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  I was glad to park in the MBLIS lot and climb from the car, not liking the driver’s seat’s confined space. Lex was seconds behind me, and we hurried for the side door, wasting no time making our way into the office’s main room. Rachel’s door was closed and dark, but I could see light down the stairs to Cal’s lab.

  “Do we know when Ramirez will be back?” I asked Lex as we made our way downstairs.

  “I don’t think he knows,” Lex answered.

  “We’ll call him later,” I decided. “Better to do this over the phone than leave an email record lying around for anyone to find.”

  This wasn’t the first time I’d gone against orders from a superior, and it filled me with that hot and itchy feeling like someone was continually rolling me across a bed of cacti. For just a second, I saw that dim hallway and the occupied cot that lay inside, but I shook the memory away. Now was not the time.

  Lex and I walked into the lab, and Cal was ensconced at their computer, the Ward case files pulled up on two of the screens.

  “Hey,” I called, and this time, Cal only had one earbud in, and they spun in their chair to face the sound of my voice. “No sign of Rachel yet?”

  Cal shook their head. “I’m predicting noon.”

  I leaned against the edge of a silver autopsy table that had yet to be used for its actual purpose. Currently, it had a comforter and pillow folded up at one end, and Cal had been using it as a nap spot, which I found both morbid and uncomfortable. “We heard from one of the neighbors that Ward may have driven away in a gray Subaru hatchback. Can you run a search and see if anything like that has been stolen or rented in the past week?”

  “Do you have a plate number?” Cal asked, but I shook my head. “That’ll be harder, then. I’ll see what I can do.”

  I turned to head back upstairs but stopped before I took a step and spun around toward Cal, pointing a finger gun their way. “Oh, and team meeting as soon as Rachel gets here. I spoke with the marshal in charge of the case, and there’s… been a development.”

  “That doesn’t sound good. Give me a shout when you’re ready,” Cal called.

  Lex and I made our way back upstairs, leaving Cal to their computer.

  “Can you call Ramirez?” I asked Lex as we dropped into the chairs behind our respective desks. “He’s more likely to pick up for you.”

  “One of these days, you’ll tell me what’s going on between you two,” Lex said, but she pulled out her phone to do as I asked. She got his voicemail and left a message telling him to call her back. She didn’t mention our current predicament, just said that it was urgent.

  Since the conference room had a whiteboard, Lex and I migrated there to brainstorm our next steps. Barrett would put an APB out on both Ward and Malia, but I doubted Ward would be dumb enough to let himself be spotted like that.

  “Does Ward want something from Rachel, or does he want to hurt her?” Lex wondered.

  We’d asked this question before but still didn’t have the answer, and it set my teeth on edge because this was the question that would determine our entire timeline and course of action. If Ward wanted to use Malia to hurt Rachel, we would have to move quickly and make sure he didn’t get that chance. If it was blackmail he was after, we’d have a little more time to craft a proper plan. I felt like we were wasting time. Every second mattered in a case like this, yet there we were, spinning our wheels with no idea what to do.

  At five past noon, Rachel stormed through the door, just like Cal had predicted she would. Lex and I left the conference room but didn’t say anything. We just watched as Rachel carved a path toward her office. She looked frazzled, her hair barely contained by a red scrunchie, her eyes red and raw, but otherwise, she was still impeccably dressed, from her crisply pressed shirt down to her clicking heels.

  She finally felt us staring at her when she stood before her office door, the key in the lock, and she craned her neck around to look at us.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “We need to talk,” I said and motioned toward the conference room with a tilt of my head.

  “Cal!” Lex bellowed toward the stairs, and there was a crash down below, followed by a curse and a “Coming!”

  Rachel hesitated by her office door and then tucked her keys away and made her way over to us, some of the fire she’d carried into the building flickering and dying. Cal came bounding up the steps a moment later, and the four of us seated ourselves around the conference table. Rachel held herself ever so primly, hands clasped atop the table, and I wondered if she was trying to hide the tremble there. She blinked too slowly, as if she had to remind herself to do so every so often, and she fixed her reddened, wide-eyed gaze on me like an owl watching prey as she waited for me to speak.

