Chapter 2
Evie
The morning after
“You can let me off here.”
It’s not exactly the address I entered into the Uber app, but if I have any hope of staving off the persistent headache and the low-grade fuzziness that’s plagued me since last night’s crash, I need coffee and a buttery bagel—stat.
Sharp, bracing cold air hits my sore skin as I exit the car. As I tap the app to tip my driver, a mud-splattered Toyota 4Runner rolls to a stop a few feet back, idling.
I squint for a better look at the driver. Just hoping, for one ridiculous second, that I’ll recognize the man behind the wheel. That it’ll be a face I haven’t let myself think about in years, not really, not on purpose.
No one I know in DC drives a mud-covered SUV—especially one outfitted with roof racks and a bike mount like it’s just come off a trail instead of out of morning traffic. The Uber pulls away. The SUV follows.
As one would expect. I’m seeing familiarity where none exists. I step into line.
Achy, sore, and exhausted, which is to be expected given I didn’t get home until two a.m. after signing out of the hospital AMA—against medical advice. With coffee and Advil, I’ll be fine.
Leo looks past the three customers ahead of me and does a double-take.
This is going to be a long day.
“Evie. My girl. What happened?”
The man in front of me turns. So does the woman ahead of him.
“Car wreck,” I say. “I’m fine.”
“Damn, girl.” Leo shakes his head. “You want your usual? Tell you what—it’s on the house.”
“You don’t need to do that,” I say, skirting the curious looks.
“Come up here. Let me get a better look at you.”
“Leo—”
“Cathy’s got the customers. Come on.”
I step forward. Early Bird Coffee is a street-level franchise, and Leo manages the corner location just outside my office building. He whistles low.
“Two shiners. When’d this happen?”
“Last night.” I shrug carefully. Everything hurts if I move wrong. “I might’ve totaled my car. When I get the estimate, I’m going to run it by you. You’ll tell me if I’m being ripped off, right?”
“Damn straight. Where’d they tow it?”
“Wherever they felt like.” I sigh. “I have to deal with that today. Any recommendations?”
“Tony’s Auto. He’s a hike from the Metro, but he’ll treat you right.”
“Good to know. The tow yard’s checking it out first, but there’s a decent chance the repairs will cost more than the car’s worth.”
Which sucks, because my Jetta got me through law school and my thirtieth birthday. It was the first thing I bought entirely on my own.
“You’re telling me this happened last night,” Leo says slowly, “and you’re here today?”
I arch a brow. “Like you wouldn’t be.”
He snorts. “You prosecuting today?”
“No. She’s not.”
The voice behind me is firm. Familiar. And irritating.
I inhale slowly, wishing I already had coffee in my hand before turning around.
“You need to go home,” Michael says.
“I’m fine. Leo, can I get my coffee?”
Leo finally moves, casting Michael a look that says, “good luck with that.”
Michael towers over me in his black wool overcoat, somehow managing to look more intimidating than usual. His thick brows draw together, though that’s not really a scowl. That’s just his face. I’ve long suspected aggressive Botox injections have left him permanently displeased.
The shadow along his jaw from his raised coat collar only adds to the effect.
“Evie.”
It’s a warning. Always is.
As Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division at Main Justice, he’s technically above my pay grade, but technically not in my chain of command. He’s spent years making sure no one’s entirely certain which of those facts matters more.
“I’m fine, Michael. Seriously.”
He stayed on the phone last night until an officer retrieved my cell from the wreck. Of course, that meant he got the full rundown before I did.
“You should take a day off,” he says. “You have a concussion.”
Leo hands me my coffee in a white Styrofoam cup and my bagel wrapped in thin paper.
“Thanks, Leo.” I don’t argue about paying—there isn’t time—but I make a mental note to pay him back in tip tomorrow.
“Evie.” Michael’s hand brushes my elbow. “Hold up.”
“Aren’t you getting coffee?”
“No.” He falls into step beside me as we head into the federal building. “Come here.”
Controlling men checking in on me whether I want them to or not. I’ve had a lifetime of practice not reacting.
Inside, the lobby hums with morning movement—footsteps on marble, the whine of the X-ray machine, murmured voices echoing off stone. He pulls me aside, just far enough to create the illusion of privacy.
He exhales slowly, and his expression changes from stern to suspicious. “Last night. Where were you going?”
“To visit a friend.”
His head tilts a fraction. Evaluating. Suspicious because he knows me.
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
“No,” I lie.
His jaw tightens and he checks his phone.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says again. “You need rest. You have a concussion.”
Then he steps into the security line, phone already at his ear.
Am I irritated that my HIPAA rights didn’t survive a car wreck? Yes. Very.
Ten minutes later, after security and a slow elevator ride, I’m at my desk, halfway through my butter-slathered bagel, when there’s a knock and Rebecca steps inside.
“You look awful,” she says, stopping short.
“Thank you.”
“Should you be here?”
I offer a congenial smile, and insist, “I’m fine.”
“Michael Harridan said you’re still investing man-hours in Operation Safe Passage.”
I chew slowly to buy time. Technically, I work eighty-hour work weeks, so some of that time is mine and not official man-hours.
She studies me, skeptical but efficient.
As US Attorney, she doesn’t waste time. Her lips purse and the overhead light catches on her ever-present single pearl strand.
