Street Harvest

By Aya Walksfar

Human traffickers abduct children to feed a 35 BILLION DOLLAR PER YEAR industry. Children are raped, sodomized, tortured, murdered.

IN the United States, a child goes missing every 40 SECONDS.

STREET HARVEST is their story.

What do the bodies of two young children have in common with the murders of two adult men?

Eleanor Hasting, a black bookstore owner and child advocate, knows these killings are linked. She must convince Lieutenant Michael Williams, head of the Special Crimes Team.

Psychic Jaimie Wolfwalker, is prepared to do whatever it takes to locate and rescue the missing street children. The law be damned. Jaimie's attitude and methods place her on a collision course with Sergeant Nita Slowater, second-in-command of the Special Crimes Team.

Four dedicated people struggle to come to terms with each other in their desperate search for clues. Every day brings more missing children, more young bodies. Can they stop the monsters before another child disappears?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aya Walksfar
• Release date: Jun 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9780990460237

Aya Walksfar

Born on the wrong side of life,I learned to make myself invisible, to be so quiet that no one noticed me in the shadows. My illiterate grandfather, and nearly illiterate grandmother valued books and education; consequently, they coaxed a Carnegie Librarian to teach me to read and write by age six.When I was nine years old, my grandfather was murdered; the killer never apprehended. Writing allowed me to deal with my anger and grief by changing the ending of that particular reality: I wrote murder stories.I published my first poem and my first journalistic articles around the age of fourteen. It was a time of countrywide unrest and riots.After that, I never stopped writing--poems, articles, short stories, novels.Good Intentions (first edition), a literary novel, received the Alice B. Reader Award for Excellence in 2002.Sketch of a Murder and Street Harvest have made Amazon's Top 100 Bestseller's Lists several times.

Book preview

Chapter 1

October 1st and the temperature in the Darrington area hovered at 73 degrees. The normal fall rains with the attendant drop in temperatures had not yet arrived, leaving the land too dry and hard to be marked by tire tracks or footsteps. Gerry’s Jeep Four-by-Four was parked in its spot to the left of the porch steps.

With the van’s engine shut down, Jaimie Wolfwalker sat motionless, listening. Birds chirped and flitted about the clearing. Several mountain chickadees landed on the thistle seed feeder hanging from its iron hook off the corner of the porch ceiling.

Even though the birds acted undisturbed, something felt wrong. The cabin door stood partly open, though that was not unusual in the warm weather. She dipped her hand beneath the driver’s seat and retrieved her Lady Smith .38 then she clicked open the glove box and took out the thin, leather driving gloves. She eased out of the van and pocketed her keys. The black gloves slid on, fitting like a second skin. With a nudge from her hip, she pushed the van door almost closed. Pistol held against her thigh, she crept to the house.

She stood off to the side and with the flat of one hand she pushed the cabin door the rest of the way open. It thudded softly against the wall. She edged across the threshold. As she stepped inside, a curse found its way to the tip of her tongue, but now wasn’t the time to give in to her anger. Directly across from the open door Gerry Martin Barnes, her friend and mentor, sat duct-taped to one of his chrome-and-vinyl kitchen chairs. Never a big man—only a few inches taller than her five-foot-eight frame, and nearly as slender as she was—he seemed smaller now.

She’d teased him about those chairs, calling him a retro for the secondhand, 1950’s look. He had laughed and said they were secondhand from Uptown Vintage, and he loved them. Said the chairs reminded him of his mother. The way his eyes got kind of misty looking made her think about her own mother, and how much she missed her and her grandmother. She hadn’t teased him about the chairs anymore after that.

Thin lips pressed together, she concentrated her dark-eyed gaze on Gerry. When the nostrils of her straight nose flared, she nearly heaved from the sweet-sour scent of rancid blood. The muscles of her strong jaw tightened and she swallowed down the bile. There was no doubt that he was dead, even though his head hung down against his chest and she couldn’t see his face. Blood spatters surrounded the chair. Black puddles created irregular ovals beneath it. The sound of flies buzzing around his body brought the nausea flooding back. She fought it down again.

She surveyed the cabin. The first floor consisted of one large room and a half bath stuffed beneath the stairs to the loft. The sparse furniture delineated where the living room stopped and the kitchen began. The chrome-and-Formica dining table, with the remaining three chairs, sat next to the kitchen’s only window. Copper-bottomed pots and pans that usually hung on the overhead rack lay scattered across the floor. From where she stood, she could plainly see the gaping mouth of the stainless steel refrigerator, its door propped open by a thick glass bottle that lay on its side. A tiny lake of soured milk surrounded the bottle. Through the half-glass back door leading from the kitchen to the outside, unseasonably hot sunlight leaked onto the plank floor Gerry had sanded satin-smooth. The light somehow made the cabin feel claustrophobic.

