had to say obviously wasn’t easy for her. He smiled slightly as encouragement. “I’ve been getting your updates in my secure in-box. I can see you’re being very systematic and thorough, but if there’s a smoking gun to lead us to the end of the pipeline, I haven’t seen it.”

“That’s why I asked for this meeting.” Abby took a deep breath. “There is no way to sugarcoat this, and I didn’t want to put it in an e-mail. How long have you known Curt Tupperman?”

What an odd way to open the conversation, but he played along. “Over ten years. With his national connections as an investigative reporter on various dailies, he’s one of our best sources when we need to leak news, though he can be a bit overzealous at times. . . .” He trailed off as the implication of her question hit home. “Are you telling me you think he’s somehow involved in the cartel’s human trafficking?”

She nodded. “He lives a very rich lifestyle for a reporter. Ms. Rothschild actually is the one who flagged him and asked me to investigate.”

“I thought they were friends. That they’d even dated.”

“Apparently, he dated her older sister Yancy for over a year, and their breakup was . . . difficult.”

Ross’s mouth dropped open. “Are you telling me you think he was instrumental in Yancy being kidnapped?”

She pulled a red file from her capacious bag and shoved it across the desk. It was stamped “Private and Confidential.” “I had to call a federal judge I know to subpoena his bank account and phone records because they cross international lines. I didn’t scan this. You’re holding the only copy. I found no calls to Mexico—he’s far too smart for that—but there are very large sums being transferred to his US account from one in Belize about every two months. All the records are here. I want another set of eyes on this before I dig deeper, as I understand he’s very well connected, and this could cause problems for your office if we move forward without substantial proof.”

Ross was still struggling with disbelief, but he pulled the folder forward and reviewed the bank account record. He saw that as much as one hundred thousand dollars was indeed being deposited into Curt’s San Antonio bank about every two months. Unless Curt had won the lottery and didn’t tell anyone, Ross had no idea where he’d be getting those kinds of funds. Book royalties, which were supposedly quite substantial on his latest expose of the finance industry, would come from New York City, not Belize. “And we can’t access the Belize account?”

She shook her head. “Despite an IRS crackdown on offshore accounts, some banks still evade reporting and keep most of their digital transfers interbank. Even the original deposit slip shows only a transfer by wire paid from ‘cash,’ with no depositor listed. But look at his phone record on the day before Yancy disappeared.” She flipped through the pages and showed him a highlighted telephone log of an outgoing call made from Curt’s phone to what Ross knew was Yancy’s cell phone number. They’d spoken—he counted—three times on the day before she disappeared.

Grimly, he stuck the phone log back and snapped the file shut, putting it in his own secure file drawer and locking it while he contemplated this new evidence. It was hard to believe Curt could be involved in anything so disgusting, but Ross had seen far too many otherwise upstanding citizens fall prey to greed to discount the evidence as coincidence. Like most law enforcement professionals, Texas Rangers didn’t believe in coincidence, anyway. “How far back did you go in your search?”

“The prior twelve months. Six deposits from Belize, totaling over a half million.”

“I authorize you to go back thirty-six months, because that’s about when we think this particular conduit started operating from Baltimore. I’ll call the judge and make the request myself for the rest of the records. If we can find when the deposits started, maybe we’ll be closer to the head of the snake. Did you access his credit card bills?”

“No, I wanted to start with banking and phone records, but it’s a good idea. Please include that in your request of the judge.” She smiled ruefully. “I try to keep a low profile, but females high in law enforcement seem to be particularly rare in West Texas. Much less forensic experts with decidedly marked British accents.”

“Shucks, ma’am, why do you think I worked on losing my Eastern nasal twang?”

They both laughed at that. But Abby’s smile faded soon enough. “This is not my place, but I’m worried about Emm Rothschild.”

Ross’s smile was wiped clean, too. “How so?”

“She’s the one who made the connection with Curt Tupperman, and if we don’t give her, ah, something productive to do in the investigation, I fear she may take matters into her own hands. With both the chain of evidence and her own safety at risk.”

“What the hell do you expect me to do about that? Arrest her?” He was irritated that she’d picked up on his own very strong and very reluctant attraction to Emm. Was he really so transparent?

Abby’s rueful smile returned. “By all accounts, you already tried that.” When Ross wouldn’t meet her eyes, she only added mildly, “I’d suggest you find another way to keep her occupied.”

