“Then don’t say stuff like that!”
They shared a laugh.
“You have to know what it means to me to be mentored by you,” Neveah said.
“I do know, and I’m excited to see the places you’ll go. But right now, I need you to go to Spokane.”
“Should I click on ‘purchase’ if everything is in?”
“Go for it.”
“It’s more than a thousand dollars! What the heck?”
“Welcome to last-minute air travel, my friend. Now let’s do the hotel and rental car.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
After Sam had sent Neveah home to pack for her overnight trip, she went out to the pit to see what the others were doing. Matt and Cam were huddled around Cameron’s computer. Gonzo was working on the warrants, and Freddie was writing updates to the reports on the Carver case.
“What can I do, peeps?”
“We got the warrant, and Walters did the dump on Carver’s phone,” Cameron said. “We’re dividing the data to track down the contacts, starting with the local ones.”
“I can do some, if you want.”
“We’ve got it, but we’ll let you know if we need help.”
“Sounds good.”
As she turned to return to her office, Captain Malone came in from the hallway that led to the morgue.
Sam met his gaze.
He shook his head.
Her heart dropped into her stomach. “No.”
“I’m going to fucking murder that son of a bitch Mayfield.”
Sam had never seen the captain look more furious or heartbroken.
“What he did to that little girl…”
As her mind raced with a million thoughts—primarily that she’d have to tell Tracy this news, and Tracy would have to tell Ethan—Sam took the captain by the arm and led him into her office, closing the door and nudging him toward one of her visitor chairs. She sat next to him, keeping a hand on his arm.
He exhaled and dropped his head into his hands, his shoulders shaking with quiet sobs.
Tears rolled silently down her face as she absorbed the news as well as the captain’s emotional reaction, which broke her heart all over again. Thinking of Luna’s parents and everyone who’d loved her was almost more than she could bear.
“She was just a baby,” Malone said many minutes later. “A baby with her whole life ahead of her.” He wiped the tears from his face and made a visible effort to pull himself together. “There were three more storage units with kids in them,” Malone said. “Thirty-two girls waiting to be sent who knows where.”
“Good God. Are they okay?”
“From what Emergency Response reported, they’re mostly in decent condition, but of course they’re terrified after being held for who knows how long in dark storage units with no food, water or toilets. They said the smell was unholy.”
“This tracks with what the informant told Freddie, about Asher Mayfield being a major trafficker.”
“Yeah.” Malone took a deep breath and blew it out.
