I stretched out a hand. “I’m Riley Hollis.”
“Good to meet you, Riley. I’m Lauren Morton.” Her voice came out in a husky Southern drawl. That was about all I had time to register before she hit me with the big guns. “I’m here because rumor says you’re about the best tracer around. I need your help. I’ve got five teenagers lost inside the mountain, and if you can’t find them, they’re going to die.”
Chapter 2
The mention of missing kids woke me up like nothing else could. I motioned for the other woman to sit. “Tell me about it.”
She hesitated, her gaze flicking at the door. “They don’t have time.”
“I’ve got to know more before I can help you,” I said, sliding into the booth.
She gnawed her bottom lip and finally sat opposite to me. “You’ll be paid, if that’s what’s concerning you,” she said in a rolling Southern accent.
I examined her. Her skin was ashy, like she’d not slept for a while, and her eyes were sunken with bags around them. She linked her hands in front of her, weaving her fingers together. Her nails were oval and polished in a lilac color. She wore light makeup, and her lips matched her nails. I guessed her to be around forty-five or fifty years old.
I ignored the financial reference. I didn’t trace kids for money. I traced them because I hadn’t been able to trust anyone else to do their jobs and find them.
For a fleeting second, my mind fled back to the last time I’d helped recover a kidnapped little girl—named Nancy Jane Squires. It made me think of Price. He’d been the cop I’d taken my anonymous tips to. Now that I’d kicked him out of my life, I didn’t know who to tell. Even if I were still talking to him, he’d left the force. Most cops were corrupt. I couldn’t trust them to actually go after the kids.
I ignored the ache of emptiness that came with thinking of Price. I’d get over it. I pretended to believe the lie and focused back on the woman sitting opposite me.
“Tell me what happened. Who are these kids and how did they end up in the mines?”
Patti brought me another cup of coffee and topped off Lauren’s. I noticed she gave the other woman decaf. Good idea. Lauren already looked wired to the gills.
She looked down at her hands, visibly collecting herself. She looked up, meeting my gaze. “I’ve been working on a case involving Sparkle Dust. The Tyet makers and distributers have been using kids as messengers and sometimes couriers. Couple of days ago, five of them vanished. I have reason to believe that this particular group of kids decided to start making their own drugs and went down into the mines to get some of the base mineral for making SD.”
I leaned against the back of the booth and considered what she’d said. What had they been thinking? First—stealing anything from the Tyet was a ticket to the dead zone, and second, the mountain was a huge warren of passages and caves. Precious few of them were publicly mapped. Unless they knew exactly where they were going and had left themselves a trail of breadcrumbs, they’d probably gotten lost in the first ten minutes. I was betting on lost. The kind of breadcrumbs they needed involved high tech or good magic, and neither were cheap. Teenagers weren’t going to just walk into Best Buy and find what they needed.
I frowned as questions clicked into my head. “They’ve been gone two days? How come the news doesn’t have a hold of this?” Before the detective could answer, my suspicion doubled. “Why come to me? The cops have tracers.” Not very good ones, admittedly, and after two days, they probably wouldn’t be able to find the trace. But still, cops didn’t go looking for outside help on cases like this unless they had more than a professional interest. From the looks of her, Detective Lauren Morton was deeply interested.
Lauren’s mouth hardened. “The department isn’t willing to allocate resources to an undermountain search. These kids are drug runners and don’t merit the cost.”
In other words, nobody important was going to care if they died. My hand tightened around my coffee cup. “Why do you care so much?”
She hesitated. “One of them is my nephew.”
My brows went up. “Your nephew? How? You’re a cop.” The moment I said the words, I wanted to reel them back. Talk about a dumb question. Cops and cop families weren’t immune to breaking the law. Hell, most of the Diamond City force was on the Tyet payroll. In a city run by the Tyet and an economy revolving around billions of dollars of diamonds and drugs, that was just the way things were done in Diamond City.
Lauren gave a weak smile. “We moved here last summer. My brother—Well, let’s just say he couldn’t be a good father and leave it at that. His ex, Trevor’s mom, left years ago. Anyhow, I took a job here. Figured I’d get Trevor somewhere he could make a new start. He’d gotten a little bit wild back in Rock Hill. Hanging out with the wrong crowd. He’d been pinched for vandalizing and petty theft. I thought maybe being in the mountains and isolated, he’d get sorted out in school and straighten up. But then he made friends with this no-good excuse for a boy—Justin Barba. Next thing I know, he was involved in Tyet business.”