  I cleared my throat. I’d called the meeting, so I had to start it. “I spoke with Marshal Graham this morning to inform her of the, ah, developments.” It was a callous way to speak of Malia’s kidnapping, especially with Rachel in the room, but I didn’t know how else to put it. “She rather unequivocally told me to stay out of it. She doesn’t want us on the case.”

  “What?” Animation exploded across Rachel’s face, and she shot halfway out of her chair, her thighs catching on the underside of the table. Lex put her hand on Rachel’s shoulder, gently pushing her down again.

  “She thinks we’re too close to it,” I explained. “Which is probably true, but, and this is not something I say lightly, that doesn’t mean we’re going to listen to her.”

  Rachel’s mouth dropped open as she sank the rest of the way into her chair.

  “What?” she said again, but it was softer this time, more curious.

  I took a deep breath. When I spoke next, I’d be committing us to this course of action, no matter the consequences, and boy, would there be consequences.

  “I don’t think we should step away from the case,” I announced. “I can’t sit idly by while all this happens around me, and I don’t think you guys can either.” Cal and Lex nodded on either side of me while Rachel stared at me with rapt attention. “So I say we investigate on our own. Barrett is in charge of things on the NOPD side, and he’s already agreed to share information with us. However, Marshal Graham wants to use our office as her base of operations while she’s in town. She arrives this evening.”

  “So how are we supposed to investigate if she’s in our space all the time?” Cal asked.

  “A good point,” I acknowledged. “It does make things harder for us. I thought maybe we could rotate through our houses, meet in the park. That sort of thing.”

  “It could work if we’re careful,” Lex said, and I nodded.

  “Rachel, what do you think?” I looked at our boss. It would be better to do this with her absolute say-so, not that I thought she would refuse us if her anger last night was anything to go by.

  Rachel’s eyes hardened into chips of stone as she cracked her knuckles one by one. She’d taken her gaze off mine somewhere along the way, but now, she brought her head back around and fixed me with a determined stare.

  “Yes,” she spat. “I won’t leave my daughter out there with that monster. I have to find her myself.”

  I smiled at her, though I wasn’t quite sure what kind of emotion I was going for. It wasn’t quite comfort, and it wasn’t quite sympathy, but it was something akin to solidarity. “Then that’s what we’ll do. Is there anything else about Ward or that previous case that you haven’t told us yet?”

  Rachel leaned back in her chair, something of her old manner settling around her shoulders again. “I’m not sure. I think we already covered most of it. Ward is incredibly smart and ruthless. He used to be a sailor, so he knows boats inside and out. I think he used to prefer to be on the sea rather than land.”

  I drummed my fingers against the table, thinking. “The sea, you say?” I had a thought on the tip of my tongue, and I drew my wallet from my pocket and flipped through the card stashed inside. My fingers came to rest on one in particular, and I slowly dr
ew it forth, eyes resting on the little black letters stamped into the cardstock. “I might have just the person who can help us.”

  “Who?” Lex asked and took the card from my hand. “You might be right.”

  Cal stole the card next and glanced it over, understanding dawning in their eyes before they slid it across the table to Rachel. She kept it from falling off the edge with one finger and stared down text there.

  “Linda Reyes?” she read.

  “She’s a CO with the Coast Guard right here in New Orleans,” I explained. “We met her a few months ago, and she gave me her card, said to call if we ever needed her help. If Ward is on the water, she’ll be the person who can find him.”

  “And she’ll be okay with us doing this behind the marshal’s back?” Rachel asked.

  That I didn’t know. We’d only chatted with Linda for a few minutes at The Bar before she’d left us for her friends.

  “Maybe we just don’t mention that,” I suggested. “To her or to Barrett. I’m sure they’d prefer plausible deniability.”

  “And if they mention something to Marshal Graham that gives the game away?” Lex said, bringing up a very fair point.

