Author's Preface
“A re you vaccinated for Hepatitis B and C?”
Kellen’s eyes lifted distractedly off the wide window facing out at the station, and he looked up at the nurse standing beside him. He glanced at the blood pressure cuff on his upper arm. A small breath escaped his nose. “Yeah.”
“Good, good.” She rolled up the short sleeve of Kellen’s T-shirt and began wiping a small section of his skin with an alcohol pad. “You can fill your prescription at any pharmacy and start taking those pills immediately.”
“Can they just test the guy for HIV, and I’ll take the pills if he actually has it?” Kellen flinched abruptly from the syringe he suddenly noticed in the nurse’s hand. “What’s that?”
“The antibiotic we talked about,” the nurse answered. “Small pinch.” She closed her thumb and forefinger on Kellen’s shoulder and smoothly delivered the injection. “PEP is a 28 -day regimen.”
She walked back around to the other side to disengage the automatic blood pressure cuff. “If you don’t take PEP, and you do contract HIV, you’re looking at medication for the rest of your life. The individual whose blood you were in contact with is passed. Even if the lab had the bandwidth to get a blood sample in time, they wouldn’t have those results back within seventy-two hours. And PEP is no longer effective outside that seventy-two-hour window.” She straightened. “Possible side effects include headaches and nausea—usually mild, if any.”
The door to the nurse’s office opened, and Kellen’s eyes shot up. Marcus entered, a small white paper bag in one hand and a file folder in the other. “Eastland.” He raised the bag, then set it aside on the counter. “Arlo picked this up for you.”
The nurse gave Kellen a meaningful look before snapping off her gloves and excusing herself.
He might fire me, Kellen registered dimly as he watched Marcus seat himself on a swivel stool. But his full attention was pinned on the folder Marcus was holding.
“It’s good and dark now, so you’re free to head back to the motel when you’re ready,” Marcus spoke again. There was a small silence. Then, finally, “I got you what you asked for.” And he held out the folder.
Kellen took it immediately. Barely conscious of the unsteadiness of his own hands, he opened the folder. Mugshots. Three pages of them, each sheet printed with the faces of six different people. Kellen flipped quickly through them, then back to the front and made a second, slower pass. Young. Early teens to late twenties. Asian features. Dark eyes. Exhaustion. Fear. Worry. Distrust.
“This is all of them?” Kellen flashed a glance at the detective.
Marcus nodded silently. He sat hunched over, elbows on his knees, watching Kellen’s face.
A third pass across the mugshots, and Kellen abruptly shut the folder. He dropped it on the small table beside him, and his vision blurred on its blank cover.
“Some of them won’t talk,” Marcus said finally. “And the ones that will struggle a bit with English. They’re Filipino. They seem to have been brought here against their will. They didn’t come for jobs or money, and they didn’t pay for their fare.”
“Labor trafficking,” Kellen said quietly. “Sex trafficking,” he added in a whisper.
“All possibilities,” Marcus agreed.
Silence.
“We didn’t find much at the warehouse,” Marcus continued. “There were no other human cargo crates inside, and the AIPO employees who were there said they didn’t know the men in the box truck or why the truck was there. We did find wooden crates like the ones they were using, but AIPO apparently rents them out to whoever wants to use them, and not much paperwork is involved. We’ll poke around a little more, but the warehouse looks like a dead end. The box truck itself has a false registration. Plate and paperwork. Fake DOT stickers, even.”
Kellen said nothing.
Another long silence.
“Eastland…” Marcus was making uncomfortably heavy eye contact when Kellen glanced at him. “I had no idea…and I’m very sorry…about your daughter.”
Kellen’s eyes shot up. A fraction of a second, then immediately settled away. His hands twitched at his sides.
“The case was before my time with the Winchester PD, and Redder never mentioned you by name. When she recommended you for the job, I just never put the pieces together.”
A stiff, trembling shrug lifted Kellen’s shoulders. “Okay.”
Marcus drew a small breath. “If there are ill feelings toward the Winchester PD that are affecting your ability to cooperate with this team, I understand, but that’s on you to either navigate or tap out.”
Kellen’s eyes lifted again. This time, he held Marcus’s steady gaze for three seconds. “You’re going to fire me over that? ”
“I’m not firing you, Eastland. I’m asking you to either work it out with your feelings or walk off the job.”
“There are no feelings.”
Their eyes met in a stare-down.
Marcus’s tongue swept his lips. “Are you sure about that?”
“Are you asking me if my work is being affected by a case you guys left to go cold nine years ago?”
Marcus’s folded hands parted empty. He was wordless for several moments. “If it was my kid, I wouldn’t care how many years ago it was,” he whispered.
Kellen’s brow twitched. His throat suddenly felt dry. He broke eye contact with the detective.
“You’re still looking for her,” Marcus said quietly. He nodded at the file folder between them. “That’s why you asked for those pictures, isn’t it?”
Kellen’s hand lifted slowly to his shoulder, and he rolled down his sleeve. “It’s part of the op, that’s why I asked for them.” He stood up.
The station hallway outside the nurse’s office was uncharacteristically quiet. Pharmacy bag in hand, Kellen made his way to the side exit. He would cross the parking lot on the left, go through the drainage ditch where there wouldn’t be streetlights, then cross the street to the gas station and call a rideshare from there.
Kellen stopped in his tracks. Faster than he could calculate his own reaction, he was making a U-turn and starting stiffly back the way he came.
But she had seen him. “Kellen?”
Quickened footsteps from behind. Kellen’s pace slowed, his empty hand lifting to the side of his face.
“Kellen.” Her voice became stern, footsteps slowing.
Kellen stopped walking and turned to face her. “Lila.”
“Damn.” And it was seven seconds before anything more followed. She was looking him over like she saw something unexpected. Like she was lost in it. Half gone entirely from that hallway. “I always liked the way that shirt looked on you.” She had a coffee in her hand, and the cup almost tipped too far in her loosening fingers. She caught it at the last second. And with it, reality. She frowned, looking him in the eyes again. “Why do you even still have that shirt? It was old when I met you.”
“It still works,” Kellen responded, deadpan.
“Right.” Lila made a small gesture with her finger that Kellen wasn’t sure the meaning of.
Four seconds of silence. Kellen side-stepped her and started again for the exit.
“Kellen, your father was not right.”
And he froze.
“He wasn’t right about anything,” she added softly. “In fact, he was very, very wrong. And he wasn’t even your father, remember? You told me you were determined to be biologically unrelated.”
Kellen’s body melted back into motion, and he continued to the exit. His hand contacted the door handle, and he pushed past it.
XI was involved in some kind of human trafficking. What kind, was the only question. Where had that box truck been heading?
Alexei would know.