Chapter 13
Ace
Despite knowing how this works from years and years of experience, I can't help but think that I'm wasting my time just sitting here watching this damn live feed of Daydreamer's Spa. Maybe Cora Preston got in my head, and I hate even considering that.
There have been many times in my career when I've felt invalidated, as if the effort I put toward a case is nothing but a waste of time because the information rolling in is pointless or too slow. This case is no different.
I know how it works. We follow the clients from one place to the next, but there's always the chance that the men wait days or even weeks before they go somewhere else that we'd consider deviant, which may lead to the disappearance of a lost girl.
Feeling this way doesn't stop me from researching every car and person that passes across the video feed. They'll lead us somewhere at some point. These types of investigations always take us to another location, but there's always the chance that it won't have anything to do with Sadie Preston.
Things like this is the entire reason I reached out to Kincaid to start up this new program, working cases here in the United States. There are so many stateside facilities that are hurting people. A lot of these women aren't trafficked outside of the US until they consider them used up and too damaged to earn as much money as they did in the beginning. People seen as a commodity rather than humans make me sick to my stomach.
Despite most being held here until they're no longer useful, women like Sadie, the ones with a name and people behind them who care where they went are nothing but trouble. There are two possible scenarios, not including the one where Sadie went to a flop house, overdosed, and is in a shallow grave in some crackhead's backyard.
One possible chance is that she was abducted by someone who knows who she is and moved her out of the US quickly. The other is that someone grabbed her without the resources to know who she is and how much trouble she could be to them. We hope for the latter, of course, because that would mean there's a chance she's closer.
Either way is awful, and I'm not discounting that, but the closer she is, the more likely it'll be that we find her. But only if the trail of these men leads us in that direction.
I pull out my phone and call Kincaid. I told him I'd keep him up to date on the case, but two calls in less than twenty-four hours feel excessive even to me.
I forgot how lonely this kind of work was. Before, as a supervisor, I could make the rounds and check in with my agents. I'm all alone on this one, and I need a distraction. My mind keeps drifting back to trying to understand why a woman would pack a silk fucking robe to go look for her sister.
Or is it possible Cora Preston is just that uppity that she wants nothing but the softest of fabric touching her body? I look down at my hand, the roughness on my palm and the web of scars from so many missions and jobs that mark the back.
"She's trouble, isn't she?" Kincaid says when the call connects.
"Of course, she is. Wouldn't be a real case without at least someone thinking they can do a better job than what we're doing," I mutter. "They put three trackers in her personal belongings. I don't doubt they tagged her car as well."
"Think we're missing something about the family?"
I pull in a deep breath. This is something I've considered as well.
"Maybe they want to know what they know. Could be a hint that they had something to do with Sadie's disappearance."
"Could also be because the oldest brother is on a very fast track in politics with his eyes on the White House," Kincaid says, always playing the devil's advocate.
"And they want to expose the skeletons in their closet to prevent that from happening?"
"Or have the ability to control him while he's in office with those secrets," Kincaid counters. "Either way, it is odd that they marked her at least three times. Other than the tracker on your car, they didn't do anything else to your stuff."
"I went to her hotel. Swanky as hell. Makes me feel less bad about spending her money to gain access to the spa."
"I didn't know you ever felt guilt," he says with a chuckle, and I can't take offense to it.
Kincaid knew me as a wild twenty-something man who never looked back in life. I was always going forward, unconcerned about the trouble I left in my wake. The cases I've worked these last three decades have sobered me some, made me consider the different directions my life could've gone.
"She's not impressed with the speed of the case," I say, not breathing any life into his accusation.
"They never are. We're running Jane Doe scans across the entire US, but we haven't found anything yet."
"Are we thinking that's the way it's going to go?"
"I think there's a greater possibility of it than her being trafficked," he says, his tone shallow and flat.
I know he has seen as much death and destruction as I have, maybe even more so because his leadership role in Cerberus was always more hands-on than the one I have with the Agency. It never gets easier, and he's the type of man who won't let this sort of thing harden him, won't let it make him grow cold and unconcerned for the outcome. It's what makes him such a great man, what makes his teams so amazing. He won't allow it for the men and women working under him either. Cerberus is full of compassionate people, and although I've done really good work with the Agency, I've felt the loss of that brotherhood more often than not in the years since I left.
"Murdered?" I hedge.
"Or an OD that the brother is trying to cover up," Kincaid says. "Either way, stay on the spa until we know otherwise."
"Will do," I tell him, ending the call.
The reminder of Cerberus and all that they do hits me in the gut, just like it always has.
It feels selfish to wish I'd made a different choice all those years ago. Although Noah made his own decisions, he followed me from Cerberus. He wanted the same thing we all did, and that was a safer America. We had stars in our eyes and we were riding the high that working for an organization like Cerberus provided. We were going to save the world, and we held our own for years and years.
That was until Noah was sent to Mexico as an undercover. I was left behind here in the States as his handler. Although that day was over thirteen years ago, it seems like yesterday that I pulled him to my chest, clapped him on the back, and made him swear he'd stay safe. It was the last time I ever saw him in person. Had I known what the outcome of that job would be, I would've hog-tied him and kept him from going. Knowing Noah, he wouldn't have changed a thing. He was that dedicated to his work.