  I sighed. There was no good solution to that problem. “We’ll just have to hope they don’t. I don’t want them getting in trouble on our account.”

  “I agree with that,” Rachel said, deciding the matter. “Jace, give this Linda Reyes a call and set something up. Try to make it for today, before our guest arrives.”

  “You got it,” I agreed.

  Rachel let out a long sigh. The lid she’d had on her exhaustion broke, spilling its contents across her face, deepening the wrinkles around her mouth and the bags under her eyes. “I’ll be in my office. Let me know when you have something set up.”

  Then she stood, drawing herself out of the chair like it was the hardest thing she’d ever done, and left the conference room. Cal, Lex, and I watched her until she opened her office door and shut herself inside, and then we finally turned back to each other.

  “What are we getting ourselves into?” Lex wondered.

  “She’d do the same for us,” I pointed out, and Lex didn’t argue. She nodded, but it was an anxious gesture, mirroring the sick feeling in my stomach. I reached out and snagged Linda’s business card, pulling it closer to me to dial the number at the bottom.

  “CO Reyes’ office,” a cool female voice answered, and I launched right into it.

  “Hi, Linda, this is Agent Jace Greyson, with MBLIS. Listen, we need your help--”

  But the woman cut me off. “I’m sorry, I’m not CO Reyes. I’m her secretary.”

  I deflated like a pricked balloon.

  “Oh,” I said uncertainly. I’d lost the thread of what I’d wanted to say.

  “Would you like me to connect you to her?” the secretary asked politely.

  “Yes, that would be great. Thank you.”

  “One moment, please.”

  The line began to ring again, and I glared at Lex, snickering off to the side, and kicked her lightly under the table. Cal was too far away for my foot to reach, so I settled for giving them a fierce scowl as they cackled along with Lex.

  “Linda Reyes,” a familiar voice said over the phone.

  I flapped a hand at Lex and Cal, telling the two of them to shut up so I could focus. “Hey, Linda. This is Agent Jace Greyson, with MBLIS. We met a few months ago at The Bar? You said to give you a call if we ever needed help, and, well, we could use your help. Can we meet up?”

  9

  Two hours later, Lex, Rachel, and I were seated on a small cafe’s patio not far off one of the city’s main marinas, waiting for Linda Reyes to arrive. We had three cups of coffee in front of us, all untouched, and it wouldn’t be long until our sandwiches arrived to receive the same fate. Rachel seemed anxious, her eyes constantly roving the street, and I got the feeling she was searching for a glimpse of Ward or her daughter, no matter how unlikely that would be. There was something I should say, some kind of comfort that I could offer, but I couldn’t think of the words, and so the three of us sat in silence with our cooling coffee cups and waited.

  Luckily, we didn’t have to wait much longer. A few minutes later, I spotted a familiar face moving through the crowd, her walk so confident that the surrounding people couldn’t help but part for her. Linda Reyes spotted us the moment we saw her and raised a hand in greeting. Her curly brown hair was caught up in a bun at the base of her neck, and her skin tanned and practically glowing from all the time she spent in the sun.

  Another woman was walking beside her. She was considerably shorter than Linda and had to pump her legs quickly to keep up. Her hair was black and sleek, gathered into the same style bun as Linda’s. Her face was round, her eyes slightly almond-shaped, and she squinted against the sun. They were both dressed in pale blue shirts and darker blue pants, little plaques on the chest no doubt marking off their ranks, though I had no idea what they meant.

  I stood to greet them, scooting awkwardly out from my spot pressed into the patio railing and stretching out a hand to Linda. “Linda, hey. Thanks for coming.”

  “Of course.” Linda smiled as she shook my hand, and then we looked around for an extra chair to snag for her companion. “Happy to help.”

  “You remember Lex,” I said as I fought my way back into my chair. “And this is the director of the New Orleans branch, Rachel Bane.”

  Rachel gathered herself and smiled, shaking Linda’s offered hand. Rachel couldn’t quite get her eyes to focus properly, and Linda noticed, a faint crease appearing between her eyebrows.

