When snowbird season hit, locals wanting to eat had to call ahead and make a reservation.
The food was good, better than average, and everything was prepared in-house. The prices were reasonable. But it was Papa Tom and the rest of the Marelli family who drew in the business.
The community had banded together after Charley to come help clear the property, salvage what they could of the kitchen equipment, and then get the rebuilding started. Even during the rebuild they served a limited menu of takeout in the parking lot, under tents donated by a local businessman who was a frequent customer.
Dedication. And that was why Bill usually ate there four or five nights a week, sometimes even more often.
It was also why he had to do a minimum of three miles on the treadmill every morning before work, to keep from gaining weight.
A small price to pay for the company and the food.
Tonight’s special, eggplant parm. They knew he liked a larger salad and smaller portion of pasta on the side to help counteract the stomach-spreading effects of their delicious food.
By the time he arrived home nearly an hour later, he felt physically stuffed. As he switched on lights on his way through the house, he tried to ignore how lonely and empty the house felt.
Nine years, and I still can’t get used to it. Maybe I should get a cat.
At least then he wouldn’t have to worry about not getting home on time to walk it, like he would a dog.
After a shower, setting the coffeepot up to start automatically in the morning, and checking his e-mail, he finally slid into bed. It was something he always put off as long as he could.
The lonely minutes between hitting the sheets and sleep taking him were always the most agonizing part of his day.
Chapter Two
FDLE Special Agent Gabriella Villalobos took a deep breath and walked into the conference room. Currently, the four interview rooms they had were full, with people waiting. This would have to do.
In her hand she carried a file folder, but the truth was she knew the contents inside and out. Jorge Martinez was a piece of shit, of that there was no doubt. This wasn’t his first bust, but this one would put him away for the rest of his life, if she had anything to say about it.
This time, instead of a penny ante drug bust, it was for human trafficking, child endangerment, kidnapping, child abuse, aggravated child sexual assault—the list went on, growing more sickening with each charge.
The vanload of young girls they’d rescued from an industrial park in Hialeah before dawn that Thursday morning appeared to be from all over, including Haiti, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Columbia, and Nicaragua.
He was, it would seem, a multinational scumbag. It also meant a paperwork and jurisdictional nightmare involving people from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Florida Department of Children and Families—since all but one of the girls was a minor—and a whole slew of alphabet-soup law enforcement agencies, local, state, and federal.
He sat manacled at the ankles, his hands cuffed to a chain around his waist, another chain locking his ankles to the table. Currently, his seven cohorts and a shit-ton of johns were being booked and processed and interviewed.
“So, Jorge. How are we doing today?”
He grinned. “No hablo.”
She grinned back and sat down, and in Spanish said, “Well, aren’t you in luck, asshole?” She switched to English. “I do hablo. In fact, I hablo quite fucking well.”
His smile faded a little, but he didn’t respond.
It wasn’t professional, and she knew it, but there wasn’t a recording device in this room. She intended to stretch the boundaries a little to soften him up before anyone else got to him.
She continued in Spanish. “I want to talk to you about the girls we rescued from the storage unit this morning.”
The smiled faded the rest of the way off his face, leaving the scar running at an angle across his right cheek, from the corner of his eye to his nose, a deep furrow in his flesh.
“One of them,” she continued, “her name is Luisa Gutierrez, and she says she’s only eleven and you raped her before you pimped her out.”
“She lies. I didn’t rape her. And she’s older than that.”
“Um, not according to the records we obtained from the Mexican embassy twenty minutes ago. Her parents reported her abducted six months ago. We were sent a copy of her birth certificate.”
He glared at her, his eyes reminding her of something dark and dangerous, like a Komodo dragon.
Only uglier.
“She lies.”
“Really? That’s what you’re going with?” She nodded. “All righty then.” She flipped to another page in her folder. “Maria Hondo. Thirteen. Guatemala. She lying, too?”
He nodded.
He’d been Mirandized, and they had that on video, but she knew what the fucker was doing. He had someone he worked for, someone who fronted the money that supported the operation, probably a drug lord, and wouldn’t lawyer up because he wouldn’t give up the next rung of the shitty ladder he clung to.
Fuckers like him didn’t say anything. They knew if they ratted out their bosses, someone would take them out their first week in general population, if not sooner. They considered doing their time a badge of honor and the price of doing business.
What he didn’t know was two of his guys, lower level shits she’d already mindfucked into thinking they were going to jail for life and a future filled with assrape and giving blowjobs—if they lived that long—had already rolled over on him and were asking to cut deals with the prosecution before they’d even been arraigned.
Goes to show what happens when you hire cheap help.
She slowly closed the file and stood, walking around behind him. “You know, Jorge,” she said, switching back to English, “it’s not nice to lie.”
She knew damn well he spoke English. They had over twenty hours of surveillance video of him speaking it just fine. He’d been born in Opa-locka, for chrissake.
