He grunted as she crawled methodically through the wretched space, which was only three feet high. No wonder the terror had been so great. The shrimper was a death trap—no air circulation, hotter ’n hell, with over a hundred and forty people crammed inside. Toward the stern, the shrimper’s internal bulkheads provided too many shadows and too much cover for Nikki to assume they’d found everyone.
The coffee scent still lingered, as it would for several more days. If the emotion was strong enough—the rage or terror or love—it made sort of an imprint, and the stronger the emotion, the clearer and more lasting it was. She concentrated on that smell rather than what was wafting off the floor she crawled across, avoiding puddles and slicks of human bodily fluids. The detritus of desperation.
And to starboard, deep in the stern, Nikki found the girl.
She might have been eleven years old, maybe twelve, huddled against the boat’s bulkhead, her jeans stained and her shirt torn. As the light splashed across the girl’s face, Nikki was struck by a sense of familiarity. But there was no way she could know this child. She touched the girl’s sweat-slickened hand, glad to find her alive. Barely alive.
“Got another one!” Nikki shouted back at the hatch. “She needs a medic!”
Nikki quickly pulled the child into her arms and started the laborious journey to the hatch. Ignoring the wetness seeping through her uniform, she concentrated instead on speed. The girl’s breathing was extremely shallow and her cold skin said she was in shock.
It took only a few more moments to lift the child—she weighed so little—into Jackson’s arms, then follow him into the pilothouse. Jackson’s bulging forearm looked obscenely strong next to the girl’s skinny limbs as he laid her carefully on a workbench Mansfield had cleared of clutter.
“Where’s the doc?”
“He’s got his hands full on deck.”
“He needs to be in here,” Nikki snapped. “Mansfield! Get the doc in here, now!” And when he hesitated, she shouted, “Don’t hang around, ensign!”
Mansfield jerked into gear and headed out onto the deck. Nikki dug through a gear bag for a space blanket, frustrated by the piles of supplies that got in her way. There! Shaking the blanket out, she turned to cover the girl, but Jackson cursed suddenly and started CPR.
“We’re gonna lose her!”
Nikki poked her head out of the pilothouse. “Doc! Get your ass in here now!”
She spotted the physician and Mansfield in the stern, bent over a woman whose arms flailed in some kind of delirious panic. Dammit.
“Lieutenant.” The desperate edge in Jackson’s voice brought her back. “She’s not going to make it.”
“She will. Keep working.”
“No, she won’t. Her chest is too damaged.” Jackson pressed two thick fingers to the girl’s carotid artery. “She’s gone.”
Nikki said nothing. How could she? There was nothing to say. She simply straightened the girl’s flimsy, once-white shirt and folded her arms over her stomach. Only then did Nikki see the bruises that necklaced her throat, spread across her collarbone and shoulders and blossomed beneath the blouse.
“Crushed,” Jackson murmured. “Internal damage mostly.”
“Wave action probably aggravated it,” Nikki said. “All that banging around down there. All the people.”
Do I know this kid? she wondered. The shape of the brow, the high cheekbones, the soft, full lower lip. The sense of near recognition was strong but Nikki couldn’t quite make the connection.
She mentally shook herself and held a tight rein on her frustration. She had work to do. She snapped her own jumpsuit straight and, leaving Jackson with the girl, headed out on deck.
“How many?” Captain Pickens barked as he came aboard. Undaunted had been lashed alongside the trawler and now nodded serenely, her boarding bridge deployed.
“One hundred and forty-one living.” Nikki’s throat tightened. “Three dead.”
“How long have they been at sea?”
Anger came to a sudden boil in her stomach. “A man I questioned said three days.” Nikki was about to scrub her face with her hand, then caught a whiff of her fingers and stopped. “The fatalities were caused by the crush. Rough seas.”
Captain Pickens swore eloquently before saying, “Chopper’s on its way for the deceased.”
Nikki nodded.
Only the poorest chanced the ninety-mile crossing from Cuba to Florida in an open boat. Anyone who could scrape together a few hundred dollars bought transport aboard fishing trawlers like the Montoya or, if they had enough cash, in cargo planes that touched down on small private landing strips near the Everglades. No matter how the journey was made, it was always dangerous.
Nikki glanced around. On the shrimp boat’s deck, the refugees who hadn’t been escorted to the Undaunted sat crammed together in little groups, their clothing matted and sweat-darkened. The fear stench on deck had waned but beneath it lay the thicker musk of dread. They’d been caught at the edge of United States territorial waters. After processing, they’d likely be sent back, their life savings forfeited on a failed chance at a better life.
What would she do if she were in these refugees’ place? she wondered. Spend her savings for a one-way ticket to another country? Risk everything to cross the Florida Straits? Put her life in the hands of men who might take her out into a desert somewhere and kill her for the fifty dollars she carried, or who thought she was attractive enough to sell to the highest bidder?
Then she made the connection. The girl’s face, her features—they looked like the girl in the ancient photo her mom used to pull out and show her at Christmas. The one of her grandmother, who hadn’t survived the trip to a better life, either.
Nikki stifled a sigh, grabbed her clipboard and started the interviews.
Chapter 2
That evening Nikki settled back in her home office desk chair while staring at the e-mail messages coming in. One of them, sent from the mysterious Delphi, churned in state-of-the-art decryption software Dana Velasco had given her. While Nikki waited, she absently finger-combed her curly hair, damp from her long shower.
The dead girl’s face still flashed in her mind every so often, taking her unawares—while getting into her Jeep, when she opened her modest town house’s front door, while she stood under the pounding hot water. Her job could be a bitch sometimes, not for what she did or had to do, but for what she had to face.
In the meantime, maybe the e-mail from Delphi would take her mind off the girl.
Seconds later, the decryption software spat up a simple message:
Signal broadcast from 25° 37’ 33.94” N, 79° 38’10.18” W. What vessels passed through these coordinates on April 27 at 4:30 p.m.?
Stand by for contact.
Nikki sat forward as she read. Decrypted, but cryptic, just like the message back in February about watching her back.
So the signal had come through just two days ago. And that location was definitely within her jurisdiction, in the commercial shipping lanes just outside the Port of Miami. Ever thorough, she double-checked the lat-longs against the navigational chart hanging on her office wall for confirmation.
Staring at the chart’s looping blue depth lines, she frowned. Dozens of container ships, tankers, cruise ships and tugs passed through those lanes on their way to and from the Port of Miami every day. That bay was heavily trafficked at all hours.
Fortunately, she knew just who to tap. Two-Finger Jimmy owed her a favor or three. Time to pay up.
Nikki