At least that part was going right, she thought.
Cassie killed the engine and mounted the outside steps to the dock. She had her cell phone in one hand and a handheld radio in the other.
As soon as she entered the darkened warehouse she made out a small knot of deputies standing in the center of the vast concrete floor and she turned toward them. They could apparently tell by the way she strode—her low heels clicked on the concrete floor—that they were in trouble. Their conversation stopped.
“We got here as soon as we heard,” Deputy Ian Davis said. The former undercover officer was clean-cut and he looked good in his uniform. He was of medium height and build and he had soft brown eyes and a baby face that had been obscured by the beard and long hair he used to wear. He looked ten years younger than he was.
Standing with him in a scrum in the middle of the warehouse floor were deputies J. T. Eastwood, Tigg Erger—both new hires—and Fred Walker. Walker, like Davis, had four years under his belt at the department. In Bakken County, that meant they were wily old veterans.
She said, “Guys, you need to get your vehicles out of sight right now. Anybody driving by this place will see them out front and know there’s a situation in progress.”
The deputies exchanged guilty glances.
“Move them out one by one,” she said. “Don’t all of you peel out at the same time or that will draw attention.”
“So where do we put them?” Eastwood asked.
“Someplace else,” she snapped. “There’s at least four empty buildings within a quarter of a mile. Guys, the Lizard King is coming and there’s a woman’s life at stake.”
Eastwood, Erger, and Walker slunk and grumbled toward the front of the building where their vehicles were. Eastwood said something that included the words “lot lizard” and Erger stifled a laugh.
Davis stayed.
He said, “Cassie, are you okay?”
Her eyes flashed. “Of course I’m not okay, Ian. What do you expect? I’ve been waiting four years for this. I can’t screw this up.”
“Like I didn’t know that,” he said and smiled gently. Paternalistically, she thought. Then he reached out with both hands and rubbed the top of her shoulders.
She pulled back and raised the cell phone in her hand like a weapon. “Damn it, Ian. You know better than that. It’s hard enough concentrating on what we’re here for without you touching me.”
“Sorry,” he said, not losing the smile. “It’s not like they don’t know.”
“Pretend they don’t,” she snapped. “Be professional. We’re on thin ice as it is.”
That stung him and he squared his shoulders. The smile was gone, replaced by guilt.
“You’re right,” he said. “I just want to watch out for you. I’m sorry.”
“Quit saying you’re sorry,” she said, angry that now he had the ability to make her want to comfort him. She resented him for that. “We’ve got just a few more months of this. I know it’s uncomfortable for you. It’s uncomfortable for me, too. It’s a problem. Then we’re married and we have a whole set of new problems.”
He nodded. They’d talked about it for months, that married county employees were prohibited from working together in the same department. He said he was eager to move on, maybe to the city, state, or federal law enforcement. He had an interview scheduled in three weeks with the DEA.
“I’ll go move my car,” he said.
“Please move mine while you’re at it,” she said, handing him her keys. It was a trivial command, one that he wouldn’t have hesitated doing a year before when their roles were cleanly delineated. Before he asked her to marry him for the third time and she accepted.
Now, though, she felt like a dominatrix for asking. And Ian, no doubt, felt a little the same way.
She nodded and watched him walk away. He was a good man with a good heart and she loved him in a way she didn’t think she could ever love a man again. It wasn’t the passionate over-the-top love she’d had for Jim Dewell when she was a young woman, but it was a kind of deep appreciation that came from being with a truly decent and kind man. He wasn’t aggressively ambitious but she didn’t need that. And he wasn’t looking for a mother, but a partner. He didn’t ask much of her and he was attentive to both Ben and her. Ian spent time with Ben doing boy things and Ben adored him. Even Isabel liked him. And Ian made Cassie laugh, which was perhaps the most important quality of all.
And she’d just sent him away with her keys in his hand.
She fought the urge to chase him down and hug him.
Instead, she called out, “Thanks for being here, Ian. I do appreciate it. But please cut me some slack. I’ll try to hold it together. This,” she said, gesturing to the warehouse, “might finally be happening.”
He mumbled something that sounded conciliatory, but she couldn’t make out the words.
*
CASSIE DUCKED INTO THE OFFICE of Judi Newman, the owner of Dakota Remanufacturing. Cassie still clutched her cell phone and radio.
It was obvious Judi had been watching Ian and her out on the warehouse floor through her window.
“Lucky you,” Judi said.
“I probably don’t deserve him.” She meant it.
“Then send him my way.” Judi laughed.
“Ben needs a man around maybe even more than I do.”
Judi nodded.
“Thank you for getting those pallets out on the dock for pickup,” Cassie said.
Judy leaned back in her chair. “Anything I can do to help. How much time until he gets here?”
“Two and a half hours.”
“Wow.”
In the last year, Judi Newman had taken over the company from her husband Russ who was in prison in Bismarck for human trafficking. He’d arranged for four underage prostitutes to arrive in Grimstad from Canada to entertain oil field workers and perhaps himself as well. Cassie and Ian Davis had been tipped to their arrival and they caught the girls climbing out of a van to meet Russ Newman in a fast food parking lot in Watson City. They’d arrested Russ and the trafficker from Alberta. The girls, all Asian, were turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
When Judi had called the sheriff’s department to complain that she’d seen two of the girls giggling and buying makeup at Walmart, Cassie had driven to Dakota Remanufacturing to explain that ICE no longer enforced immigration laws and that it was as frustrating to local law enforcement as it was to her. They struck an instant friendship partly because they were about the only single women their age in Grimstad, which was twenty-to-one men to women. It became clear to Cassie right off that Judi wasn’t unhappy at all to be rid of her husband Russ.
Cassie had told Judi about her history with the Lizard King and her scheme to draw him in. When Judi learned of the plan she promptly offered to use her firm as a front. Judi had read about the Lizard King on the Internet and she’d also heard references to him over the truck-dispatching channels she monitored at work.
“Have you been listening all morning?” Cassie asked, gesturing to the radio unit on a credenza behind Judi Newman.