Faint Trace (5 page)

“With the
personalization
you added,” I said, using his euphemism for forgery, “those containers contained millions in goods. You can't tell me you gave it all away to the women you freed?”

“Not all,” he said. “I bought that house I'm living in. All cash.”

When I asked why he would sink so much cash into an asset that couldn't be easily liquidated, he frowned. “It was in a good school district.”

After everything we'd heard, from human trafficking to a massive counterfeiting operation, this one detail almost derailed the interview.

“Will you excuse me?” Ernie asked, struggling to maintain a fierce look. I followed him out, Van telling us to call his lawyer. The door had barely closed behind me when I started laughing, holding on to a chair back to keep from doubling over.

“He did it for the school districts,” Ernie said, grinning at me. We both sobered up quickly when Stanzler arrived with fourteen Death Squad gang members in custody, congratulating us on identifying Hu and letting us know that other agents would take over questioning.

“From what Ouyang said, Hu was a saint,” Stanzler said. “Ouyang and the other guy, Ngyun, they were part of a program to stop human trafficking. Hu was still connected in to the Saigon Death Squad's network, and when it was human cargo, he was able to divert the shipment, produce fake paperwork, and give the women enough money to live on. It would seem even scumbags like Hu have a code.”

Ernie went to his computer to type up his notes, but I pulled Stanzler aside.

“Do you have a minute to talk?” I said.

I followed his eyes to the wall of interview rooms. Right now most contained members of the Saigon Death Squad, but two more held men who were planning to blow up a federal building in San Jose, and the room at the end contained a woman who was connected with wire transfers made to a terrorist organization. The Bureau was doing so much good work to counter the poison behind those doors.

“I guess I have a minute,” Stanzler said, inviting me to his office. “Something on your mind?”

“Y
OU
CAN
'
T
LEAVE
the bureau,” Kevin said, watching Lucy haul wet sand across the beach to make a castle. “I don't want you to do this.”

“I do. There's nothing I want more,” I said. “What I don't want is for you to have cancer.”

“No, I mean it. Can't you take a leave of absence?”

We'd burned through enough of our savings that I wasn't sure if a leave was financially feasible. More importantly, I was tired of feeling split in two. Kevin was with me, but he had a bigger fight on his hands, and figuring out whether we could get another full-­time or part-­time caregiver was taking all of my energy. For the first time in my adult life—­“First time in your whole life, you mean,” Dad later said—­I needed help.

Lucy chased a dog around the beach. Whether because she was a willful three-­year-­old or just couldn't hear as we yelled into the wind, Lucy didn't return when we called. I counted to three and started after her, while Kevin tried to stand. I turned back to him, thinking he would fall, but he slumped back onto the rock.

“Goddammit. Can you go get her?”

I ran across the beach and Lucy ran to me, unaware of the panic she'd caused. She grabbed my hand to swing, but without two parents she ended up running around me, not getting the lift she wanted. She stumbled and tried to compel me to do what she wanted—­“Up, up!”—­but I pulled her along.

The three of us made it to the car lurching sideways. Kevin had his arm over my shoulder, and while to an outside observer it might appear casual, the weight of his body got heavier and heavier. Lucy pulled in the other direction, not understanding why she couldn't take off. On the drive home both Kevin and Lucy fell asleep, but Kevin woke with a start when I stopped at a red light.

“I guess you need the extra help when you can't even count on me,” he said, quietly. “For anything.”

“I count on you for everything.” I knew this was true. “My heart is breaking, but it can't be broken yet.”

“It can't ever be broken,” His voice softened in the dying light. “You have to stay whole for Lucy.”

“How about you stay whole for Lucy?”

“I would if I could. If I can.” He paused. “This is what you want?”

“This is what I need.”

The car behind us beeped and I dragged my attention back to the road.

“Hopewell Falls has great breaks out on the Mohawk, right?” Kevin said. “Because I think I want to pick up surfing again.”

I smiled at him. We were off, making the best plans we could for a future we didn't want. I was going home.

 

Acknowledgments

When William Morrow approached me to do a prequel to
Ice Shear
, I jumped at the chance. I appreciate the inspiration and thoughtful editorial guidance from the whole team, including Rachel Kahan, Trish Daly, Ashley Marudas, Camille Collins, Eileen DeWald, Tom Egner, Dana Trombley, and Emily Krump.