Today she’s in a black suit, and her dark, shoulder-length hair is down, which means she’s meeting with someone she considers important. Or maybe it’s a court day.
“I know you disagree with the decision to drop Safe Passage,” she says evenly. “And I hear you. But you have to trust the process. Some decisions aren’t yours to question.”
She pauses, just long enough to strengthen her point.
“Dropping a case doesn’t mean no one’s working it. It means you’re not.”
She doesn’t wait for my response, leaving me to watch her exit my office, silently fuming.
Because we had a solid case. A clean one. Two years of FBI work, solid evidence, a cooperative witness.
Lina—my witness. Nineteen years old when I met her, scared in the specific way of someone who has learned that trust gets people hurt.
She’d been scared—but she showed up. She gave statements. She trusted me.
The others—they accepted payment in exchange for signed NDAs. They chose silence—not that I blame them. But Lina didn’t. She wanted to fight. She believed me when I said we’d keep her safe.
Then the case was shut down.
And she vanished.
I fire off an email to Daniel Price, the Supervisory Special Agent, or SSA, on the case, and notice—again—the unanswered messages stacking behind it.
There’s a rap on the door. Shonda doesn’t wait for an answer before dropping into the chair across from my desk. Her dark skin is luminescent in the light, a slight sparkle to her eye shadow, the only hint of personality to her standard charcoal gray pantsuit.
“So,” she says, eyeing my face, “were you texting and driving?”
“No.”
“Hmm.” She steals a piece of my bagel. “That bruise is nasty. What happened? All I heard is that you were in a wreck.”
“My brakes failed.”
She stills. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“That must’ve been scary.”
“It was.” I don’t want to think about it, so I sip my coffee. But then what I haven’t shared with anyone spills out. “I think someone cut my brakes.”
“Damn.” She studies me for a beat, then shakes her head. “Don’t start seeing threats where there aren’t any. That way lies insanity.” She points a perfectly manicured almond-shaped nail in my direction, wagging it back and forth.
“Maybe.”
“No maybe.” She stands. “You need sleep. You drove an old car. These things happen.” She pauses at the door. “Joint call with FBI and MPD. Conference room A. Ten minutes.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Metropolitan Police Department—fun times.
Safe Passage isn’t my only case. It’s just the one I can’t put down.
I watch Shonda’s retreating back, taking a few more minutes to skim my email.
There’s a new FBI 302—an investigative interview report—from an undercover sting at a Northwest hotel, an MPD report about a missing 15-year-old recovered in an apartment in Southeast, and a late-night email from a shelter advocate at one of the NGOs—nonprofits—saying one of her trafficking victims wants to recant. Lovely.
I skim the FBI report to see if the elements of federal sex trafficking of a minor exist—and they do.
With that, I gather the pertinent files for my next meeting and give one sidelong glance to the files stacked on the corner of my desk—the working copies I’ve marked up for months, separate from the full case archive I keep in binders at home.
Pieces of the file have started going missing from the database—a memo here, a note there, nothing anyone would notice unless they’d read it a hundred times.
I have. I’ll be damned if I’m giving up daily access to my notes. I’ll scan every page tonight.
The morning bleeds into detention hearings and plea colloquies.
I win my motion to hold a pimp without bond—hollow victory against an overworked public defender with no real defense.
The monthly trafficking task force meeting runs long: FBI wants multi-state labor cases, MPD needs support on juvenile street work, the victim services nonprofits push for more shelter beds and case workers than anyone’s budget allows. Everyone wants different things.
What do I want? I want the bastards who trafficked Lina, and girls like her, as their sick source of income, to pay. I also want every single person who forks over money for those girls to pay. I want a world where a victim doesn’t have to go through hell to receive justice.
It’s past nine p.m. when I finally dig into phone records from an MPD sting.
There are multiple references to “uncle,” and I make a note that I need to ask about that.
Street slang for a buyer, or something else?
There’s also a particular patrol car that shows up repeatedly but there’s no record of the patrol car interfering.
I write the unit number on a sticky note and press it to my monitor.
Maybe I can use this as an excuse to reach out to Daniel. Yes, he’s FBI and he’s not on this case, but this might earn a response from Daniel. He likes to dig in on the MPD when he gets a chance. Maybe just asking about a different case will make him think I’ve dropped Safe Passage.
Shonda shouts from across the darkened expanse of cubicles at my open door. “Go home.”
Judging from the clatter of keyboard keys, I’m not the last one in the office by any means. But, my head is aching, and every movement hurts—and that’s after my latest dose of Advil. Pajamas, hot tea, and an episode of mindless television are calling me. I’ll scan my files tomorrow.
With that thought, I switch off my desk lamp, load up my briefcase, flick off my office light, and pull the door closed, locking my stacks of manila folders inside. It’s not until I’m through the lobby that I remember I don’t have my car.
Joy.
How could I forget? Apparently a near-death experience isn’t enough to jog my memory for an impending inconvenience.
Outside, the street feels too open. I order a ride and walk toward the lighted corner.
Five minutes away.
I accept.
And then I see it.
A dark gray Toyota 4Runner rolls closer, mud splattered across the bumper. Roof racks silhouetted under the streetlights.
The same one from this morning.
My pulse ticks up as it slows to a stop.
In this light, all I see is a shadow beyond the windshield.