Sadness and anger cloaked the whole NYC K-9 Command Unit in smothering grief, but it was the youngest Jameson brother who seemed to struggle most. She’d known Zach since she was a kid, and she prayed she could help him through the worst time in his life, but he was cold and distant, buried in a chill she could not penetrate no matter how hard she pressed.
Bill finished with the twitchy passenger and walked him across the busy floor to a security agent by the baggage screen. Violet relaxed. His carry-on bag would be x-rayed, and authorities alerted if anything was amiss. She was about to call out a thank-you to Bill when she saw the TSA agent usher the man through the line without putting his bag on the conveyor or walking him through the metal detector.
Agape, she hurried to her boss. “Bill, did you see that?”
He shuffled through the papers on his counter. “It’s not a problem. Don’t worry about it.” He gave his attention to the next customer.
Not a problem? How was allowing a passenger onto a plane without proper scan not a problem? Boss or no boss, she was about to let Bill have a piece of her mind when a voice snapped her back.
“I’m in a hurry.”
The next passenger’s license identified him as Joe Brown. The short, barrel-chested man was a regular, flying on business, she’d always assumed. The overhead lighting gleamed off his scalp, which shone through a harsh crew cut as he pushed his suitcase onto the scale.
“Your luggage is overweight, sir. You’ll have to pay a fee.”
He started to argue, but she merely pointed to the digital numbers on the scale. “Take something out and put it into your carry-on or pay the fee. That’s it.”
With a jerk, he plopped the suitcase down, putting his body between her and the contents, and yanked the zipper. She smelled the overpowering whiff of menthol. She leaned forward.
He stared at her, eyes like wet stones. “Cold rub. I’ve been ill.”
Cold rub? Tension slithered through her stomach. She’d heard before from Zach that smugglers had all kinds of notions about how to fool the noses of detection dogs like Zach’s beagle, Eddie. Cold rub...to mask the smell of...?
When the customer yanked a rolled-up leather jacket from his bag, she saw a glimpse of something inside, lumpy, wrapped in a sock. Whatever it was had some heft to it.
Her heart stopped. Cocaine? Should she call security? But what if she was misreading the situation like she might have with the previous passenger? She forced a nonchalant smile. “Excuse me for one minute.”
She walked quickly to Bill and whispered to him. “I think that guy’s smuggling drugs.”
Bill frowned. “I’ll take it from here.”
She watched, pulse pounding in her throat as her boss approached Joe. The man stood quickly, pulled on the jacket, one side hanging down lower than the other. Whatever he’d had rolled inside must be jammed in the pocket now. She fingered her phone, ready to call for security or maybe even Zach. His work with a drug-detection dog took him all over Brooklyn and Queens as well as other boroughs, but currently he was assigned to LaGuardia Airport. She’d waved to him not an hour before, noting the slump of his shoulders, the haggard look that indicated another sleepless night.
To her utter shock, Bill Oscar pointed Joe toward the same security agent. This could not be. She grabbed at his sleeve, snapping at him. “What’s going on?”
He detached himself. “Nothing at all. You need to relax. As a matter of fact, you’re due for a break. I got the counter.” He gently pressured her away. “Go get some coffee. You look tired.”
He practically propelled her away, which only flipped on her stubborn switch. No way. Whatever is going on here is not happening on my watch. As Joe Brown strolled toward the TSA agent, she hurried along with her cell phone. If Bill was suddenly abdicating his job, she’d at least get a good picture of Brown and text it to Zach.
Just before she took the photo, Brown turned around.
His look brimmed with such malice, it was all she could do not to run. Her mouth went dry as she read the threat in the grim lines of his mouth. Backing away, she headed toward the employee break room, skin erupting in clammy goose bumps. The terminal was undergoing a remodel and the place where she was headed was sectioned off with cones—only employees allowed. Plastic draped the work areas and the din of an air compressor and a nail gun assaulted her eardrums.
Call Zach. Her fingers fumbled with the phone. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and she risked a look. Brown was striding toward her, putting himself between her and the milling crowd.
She realized her mistake at once.
Isolated corridor.
Empty break room.
And a drug smuggler bearing down on her.
She could scream, but over the din of the air compressor and construction noises no one would hear a sound.
It was time to run.
* * *
Officer Zach Jameson surveyed the throng of people congregated around the ticketing counter. Most ignored Zach and K-9 partner, Eddie, and that suited him just fine. Two months earlier he would have greeted people with a smile, or at least a polite nod while he and Eddie did their work of scanning for potential drug smugglers. These days he struggled to keep his mind on his duty while the ever-present darkness nibbled at the edges of his soul.
Jordan, his oldest brother and chief of the NYC K-9 Command Unit, was gone. Sometimes it still felt unreal to Zach. His words at his brother’s funeral came back to him, when he’d promised Jordy’s widow, Katie, that he and his brothers would bring her husband’s killer to justice.
But they hadn’t, not yet. It didn’t help that his older brothers Noah and Carter, and other K-9 officers of the unit and all their collected dogs were officially off the case because of their familial connection to the victim. Even though Noah had been appointed interim chief, he was shut firmly out of the investigation like the rest of them. A storehouse of training, intelligence, loyalty and commitment and where had it gotten them? Nowhere. The only lead so far had been killed during the attempted arrest, and Zach had not even been on scene to try and prevent it. And to add one final twist to the knife in his gut, Jordy’s police dog, Snapper, was still missing.
With Jordy gone, justice and duty were the only two things Zach had left, the former seeming more unreachable every passing day. As for duty, sometimes it felt like he was going through the motions in a haze—phoning it in, as his brothers might say. The badge meant everything to him, and he despised the way that grief was dulling his edge as a cop.
Eddie plopped his bony rump on Zach’s steel-toed boot and looked up into his face as if to say, “Let’s do our jobs, okay?”
He stroked the dog’s ears and sucked in a breath, trying to clear away the fog that had descended on him the moment he heard of his brother’s death. A cop always lived with the fact that he might lose his life in the line of duty, but not this way, when Jordan and Katie had their first baby coming, and not when Zach should have been watching Jordan’s back like Jordan had always done for his younger kin.
Jordan was the one who had prayed and prodded Zach through his police training, a process made more difficult by Zach’s dyslexia. Everything hands-on came easy, but the written exams...taking those was like chiseling away at a mountain with a butter knife.
“Don’t