Special thanks go to my agent Lisa Gallagher for her enthusiasm for June Lyons' story and the books. My early readers, Kate Curry, Nita Gill, Tambi Harwood, Maggie King, and Lou Moore, caught plot snags, California geography errors, and the overuse of the word “well.” I couldn't have done it without them.

 

Read on for an excerpt from

FLAME OUT

The thrilling second installment in

M.P. Cooley's June Lyons series,

on sale May 19, 2015

 

Chapter 1

T
HE
RAIN
WAS
UNFORGIVING
.

Dave was doing a lousy job of holding up his half of the house. My arms strained under the weight of his niece's birthday gift—­a large backyard playhouse—­and it was slow going back to my car. The spring rain had soaked through the layers of cardboard, and my knuckles scraped against the hard red plastic panels where the box disintegrated.

“You know,” I said, “that spin-­art kit would've fit in the back seat with room to spare.” I hefted the playhouse, shoving it hard, but it jammed against my trunk's lockbox, which held my ser­vice revolver. “And I bet Tara would've had a lot of fun with the costume trunk.”

“My niece isn't a princess dress kind of girl.”

I stopped short as a red Subaru sped past, spraying the back of my legs with water. “The kit includes fake mustaches and Groucho eyebrows. She could wear those with the glittery pink sandals.”

“Until she trips and breaks her skull. Blood. Everywhere.” He reversed, backing the box into the trunk. “Can you lift your left side a little higher?” I raised it up to my shoulders.

“That's the trick,” he said.

It wasn't the trick, and the edge slipped out of my hand and dropped to the ground.

“You. Out of my way,” I said. He stepped aside, defeated. The steady rain flattened his black curls, and the wet white box smeared the arms of his Jets windbreaker with saturated cardboard. I balanced one side of the box on the edge of the trunk, and using leverage, shoved most of it in. The trunk wouldn't close, so I bungeed the top to protect it from the rain, not that it mattered at this point. I ran around front and climbed into my dry car, starting the engine to get the heat going, and unlocked the door for Dave, who made a distinct squelching sound as he dropped into the passenger seat.

“I hate to tell you,” I said as I backed the car out of the spot, “but Tara won't be very impressed with a big soggy box.”

“She'll be
very
impressed with a big soggy box because she and her dad will have a project,” Dave said. “Is it too late to go back to get the kiddie tool set?”

“Yes.” I pulled out, bouncing through a pothole. My thirteen-­year-­old Saturn was close to the end of its life. “Yes, it is.”

“Yeah, and she wouldn't go for the kiddie version anyway. I should remember to buy her gift at Home Depot next year.”

I drove slowly out of the packed lot and negotiated the traffic circle, passing the exits for Colonie, Latham, and Cohoes. I missed the Hopewell Falls exit and was forced to loop around a second time. Dave snorted.

On the outskirts of town we passed St. Agnes Cemetery, where my husband lay buried. In the first year after he died I would've insisted we stop. In the second year, I would've taken the drive through the cemetery so I could see his grave. This year, I thought a message to him: “Miss you, babe. See you on Thursday. Wait until you hear Lucy's theory on where babies come from. She's definitely your daughter.” I would never cut the thread to Kevin.

The landscape crested, dropping into the city below. Hopewell Falls was all downhill. The Mohawk River bounded the city on the east and the Hudson on the south, the waterfall that formed where the two rivers met giving the town its name. Through newly sprouting trees and mist from the rain, I could make out my own house in the distance. Dad was babysitting Lucy while I helped Dave and worked the three to eleven p.m. patrol. In this weather, I wished I were at home. There would be plenty of car accidents tonight, but the bigger threat were those ­people trapped inside on a Saturday with their “loved ones,” drunk, and if I was very unlucky, armed.

The streets got twisty the closer we got to the river. We stopped at a light, waiting to cross Interstate 787 and beyond that, the short bridge that spanned a small waterway, the last remains of the Mohawk River before it joined the mighty Hudson.

Dave was frowning, his eyes on the Ukrainian church, its gold and sky-­blue dome bright against the gloomy afternoon sky.

I touched his arm. “You OK?”