The silence and emptiness of the house surrounded her. Whoever had done this was gone. Still, she could barely force her feet to move. Shuffling sideways, she finally eased away from the heavy planks of the door. The rough solidness of the natural log wall at her back comforted her.

She shut her eyes for a moment then slit them open as she eased around the perimeter of the living area toward the steep, narrow pine stairs that led to the sleeping loft and a minuscule bathroom. When her foot landed on the first step, she opened her eyes a bit wider. I can do this. I have to do this. Just don’t look at Gerry. Eyes on the steps. Shallow breaths. Don’t think about what that sweet-sour smell is. She climbed slowly, head bent forward so that her long, chestnut hair screened her vision.

Like the room below, the loft was simply a large open space with a small square boxed in for the bathroom. When she reached the top of the stairs, she lifted her head, and stared. Her hand froze on the banister. Her feet refused to move any farther while her eyes darted everywhere like a bird desperately trying to find the way out of a closed room. Her stomach cramped and she pressed her clasped hands against it.

Gerry’s grandmother’s hand-stitched quilt, with its green and brown, yellow and blue geometric designs, lay shredded in a heap at the foot of the antique, king-sized sleigh bed. The sleigh bed’s curved cherry wood headboard bore deep grooves gouged in no particular pattern, just random vandalism.

The brass lamp she and Gerry had found at an estate sale two summers ago lay against the south wall, its shade crumpled, the energy-saver bulb shattered into sharp shards lying in glittering disarray around it. It didn’t make sense, but the sight of its destruction brought her to the brink of hot tears. She blinked furiously, clearing them away.

The once-sturdy, four-drawer chest lay on its side, several areas of its back caved in. Remnants of its drawers were scattered among the torn clothing strewn about the small room. Split in jagged lines, both doors of the 1870’s Victorian armoire hung askew, partially ripped from their hinges. The black iron fireplace poker from downstairs protruded from the side of the armoire, an obscenity marring the original walnut finish Gerry had kept lovingly polished. The two drawers in the bottom of the armoire had met the same level of destruction as the drawers of the chest. He’d once told her the armoire had belonged to his grandmother.

Bile surged up her throat. She swallowed the bitter saliva that flooded her mouth, but a burning, sour taste still sat at the back of her tongue. A black wave crashed over her, dimming her vision. A roaring filled her ears. She swayed. Her hand clamped tighter to the smooth pine wood banister. Her breath rasped in ragged sheets as her heart pounded.

Such rage! She wasn’t usually sensitive to the energies left behind from another adult’s rage, but here in this room it felt like ants crawling all over her with rapier-sharp feet. Such mindless frenzy painted a picture of thwarted desire. Gerry had obviously refused to accommodate whatever demand his torturers had made.

A grimace twisted her mouth. Gerry’s ten years as a prisoner-of-war had hardened him. A mild mannered, soft-spoken man, he had told her that he no longer feared pain.

She stepped further into the loft. Her eyes swept through the open door and checked out the tiny bathroom cubicle. The claw-footed bathtub was empty. The only things in the bathroom were the toiletries that had been flung about and the baby blue towel trampled on the floor.

A weight settled on her shoulders as she walked over to the bed and pushed against the headboard. After she slid the heavy piece of furniture a couple of feet, she knelt and tapped a corner of the pine baseboard behind it. A small section sprang open.

When a head-on collision with a drunk driver killed her mother, Jaimie supported herself through her last year of high school by doing odd jobs. Handy with a saw and a hammer, she had discovered a talent for inventiveness when it came to interesting projects.

During the first summer right after her grandmother’s lethal heart attack, when she divided her time between studying with Gerry and working at Auntie El’s bookstore, he had commissioned her to build an un-findable hidey-hole. Afterwards, as a bonus, he drove fifty miles one-way to treat her to barbecued ribs at Famous Dave’s in Everett. They laughed as rib sauce smeared around their mouths. It was the first time that she had laughed since her grandmother died.

Jaimie shoved those memories away. They had no place in this blood-soaked house.

