I couldn’t put it past him. Knowing what I knew, what the Captain had shown me, Nathan was capable of damn near anything. If he was half as cunning as Captain Pierce had made him out to be, there was no telling what plan he might concoct to keep me from seeing the truth.
Maybe he intended to keep me out of harm’s way. Or maybe he wanted me in here where I couldn’t interfere with his plans, where I couldn’t snoop around and ruin his schemes. Even if I’d quit the force, he might have suspected that I’d still be able to put my detective training to good use. Maybe this was intended to be my prison.
“We can stop this,” I said, trying to manufacture a reason to get us out of this room. “The police, the FBI…”
“No, Sandra. Don’t you see? Someone with a badge has been watching me this whole time. Things haven’t sat right with me since the courthouse transfer.”
The transfer… My mind flashed back to the men I’d shot. It played over the chase, and the way Officer Kimball had sped off ahead.
“There were two in uniform when they came to pick me up. Everything seemed normal. The lanky guy, the one with the scar, he gets me in the car and shoots his buddy in the head, point blank. A couple of the undercover cops tried to stop him, but it was too late.”
Kimball… It had never sat right with me. I trusted Officer Kimball, and he’d gotten in the car with scar-face like nothing was wrong. If he was in on it, why did he end up taking a bullet?
My mind went back to the day I shot O’Rourke. I could see Kimball and the way he greeted the man with the scar. It was as if they knew each other… Or… Maybe he was expecting someone.
Still, that didn’t explain why Kimball had sped off ahead. If he was killed during the pickup, that meant he thought everything was normal right up until the last minute… He never would have broken from protocol… Unless…
Captain’s orders… Kimball would have trusted the Captain. If he was ordered to hurry to the pickup, he would have done it. If the Captain had assigned someone to ride along with him, he wouldn’t have questioned it.
Captain Pierce had called Kimball “compromised.” He’d branded him a traitor.
“They’ve pulled my passport, Sandra. They say it’s temporary, in case I’m needed for any further questioning. Why? The case is over. Peter Wallace is in jail. They’re railroading me,” Nathan whispered.
Now it was the captain’s voice ringing in my head as the detective inside me went to work, putting all the pieces together.
“We still have a rat, Sandra. Officer Kimball was compromised, and now he’s dead.”
That son of a bitch, I thought to myself. It all made sense. Nathan wasn’t the one who had been playing me all this time. It was Captain Pierce.
And now he was trying to turn me on Nathan. If I gave him access to one of Nathan’s computers, there was no telling what he might do.
But why? What the hell was his angle? Money? Power? Promotion? Was he working some kind of vigilante angle? If Captain Pierce had any part in this, then the blood of thirty-six women, and maybe even more, was on his hands.
There was still one small problem, though. A container was on an inbound ship, and it had Nathan’s fingerprints all over it.
“Are you okay? Talk to me,” Nathan said.
“Nathan, I’m going to need you to be honest with me,” I whispered, staring at him. My gun was sitting on the floor well out of reach, but I was already making plans to lunge for it, if necessary. There were so many possibilities surrounding this whole sordid affair that I still couldn’t rule anything out, and that included Nathan’s possible involvement.
My heart told me a different story. It begged me to rush into Nathan’s arms, to bury my face in his chest and promise to protect him, no matter what. Listening to it would have been dangerous, but at that moment, it was all that I wanted to do.
I forced myself to listen to my brain instead. That way, I was far less likely to get myself shot.
“I’ll tell you anything, Sandra,” he replied, his eyes sparkling in the way I’d come to enjoy. Could he really be the evil man the Captain had made him out to be? I’d been a detective long enough to know when someone wasn’t being sincere, and either Nathan was the best liar I’d ever met, or he was genuinely concerned about me.
“You signed for another container. Didn’t you?”
His eyes cast to the floor quickly, not wanting to meet my own. He might as well have come right out and said it: yes, that was his doing. My body was tense, muscles ready to throw myself to the floor, toward the gun that might be my only salvation.
“I had to, Sandra. Let me explain.”
“You want to explain? The last container ended up at the bottom of the ocean. You just condemned another group of women—children—to death or sex slavery, and you want to explain?!”
My mother would have been proud. Her angry woman voice was channeling through me from beyond the grave. Maybe Nathan was right; maybe the Captain was trying to hand his ass over to the Irish, but none of that mattered if this asshole was still bringing women over. This time, he had no excuse. He knew what was in that container, but he’d signed for it anyway. This wasn’t a case of willful ignorance. He was a monster, and he needed to be stopped.
“Sandra, stop. Mr. Wallace used my company to keep his business at arm’s length. The Chinese didn’t know who they were working with. They didn’t know Mr. Wallace’s operation had ceased to be, and they had already been paid for the next shipment up front. The container showed up at my Chinese dock with three heavily armed guards to ensure it arrived safely. If I hadn’t signed for the delivery, there would be another pile of bodies.”
“You could have told the police,” I countered. “We could have…”
“You could have what, Sandra? Sent police to the far side of the planet to stop those assholes from killing dozens of women? The only chance those women have is on that ship! If there’s even a hint of police involvement, that crate will end up right where the last one did. The Chinese expect prompt receipt and delivery. If that ship deviates from the schedule, you know exactly what will happen. You’ve seen it.”
I considered his words. They made perfect sense. Damn. Why couldn’t the bad guys all wear black hats and twirl their mustaches? “What are you planning, Nathan?”
“I’m not lacking in connections or money to pay for the right kind of help. I’m going to take delivery of the crate, and I’m going to shelter those girls while they apply for asylum. With Wallace out of the picture, there are no more payments, no more shipments, and no more problems,” he said, his eyes sweeping back and locking with my own. “Nobody was supposed to know about this. How exactly did you find out about the shipment?”
“What do you know about computers?” I asked quietly.
“Not much. But what does that matter? Didn’t you hear what I just said? How do you know about the shipment?”
“I didn’t come here to be with you, Nathan. I came here because Captain Pierce wants access to your computer. He knew about the shipment. He thinks you’re still involved with the Irish mob.”
It was all out in the open now. No more secrets. Captain Pierce was building a case. He was setting Nathan up for a fall, and I was just o
ne of the pawns.
I closed my eyes for a moment, letting that realization set in. I believed every word Nathan had said thus far. There was too much that just didn’t add up on Captain Pierce’s side of things, too many questions he didn’t have answers for.
Part of me felt relieved. Nathan wasn’t a sex trafficker. He hadn’t lied to me—not in the way I’d thought, at least. But another part of me felt sick all over again. Captain Pierce and God knows who else in the department had a connection with the Irish mob. That meant they were complicit in murdering thirty-six women and children and trafficking countless others. My whole world was crumbling around me. The cops were supposed to be the good guys…
And clearly, I didn’t know Nathan as well as I’d thought. Maybe he was trying to do the right thing, but he’d had no qualms about hiding it from me. What exactly was his game plan, anyway—to disappear from my life, to hide out in this safe house until the threat passed, and then just waltz back up to me once it as all over?