“I feel a lot better today. The funeral’s over and my sister’s at rest. I feel like I can move forward, get back to where we left off, concentrate on finding the killer.”
“You’ve had some time to think. You’ve got a company to run. You could let me take over and get back to your life.”
She just shook her head, moving the honey blond curls he admired so much. She was wearing tight brown leggings with a cute little blue-and-brown print top. Hauling her back to bed would be a lot more enjoyable than talking about murder.
“I’m not quitting.” She headed over to the kitchen counter, poured herself a mug of coffee and took a sip.
“What about your job?” he asked.
“I haven’t taken a vacation since I started the company.”
“Hunting a killer doesn’t exactly count as a vacation.”
She just shrugged and took another sip of coffee. “I’ve been keeping up with things in the office. I worked part of the day on Wednesday, and I was on the phone with my people yesterday afternoon.”
She walked back to the table and sat down, cradling the mug between her palms. “As far as work goes, everything seems to be under control.”
Jase blew out a resigned breath. “In that case, here’s where we stand. I made a few calls this morning.” He told her about talking to Detective Ford, and that it appeared Zepeda had been telling the truth—the liquor store was the primary crime scene. He told her the CSIs had found skin DNA, but there was no match in the system.
“Which means it wasn’t Zepeda,” he finished.
“So where does that leave us? What do we do next?” She took a sip of coffee. “We never talked to that guy Bandini. Maybe we should.”
Jase shook his head. “We can, but at this point, I don’t think it was Bandini. Both Zepeda and Holly said Tina was on the run. She was hiding from someone. She’d only been in Dallas a few weeks. Eli thinks whoever she was involved with tracked her to the rehab center, followed her that night and killed her.”
“Why, though? It must have taken a lot of effort to find her. Why would someone from out of town go to that much trouble? Why did he want her dead?”
“Good question.” One he might be able to answer. “Eli mentioned the tattoo on Tina’s neck. He said it identified her as being one oftheirs. A group, not a person.”
“Theirs. I don’t get it. What am I missing?”
He wished he didn’t have to tell her. He’d tried to warn her off this case half a dozen times. “There’s a possibility we haven’t really discussed. There’s...ah...a chance that when your sister left home, she somehow fell into the hands of a trafficking ring.”
“Drug trafficking?”
“Sex trafficking, honey. Organized crime. Young girls are smuggled in from other countries or picked up off the street. They get them hooked on drugs, get them to service their customers in exchange for satisfying their drug habit.”
The color washed out of her face. “You aren’t saying these women are locked up somewhere and held against their will?”
He inwardly cursed. He hated this, hated having to tell her. “They can be. Mostly they stay because they’re addicts. They need drugs, and they don’t have anywhere else to get them.”
Kate slumped back in her chair. “Oh, my God. I didn’t put it together. You’re saying she could have been kidnapped right off the street. That it wasn’t her choice.”
“We don’t know that’s what happened. Not for sure.”
“But it could be.” A trembly breath whispered out. “Just when I think this can’t get any worse, it does.” She pushed her hair back from her face. “So you think she was being used in some sex trafficking ring, but since she came here from somewhere else, you don’t think the ring is in Dallas.”
“That’s about it. Benson doesn’t believe it’s here, and Holly and Eli both said Tina came from out of town. She’d only been in Dallas a few weeks.”
Kate closed her eyes. Jase could almost see her mind spinning through possibilities.
“She was being held prisoner,” she said, working through the theory. “Forced to do sex acts for drugs. Somehow she managed to escape. She comes to Dallas because her older sister is here, but she wants to get clean before she makes contact.”
He helped her spin out the thread. “She probably believed she was safe. As long as she didn’t go to the police, she figured she’d be okay.”
“But she was wrong,” Kate said.
“She didn’t talk—she was afraid to. But she knew too much so they couldn’t let her live.”
