Now the fire she’d thought extinguished burned in her stomach again, and she wouldn’t rest until she had the answers she’d wanted since she was ten years old.
* * *
After showing Brad to the den, Laura disappeared into her bedroom, where she’d been for the past forty-five minutes. With three sisters in the house when he was growing up, Brad never had been able to figure out what took women so long to take a shower and get dressed.
With a sigh he leaned back on the sofa and flipped through the television channels. He never had a chance to watch TV in the morning, so he had no idea there were so many talk shows on. He punched the remote again just as his cell phone rang. The number displayed was from the local FBI office.
He muted the volume on the TV and raised the phone to his ear. “Detective Austin.”
“Brad? This is Bill Diamond. I just heard about Nathan Carson. How is he?”
Brad eased back into the couch cushions and sighed. “I don’t know, Bill. The last I heard they were taking him to surgery. The detectives from homicide were on their way to question his wife, so I left. My two partners should be at the hospital now.”
There was silence on the line for a moment until Bill spoke again. “So you’re not at the hospital now?”
“No.”
“When you head back downtown, why don’t you take a detour by here? Let’s put our heads together on this case and see if we’ve missed anything.”
“I can’t right now. I’m on another case. Is there anything we can discuss over the phone?”
“I think so. Hold on a minute. I want to check on something.”
Brad heard a desk drawer open and close, then the rustling of papers. As he waited patiently for Bill to speak again, he thought of the first time he’d met Bill. It was soon after the agent had been assigned to the FBI’s Memphis office, and they’d become friends right away. The man’s no-nonsense attitude had served him well as he’d risen through the ranks of the agency, and Brad was glad he’d been placed in charge of the office in Memphis.
“Okay, I’m back,” Bill said. “I wanted to get out the file I’m keeping on Nathan Carson.”
Brad took a deep breath and blew it out.
“The bureau has been watching Carson for a year now. He may have known that and decided to call you because he wanted to get some kind of deal before he was arrested. We believe he holds the key to catching the ring of human traffickers we’ve been after for years. When you told me he had called you, I thought we might be on our way to shutting down Lynch at last. Now Carson’s in the hospital fighting for his life.”
Brad nodded. “Somebody had to know he was meeting with me today, but I can’t figure out how they could have known. The only people who knew were my partners and you. How could anybody else have found out?”
“Who knows? They might have his phones bugged, or there could be someone planted in his office to keep an eye on him.”
Brad’s fingers tightened on his cell phone. “Are you sure the case he wanted to talk to me about is connected to your human trafficking ring?’
“It just makes sense that it is. An undercover cop discovers Lynch’s organization is dealing in illegal aliens. He’s murdered and left on the riverbank. Then we have no leads for five years, even though we’ve had several unidentified bodies found along the Double Nickel.”
Brad frowned. “Double Nickel? Is that some kind of bureau talk?”
Bill’s laugh rippled into Brad’s ear. “No. We’ve known for years that smugglers are bringing in illegal aliens on ships down on the Gulf coast. Some of them are sent up the Mississippi River on boats and others are transported on trucks up Interstate 55, which is called the Double Nickel by smugglers of both drugs and humans. The sad thing is, the people who are being brought in paid these people good money to get them into the States. What they don’t find out until it’s too late is that the men are bound for big farms in the West where they’ll be treated like slaves, and the women will end up in brothels.”
Brad’s stomach roiled. He’d heard these stories from agents for years, and it sickened him that the smugglers always seemed to be one step ahead of the police. Just like with Nathan Carson. Just when they had what looked like a promising lead, someone beat them to Nathan.
“What do you intend to do now?”
Bill sighed. “I talked to the director of the police department. They don’t have the manpower to keep a guard posted outside Nathan’s room twenty-four hours a day, but we can do that. If Nathan makes it through surgery, we’ll have someone guarding him 24-7. I don’t want anybody getting to him, and I want to know the minute he regains consciousness.”
Brad pushed up from the sofa and raked his hand through his hair. “That sounds good, but I need to tell you something else.”
“What?”
“I told you I’m working on another case right now. I think it may be linked to the Carson case, too.”
When he’d finished relating the facts in the unsolved case of the Webber murders and of Laura’s abduction the night before, Bill gave a low whistle. “The car bombings sound like more than a coincidence. Maybe both cases are tied to Tony Lynch and his organization.”
“That’s what I think. I’m going to look into the Webber case again and see what I can find out. With any luck we may be able to close two cold case files and catch your human traffickers at the same time.”
Bill chuckled. “That sounds like a mighty tall order, but nothing would make me happier. Let’s stay in touch.”
“Okay. Talk with you later.”
Brad ended the call and stared at the phone a moment before he punched in another number. It only rang once before his partner answered. “Detective Crowne speaking.”
“Hi, Alex. It’s Brad.”
“What can I do for you, buddy?”
“I’ve been on the phone with Bill Diamond and wondered if you’d had any word on Nathan Carson’s condition in the past hour.”
“No, I’m in the hospital waiting room right now, and he’s still in surgery. I suppose the longer he hangs on, the better his chances of survival.”
Brad nodded and glanced at his watch. “That surgery sure is taking a long time, but he had a lot of injuries. I’m working on something else right now, so keep me posted.”
“No problem. Seth and I will see you later.”
“Alex?” Brad blurted out in an attempt to keep him from hanging up.
“Yeah. Is there something else?”
Brad bit down on his lip a minute and hesitated. “Nothing really. I thought I’d let you know Laura is back in town.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment. “She is? Have you seen her?”
“Yeah. That other case I’m working on involves her. I’ll tell you all about it when you get to the office.”
Alex hesitated before he spoke. “Okay. And how did you react when you saw her?”
“I’m all right. She wants us to reopen her parents’ case.”
“Well, it’s officially an active case. What did you tell her?”
“I told her we would.” Brad closed his eyes and rubbed his hand