  “This is my XO, Lieutenant Meg Shoals,” Linda said, putting her hand on the shoulder of the woman beside her. “She’s here to help, too.”

  Meg raised a hand in greeting. “Hey.”

  “So, what is it you need?” Linda asked, resting both elbows on the table and tucking her hands under her chin.

  I glanced at Lex and then Rachel, and both of them nodded for me to continue.

  “Okay,” I began, “so, a little over a week ago, a man named Simon Ward escaped from a Texas penitentiary. Rachel was a part of the team that put him there, so last night, Ward broke into her ex-husband’s house and took her daughter.”

  Linda gasped, one hand flying to her mouth as her eyes widened. But before I could say anything else, the server arrived with our sandwiches, budging right up to the table to lay the plates down before us.

  “Can I get you two anything?” he asked Linda and Meg, who barely registered that he was there, eyes locked on me as they waited for the rest of the story.

  “What?” Linda said finally as the server continued to stare at her. “Oh, nothing for us.”

  “Okay. Do y’all need anything else?” he said to the whole table.

  “No, thank you,” I said quickly.

  “Okey dokey, then,” he said, and finally walked off.

  Linda turned toward Rachel and reached out to take Rachel’s hands in hers, giving them a light squeeze. “I am so sorry. That’s truly awful. What can we do to help? I’m here for anything you need.”

  Rachel swallowed, the motion thick and painful like there was a great blockage in her throat. So I continued on, drawing Linda and Meg’s eyes back toward me. “Based on Ward’s previous patterns and preferences, we think he might be out at sea. We were hoping you might keep an eye out for any suspicious boats. We don’t really have a lot to go on right now, other than the fact that he might also be driving a gray Subaru hatchback.”

  “Here.” Rachel spoke softly as she leaned over to reach into the messenger bag sitting on the ground. She pulled out a single sheet of paper and passed it over to Linda. “This is a list of the boats we know he’s sailed on in the past. A few of them have been impounded or resold over the years, but maybe he’s still using one of them.”

  “Thanks,” Linda said as she took the page. Meg scooted her chair over an inch so she could take a look as well.

  “This is a good place to star
t,” Linda told us as she looked it over. “We can run a few searches to see if any of these boats have registered with nearby ports recently.”

  “That would be fantastic, thank you,” I told her, relief flooding through me now that we were no longer in this alone.

  “I’ve got your number, so I’ll call you as soon as anything comes up,” Linda promised. She patted Rachel’s hand again, and the two of them locked eyes. Linda had her look of determined comfort down pat, and even I felt the effects of it sitting off to the side. There was a woman used to taking charge and getting things done, and I was certain that with her on our side, it wouldn’t be long until we rescued Malia.

  “Thank you for your help,” Rachel said, and she offered up the first truly genuine smile I’d seen from her since the incident. “We owe you big time for this. I owe you big time.”

  “People like us have to stick together,” Linda said as she and Meg stood. “You’ll be hearing from us soon.” She rapped her knuckles against the table twice as a final farewell, and then the two of them threaded their way out of the patio and melded with the crowd headed away from the cafe. I watched them go until the traffic swallowed them up and then sagged back into my chair, breathing a sigh of relief.

  “She is so cool,” Lex said, and I nodded in agreement. Her confidence seemed real, not just a mask put on for someone else’s benefit, and I admired that a lot. I so often felt like I was acting, presenting a face to the world that wasn’t quite my own.

  “What do you think, Rachel?” I asked.

  “This was a good idea,” Rachel said. There was a small spark of life in her eyes again, excitement at the progress we had made, and it was good to see that animation inside her once more. “Thank you for setting this up, Jace.”

  “You haven’t heard from Ward yet?” I asked, though I felt bad bringing up his name when she’d just started to release from her shell.

  Rachel shook her head, eyes darkening. It was odd. Most kidnappers reached out fairly soon after the initial grab, especially if they wanted something. What was Ward waiting for?