“Never better, Lyons.” He shook off my hand. Something must be wrong—­I spent most of my time extricating myself from the hugs, pats, and leans Dave used with everyone, but especially me.

“You sure? It's only a birthday party. You're too late to be forced into pin the tail on the donkey. And if you really wanted to escape, you could take my shift for me . . . put on the blues, drive around for eight hours.”

“Uh, huh.”

“And your brother's doing better.” His brother, Lucas, had been unemployed for a while and had divorced again for the fourth time last year, leading to a drunk-­and-­disorderly charge outside his most recent ex-­wife's house. Thankfully, the arrest scared Lucas straight.

“Lucas is doing great, although his plan is to score points off his ex today. I guess Felicia threw a roller-­skating extravaganza for Tara's school friends, and Lucas insisted on throwing a second party for all the kids from the church. I'm expecting balloon animals.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So why are you tense?”

He didn't answer. The light changed to green, and in less than ten seconds we had crossed the highway and the bridge from the mainland to the Island.

“It's just, the Island's so closed off,” Dave said finally. I stifled a laugh. Annexed by the same Dutch settler who farmed Hopewell Falls back in the sixteenth century, DeWulf Island was hardly some isolated outpost. The channel separating the mainland from the Island was narrow enough that I could probably cross it with a running jump, and if I followed the main thoroughfare we'd be in Troy in another half mile. Instead of taking the straight shot across the Hudson, I veered right, passing a series of side-­by-­sides, apartments built by the Ukrainian and Polish immigrants who had fled first the Soviets, then the Nazis, and then the Soviets again. The remains of the Golden Wheat bakery, burned down two years ago, lay on our left, and we passed a small Polish grocery that sold Cheetos, Cokes, frozen pierogies, and pickled beets.

“Left here,” Dave said, and we turned onto a street populated with more trees than houses, plants lush with the recent spring rains. The street dead-­ended at a modest home surrounded by several acres of land. The home's façade was brick with a white porch and black shutters. Purple balloons swung wildly in the breeze, and four cars were parked out front. The bench on the front porch was freshly painted, and a lilac bush sprang up on the lawn, trimmed and blooming. We were at Lucas's house. Or rather, his Aunt Natalya's.

Dave and I wrestled the playhouse up the narrow walk to the front door and rang the bell. Lucas greeted us, beer in hand.

“Jesus, Davey. Did you have to be so late?” he said. “And Aunt Natalya'll kill you if you sprinkle dirty cardboard through the house. Oh, hi, June.” He stepped outside and dropped his beer on the arm of the bench, picking up my end of the box. He got a good look at the contents for the first time and grimaced.

“Oh, wonderful. A construction project of my very own.”

Matching Dave's 6'4”, Lucas was fairer than his brother, his light brown hair sporting some gray, straight, and almost fine. He'd worked construction for over twenty years until suffering a vague injury involving a lot of Vicodin. His new work as a bartender agreed with him. Dave and Lucas bickered about the gift as they walked around the house to the backyard where the party was in full swing.

Backyard was perhaps an understatement. Dave jokingly called it the back forty, and it wasn't a complete exaggeration, the lot extending north three acres. The lawn had room for a two-­tiered bouncy house and a swing set. Beyond that was a garden that could produce enough fruits and vegetables to feed everyone on the Island, with sunflowers sprouting along the border between the cultivated plot and the meadow near the property's far border.

Despite all the wide-­open space, the adults were grilling and eating on the porch, clustered under the small green tin awning to stay out of the rain. The bouncy castle's turret listed to the left, the weight of the water pooling on the roof about to send the structure sideways. A bunch of kids flinging themselves against the sides didn't help. I was pretty sure this birthday party was going to end in tears, either with the puffed-­up monstrosity tipping sideways or the kids being told no, really, they needed to come in.

“Dad!” the birthday girl shouted, “the roof's caving in!”

Lucas Batko handed the box back to me. “This is going to be a disaster,” he said as he jogged across the lawn to the castle that was wiggling like a basket of puppies. On the way he picked up a toy axe lying on the ground outside the door. Squeals sounded as he entered the inflatable structure, and the castle surged and rolled as Lucas trudged across the inflated floor, designed for a 50-­pound child, not a 200-­pound man. He took the axe handle and pressed up on the roof, sending the water from the first turret splashing over the side. Dave and I maneuvered up the steps to the porch.