Fingers scrabbling inside the hidey-hole, she retrieved a small silver key and a USB device. She pushed to her feet, held onto the silver key, pocketed the USB device, then picked her way over to the armoire. It took a bit of work, but finally with a creak of the wood the fireplace poker came lose. With the black iron poker in hand, she took one last look around the room then slowly headed down the stairs. She turned right at the bottom and made her way across the living area.

Flagstone skirted the red brick fireplace. Blood speckled the flagstone’s silvery sheen. Careful to avoid the droplets, she knelt then slid the poker along the front inside wall of the fireplace until it thunked into metal. Moments later the poker snagged a small metal box from a special hook three feet up inside of the fireplace.

The silver key fit the lock of the soot-caked box. The first time Gerry had gotten the box out to place a new DVD inside she’d laughed and told him he was going to wind up roasting his data. A wide grin had split his plain face and he had looked almost handsome as he handed her the little key. When she had opened the box, she saw that the inside was pristine and the plastic DVD covers had been as smooth as the day they’d been made, un-touched by the heat.

Gerry had tapped a finger against the dull, black metal. The very best fireproof and heatproof box that technology can produce and money can buy.

Now, inside of the box a single DVD case snuggled in heatproof packaging. She removed and unwrapped the plastic case then popped it open long enough to visually check the disc. Snapped shut, the case fit snugly in one of her roomy vest pockets. When she stood, she left the open, empty metal box on the floor.

She took a deep breath then released it slowly through her nostrils. Still, the stench of aging blood filled her nose, and she gagged. Hand clamped over her nose and mouth, she chanted into the palm of her hand, I can do this. I have to do this.

After a moment when she was somewhat certain that she wouldn’t throw up, she picked her way between blood splatters over to the bound body of her friend. Gerry’s arms had been twisted around and duct taped into position, exposing the inside of his forearms. Bubbled blisters, round as the tip of a lit cigarette, dotted the length of both forearms. The monster inside of her reared its bloodthirsty head. So they had taken their time, at least enough to allow blisters to form.

Tears scalded her eyes, but she blinked them away. Oh, Sweet Mother, why didn’t I get here sooner?

She hadn’t noticed before, but someone had gotten creative with a knife, too. Strips of flesh, missing from his right arm, lay like discarded jerky on the floor in front of the chair. Blood formed crusted rivers along the revealed muscles. A dark, hardened pool, dried black and covered with busy flies, lay on the floor five or six inches beneath the fingers of his dangling right hand.

Not normally violent, still she had her moments. One ex-boyfriend told her it was like a wild animal lived inside of her. When hurt or angry that wild thing roared up, slashing and maiming. Her ex only saw it happen once, when they’d caught up to a sexual predator still mounted on a little girl’s dead body.

By the time the cops arrived, the bastard had bled out at the scene. Her ex-boyfriend said he didn’t blame her for what she did, that it absolutely was self-defense, but they broke up soon afterward.

Jaimie knew the truth though, and the truth didn’t set her free. It scared the living shit out of her. She didn’t want to become one of the monsters.

Her feet shuffled to a halt in front of the chair and she squatted, her .38 hanging from her hand. She looked into his grey, waxy face. Hey, Gerry. Her voice came out rusty. She cleared her throat, blinked hard to forestall the threatening tears, and tried again. Thanks for protecting this information. Always backing everything up, huh? I got them both. She tapped the pocket where the DVD and the USB key were safely zipped in. I’ll do my best to make sure your death wasn’t in vain.

Eyes closed, she clamped her jaw tight. A few moments later, she opened her eyes. "We are going to get these monsters, man. I promise you, we’re going to get them. We’re going to stop them. I don’t care what it takes."

The heavy steps of her scuffed brown leather hiking boots echoed hollowly across the bare wood floor. She stepped out then gently pulled the door closed. Outside in the unseasonably warm, late afternoon air, she drew in a deep cleansing breath and exhaled as she took one last look around the stamp-size front porch.

Two solid oak Adirondack chairs hogged a large part of the small space. A split-cedar railing encircled the porch. Along the front, a flat cedar board topped the rail and held several plant pots. Sedums bloomed, deep rich-pink and magenta flowers spilling over the lip of a glazed clay pot. Next to the sedums, nasturtiums burst from their pot in wild profusion, their rounded green leaves and bright red and yellow flowers dangled halfway to the ground.

She’d always loved trees, but hadn’t given much thought to flowers until she met Gerry. Even now, she still wasn’t that great at recalling the names of flowers, except for the ones he loved.

