Chapter Two #3
She knew playing Devil’s Advocate was a smart way to get all the angles on a case, just like she knew leading with your emotions could give you tunnel vision, or worse yet, get good cops into bad trouble.
But the girls in the photos were bound and bruised, for fuck’s sake.
There was no telling what might’ve happened to them off camera, if they’d been hurt or made to do things.
Or worse. How was she supposed to take her emotions out of that?
“This looks like abuse at the very least. At worst, maybe forced prostitution or rape—God, Sam, are you looking at these pictures?” She swiped a photograph from the top of the pile on the desk in front of her, trying like hell to keep her anger in check so her hand wouldn’t shake.
“I am,” he said, a muscle pulling tight across his jawline. “And I’m trying to see them objectively, like all other potential evidence. Look at the background.”
Her stomach churned, but she forced her focus away from the girl in the photograph, taking in the black settee along with the dark red walls behind it. “What about it?”
“It’s not here, for one.” Sinclair gestured to the dingy, low-rent room around them with a quick lift of his hand. “These pictures look like they were taken someplace way more upscale. Like maybe a sex club.”
“Or an Internet porn set,” Isabella argued, but Sinclair just nodded.
“Neither of which are illegal all by themselves. As off-putting as these pictures may be to some, others participate in rough sex acts consensually,” he reminded her.
He had a point. Albeit a thin one. “What about her expression?” she challenged. “This girl looks about as far from enjoying herself as it gets.”
“Maybe,” Sinclair said, the muscle ticking in his jawline telling Isabella in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t unaffected by the photo. “But a large part of BDSM culture is role play. Acting. There are too many rape fantasy videos on some of these websites to even count.”
Gut clenching, Isabella took a different tack. “Yeah, but the girls in these photos barely look eighteen.”
“Barely eighteen and not eighteen are, unfortunately, two totally different scenarios. I’m not saying I agree with either,” he said, cutting off her brewing protest with a surprisingly soft tone.
“But you and I both know one of those things won’t make a case.
Without an ID on any of these women, we have no way of knowing whether what’s happening in these pictures is consensual kink or a sex crime. ”
Okay, so it was going to be an uphill climb. Still… “Age aside, if these girls are being forced to do anything against their will, that’s illegal no matter how old they are,” Isabella said.
Sinclair paused, his gaze going dark as it landed on the stack of photos, and finally—finally—he was ready to play the other side of the coin. “If someone’s moving girls, eighteen or not, that’ll fall under Peterson’s jurisdiction at the FBI.”
Isabella’s stomach clenched. Derek Peterson was in charge of their local FBI task force unit, and while he was a good agent and a decent enough guy, to say his team was overextended was a gift. “You think he’ll open an investigation?”
“Based on just the photos?” A frown bracketed Sinclair’s mouth. “Not likely.”
Oh, come on. “Sam—”
He stopped her words with a lift of one hand. “Listen, Moreno. If someone’s trafficking or hurting these women, I want to grab whoever’s responsible just as badly as you do.”
Isabella knotted her arms over the front of her shirt, and although she was tempted as hell to refresh her argument, she knew Sinclair wasn’t the bad guy here.
At her silence, he continued. “RFD’s got this place on lockdown, so no one’s coming or going. Our best bet is to bag what we have, do our due diligence on making a case, and run all the facts up the chain of command to the FBI field office. If there’s something here, we’ll do our best to find it.”
Dammit, she didn’t like this plan. But she didn’t hate it yet, either.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this one,” Isabella said, looking down at the stack of photos Sinclair had placed on the desk.
The cop in her saw all the variables, heard everything her sergeant had said about the possibility for consensual encounters.
But the part of her beneath her armor saw something very, very different. Something Isabella knew by heart and would never forget.
Something she could not, under any circumstances, let her boss or her fellow detectives or anyone else ever see, so she scraped for a breath and took a step back, focusing on the job in front of her like always.
“Someone’s hurting these girls. Or worse. It’s our job to help them,” Isabella said.
Sinclair scrubbed a hand over the light blond stubble peppering his face. “If that’s the case, we’ll do all we can to make that happen. But everything Peterson comes at us with will need a solid argument if we want him to open an official investigation.”
Isabella straightened, tucking her shoulders in toward her spine. No way would she leave these girls without someone to stand up for them. Without someone to keep them safe.
Without someone to keep them alive.
“Okay,” she said. “Then let’s give him one.”
Isabella pushed away from her desk, her back creaking as badly as her ancient office chair.
The convenience store robbery Hale, Maxwell, and Hollister had caught three days ago had turned out to be a slam dunk thanks to a smart store owner with a lot of security cameras and a stupid thief whose license plate they’d easily lifted from the footage, so she’d thrown the last seventy-two hours’ worth of her energy into working alone, making a case for her case.
Hell if she hadn’t had to throw down for what little she’d been able to scrape up, too.
Facial recognition on the girls in the photos had been the bust she’d expected it to be, although of course she’d tried.
The rental agency for the house confirmed that the place had been vacant for nearly half a year, and the former tenant was an eighty-year-old woman who’d had no known relatives and a squeaky clean record when she’d passed away five months ago.
Still.
Isabella might be lean on hard evidence from the scene of this fire, but her gut absolutely screamed of things not right.
If Peterson sank his hooks into the case, maybe took a harder look at the crime scene, had CSU scour the room in the basement for something they could’ve missed, she was positive he’d uncover something illegal.
And whoever was responsible for hurting those girls needed to go down.
“Moreno.” Sinclair stood in the doorframe of his office, tipping his head to the room behind him. “You got a second?”
Her gaze spun over the open space of the Intelligence office, briefly connecting with Hollister’s before she planted her boots onto the linoleum and scooped in a deep breath. “Sure.”
“Have a seat,” he said, closing the door when she’d crossed the threshold, and shit. Shit. Getting asked into Sinclair’s office was a fifty-fifty on bad things about to happen, and the odds increased to seventy-thirty when he shut the door. When he told you to sit down on top of it all?
One hundred percent chance you were about to get news you didn’t want to hear.
“I just heard back from the FBI on the photos RFD found at that fire call,” he said, sliding into the chair across from her. “They’ve decided not to pursue the photos found at the house fire.”
Isabella’s heartbeat slammed in her ears. “What?”
“You put together a compelling report, and Peterson gave everything a hard look,” Sinclair said, propping his elbows over his desk and steepling his fingers as he gave her a sympathetic look.
“But with all this gray area and no clear-cut evidence of an actual crime, he doesn’t have a damn thing to go on. ”
There was no fucking way she was hearing this properly. “That’s what an investigation is for,” she said, trying—and failing—to keep her words level despite the anger free-flowing through her veins.
Sinclair sat perfectly still, save the barely-there lift of one brow.
“An investigation into what, exactly? This case is already cold and it hasn’t even been opened.
Look”—his voice softened in both volume and tone, and God, she officially hated this as much as possible.
“I know this is personal for you, and it’s tough to let this one go.
But, for now, it’s what we’re stuck with. ”
Translation: Until one of the girls in those photos becomes a body.
Not on her watch. Not ever.
Isabella set her molars together with a firm clack. If more evidence was what the FBI wanted, then she wasn’t going to stop until she damn well had some.