She spun her spoon on the table. “It’s my fault. The job takes up more time than I thought it would, you know?” She smiled again, and just as quickly it faded. “Trevor has no one else but me. I should have been with him more.”
Even if I’d been leaning in that direction, which I wasn’t, I couldn’t judge her. She was taking care of a kid that didn’t even belong to her. As far as I was concerned, that made her pretty close to a saint. I had some experience with being abandoned to the care of others.
“How old is he?”
“Seventeen. Just turned.”
“He’s not using, is he?” My stomach clenched as I remembered the surgeon and the way I could see the dark threads of his arteries beneath his skin.
“I don’t think so. God, I hope not.” She wiped away a couple of tears. “Sorry. I don’t usually break down. I just thought maybe here he’d have a chance to be a normal kid. If only I’d—” She knotted her hands.
“If you’d what? Look, the boy’s a teenager and he’s trying to be a man. You took him from a bad situation and set him up in a better one. You’ve been a better parent than his own. What more could you have done?”
She grimaced and just shook her head. I understood. Guilt wasn’t that easy to shrug off. I pushed in a different direction.
“The cops know he’s your family? And they still won’t go looking for him?” I really shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d bounced off the corruption in Diamond City so many times that I practically had a PhD in bureaucratic greed. All the same, however corrupt law enforcement was, they tended to look after each other’s families.
Lauren looked away. “I begged,” she said. “But like I said, Trevor had a juvenile record before we came here. I’m a new face and they think I’m just a silly woman without sense enough to realize that he’s off doing what he wants to do.” She drew a breath and let it out, nodding. “That’s true enough. He is off doing what he wants to do, but that doesn’t mean he’s not in trouble, and it sure doesn’t mean I’m going to sit around waiting for his body to turn up.”
I didn’t bother telling her that it was a rare thing for anybody to be brought up out of the tunnels, unless it involved some sort of mining accident. Those people the Tyet dumped there tended to be lost forever.
I took a breath. It was up to me. If I didn’t find him and his friends, they were likely going to die, if they weren’t dead already. Two days is a long time in the mines.
Unless they’d nulled out their trace, I’d be able to find them fairly easily. That wasn’t what bothered me. The location of the Sparkle Dust minerals was a closely guarded secret, one that those in the know were willing to kill for. On top of that, the method of converting them into the drug was a complete secret. If the kids knew, they were dead meat. With all that, looking for them became a serious risk. If we were caught, we’d be up shit creek without a paddle or a rubber ducky.
I caught myself. Was I really going to do this? I hated tight spaces. I rarely took elevators, and going into the subway sent my heart into overdrive. I usually came out soaked in sweat. Literally. The mine shafts would be a lot worse. Could I handle it? I jeered at myself. Better question was, could I live with chickening out and letting five kids die when I could have done something about it? The answer to that was a big
hell no
.
If I was going to do this, I was going to need help. The most convenient and quickest option was right here in the diner. I twisted around. Dalton was still brooding at me beneath lowered brows. I waved at him to come over. His brows rose, but he complied.
“How fast can you get gear together to go into the mountain? There’ll be two of us—” I pointed to Lauren and myself. “Plus whoever you want to bring, and one more.” I’d call my brother, Leo. A metal tinker would be useful in the mountain, especially Leo. Rocks talked to him, or so he said. I didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t hurt to have him along. He spent half his time underground.
Dalton scowled. “You can’t go into the mountain. It’s suicidal.”
“Yet I’m going,” I said. I gave him a long look. When he neither spoke nor moved away, I shook my head. So much for trying to trust him. “Fine. I’ll find someone else who’s willing.”
I thumbed my phone on and hit my
Contacts
button. I knew where to get the gear, but finding backup was going to take time. More than I had. That meant it was just going to be me, Lauren, and Leo, though I was rethinking calling him. Without Dalton and his crew, we’d be sitting ducks. We wouldn’t have a chance if we ran into any Tyet goons. I didn’t want to lead my brother right to his death. I didn’t have a right to risk him that way.
