“I am,” he said, a muscle pulling tight across his jawline. “And I’m trying to see them objectively, like all other potential evidence. Look at the background.”
Her stomach churned, but she forced her focus away from the girl in the photograph, taking in the black settee along with the dark red walls behind it. “What about it?”
“It’s not here, for one.” Sinclair gestured to the dingy, low-rent room around them with a quick lift of his hand. “These pictures look like they were taken someplace way more upscale. Like maybe a sex club.”
“Or an Internet porn set,” Isabella argued, but Sinclair just nodded.
“Neither of which are illegal all by themselves. As off-putting as these pictures may be to some, others participate in rough sex acts consensually. Including people who star in Internet porn,” he reminded her.
He had a point. Albeit a thin one. “What about her expression?” she challenged. “This girl looks about as far from enjoying herself as it gets.”
“Maybe,” Sinclair said, the muscle ticking in his jawline telling Isabella in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t unaffected by the photo. “But a large part of BDSM culture, not to mention porn, is role play. Acting. There are too many rape fantasy videos on some of these websites to even count.”
Gut clenching, Isabella took a different tack. “Yeah, but the girls in these photos barely look eighteen.”
“Barely eighteen and not eighteen are two totally different scenarios. I’m not saying I agree with either,” he said, cutting off her brewing protest with a surprisingly soft tone. “But you and I both know one of those things won’t make a case. Without an ID on any of these women, we have no way of knowing whether what’s happening in these pictures is consensual kink or a sex crime.”
Okay, so it was going to be an uphill climb. Still… “Age aside, if these girls are being forced to do anything against their will, that’s illegal no matter how old they are,” Isabella said.
Sinclair paused, his gaze going dark as it landed on the stack of photos, and finally—finally—he was ready to play the other side of the coin. “If someone’s moving girls, eighteen or not, that’ll fall under Peterson’s jurisdiction at the FBI.”
Isabella’s stomach clenched. Derek Peterson was in charge of their local FBI task force unit, and while he was a good agent and a decent enough guy, to say his team was overextended was a gift. “You think he’ll open an investigation?”
“Based on just the photos?” A frown bracketed Sinclair’s mouth. “Not likely.”
Oh, come on. “Sam—”
He stopped her words with a lift of one hand. “Listen, Moreno. If someone’s turning these women out, I want to grab whoever’s responsible just as badly as you do.”
Isabella knotted her arms over the front of her shirt, and although she was tempted as hell to refresh her argument, she knew Sinclair wasn’t the bad guy here.
At her silence, he continued. “RFD’s got this place on lockdown, so no one’s coming or going. Our best bet is to bag what we have, do our due diligence on making a case, and run all the facts up the chain of command to the FBI field office. If there’s something here, we’ll do our best to find it.”
Dammit, she didn’t like this plan. But she didn’t hate it yet, either. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one,” Isabella said, looking down at the stack of photos Sinclair had placed on the desk. The cop in her saw all the variables, heard everything her sergeant had said about the possibility for consensual encounters.
But the part of her beneath her armor saw something very, very different. Something Isabella knew by heart and would never forget.
Something she could not, under any circumstances, let her boss or her fellow detectives or anyone else ever see, so she scraped for a breath and took a step back, focusing on the job in front of her like always.
“Someone’s hurting these girls. Or worse. It’s our job to help them,” Isabella said.
Sinclair scrubbed a hand over the light blond stubble peppering his face. “If that’s the case, we’ll do all we can to make that happen. But everything Peterson comes at us with will need a solid argument if we want him to open an official investigation.”
Isabella straightened, tucking her shoulders in toward her spine. No way would she leave these girls without someone to stand up for them. Without someone to keep them safe.
Without someone to keep them alive.
“Okay,” she said. “Then let’s give him one.”
* * *