Year after year, he planted sedums and nasturtiums, containers of cherry tomatoes and pots of fuzzy-leaved lemon cucumbers. Pots of all sizes crowded the porch railing. They had sat on the porch chairs during the long summer evenings and plucked the tiny red fruits that clung tenaciously to the tomato plants, or pulled a round, bright yellow cucumber from its vine to eat it like an apple.

Two summers ago, he had finally talked her into trying the nasturtium flowers. Peppery tasting, she fell in love with them at first bite. Now the last of the porch garden, the brave cool-weather plants looked sad somehow. Or maybe it was just her emotions leaking over onto the potted plants.

Gaze focused out through the surrounding Douglas fir and Western red cedar woods, she recalled her last visit with Gerry, a little over a year earlier. They had lounged on the rocking chairs, sipped sun tea, and watched the summer light melt into a mellow darkness. The darkness had drifted feather-light down over the deer ferns and salmonberry bushes that grew among the trees.

She took measured, even breaths, forced the memories into a box in the back of her mind. Chin lifted, she walked down the three wood steps and over to her van.

Minutes later the van’s rumble was the loudest sound in that patch of forest.

****

Darrington, only fifteen miles from Gerry’s cabin, always amazed her. A wide spot on Highway 530, plunked down in the middle of nowhere, it boasted a motel, an IGA grocery store, and a latte stand in the store’s parking lot. A defunct, trading-post store with dead stuffed animals in its windows and five different denominations of churches were scattered like stray leaves around the town.

The Shell gas station and convenience store that occupied one corner of the four-way stop for Highway 530 had the only pay phone in town. It hung on the outside wall of the store.

Jaimie fished out the correct change then dialed 9-1-1. Once connected to the county sheriff’s office, she talked over the dispatcher’s questions and gave enough information for the police to find Gerry’s body. After she hung up, she jogged to her van parked over at the IGA store, and drove away. She wasn’t sure how soon it would be before the police might arrive at the pay phone with questions that she couldn’t answer.

Tears sprang to her eyes as she turned left and drove out of town. Gerry had loved Darrington, with all of its prejudices, all of its open-heartedness, all of its flaws, and all of its beauty. Besides, he told her, where else could he live surrounded by mountains and only minutes from wonderful hiking and camping opportunities?

The Sauk-Suiattle trail had been one of Gerry’s favorite spots. Parked in a corner of the empty, dirt parking lot, she jerked open the camper-size refrigerator and slapped together an easy dinner that she stuffed into her backpack.

Not bothering to lock the van, she shouldered her pack and started up the narrow, packed-dirt trail. The trail followed a gentle incline that, six miles in, led to a swinging bridge. She’d been there before, but probably wouldn’t hike that far today.

The edge of dark stalked through the mix of Douglas fir, alder, BigLeaf Maple and Western Red cedars, shadowing the barely-visible pathway that meandered through the deepening gloom. An hour into her hike, she wandered off the trail, following the faint sounds of a creek. Close to a large Douglas fir, she dropped her pack, untied her bedroll, and flipped it out flat. She rested her back against the corrugated bark of the tree.

Dinner consisted of two thick ham-and-cheese sandwiches, and six chocolate chip cookies. All of it tasted like old cardboard. The rest of the liter of diet Pepsi washed the last bite of sandwich down. Coffee went better with cookies—at least she could dunk them—so she hauled out the stainless steel thermos. Muscular legs crossed at the ankles, she poured the strong black brew into the thermos cup and settled more comfortably on the down sleeping bag.

Palm placed flat on the ground, yellow and brown leaves crumbling beneath her hand, she tilted her head back and gazed up through the canopy of the trees. A full moon rode high and silvery against the endless black of night. Her mother once told her that each star was an ancestor who watched over her. She knew better, of course, but couldn’t help wanting to believe that one of those bright eyes staring down from the heavens was Gerry.

Tomorrow, tomorrow I will hike out and drive to Seattle and tell Auntie El about Gerry. Tonight I can’t face her sorrow and my own, too. For this one night, I’m going to drink coffee and star gaze. I’m going to listen to the owl I can hear softly hooting and rustling above me in this tree. I am going to immerse myself in the murmuring of that nearby stream as it trips its way across the rocks and fallen tree trunks in that creek. I will not think about Gerry. I will not!

Even as she told herself that she would shove these memories aside and rest, she knew she lied.

