The drawer rolled open, its mangled lock smoking like a spent match.
“Go,” Madrid said. “We’ve only got a few minutes.”
Jess didn’t have to be told twice. As methodically as she could manage, she went through each file, but found nothing even remotely suspicious. The second drawer proved just as useless. By the time she finished with the cabinet, frustration and the ever-present fear of discovery were quickly transforming into panic.
“Nothing,” she said.
Madrid finished with the desk. “Maybe there’s a file or storage room.”
“How long will that tranquilizer last?” she asked.
“Half an hour tops.” His gaze met hers. “You doing okay?”
She gave him a smile, but it felt shaky on her face. “I don’t know how criminals do this stuff. It’s nerve-racking.”
“Different wiring.” He reached out, touched her shoulder gently. “Let’s look for the file room.”
His touch reassured her the way nothing else could have at that moment. Then he was moving past her and into the hall. She followed closely behind him. Looking ahead, she saw a room labeled Records. “There,” she said.
“Bingo.”
His hand was resting on the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans as he entered the room and flipped on the light. It was the size of a walk-in closet, but from floor to ceiling the room was filled with some type of paper storage system, from file cabinets to cardboard record storage boxes to steel shelving units.
“I don’t think we can get through all this in five minutes,” she said.
“We’ll go through what we can. Leave the rest.” He looked around. “I’ll take the file cabinet.” He tugged at the first drawer. When it didn’t open, he pulled the gun and shot the lock. The drawer rolled open. Madrid pulled out the first file and began to page through it at the pace of a speed-reader.
Jess turned and, uncertain where to start, crossed to the nearest shelf and pulled down a box. The box itself was marked Parking Tickets. She figured if someone was trying to hide something, he’d label the goods with an innocent, ordinary title. Quickly she paged through each folder, finding nothing.
Urgency hammered at her as she went to the next box. Seconds ticked into minutes as they worked. Midway through the box, she glanced at her watch and was alarmed to realize they’d been inside for fifteen minutes.
Hurry.
Closing her eyes against a rise of panic, she slid the box onto the shelf and went to the next. This one was labeled Arrest Reports from several years earlier. Someone was behind on their filing. Discouraged and scared, certain she wasn’t going to find anything, Jess began paging through the files.
She was no cop, but she realized almost immediately these were not arrest reports. They looked like some type of profile. Psychological. Physical. A dossier of sorts on young, foreign-born women complete with photographs, background information and health reports.
“I think I found something,” she said.
Madrid left the file he was frantically digging through and crossed to her. He looked down at the dossier in her hand. “I’ll be damned.” He went to the next document.
“What is it?”
Madrid made a sound low in his throat. “Looks like some sort of blueprint.”
“Blueprint of what?”
“Hard to tell from this.” He went to the next page. “Looks like a container. Like some sort of ship modification.”
“A container ship?”
He set his finger against the drawing. “There’s been a compartment built into the aft side. Looks like some sort of crude living quarters.”
Jess stared at the architectural drawing, her heart pounding. The tiny type illustrated a small bunk area, a sink and toilet facility.
“My God,” she murmured. “A floating prison.”
His eyes were dark with knowledge when they met hers. “I think we just hit pay dirt.”
“Let’s hope we fare better than these passengers.”
Her words were punctuated by the sound of the outer door opening.
Chapter Eight
Madrid heard the door close as if it were a gunshot. Adrenaline stung his gut. Automatically his hand went to the dart gun. Only, he didn’t have any more darts. The last thing he wanted to do was shoot a cop—even if there was a good possibility said cop was corrupt. But he pulled the revolver from his waistband anyway.
Human smuggling was a lucrative trade. But it was also a violent, immoral one. He knew whoever was responsible wouldn’t leave any witnesses. Not alive, anyway.
In a fraction of a second his mind ran through a dozen scenarios, none of them good. The best he could hope for was to get out alive.
“Go out the window.” He strode briskly to the window above a lateral file cabinet, realizing immediately there was no way he could fit through it. But Jess could.
Twisting the lock, he flung it open as wide as it would go. “Run to the car.”