He turned to her again and found her eyes had darkened, as if someone had turned down the gas flame and replaced it with blue ink.
“I believe you,” she said. “It’s like that for me, too. I don’t have a personal score to settle or anything, but the idea of those little kids…” She trailed off, frowning. “I make my living with words, but I deal in facts, so it’s hard for me to explain what I’m feeling. I just knew, when my source tipped me off to this, that it wasn’t a story I was going to let go.”
“Then we’re on the same page.”
“Maybe.” She stared at him hard, as if trying to see into him. He stared right back. He wasn’t one to blink.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Where do I start?”
“How about telling me just how much about this you shared with your editors? Then I’ll have some idea what the bad guys know.”
“I didn’t tell them much.”
“Apparently it was enough.”
She sighed and touched the side of her head.
“Where are those pain pills?”
“In your upper left vest pocket.” He went to the kitchenette to retrieve a club soda out of the fridge and then poured it into a glass for her. Then he returned to the couch, crossed his legs loosely and waited while she swallowed the medicine.
“You don’t trust easily, do you?” he asked.
“Apparently this time I trusted too much.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “That’s how we learn, Erin.”
“Yeah, right. By being whacked on the head.” But he saw her gaze drift to the badge clipped to his belt. “I usually have an adversarial relationship with cops.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I jolly around with them and build relationships, but I’m always trying to learn things they don’t want me to know. Things they’ve done wrong. Things they haven’t done that they should have. They see my role as being their mouthpiece. I see my role as being the public’s eyes and ears. The two are not the same.”
“Of course not.”
She raised her gaze to meet his. “It’s going to be weird being on the same team.”
He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands. “Here’s how I see it. You’re not going to walk away from this story, no matter what they’ve done. Firing you. Taking your work. Breaking into your place. Putting you in the hospital. You’re not giving up, right?”
“No way!”
“If I can see that, having known you only a few hours, then they know it, too. So now you’re the best source I have on an international crime ring, and the bad guys know you’re not quitting. I wouldn’t walk away from the crime regardless. I’m also not walking away and leaving you in their crosshairs. Since we’re stuck with each other, we may as well work together.”
She seemed to consider it for a moment before replying. “You have access to resources that I can’t get to on my own. So sure, we can work together. Just don’t try to shut down my story once this is over. You can put these people in jail, but I can put them on the nightly news. Which do you think will cost them more?”
He nodded. “You can write it once we’ve got the case. I won’t gag you. But look at it this way, Erin. Right now, right this very instant, while you’re hesitating about what to share, they’re still trying to find you. Because you can lead them to their leak. Quit wasting time. They sure as hell aren’t.”
She lowered her head briefly. “It’s easier to walk into a forest fire,” she said quietly. “At least you can see where the danger is.”
“The problem is, you’re already in the fire. Now we have to walk through it.”
“Yeah. Okay. Nobody knows how much I know. Nobody knows who my source is, not even me. My editor knows only that I have one, and that he’s feeding me information to check on. And that so far I’ve been able to verify most of what he’s shared.”
“How much is that?”
She shrugged. “Not enough. This guy is scared to death. He’s handing out information as if it were nuggets of gold. A little here, a little there. Then he seems to panic and shut down. After a while, he comes back.”
“So you think he works for the company?”
“I don’t know how else he would get flight information.”
“Flight information?”
“Yeah. He’s told me that some shipments out of Colorado Springs are listed as going to one country but actually go to another. But the manifests don’t add up.”
“How so?”
“Equipment that’s supposedly being shipped isn’t leaving their factory. They list it as being shipped by cargo carriers, but they’re not cargo carriers. They’re private jets. Too small for the equipment that’s on the manifest, and not going to the country that’s supposedly getting the equipment.”
“So he got curious?”
“Yeah. And then one night he worked late and overheard a conversation about how the cargo had to be sedated.”
“And that made him think it was white slavery?”
“It made him curious. Curious enough to go out to the corporate airport and try to check on the cargo, thinking maybe he’d miscounted the inventory back at the warehouse, because his first count showed no product in transit. So he started looking around, and that’s when he saw two kids being carried aboard a jet, both of them asleep.”
“Some executives’ kids being flown back home, maybe?” Jerrod asked, almost wishing it could be that innocent.
“Home to Venezuela?” Erin replied. “Somehow I don’t think so.”
“He knows the flight went to Venezuela?”
She nodded. “Flight plan was for Brazil, but the aircraft never went there.”
“How would he know that?”
She shrugged. “That part I’m not sure about yet. But his e-mail sounded pretty sure, and everything he’s told me before has checked out.”
“Does he have any idea why Mercator would be doing this?”
Erin shook her head. “Not yet. I mean, would Mercator be trafficking in kids just to get contracts?”
He glanced her way. “Every foreign-arms sale has to be approved through the government. Which basically means armaments are going only where our policy wonks want them to go, never mind that we may live to regret it two or three years later. Which means there’s a certain amount of quid pro quo going on between government and contractors.”
Her eyes widened. “You mean, the government might…know about this?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But I’ve found it’s always dangerous to underestimate your enemy.”
6
Jerrod and Erin left the hotel before the eastern sky began to brighten. At a gas station, Jerrod bought them large coffees in metal travel mugs and breakfast tacos he’d heated in a microwave.
“Sorry it’s not a better meal,” he said as they pulled away. “We’ll get something farther down the road.”
“It’s amazing what we’ll accept as food,” Erin said with a sleepy laugh. “I wonder if there’s anything organic in these things?”
“Probably not,” he said, chuckling. “But