“No hab—”
Before he could finish the sentence, she grabbed a fistful of his hair in her hand and slammed his forehead against the conference table.
He let out a howl. “What the fuck’s your problem, lady?” he screamed in perfectly spoken English.
She knelt down. She’d split the skin over his left eye and blood trickled down his face. “Aw, wow, looky there. Amazing. A blow to the head, and listen to you hablo, asshole. It’s a medical miracle. Let’s put you on Dr. flippin’ Oz.”
The door burst open, her boss storming in first. “Villalobos, wait in my office, please.”
She snatched the folder off the conference table and leaned in close to Martinez to whisper, “Just think what your buddies will say when they learn a woman made you her bitch, huh?” She blew him a kiss.
The sneer fell from his face, giving her some satisfaction as she walked out the door and left him to the care of two other agents.
She sat in front of her boss’ desk and waited for him to follow her in a few minutes later. He shut the door and rounded his desk before sitting.
“You’re damn lucky, Gabe,” he said in the low, growly tone that told her she’d pushed her luck right up to the edge and was teetering on it, looking over into an abyss on the other side. “He said he tripped and hit the table earlier. That you didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Clumsy, isn’t he?”
Walker glared at her.
“Look, I knew the asshole wouldn’t file a complaint. It’s too big a hit to his machismo.”
He continued glaring at her. “You have two choices. Take three weeks’ paid vacation time, right now, starting today, or face an IA investigation. Your choice.”
“I’ll take my chances with IA.”
He slapped his desk with his palm, making her jump. “Dammit, Gabe! You’re one of my best agents. I need you in the field. I cannot risk losing you because you blow your damn gasket over some scumbag.”
“A child raping, child pimping scumbag who didn’t lawyer up.”
“We have too much riding on too many ongoing investigations to have some goddamned public defender their first year out of Stetson getting these guys off on technicalities because of alleged improprieties.”
She knew he was right and decided it was time to keep her mouth shut. She’d never seen him look this angry.
And there were plenty of times over the years she’d seen him angry.
Some of those times at her.
He pointed his finger at her. “You have eight weeks of paid vacation time on the books you haven’t taken yet, some of it rolled over from last year. I know, because I just checked. Don’t make me force you to use it all at once. And not this bullshit you usually pull of you taking vacation days and coming in to work anyway while you’re not supposed to be in the office.”
Her jaw clenched. She wouldn’t be able to talk her way out of this one. Although, to be fair, this was the first time she’d ever crossed the line so far with a suspect. She hadn’t planned on doing it, but indelibly seared in her mind was the terror those girls wore when the team burst into the storage unit and rescued them.
The screams.
The scene would forever haunt her, along with the myriad horrors she’d witnessed in her ten years with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement working these kinds of cases. Child sex stings, child trafficking, child pornography rings, investigating the worst of the worst crimes and criminals, to protect the weakest and bring scum like Martinez to justice.
She deflated as she sat back in the chair.
Apparently, Travis Walker read the defeat in her manner. He opened a desk drawer and pulled something out. When he slid it across his desk, she realized it was a set of three keys and one of his business cards, with a Sarasota address written on the back, along with a four-digit number.
“What is this?”
“Your three weeks’ vacation. Those are the keys to my vacation condo there, and that’s the alarm code. My wife and I aren’t using it anytime soon. When you set it, hold the away button if you’re leaving, and the stay button if you’re staying so it deactivates the motion detectors. It’ll beep and start a sixty-second countdown. When you come in you have sixty seconds to disarm it with that code. The alarm pad’s on the wall just inside the door, on the left. You can’t miss it. And it’s a second floor unit. One of those keys is the front door, one is the garage and storage down below, and the last one is the mailbox.”
She stared at the keys and the card for a moment as his words sank in. “You’re forcing me to stay at your condo for three weeks?”
He smirked. “I can access the alarm logs online. I can see if you’re there or not.” His smile faded. “I’m serious. If I see you set foot in this office before three weeks are up, and I’m talking three weeks of workdays, not including weekends, I will call IA and file the report myself. You need some downtime. You’re wound tighter than a freaking cheap watch. If you snap, you’re not only going to take down your career, but a whole bunch of investigations that dozens of agents have spent thousands of man-hours working on. Think about that, Miss Dedication to Duty.”
* * * *
How serious Travis Walker was showed a few minutes later when, after she grabbed her stuff, he personally walked her down to her car and stood there while she got in. She didn’t crank it yet, ignoring the blistering waves of sunny Miami heat pulsing from the car’s interior.
He leaned in, arms braced on the door and roof. “Look, Gabe. You’re dedicated. I get that. We’re all dedicated. I wouldn’t have someone working for me if I didn’t think they would give one hundred percent to this job. But you take it to an unhealthy level. You’re going to be forty in a couple of months. You need to relax and get away from this shit for a while. You will burn out if you keep this pace up. You’ve lasted longer than most agents doing this work. Usually, people transfer out or request different kinds of assignments by now. I am very worried about you.”
