Chapter 2
Sucking in a mouthful of humid air, Graham forced himself to swallow and pushed down the anxiety churning up his throat.
Telling a mother a suspected sex-trafficker took her child never got easier.
He loved his job at the bureau, but not this part…
never this part. He’d much rather be back in Mexico chasing down suspects.
But that wasn’t an option right now. Especially since Sanchez had figured out who he was and hightailed it onto that stupid plane back to Chicago.
Graham might have gotten the information he needed from Sanchez once he’d thrown him in a cell, but it hadn’t been in time to stop Pete Bogart from taking one more girl.
And a plane full of innocent people almost died because of his screw-up.
He turned toward his partner and nodded. Eric pressed the button for the intercom on the side of the apartment building and Graham waited for the moment he would bring a nightmare to a stranger’s doorstep. Becca Stanley’s family had no idea the hell they were in for.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Stanley?” Eric’s voice boomed from his large form, but a hint of compassion softened his delivery.
“Yes?”
“My partner and I are here to speak with you about your daughter’s disappearance. We’re with the FBI. Can we come up?”
No more words crackled through the speaker, but a soft buzz vibrated against the metal lock on the door.
Graham opened the door and they hustled up three flights of stairs to the apartment Becca lived in with her mother.
Images of young Becca Stanley flashed through his mind.
Her curly blond hair and crystal blue eyes made her appear more like an angel than a child.
Her cherub cheeks and heart-shaped mouth were the picture of innocence.
He fisted his hands as a desire to beat the man who took her to a fucking pulp surged through him.
He’d failed Becca, and all of the other girls Pete Bogart had taken.
He hadn’t gotten the information he’d needed from Sanchez until it was much too late.
Too late to keep Pete from taking more girls, but not too late to save their lives.
He’d only gotten the name of the man responsible for planting a sex ring in Chicago from Sanchez the day before and hadn’t had much time to get more information on the bastard.
But now he had a name, and with the help of Suzi Stanley, he’d bust the sonofabitch if it was the last thing he did.
“You want to ask the questions?” Eric asked outside the closed apartment door.
Graham nodded and readjusted the file clenched in his fist.
Eric gave one curt nod and knocked on the door.
A woman with eyes the same color as Becca’s opened the door.
Dark circles hung low under those blue eyes and tears streaked down her cheeks.
She leaned against the side of the door and gazed at them with a far-off stare that suggested she’d taken something to dim her pain.
“Hi, Ms. Stanley. I’m Special Agent Graham Grassi and this is my partner, Special Agent Eric Short. We need to ask you some questions about Becca.”
“Of course. Come in.” She stumbled backward and Graham reached out to steady her.
Ms. Stanley placed a hand over her heart and closed her eyes for a beat.
For a second, Graham feared she wouldn’t open them back up.
Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes and said, “I’m sorry.
I can’t… It’s just…” Sobs interrupted her words and Graham led her to the sofa in the living room.
“This is a difficult situation and we’re very sorry about what’s happening.
But if we’re going to find Becca, we need you to answer some questions about the man Becca was with this morning.
” Graham sat down beside her and took a pen from the pocket of his jacket.
He scribbled notes down on the notepad he had sandwiched in his file.
Ms. Stanley clasped her hands together on her lap and tried to regain her composure. “I’ve told the police everything I know.”
“And they’re doing everything they can to find Pete Bogart right now.
An Amber Alert has been issued for Becca, and Pete’s picture is being flashed across the state in hopes of gaining more information.
But we’ve been investigating Mr. Bogart for a while and we need you to tell us how you and Becca met him. ”
“I don’t understand,” she said with a shake of her head. “You’ve been investigating him? You knew he was a bad man and let him hang around with young girls?”
“Why was he spending time with Becca this morning, Ms. Stanley?” Eric cut in.
Graham shot him a what-the-hell-are-you-doing look, but kept his mouth shut. He wondered the same thing but would have asked in a subtler way.
“Pete dated my best friend, Mickey O’Shay.
Becca spends a lot of time with Mickey. Mickey’s her godmother.
