Big Ben Callahan made it clear to every boy Kelsey dated in a jovial, not-quite-joking way that he was capable not only of saving lives but also of ending them in quiet and undetectable ways.
Kelsey made the mistake of sneaking out of the house late one night during her sophomore year of high school. Somehow her father had known, and he approached the boy’s pickup just as they were about to drive away. He materialized from the shadows of the tall blue spruce in their front yard—nearly causing the poor kids to pee their pants when he knocked on the passenger window. If that wasn’t bad enough, when the boy rolled down the window, Big Ben Callahan leaned in across a mortified Kelsey and asked in a quietly piercing voice if he’d brought a gun with him.
“N-n-no,” the boy stammered.
“A big-ass knife?”
“Of course not!” The boy looked like he was about to cry.
“Some kind of stick or club?”
“No, sir.”
Her father had considered the answer for a moment, then said, “You’d better bring one the next time you come to my house in the middle of the night.” Then he opened the door so Kelsey could get out and follow him back inside.
It turned out that Austin Herbert McKay had been carrying a knife that night. He was just too terrified of Ben Callahan to use it. McKay went on to sexually assault three girls around Missoula—all of them redheads—over the next few months before he was finally arrested. Ben Callahan never once rubbed the incident in her face—though he had, over the years, raised an eyebrow at her questionable taste in men. Sadly, he hadn’t been around to run off her ex-husband before she’d tied the knot.
Her dad had grown misty-eyed when she graduated with honors from Hellgate High School, but he’d broken down completely when she graduated from FBI training at Quantico, admitting that the thought of her strapping on a gun every day terrified him. She reminded him of that night he’d stood under the spruce tree—and pointed out that there were a lot of bad guys in the world. He’d understood with no further explanation, returning to Missoula and his life as a cardiac surgeon while she went hunting for all the Austin Herbert McKays she could find.
Kelsey Callahan inherited her father’s protective nature along with his sense of justice, but she’d gotten a penchant for expensive silk blouses, her red hair, and her defined hourglass shape from her mother. If anyone ever asked what happened to those underwear models in the Sears, Roebuck catalogs, Sue Callahan would point out that some of them married cardiac surgeons and raised promising young FBI agents. Her mom’s previous career wasn’t something Kelsey ever talked about in high school—she didn’t relish the idea of boys knowing there were pictures of her mom in lacy bras floating around out there—especially since Kelsey looked so much like her.
Her first posting, to the Los Angeles FBI field office, had quickly hardened the starry-eyed Montana girl—and dispelled the notion that she’d be out hunting bad guys all day. When she wasn’t interviewing people with foreign names who’d signed up to take flying lessons, she was helping senior agents prep evidence for court cases or sitting in a telephone closet listening to wiretaps. It took her three years to escape L.A. and get a spot in Dallas—where she immediately volunteered to work the Internet Crimes Against Children squad. The ICAC was not a particularly sought-after job, so she was able to take on a lot of responsibility early in her career. By five years in she was second-in-command at the CAC Task Force. Two years later she’d doubled the number of agencies involved and sent the stats through the roof. Her success came at the expense of a personal life—but she was still in her thirties and decided she could have one of those in the future. Someday. Maybe.
In a stats-driven bureaucracy like the FBI, Kelsey Callahan became a shooting star. Her task force saved kids and made arrests at a near superhuman rate. The special agent in charge kept her in Crimes Against Children, long after she’d reached the normal time allotted to rotate out of such a soul-crushing job. There was no doubt that the sadness and grind of it all were taking their toll. It was impossible to work a job where you might find some kid’s head in the freezer and not have it affect you.
Then this Dominic Caruso guy showed up. What a breath of fresh air—even if he was a spook. There was something about the easy way he carried himself, as if he’d been on a break from the byzantine politics of the FBI. Even now, as she drove them toward an interview of their second former child prostitute who’d fallen back into “the life” after adulthood, he stayed off his phone and nodded his head in time to some tune he hummed inside his head. Her dad hummed inside his head when he was thinking—and that habit alone put Caruso up a notch in her book.
She’d been awake since before five, and the last cup of coffee sloshing around in her gut was causing her stomach to rebel. She’d caught Caruso early at his hotel room with his scary-looking friend, John the mystery man, so she figured he was probably ready for breakfast as well.
He caught her looking at him and grinned from behind a pair of extremely sexy Wiley X sunglasses. Of course this one would be spoken for.
“You doing okay?” Caruso suddenly asked.
The question caught her off guard. As the CAC Task Force commander, she was responsible for checking on the well-being of her team, but it was a rare moment when anyone, particularly a stranger, checked to see how she was holding up. The toughen-up-buttercup culture was changing, and the Bureau had programs to be sure, but FBI agents weren’t exactly the type of individuals to admit weakness.
“I’m fine,” she said, her words automatic and unconvincing, even to herself. “Why do you ask?”
“Well,” Caruso said, as though he’d thought this through while he was humming. “You gotta see some of the worst shit imaginable.”
“Sometimes,” she said. “But I’m not sitting around boohooing myself to sleep or anything.”
“I wouldn’t even suggest that,” Caruso said. “But you must be taking in more evil than some kind of sin-eater.”
“We save a lot of kids,” Callahan said. “Makes my petty problems seem small.” Talking about herself had always made her uncomfortable. “You hungry at all?”
Caruso nodded. “I could eat.”
“There’s an IHOP off—”
The cell phone in her pocket began to hum.
She grunted hello, then listened, her chest tightening with each word.
“What?” Caruso asked, after she’d hung up, looking over the top of the Wiley X shades.
“Somebody found Matarife’s place before we did,” Callahan said. “Johnson County got an anonymous tip. They’re already on scene and the Texas Rangers are en route.”
“Barricade?” Caruso said.
“No.” Callahan shook her head. “A homicide. Multiple, in fact.”
She pounded the flat of her hands against the center console. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with the Rangers, least of all the one who she knew would show up at this scene.