“You understand how sensitive this is, marshal,” Hollister said patronizingly, giving me a serious look with furrowed brows, narrowed eyes, and the knowing nod. “We needed to determine what kind of attack the Guzmans suffered because as a cultural attaché who works at the Spanish consulate, what the FBI first thought was a kidnapping and ransom ended up being a run of the mill abduction for the purpose of filming child pornography.”
It was surprising that it wasn’t me who lost my temper. One second I was parsing what had just come out of Hollister’s mouth, and the next he was pinned to the wall outside of Sofia’s hospital room with a forearm across his throat.
“Are you fucking kidding?” Lahm, blond-haired, green-eyed, and pretty Lahm, whom I had taken for easy-going, lost his shit and slammed Hollister back hard enough to make him yell. “That just happened, right? Those kids were just put through something horrific, and you just used the words run of the mill when you described it?”
Hollister squirmed against the wall like a trapped insect on the end of a pin.
“You better put some respect in your tone and your verbiage, Agent, or you will be treated to my displeasure.”
Hollister was rapidly turning gray.
“Do you understand?”
Hollister nodded and Lahm moved fast, like coiled snake fast, and in the next moment, the man who had seemed so full of himself bent over and threw up.
I stepped back—I was wearing my Alexander McQueen black monk strap boots, and I didn’t want vomit on them, after all.
“Okay,” Lahm said calmly, like Hollister hadn’t just bolted down the hall, looking, I assumed, for a bathroom. “Here’s what we—”
“That was great,” I interrupted. “You sticking up for the kids.”
He crossed his arms like he was bored. “Most of those guys are pretentious pricks,” he informed me. “And they’re so used to dealing with heads of state, they forget how to talk to regular people.”
I nodded.
“Okay, so, here’s how it went down.” He described how the kids’ bodyguards had taken them to Bookmans over on 19th Avenue to trade in some of Oscar’s PlayStation games and for Sofia to pick up more manga. Because it was such a routine outing—the kids loved the store and went often—only one member of their protection detail accompanied them. On the way back they stopped at a Circle K to get drinks, and Sofia had asked to use the bathroom. On her way out, she was grabbed and taken out the back, away from the car where the now fired bodyguard had been waiting. The man who carried her informed the clerk that his daughter was sick and had thrown up. The clerk insisted that Oscar resisting, screaming and crying while being dragged out, was a temper tantrum when he had to explain to the FBI why he’d done nothing to help the little boy who was clearly, from the video surveillance, terrified.
“Jesus,” I whispered, feeling bad for Oscar all over again.
“The FBI has spoken to three of the men who lived through you and your partner’s siege on the house —”
“Oh, no, it wasn’t just—”
He lifted his hand to shut me up. “It looks like the plan was to move Sofia to Mexico within the next few days and sell her to a whorehouse. If Oscar had showed up without backup, he would have suffered the same fate. Clearly this has nothing to do with Homeland Security, as it was not, in fact, an act of terrorism.”
“Why was the State Department here?”
“They had to make sure that the attack was not made specifically against the Spanish consulate or Guzman.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Once they determined it wasn’t, they’re off the hook too.”
It was nice of him to stand there and explain it all to me.
“What the heck is this?” an orderly asked as he stopped at the puddle of vomit a few feet behind Lahm.
He glanced over his shoulder at the man. “Some drunken frat boy, man. I’m sorry.”
“I’m so sorry, gentlemen,” he said quickly. “I’ll be right back to clean this up.”
“No worries, it ain’t like it’s water. No one’s walkin’ through that.”
Once the orderly was gone, Lahm turned back to me.
“So this is all the bureau now. They’ll follow up on whatever the bigger picture is here, how big this operation is or isn’t. You and your partner did a very good thing, marshal. You should be pleased.”
I nodded as he offered me his hand.
“So,” I said as he turned to go. “You think you’re gonna get any crap from Hollister for putting him on the wall?”
“And he would say what? I was talking smack about a couple of kids and Lahm took offense?” His right eyebrow arched evilly. “I think not.”
“Okay.”
“And besides, you’d back me up, right? I just have to get out there to Chicago and track you down.”