Chapter 2

The third day of October, and the damn month wasn’t showing any more inclination than September had to return to normal weather. It was still too warm and too dry. Sergeant Nita Slowater tossed her head to get her long raven hair out of her face as she walked down the hall to the Special Crimes Team Command Center. She loved how her hair swung along the middle of her back, but sometimes it could be irritating. At one time, she had thought the designation 'Command Center' was a fancy name on a fancy wood plague for the large conference room on the fifth floor of a downtown Seattle office building. She’d sneered at the affectation when she had first arrived as the second-in-command of the unit.

Just as she had sneered at the wood plagues affixed to each office door with the occupants’ names engraved in a dignified, plain script. To her it seemed that Lieutenant Michael Williams, head of the Special Crimes Team, also known as SCaT and answering only to Governor Marleton, was trying too hard to rise above the less-than-sterling reputation of his newly-formed team.

Now she smiled. Her smile transformed an ordinary face with hazel eyes and a nose with a bump in the middle from being broken while apprehending a perp, into an interesting face—a face that was pleasant to look at while hinting at strength and tenacity.

The plagues weren’t an attempt to rise above anyone’s poor opinion of the team. Mike viewed his team as good cops, solid cops, regardless of any labels slapped on their personnel files.

She pushed the solid wood door open, made her way to her usual chair at the long table in the center of the room. Gratefully, she sank down on it and nodded at Officer Juan Rodriquez who occupied the chair on her right. Hawk’s head cane propped against the table edge next to her, she opened her laptop.

Lieutenant Williams stood at the front of the room, studying the latest hard copies of the crime scene photos pinned to the cork board wall. His large-knuckled hands were clasped behind his back. The big man didn’t even flinch when her cane clattered to the floor. She admired that kind of intense focus on the job at hand. It was one of the traits that made him a great detective. Too bad some of his other traits got him busted to SCaT.

She glanced around the table at the rest of the team then up at the clock on the opposite wall. Late again. Oh, well. Nothing new. At least Mike doesn’t jump down my throat like he used to do for the least infraction of his rules. Besides getting free lattes, guess that’s another stroke of serendipity to getting a chunk blown out of my thigh while saving the lieutenant’s life. She grinned as she picked up the sixteen-ounce latte waiting at her place. If she was lucky, she might even be able to get rid of the cane pretty soon.

As she logged into the Special Crimes Team’s online Team Room, then waited for the website to come up, she thought about Ronald Arneau, their computer guru, and smiled. The man was barely into his twenties and had the soft build of a nerd who forewent exercise in exchange for another hour of computer time. His longish, ash-blond hair often flopped into his eyes and currently sported bright purple streaks. With his crooked smile, the guy looked like he belonged in a college classroom, rather than surrounded by cops. Except he had already managed to piss off Governor Marleton and had gotten exiled to SCaT for his audacity. Took talent to do that!

Well, she was glad his hacking the governor’s computer had landed him with SCaT. He kept the case information up to date and organized. Even her sometimes cryptic investigative notes flowed in a logical manner. Morgue and crime scene photos were posted as soon as he could access them.

Too bad for the kid that he hadn’t wound up assigned to SRDTF, Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force, the multi-jurisdictional drug task force of Snohomish County. Even though both SRDTF and SCaT were comprised of law enforcement members from a number of different jurisdictions, and could boast an FBI team member as well, that is where the similarities ended. SRDTF was a well-respected unit, one other counties wanted to emulate, while everyone considered SCaT the Siberia of law enforcement. The unit comprised of losers and misfits.

To hell with what everyone else thought. SCaT could stack up against SRDTF any time.

She shoved those thoughts aside as the Team Room logo filled her screen. Since only their members could access the Team Room, Mike had given Ronald a free hand to design their logo. She studied the latest logo design: a detective shield with a perp on the ground, hands cuffed behind his back, a cop standing with one foot on the perp’s neck. The words on the shield said: Stomp Out Crime. With a chuckle, and knowing the newest design was destined for the recycle bin like several earlier ones, she clicked her mouse and pulled up the latest murder file and photos.

Late afternoon of the day before, an anonymous tip had sent a Snohomish County Sheriff’s deputy to Gerry Barnes’ cabin. As soon as Deputy Wilks surveyed the scene, he relayed his findings directly to his superior via his cell phone, as the guidelines from Governor Marleton dictated. She had to admit that that simple precaution often kept the press off their backs for at least the first twenty-four, critical hours.

At 1635 hours, Mike received a call from the Sheriff’s Department. He called her at 1645 hours with directions to the scene. By the time she arrived, the rest of the team was already there, waiting for her. That was all right, though, since they had to wait for Dr. Hutchinson, the ME, and the crime scene techs to get there. Dr. Hutchinson was an amiable bear of a man unless you messed with his dead bodies.