” Her gaze flitted between him and Eric and wrung her hands.
She sniffled back a sob and pressed on. “Mickey canceled their weekly get-together last minute and Becca was upset. It seemed perfect when Pete texted this morning wanting to see her. I figured an hour out of the house would take her mind off missing Mickey.”
“Pete dated Mickey, as in they aren’t dating anymore?”
“She broke things off a couple of weeks ago. Something about their schedules being too busy.”
Eric took a step forward and angled his chin in her direction. “You didn’t think it was odd that Pete would want to spend time with Becca after your friend broke up with him?”
A gasp escaped Ms. Stanley’s parted lips and she clamped a shaky hand over her mouth.
Graham cleared his throat and shot Eric another warning look. The dude needed a little more tact today. Ignoring Eric’s question, Graham cut into the tense silence with one of his own. “Did you or Becca ever visit Pete’s house?”
She shook her head. “No. He and Mickey would pick her up.”
“So you don’t know where he lives?”
Again, she shook her head and the messy waves stuck to her moist cheeks.
Graham pulled pictures from his file of Pete with other missing girls in the city. “Do you know any of these girls?”
Ms. Stanley took the pictures and flipped through them. She lifted her head and fear invaded the blue of her eyes, turning them dark as night. “They look familiar, but I don’t know them. Maybe I’ve seen them at the market or the park? Why did he take these girls?”
Graham glanced at Eric before he faced her. Time to tell the truth about the monster who’d taken Becca. “Pete Bogart is suspected of being involved in running a sex-trafficking ring.”
The pictures in her hand fell to the ground and Ms. Stanley covered her mouth with shaking fingers. “Oh my God. Not my Becca.” The sobs she beat back before came back with a vengeance. She cradled her stomach and fell against the side of the sofa.
Graham glanced up at his partner. One of them needed to stay and get more information from Becca’s mom.
One of them needed to go find Mickey O’Shay.
Since he had already looked up Ms. O’Shay’s information, he’d be the one paying a visit to the bombshell who he’d been shocked to discover was the flight attendant who’d zipped around a plunging airplane last night and helped him take down the hijacker.
Could she have been working with Pete all along?
Graham rubbed fatigue from his eyes as he sat on Mickey O’Shay’s front stoop. He hadn’t slept last night.
He couldn’t believe his bad luck. It couldn’t be a coincidence Mickey was working on the plane the night Sanchez had boarded and was connected to Pete Bogart.
Especially since the man he’d followed onto the plane, and later taken into custody, was involved in the same sex-trafficking ring he suspected had taken Becca Stanley.
He still couldn’t believe the jackass had attempted to hijack a plane instead of going into custody.
But now he couldn’t help but wonder if Mickey’s actions were too planned out, as if she expected something to go wrong on the plane.
Sanchez had sung like a canary and told them a lot about their operation.
His vile excuse of a job was to take the new girls to Mexico to train them, and then transport them back to Chicago.
The only person he worked with directly was Pete, but there were others.
Sanchez had spoken to a woman in Chicago who was in charge of keeping an eye on the girls and breaking them down emotionally. Could that woman be Mickey?
Graham needed to get a grip. She should be home any minute now and he had to get a better handle of who she was and what she knew. The lives of three young girls depended on it.
The hot August sun beat down on him, causing rivers of sweat to pour down his back.
Summers in Chicago were brutal and the linen jacket he wore to cover his firearm didn’t help.
Not even a slight breeze stirred the stilted air to cool him.
He rested his forearms on his knees, his hands clasped together, as he watched people hustle along the busy street.
Cars honked their horns as they crawled past and radios blared from open windows.
Dumb-asses should have their air blasting.
Graham glanced at his watch. Ten minutes had passed since he buzzed the doorbell and no one had answered.
He didn’t have time to wait all day. He had shit to do.
Rising to his feet, he grabbed the file folder sitting beside him and walked down the three steps to the cracked sidewalk.
He rounded the corner, his grip lingering on the metal rail at the bottom of the stoop, and stopped in his tracks.