Dave's Aunt Natalya intercepted us. She moved rapidly despite her pronounced limp, twisting her left hip forward before propelling the right foot in front.

“David, how could you! Forcing June to march through muddy grass with a heavy box.” Dave told me she had been in the US since the late 1940s but her Ukrainian accent hung heavy on the edge of her words, her
g
's lapsing into
h
's, dropping articles left and right. Small and sharp eyed, her black hair laced with gray, Natalya rested her hands on her uneven hips, the left a few inches higher than the right. “You are no gentleman.”

Dave had to fold in half to give his aunt a kiss. “That's not news to Lyons,
teta
.”

Dave and I dropped the house on the ground in front of the gift table, and Dave took a green polka-­dotted bow out of his pocket and slapped it on the corner. Natalya frowned, but it wasn't at the gift-­wrapping.

“Showing up your brother with your big gift?”

Dave held up his hands in surrender. “Can't compete with a bike,
teta
.”

Despite being almost eighty, Natalya yanked me toward her, pulling me into a hug. I could smell hairspray and powder, the two things that kept her fresh and presentable in the damp weather.

“Food now,” she said. “The children stuff themselves with junk Lucas purchased”—she eyed the pizza rolls with distaste—“but I grilled sausage and have salad from greens I picked myself.”

Dave hooked Natalya's hand through his arm. “Good idea. Lyons starts busting stuff up if you don't feed her.”

Dave prepared our lunches under Natalya's careful direction. He came back with two plates piled with perfectly grilled kielbasa, dumplings, and salad, a pizza roll balanced on top, with a beer in his hand and a bottle of water tucked in his elbow. We settled in a few chairs near the edge of the porch.

“Hail the conquering hero,” Dave said to his brother as he returned, tipping his beer at him. Lucas reached out and grabbed it, taking a swig. Dave's protests were hard to make out with the dumpling shoved in his mouth.

“Good, right?” Dave said. It was delicious. The pierogies were homemade, and the sausage, grilled perfectly, came from a local butcher who made his own. Heavy fare, but delicious.

Dave said between mouthfuls of dumpling, “Aunt Natalya picked out the best food on the table for you.”

“Yeah,” Lucas said. “She's always trying to butter up Dave's girlfriends.”

Dave choked on his pierogi. “I have no idea where she got that idea.”

“Wishful thinking on her part.” Lucas pulled out a lighter. “I'd better go. We were holding the cake until Tara's favorite uncle got here”—­Dave saluted as Lucas continued—­“and since he's deigned to grace us with his presence, I better try to get the candles lit before her next birthday.”

“Get me another beer, will ya?” Dave called to his brother, but Lucas was already inside. Dave knocked his knuckles against mine. “You're going on shift, but you want one?”

At my no, Dave went to grab one for himself. I dug into my meal.

I was almost done when Dave broke my food reverie. “Me and Special Agent Bascom grabbed a beer last night.”

“You and Hale?” I said.

“Yep. I invited the G-­man over today. Once I told him about the bouncy house, he signed right up.”

I wiped my mouth, preparing to escape before Hale arrived.

“What's your hurry? You two buried the hatchet.”

“Mostly.” I collected my trash and stood to go. “He's still a shark, but a friendly one.” What I didn't want to tell Dave was that I was avoiding Hale because he was chasing me for an answer: Was I or was I not going to consult with the FBI? It had been almost four years since I left, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to rejoin. What's more, I couldn't figure out why they would want me. Why Hale might want me.

As I was about to say my good-­byes, Lucas came out with the biggest cake I'd seen this side of my wedding. Scratch that, it was bigger. A princess sat on top, the highest tier making up her skirt, pink and detailed with icing and candy, surrounded by four birthday candles. Below lay her kingdom, the tiers decorated with characters from the
Dora the Explorer
TV show.

“Tara, come up and blow out your candles!” Lucas called. The kids were slow to leave the bouncy house, and Lucas started to pace, beer in hand, checking to see that the candles were still lit while yelling for Tara to hurry.

“Calm down a little,” Dave said to his brother. “Let me get her.”

Dave pretended to be a giant and said he was going to eat slow children, and the kids came running up the steps and were corralled into singing. At first deliriously happy, the birthday girl began to cry when they went to cut the cake.