As soon as she had stepped into the cabin behind Mike and Dr. Hutchinson, the sickly sweet smell of death and the sharp, rancid odor of old blood had seeped into her nose. It lodged as a gut-churning taste at the back of her throat. She often wished—never more than right then—that smells didn’t sometimes translate as tastes.

Afterward, in spite of an unexpected spate of rain, she was glad she’d left her Subaru Forester at home and had ridden her bike, even though the sixty mile per hour wind clawed through her leathers with chilled fingers. At least, most of the death stench that had permeated her clothes blew away. Though the smell disappeared, not all the Altoids on the planet, extra-strong peppermints or not, could overcome that sickly sweet taste of death left to ripen in a closed, warm cabin. Somehow, it continued to linger this morning, tainting the taste of her hazelnut-flavored latte.

Sliced and diced; peeled, and even cooked in a few places. Gerry Martin Barnes’ death had taken its time in coming, according to Dr. Hutchinson. Barnes had been tortured by someone with a strong stomach and a mile-wide sadistic streak.

Why? Why did they expend this kind of time and effort on a fifty-five year old man? What, if anything, did he have in common with our first victim, Darrel ‘Dirk’ Torenson, besides the manner of their deaths? Torenson and Barnes have to be connected. I just can’t believe that we have two sets of premium sickos operating in this area at the same time.

She pulled up a second window and skimmed the information they had on Barnes so far: a full-blooded Cherokee, a retired Army veteran, an amateur ornithologist, and a professional computer geek.

She chewed the inside of her lower lip. Did he piss someone off, or did he possess information, or something else, someone badly wanted?

She clicked back to the photos of the interior of the cabin. The police photographer had done a meticulous job. Hmm. Most likely information, judging from the way his laptop was trashed and his cabin thoroughly ransacked. Wonder if the empty black box we found on the floor was the object of their search? What in the world... She zoomed in on a slice of the loft’s baseboard. What’s that piece of baseboard doing propped up on the floor at that angle to the wall? She lifted her head and looked down the table. Hey, Ronald, what’s with the baseboard in the loft?

He glanced up. Zoom in, Sergeant.

Come on, you know I'm from the Dark Ages. Remember? Me. Technosaur.

Give me a sec. He tapped some keys then looked up. It’s some kind of little door into what looks like...hmmm...I’d say a three-inch by two-inch hole.

Thanks. I’ve got the report up now. She skimmed the three-page document. A three-inch by three-inch by two-inch hole, but wasn’t anything found in it. Absently, she tapped a finger on the tabletop. Not big enough for a passport or a roll of cash. What the hell was in it? This guy into drug trafficking? The isolated location of the cabin would make a great distribution point. Meth lab? Lots of woods to hide one. Hell, there’s enough woods up there to hide a whole meth factory! Could that be the connection to Torenson? Torenson’s upscale, automotive repair shop would provide wonderful transportation opportunities. Cars arrive and leave constantly.

Please, tell me this is just a regular old murder because of drugs or money, or even a jealous husband. Tell me it isn’t going to become another Avenger case with God telling someone to kill people. She muttered loud enough for the rest of the team to hear then dropped her face to her hands. Head bowed, she rubbed her fingertips up and down her forehead as if she could scrub away the ugliness of this case.

They’re all Avenger cases, one way or another. People killing each other for no sane reason. Mike’s deep, gruff voice brought her head up. He stalked over to his chair at the head of the conference table.

Yeah, I know. She dropped her hands to the tabletop. I did finally read the handbook the governor had printed for our team. We get the worst of the worst: all the nut jobs whose most cherished ambition in life is to find new ways to torment and murder their fellow humans.

You stated our mission quite succinctly, Nita. Detective Frederick Albert chuckled from the far side of Officer Rodriquez.

She pretended to glare up the table at the well-dressed, soft-spoken man, who had saved her life during their last case. Well, thank you, oh so much, Detective Albert, for those kind words, sir, she teased.

It was a recent development, her getting comfortable using Frederick’s first name. Damned huge stride, to be honest. She still wasn’t able to do it with anyone else on the team, except Mike and Ronald. As she’d gotten to know Frederick a little better, it made her wonder all the more why a man with luscious, caramel skin and spring green eyes, who was invariably polite to everyone, had been exiled to a team that was considered a career killer.

Would you two knock it off? Mike muttered, shifting his eyes