She wrapped her fingers around her steering wheel and nodded. “Thanks, boss. I appreciate that.” She wouldn’t look up and meet his gaze.
“Gabe, go up to Sarasota. Walk on the beach. Eat good food. Read a freaking book. Go see a play at the Asolo. Meet people. Anything. Something other than…this. Something not horrific, okay? There’s even a community pool and hot tub at the complex. Use them. Lay out in the sun.”
“Why are you insisting I get out of town? Why isn’t staying out of the office enough?”
“Frankly? I’m worried Martinez, or the people he works for, might try to send someone after you.”
She snorted. “They can try.”
“You aren’t bulletproof. Besides, I know you. The temptation will be too great for you to try to do something resembling work if you’re in Miami. Twenty-one working days, Gabe. You set foot in this building before then, you’re gone. You know I’ll do it. Please, do not make me do it. It’d kill me to lose you, but I can’t and won’t risk our other cases.”
Yes, she knew he would do it. He was a man of his word. She finally looked up at him and recognized his serious expression.
He definitely wasn’t kidding.
“Fine.”
“Enjoy yourself. I’ll e-mail you the WiFi password and anything else I think of that you might need.” He smiled. “To your personal e-mail account. And feel free to use the master bedroom. It’s got a newer mattress in it anyway, so it’s more comfortable.” He closed the door for her and stepped away from the car while she cranked the ignition.
When she pulled out of the lot a moment later, she glanced in the rearview mirror and spotted him still standing there, ensuring she really left.
She focused on the traffic. In his haste to get her out of the building, he didn’t seem to notice that she grabbed her work laptop and some files in the process.
At least that was something she could smile about.
Chapter Three
Gabe dumped her stuff on the kitchen counter when she walked into her condo. She set the thermostat down to seventy-three and walked through to her bedroom.
She undressed, locked her sidearm in the small gun safe hidden in her closet, plugged her personal and work cell phones into their chargers, and started the shower. When she turned, she looked away from the vanity over the sink so as not to catch a glimpse of her back in the mirror.
An ingrained habit, one she never thought about anymore.
She didn’t really need a shower, because she’d just taken one that morning. But the soothing white noise of the running water was the only luxury she’d indulge in to relax herself.
That, and she wanted to attempt to wash off the mental stink of the morning. Not that it would work, but she’d feel better freshly showered before climbing into the car for a drive to Sarasota.
Not to mention it was one of the few times the ghost of Maria’s voice couldn’t pierce through her brain and interrupt her thoughts.
She grabbed her brush and removed the elastic band from the end of the braid in her hair. As steam filled the bathroom, she brushed out her long, dark brown hair. She had some grey coming in here and there, but she didn’t care. She damn sure wasn’t about to start coloring her hair.
That would be a waste of time and money.
She kept it long because Maria always made her cut it short when she was a child, and Gabe had hated it. She could trim the ends herself and only go to a salon a couple of times a year. And she’d found it easier to care for when it was long, able to quickly bind and braid it as needed instead of fussing with it with a hair dryer or curling iron.
With that done, she stepped into the shower and turned her face into the spray. The last thing she wanted to do was take time off. She’d rather spend twenty-one working days stuck in a witness holding area at the courthouse, waiting to testify.
Work was her life. What the hell was she supposed to do with twenty-one days of forced downtime? Not like she had any home improvement projects. The
condo association took care of the building’s maintenance and landscaping. Any repairs she needed, she had people to call if it was something she couldn’t take care of herself.
Fortunately, the one-bedroom unit rarely required repairs. It was small, and it was all she needed. More than she needed, actually, but she couldn’t find any studio units for purchase in decent buildings.
She wouldn’t waste her money on rent when she could buy and possibly resell it later at some point.
As she bumped the water temperature to just short of something boiling up out of the bowels of Mordor, she started creating a list in her mind. If she was banished to Sarasota for what would actually be four weeks, when she figured in weekends, she’d make sure she took what she needed with her.
Lil Lobo, her stuffed wolf given to her by one of the kids in a case several years earlier, topped the list. No matter what, it always went with her. Followed by her personal laptop, a MacBook Air with a dodgy charger. She hadn’t made herself buy a new charger yet because, technically, the old one still worked.
Well, I could crochet.
It was the only thing coming close to a hobby that she allowed herself. She crocheted hats, blankets, stuffed animals, and various things to donate to the local children’s hospital and other charities. Unfortunately, she usually didn’t have a lot of time over the course of the average week to indulge in it. She could rationalize it as a valid pastime because it was creating something helpful and productive.
One of the few things Maria had allowed her to do for “fun” as a kid, and just about the only thing left over from her childhood that she didn’t resent. She liked helping people, being useful. It was one of the reasons why she went into law enforcement in the first place.
And it was one of the few things, besides long, hot showers, that allowed her to totally clear her mind and zone out, focused only on the soothing, repetitive movements of the hook through the yarn, and not hear Maria’s voice.