Her shoulders eased a fraction. “I wish all of them were dead,” she whispered. Her eyes suddenly widened. “Is that awful of me?”
“Not at all,” Coop said gently. “That’s human.”
“What if there are more of them?”
He leaned forward slightly. “They kept you blindfolded, and, since we made it known we recovered the money, there’s no reason to come after you.”
Tears welled; one spilled over. “When I found all that cash, more than I’ve ever seen in my life, I knew something bad was going on.”
She wiped her cheek with her sleeve.
“I hid it,” she admitted, confirming Erica’s vision. Her voice broke. “That’s why they killed my mom. It’s my fault.”
“No.” The word came out terser than he intended. He gentled his tone. “These were bad people who did terrible things, Cheyenne. Once they were crossed…” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “What happened was probably inevitable.”
Across the bed, Linda sniffed, her composure cracking for the first time.
Cheyenne swallowed, nodding, though he doubted she was convinced. That question would likely haunt her for a long time.
Coop cleared his throat and reached into his folder. He laid a sheet of mugshots on the bed.
“You’ve already spoken to the detectives,” he said. “But I want to confirm something.”
Cheyenne leaned forward and tapped one. “That’s him. He was at our house, and I recognized his voice at the warehouse.” She trembled visibly, the stranglehold on her blanket resuming. “He was the worst of all of them.”
“How so?”
“He laughed a lot and said awful things. He hit me more than once.” Her voice grew smaller. “I think he’s the one who killed my dad.”
“Did you see it happen?”
She shook her head and said in a small voice. “Where they kept me was dark. And when they took me out, they blindfolded me, but I heard everything.”
The shipping container, the bloody blanket, the isolation… Rage roiled inside him. What he wouldn’t give for five minutes with the bastard, but he tamped it down for Cheyenne’s sake.
What she said matched what they already suspected, and it mirrored Erica’s visions. But he needed more, something tangible, to link this to Kedrov.
“I know this is hard, but try to remember if there was anything else? Sights, sounds, smells?”
Cheyenne frowned, thinking. “Sometimes there were other voices. More men came and went.”
“Did you ever see them?”
“No.”
“Could you make out what they said?”
“Mostly they spoke Russian, but a few sounded American.” She closed her eyes, concentrating. “One of them said something weird.”
He waited, knowing it was best not to push.
She tilted her head as if replaying the memory. “He said… ‘Badges don’t make saints.’”
A chill crawled up the back of his neck. That phrase didn’t belong in a warehouse full of Russian muscle.
“Why do you think you remember that phrase specifically?”
Cheyenne gave a small, tired shrug. “They laughed afterward. Like it was all a big joke to them.” She looked down. “I wasn’t exactly in the mood for jokes.”
