Her eyes looked right through him. “What the hell?”
Chang feigned a smile. He was big enough that he could run right over this puny bitch if he wanted to.
“Inmate troubles,” he said—and threw what he thought was a pretty damned good left hook.
Unfortunately for him, Pankita Lincoln’s father had taught her how to box.
Chang’s eyes and then his shoulder telegraphed his intention to throw the hook a mile away. She faded backward, just enough to let the hook slip by. Pepper spray in hand, she gave him a full blast directly in the face before driving her knee into his groin in a repeated, rapid-fire attack.
Chang roared in pain. His eyes slammed shut and he staggered back, instinctively trying to put more distance between himself and the searing burn. Defensive-tactics instructors taught their students to use the fingers of the nondominant hand to hold open one eye—but DT class was nothing like real life. There was no getting ready, no time to prepare. This whole thing had gone to shit.
Flailing blindly, Chang forced his eyes into a grimacing squint. His lungs rebelled, convulsing each time he tried to draw the smallest breath. Mucous membranes kicked into overtime, sending strings of snot draining from his nose. If he could just get hold of her, he could shut her up for good, maybe even make it look like she’d killed Feng—at least long enough for him to get away.
Pankita Lincoln had other ideas.
21
Dominic Caruso thought Flaco’s interview seemed to be going well when they first sat down in an interview room at the Dallas FBI field office. Flaco’s nostrils flared and his upper lip twitched, rabbitlike, as if he were trying to keep on a pair of nonexistent glasses. He was obviously terrified—not a bad emotion for someone from whom Caruso wanted information. He spent more time staring at the one-way glass than he did making eye contact with the two investigators.
Then Callahan made the mistake of asking who had kidnapped him. The skinny gangbanger just sat there staring at her, blinking stupidly, head shaking like it might explode at any moment. In the end, he muttered something about a lawyer and refused to say another word. Dom suspected his reticence to talk might have had something to do with the application of particular boot to the side of his neck. John Clark was in his late sixties, maybe a little old for this kind of hands-on work, but there was a brooding air of vengeance about the man that gave even Caruso the willies.
Joe Rice and a blond Dallas PD detective named Shirley Winston took Flaco to jail, leaving Callahan to deal with Caruso. It was not lost on Caruso that both of the task force officers looked at him like a member of an invading army.
Kelsey Callahan rubbed her eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “Want to see where I work?”
“Sure,” Caruso said, wondering how much of the conversation the mic on his neck loop was picking up. Adara was open-minded, but she would not like this at all.
“Good.” Callahan gave a contemplative nod. “’Cause I need to drop by the hangar before you buy me that drink.” She leaned back against the table, looking him up and down, obviously flirting.
Caruso gave her his best smile. “I thought you were buying me the drink.”
She sighed. “I know I owe you one. I mean . . . hell, I hear the words coming out of my mouth and I’m like, ‘That’s not me.’” She gave a nervous chuckle. “Did you know that I make every boyfriend let me run a diagnostic on his computer and phone? That kind of trust is a real turn-on, let me tell you. But I can’t help it if I know the stats. I can walk down the street anywhere in the U.S. and the odds are I’m passing some pervert with child porn on his computer every couple minutes.” She breathed out hard, puffing her cheeks as if trying to keep from crying. “This job, it can turn you into a real bitch, you know.”
Caruso shook his head and said softly, “A carne di lupo, zanne di cane.”
Callahan raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to explain.
“Literally it means something about wolf meat and dog fangs, but figuratively it says you have to be rough to fight rough things. Kelsey, your investigations pit you against some of the sickest people on the planet. You’re entitled to be a little pissy once in a while.”
“Fight rough with rough.” Callahan closed her eyes to think for a moment. “I like that . . . I like it a lot.”
? ? ?
The hangar near Love Field Airport was less than fifteen minutes away from the FBI field office via the West Northwest Highway, called Loop 12 by locals. Caruso followed in his rental car, parking beside Callahan. He groaned within himself as he noted the position of three exterior security cameras. If they went to a remote server, then he was screwed. Government agents didn’t like being under surveillance any more than regular citizens. The difference was, they could do something about it, so there weren’t likely to be any cameras inside the building.
Callahan used a proximity card to get through the front door. Once inside, she deactivated an alarm with a simple key pad. She didn’t try to hide it, and Caruso memorized the five-digit code.
She flipped on the lights and said, “Behold! The office of misfit toys.”
“Nice,” Caruso said, surveying the bullpen arrangements of all the desks in the cavernous hangar. “You’re in charge here, right?”
“I guess.”
“Then where’s your office?”
“No office,” she said. “I’d miss too much. I sit at that desk there, below the whiteboard.” She explained the makeup of the task force, the agencies involved, and ran down a list of their recent arrest and rescue statistics.
“Those are impressive numbers,” Caruso said.
Callahan scoffed. “You want numbers? In 2008 there were over 57,000 kids reported missing in Texas alone. In that same year, the Highway Patrol made 2,891,441 traffic stops. How many kids do you think they recovered?”
“No idea.”
“Zip,” she said. “Nada. Zero. So they developed a program called Interdiction for the Protection of Children, which lines out a set of behaviors law enforcement should look for in trafficked children and the traffickers themselves.”
“So it’s working?”
Callahan closed her eyes. “Fifty-four kids were rescued last year. Better than zero, but we still have a long way to go. Human trafficking is a thirty-five-billion-dollar-a-year gig. There are places in the world—hell, there are places right here in this state, where women and kids are sold and traded like horses. And we’re barely making a dent.”
Caruso was thinking, You haven’t met John Clark, but he said, “And you still don’t think you’re doing enough?”
“Honestly, I’m overcome with guilt for standing here talking to you now instead of trying to save another one.” She ran a hand through her hair, redoing the scrunchie that kept her ponytail in place. “Anyway, sorry about bringing you down. I’m sort of used to having to make my case all the time.”