Dalton’s calloused hand closed over mine, preventing me from dialing. “I’ll take care of it,” he said, grooves cutting deep into the sides of his nose and mouth. He definitely didn’t look happy. “When do you need it?”
I looked at Lauren. “Have you got anything with you I can read?” I’d at least find out if they were still alive to be rescued before putting Dalton to work gathering supplies.
“I only have something from Trevor, my nephew.”
She put her hand in her breast pocket and took out a toothbrush wrapped in a plastic evidence bag. Trust a cop to get something that had DNA evidence on it and keep it protected. DNA didn’t matter at all to what I did. I only needed Trevor to have come in contact with an object and leave a bit of his trace behind.
I took the bag and opened myself to the trace. Two ribbons wrapped the toothbrush. One was a greenish yellow. It belonged to Lauren. The other was a mustard-orange color. That had to be Trevor. I blinked out of trace mode, feeling a wave of dizziness. I really needed food and some sleep. I was only going to get one of those before diving into the mine tunnels. My stomach clenched hard, and suddenly I wasn’t remotely hungry. I shuddered and swallowed hard. Stupid phobia. I focused back on my new client.
“He’s alive.”
Lauren’s shoulders slumped, and she clutched her hands together. “Praise the Lord.”
I looked up at Dalton. “How soon can you get the gear ready?”
I hoped he knew what we’d need. He seemed more than competent. Mostly I wanted food, water, lights, and weapons. I’d provide the nulls.
“An hour, maybe two.”
“As quick as you can. Soon as you’re ready, we’ll go.”
“Where?”
I looked at Lauren. “Where was the last place you know these kids were?”
She nodded. “They were hanging out at a place near Vine and Reeder.”
“I’ll get to work,” Dalton said. “Stay here and I’ll be back to pick you up.” He withdrew to speak to his two crew members.
I thumbed my phone to text my brother, Leo. I didn’t want to explain beyond the bare bones.
Got a case. Missing teenagers. Going inside the mines. Could use some help. Can you come to the diner in the next hour?
I hit
Send
and set my phone aside.
My phone beeped with a new text. I checked it. It was from Leo. He was short and to the point:
On my way.
Just then Patti arrived with a bacon burger smothered under sautéed onions and bleu cheese, with a mound of crispy fries. I eyed it sourly.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded, her brows winging down. “You don’t like what I brought you?”
I shook my head. “That’s not it. I’m just not sure I’m hungry anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
“We’re going into the mountain.” I glanced up at her with a pained look. She knew I didn’t like small spaces. “I might be better off with just coffee.”
Her expression softened slightly, but she shook her head, wisps of black hair dancing around her face. “You’ve been up for almost twenty-four hours, and I’m willing to bet you haven’t eaten since you left here yesterday. You need the energy. So pull up your big girl panties and force it to stay down.”
Having made that pronouncement, she smiled at Lauren. “Can I get you anything else?”
The other woman looked itchy. I understood. She wanted to find her nephew and the other kids, and this felt like wasting time. All the same, there wasn’t anything we could do until Dalton returned and Leo arrived.
Lauren smiled weakly. “I guess I’m going to need a little fortification of my own. Can I see your menu?”
Patti cocked her head at the detective and then waved her hand. “Never mind. I’ll bring you something. You’ll love it.” She twirled around, ducking behind the counter and vanishing into the kitchen.
Lauren watched her go, brows raised, her mouth hanging open. She looked at me. “I don’t get to order?”
I laughed. “She doesn’t usually do that to first timers, but once you’ve been in a few times, you start to realize that it doesn’t matter what you order, she brings you what she thinks you ought to have. Sometimes it’s even what you want. I warn you, though, if you refuse to eat it, you’ll regret it when you come back. If she lets you come back.”
I have to admit, I have always loved the bacon bleu burger, and with the sautéed onions, it was possibly the most perfect food on the planet. I started to eat, prodding Lauren to tell me about the other missing kids.
“There are three other boys and a girl,” she said. “I can’t tell you much about them. Once I realized that Trevor had come into extra money, I figured he was up to no good. He didn’t have a real job.