“We’re having the survey of the Sinclair family buildings in a couple of days, and that should keep her busy for a week or so. After that . . . she may be going back East.” Ross couldn’t disguise his own desolation at that thought, at least not from those uncommonly perceptive gray eyes.

But Abby only nodded and stood, allowing him his privacy. “I’ll be off, then.”

“And the hemophilia drug? Have you had any luck tracking that?”

“I have several sources in Mexico searching for me but nothing conclusive as yet. You do realize all the women in this particular pipeline may have been funneled overseas by now . . .”

Ross sighed heavily. “Of course. The alliances between the cartels and other crime syndicates worldwide are always in flux, but the latest intel suggests the Los Lobos cartel is working closely with Italian Mafia and Chechen rebels. There’s even some talk they may be putting out feelers to ISIS. Any woman who disappears into that network is unlikely ever to be seen again, especially as human trafficking violations aren’t high on the list of priority cases with the intelligence agencies overseas. But they’re making millions every day, and anywhere there’s money like that, Los Lobos will be attracted.”

Abby looked revolted. “Surely even Mr. Tupperman wouldn’t do business with ISIS?”

“Unlikely he’d even know. Arturo Cervantes is by all accounts extremely tight-fisted both with his money and his authority. We think only he and his son, Tomás, know all the particulars of everyone they conspire with, which is one reason why they’ve been so hard to track.”

Abby nodded, understanding completely. “I’ll be back in a few days, after I’ve had time to examine the new evidence.”

Ross nodded and walked her the short distance to his door. “I’ll find a way to keep Emm occupied.” His smile suddenly grew sensual. “Who knows, it could be fun.”

 

Outside, Abigail Doyle carried the recollection of his sensual smile with her to her car. She’d immediately seen the strong attraction between the two Easterners and thought it would be a shame if Emm returned to Baltimore without admitting her own feelings. For a second, as she drove back to her lonely hotel room, she toyed with the idea of playing matchmaker, but she dismissed the notion equally quickly. She’d done that once before and ended up not only losing a friendship she cherished but spoiling the nascent relationship she’d been forging with the only man she’d ever met who appealed to her on every level.

She unlocked her hotel room door and looked around at the neat, tidy little room that was such a perfect metaphor for her neat, tidy little life. Disarray upset her, and even when she traveled, she unpacked immediately, folding her clothes neatly into bureau drawers and hanging her suits with colors complementing the appropriate adjacent blouse, the sensible shoes matching each outfit centered exactly beneath on the closet floor.

For a moment, she lay back on the neatly made bed and closed her eyes, but seeing Sinclair’s Cheshire cat grin had hit her like a gut punch. She couldn’t squelch a dart of envy. Emm had no idea what she’d started; Abby had picked up immediately on the fact that her new friend was more of an egghead than a socialite. No doubt she’d had a number of boyfriends, but she would have few defenses against a man of the world, and a Ranger captain to boot, like Ross Sinclair. Abby had a feeling Emm’s life in Baltimore was about to take a big detour west.

Abby had moved to Texas from even farther away, and had few regrets despite the curiosity and sometimes outright prejudice she faced as an outsider. Even in England, her parents had been from Cornwall, the most southerly county in England and the most fiercely independent. When they passed about a year ago, she had been coming off a bad breakup with an Oxford don she’d met at a social event in London. He was the heir to a lower earldom but had long since lost his country house to taxes and the rising cost of upkeep. All that remained of his family’s wealth was a London townhome that needed a good polish, and his prickly pride, which made him extremely difficult to please. Had he not been absolutely brilliant, with a dozen best-selling tomes of British history under his belt, he’d have been let go from Oxford, too. He’d been twice divorced when she met him, and he’d had to court her to get a first date. Only when she quit MI6 to care for her parents in their last months had she really accepted his attentions.

Mentally, he was one of the only men she’d ever met with whom she was compatible, though even his analytical ability paled compared to hers. Physically, they were more than compatible; his creativity extended between the sheets. Even thinking about some of their role playing heated her in body parts she seldom thought about anymore. But emotionally? When she quit laughing at his sophisticated jokes and tried to open up a bit with the man she’d grown to love, he turned back to his books and froze her out. Even when her parents both passed within a week of each other, he didn’t come to the funerals. He was off to a new conquest, and only then, too late, had she realized he was a serial womanizer who got his self-worth as a man from the women he wooed and deserted.