Working a mission with a team and going into a compound with your brothers at your back didn't compare to what he was sent to do .
We both knew how fucking dangerous Alejandro Cortez was. We had proof in the line of bodies he left behind in his abandoned compounds as he moved around Mexico at just how quickly he would turn on those who worked for him.
We knew the dangers and chose to infiltrate anyway. The goal was to get as much information as we could in six months. We just needed to discover how his pipeline from Mexico to the US worked. Shutting that down stopped an excessive amount of drugs, gun, and sex trafficking. Cortez dipped his toes in anything and everything that made money for the cartel, and he didn't care whose toes he stepped on to put another dollar in his pocket.
Noah worked the daughter angle. I remember joking with him about how big of an ask it was to spend time with the gorgeous drug princess, but then the calls became fewer. He was close but couldn't get close enough. Cortez was paranoid and didn't trust easily. Six months turned into a year, with Noah vowing he was only a month away from being in the inner circle. He just knew he could get there.
Noah wasn't even the one to tell me about his marriage to Cortez's daughter, but I had access to the photos. He didn't look like a man undercover. He looked like a man in love. I knew better. I knew he was in deep, but at the heart of it, he was still ICE, and he was still on our side, no matter how it looked to everyone else.
It didn't stop the whispers that ran rampant through ICE. It didn't stop the meetings I was called into so I could discuss my rogue agent.
A year turned into three, with infrequent calls, but he fed us information. We were able to get the drop on several houses in the US that were processing the goods they were trafficking, but he was never capable of giving us the direct pipeline.
As time crawled by, the less convinced I was about his loyalties, but in the end, it was his wife who betrayed him when she discovered his burner phone. Instead of taking it to her husband for answers, she bypassed him and went to her father. She was confident in her loyalty to her family but quickly discovered her paranoid father had lost all confidence in her.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. Now is not the time to take a fucking trip down memory lane. It's marked with regret and the most painful loss I've ever felt in my life.
Trying to shove the thoughts away doesn't work. I'm locked into the memories until they play out. I've been down this road a million times, and I know every what-if and what-could-I-have-done will play out before I'm capable of escaping the memories.
The tape was sent to us with his bloody wedding ring. although I knew what I was going to find, I had no fucking clue just how bad it was going to be until I played it.
We'd heard rumors that Cortez had grown increasingly paranoid because although he'd killed some low-level dealers in the past for sampling his drugs, he himself formed an addiction to the cocaine he was sending out of Mexico, making him even more distrustful than before.
The tape never showed him, but voice analysis determined it was him in the background, issuing commands to his men.
They killed Noah's wife first. There was no emotion in the cartel leader's voice when he issued the death warrant for his only daughter. Next was Alexander. The two-year-old having his grandfather's name meant nothing to the man. The baby, Carlito, was only ten months old and had no fucking clue what was happening to him.
Noah sobbed and begged, wanting to trade his life for theirs, to no avail. I knew my best friend of over twenty years was going to die the second Cortez was willing to kill his own daughter and grandsons.
"Their blood is the blood of a traitor," Cortez told him when he was on his knees, begging for death .
They didn't kill him right away, of course. That would be too noble of a death. It was slow, the pain they caused him.
I don't know how many times I reached out to turn the tape off, finding that I couldn't. If he had to suffer that shit because of me, then I had to suffer with him. I couldn't leave him alone in his last moments, despite knowing he'd been gone for days before we received the tape.
I clear my throat but it doesn't dislodge the clog of emotions. It's been ten years, but the images in my head are just as vivid as they were the day I got the recording.
Love got him in that kind of trouble. Why volunteer to die in the face of such betrayal? I can understand dying for his kids, that's reasonable, even if I'm not a father, but willingness to die for a woman who betrayed you and set all of that shit into motion? That's the fucking definition of insanity as far as I'm concerned.
Love gets you killed. It's a useless emotion that makes people do the stupidest, most dangerous shit, and there's no place for it in our line of work.
I vowed vengeance on Cortez. I put every effort I could into taking him down. There were times I nearly lost my job because of my obsession, but the man had a heart attack and fucking died before I could wrap my hands around his throat and watch the life drain from his eyes.
What eats away at me now is the fact that although I tried to find ways to take Cortez down, I did nothing to stop the Agency from putting a stain on my friend's record.
Noah Upton died a traitor to his country. The Agency wanted it to seem like they killed him, so the other agents they had working on various cases in Mexico wouldn't be discovered. It made sense back then, but with Cortez's death, that branch of the cartel sort of imploded. Alejandro left behind no family. He killed his only heirs, and all that was left was a gaggle of selfish men fighting over their piece of the pie. With no real leadership, the organization was fractured, which caused more problems than it eliminated as far as smuggling and sex trafficking were concerned.
Noah lost his life, and we lost our hold in Mexico.
I've spent every day since living in regret and doubting every move I make.
But I know one thing for certain and that's getting involved with anyone on anything more than surface level is only asking for trouble, and I want no fucking part of it.