He picked up a copy of the picture he had left with Mickey, the last picture taken of Becca with Pete from this morning. She’d been missing for five hours, and the more time that went by, the less likely they were to find her. He couldn’t let that happen.
A sharp rap on the doorframe had him glancing up and staring into the deceptively calm brown eyes of his partner. Eric had been with the bureau for over twenty years and had been with the human trafficking task force since its inception. Graham considered himself lucky to be partnered with him and learned long ago not to underestimate his easy-going demeanor and receding hairline. His wrinkled shirts and slightly overweight build made him seem unassuming, but his mind was sharp and his instincts were usually spot on.
“Harper’s ready to see us.”
Graham groaned and fell back against his desk chair. The tension in his neck doubled. He hadn’t been on the best terms with his boss the past month. “Can’t you brief him while I keep working? We don’t want to waste any time.”
Eric narrowed his gaze and folded his arms over his broad chest. “You and Harper both need to get past what happened in Austin.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He shoved the picture he’d been studying into a file and stood. “Let’s get this over with.”
They walked shoulder to shoulder down the wide corridor in silence. A sense of foreboding loomed inside him the closer they got to Harper’s office. Eric was right, he needed to get past the part he had played in Austin, but knowing that didn’t make it any easier. Guilt was his constant companion these days, andnothing he did made it go away. Hell, he wasn’t sure he wanted it to.
A large hand came down on his shoulder and Eric pulled him to a stop outside of Harper’s office. “Harper wants a briefing, and then we get back out there.”
Graham nodded and followed Eric into the large corner office. His fingers curled around the edge of the file folder as it hung loosely in front of him. He stopped in front of Harper’s massive walnut desk. Harper’s gaze didn’t lift from his computer screen, and Graham shifted his weight as the awkward silence dragged on. The muscles in his mouth tensed and he fought every instinct to roll his eyes. Leave it to Harper to call them in here and then make them wait until he was ready to speak.
Eric cleared his throat, and Harper held up one crooked finger, signaling for them to wait.
Graham glanced at Eric out of the corner of his eye, and Eric pressed his lips together to hide an amused smile. How could he find this funny?
Harper finally looked up and shifted his body so he leaned back in his black leather chair. The wheels squeaked until he stopped moving and his muscles relaxed. His brown eyes hardened as he asked, “What have you found out about the Stanley girl?”
“She was last seen with Pete Bogart at a frozen yogurt shop down the street from her apartment.” Graham set the file folder on the desk. Harper flipped it open, but his gaze stayed locked on Graham. “I pulled the footage from a traffic camera on the corner and was able to get a picture of the two of them together. The mother hasn’t heard from either Becca or Pete since nine a.m. this morning. She was supposed to be home by ten.”
“Why did the mother let her daughter go with him?”
“Pete had been dating the mother’s best friend for the past few months,” Eric said. “The friend is Becca’s godmother andshe has a standing date with the girl every week. Pete often tags along for these outings, and the girl wanted to see him after the friend canceled today. The mother thought there was no harm in them spending an hour together.”
“Have you talked to the friend?” Harper asked.
Graham’s blood warmed as his mind went back to his meeting with Mickey. If he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her after seeing her on the plane, there was no way in hell he’d get the image of her in those tight black pants out of his mind.
A sharp elbow to the ribs brought his focus back to the present. “I talked to her earlier. As I wrote in my report, she’s the same flight attendant that worked on the plane I followed the hijacker on. Her connection with both the place hijacking and Pete Bogart was a red flag for me, and I wanted to gauge her reaction to the news about her goddaughter.”
“That’s one hell of a coincidence,” Harper said. He drummed his bony fingers against the hard wood of his desk. “Did Sanchez mention anything about a woman helping Bogart when you questioned him?”
Graham shook his head and curled his hands into fists at his sides. It had taken all the self-control he had not to pummel Sanchez’s face to a pulp when he’d questioned him. The bastard had almost succeeded in crashing a plane and killing hundreds of innocent people just to escape capture. And that would have been on his head, too. If Sanchez hadn’t spotted him, he wouldn’t have gotten spooked and resorted to such drastic measures.
“Yes, but he didn’t have any information on her. The only name he gave was Pete’s. He said he didn’t know much more about what was happening in Chicago. He didn’t even know the location of the girls. His role in this is limited to training the girls in Mexico, the sick fuck.”
Harper raised his eyebrows. “Did you believe him?”
Graham shrugged. “Yeah. He shook like a leaf the entire time he was in the box. He would have given me anything to lessen his sentence.”
“But we still have our eyes on the friend,” Eric interrupted.
“Any other reason to suspect her besides the connection to Pete, the girl, and the plane?”
“Isn’t that enough?” Graham asked with a snort.
Harper turned his sharp gaze in his direction. “Not after what happened in Austin last month. I trust you won’t make the same mistake again. I need concrete evidence about this woman, not a hunch and a gut feeling.”
Graham’s nostrils flared. “There’s also the issue of Pete only giving his real identity to her. I reviewed the case files for the other missing girls, and although Pete made connections with them and their mothers in weeks prior to their abduction, he gave each mother a different name. Why did he break pattern? Was he in a real relationship with Mickey and she was in the dark as she claims, or has she been in on it since the beginning?”
“These operations usually have a woman involved in keeping the girls in check,” Eric said. “It’s a woman who stays at the house to keep an eye on things. It’s easier for the girls to become emotionally attached, and for the selfish bitch to use those emotions to mentally break down the victims.” Eric slammed the toe of his shoe against the carpet as if to ground out his frustration.
Harper closed the file and slid it back toward Graham. “I’d say you need to find out what this woman knows as soon as possible. I’ve issued a BOLO for Pete Bogart, but chances are the guy’s smart enough not to show his face around here. Something like this takes a lot of planning. He’d have a place set up to hide.”
