I tried not to steal peeks of Finn as he sat in my passenger seat. He smelled like oak trees and summertime, and somehow it reminded me of the few good things that came out of my childhood. His disheveled brown hair hung just above his boyish blue eyes, giving him a childlike flair to the deep frown that curved itself along his face.
I wondered what he dealt with that carved such a deep cavern into his skin.
I knew he was only here to keep an eye on me, and that annoyed me. I was officially working with the very people I threw behind bars almost every day of my life and I could’ve killed my own sister for putting me in this position. I love my sister, don’t get me wrong, but she always used our shitty childhood as an excuse to do shitty things.
And it made me furious.
“You gonna drive any faster than this?” Finn asked.
I furrowed my brow. “You mean, break the law and go over the speed limit?”
He snickered. “People do at least five over all the time and never get clocked.”
I shrugged. “They’ve never zoomed past me doing five over, then.”
“You’re a detective. You don’t sit in a car all damn day with a speed gun out the window.”
“And you’re a punk little kid who rides a motorcycle. You shouldn’t be committing criminal acts just to stay afloat.”
He chuckled. “You think you know me so well.”
I decided to peek over at him and give him a nice read so he knew exactly what he was dealing with. “I know your childhood was shit.”
He scoffed. “Everyone’s childhood is shit.”
I turned my eyes back toward the road. “I know that your family’s dead.”
He didn’t say anything, so I continued.
“I also know that you didn’t repair things with them before they died.”
He clicked his tongue. “Anything else, Crystal Ball?”
I shrugged. “That depends, do you want me to keep going? Because you might not like what I have to say.”
When he didn’t respond back, I took that as my cue that I had one-upped him. At least for now. And that was good because I needed him to shut up. I needed to think, and I couldn’t do that with people yapping around me all the damned time like the idiot men in my precinct.
I wanted to ask Finn if he enjoyed playing the mysterious bad boy role, but I held my tongue. He reminded me of the guys I ran with when I was younger and rebelling against my parents that I blamed for making my sister run away. He also reminded me of the one bad boy I decided to trust with my heart at the tender age of fifteen.
You know, before he shat on it and set the damned thing on fire.
“We’re here,” I said as I pulled into the parking lot of the police station.
Finn unbuckled his seatbelt. “Great. Let’s make this quick.”
I parked the car. “Uh, what the hell are you doing?”
He looked over at me. “Coming inside with you.”
I shook my head. “Oh, no no. That isn’t how this works.”
“Well, it’s how it works with us. Now, come on.”
I reached open and grabbed his wrist before he could open the door and tugged his ass back into his seat.
“What the fuck?” he asked.
He ripped away from me as I stared him down. “While I’m in town? While you’re working with me? You don’t make the calls. None of you criminals do.”
He grinned. “Does it make you feel better to think of us as a bunch of lowlives so you don’t form a crush?”
I wanted to vomit on him. “No, I just speak the truth. And you want to know what your truth is?”
“Hit me with it. I’ve got all the time in the world to have some girl tell me what’s what.”
I leaned toward him a bit. “You lost someone near and dear to you. Probably a girl you loved, or maybe even a sibling. And for some reason, you blame yourself for it. You blame yourself for that death and now you close everyone out and you use that one measly moment in your life to justify all the shitty things you do and say, day in and day out. You’re no better than the criminals I put in jail for a living, and you’re sure as hell no better than my sister. I see now why she gets along with you guys. You’re all born from the same pathetic pod that can’t get over bullshit that happened to you when you were a child. But, newsflash, Mr. Finn: you’re not responsible for how you are raised. But, you sure as hell are responsible for how it forms you as an adult. Now, stay here and shut the fuck up, or I’ll arrest you on the spot.”
His eye twitched. “For what?”
I nodded to his hip. “For having the fucking audacity to carry an illegal firearm in the presence of a goddamn detective.”
The car fell silent and I felt his anger radiating toward me. I had pinged him from the moment I laid eyes on him and that simply came with the job. I had to read people all of the time because almost no one ever told me the truth right off the bat. I usually had to pull it out of him. But, reading Finn like that was almost unfair.
I mean, he was such an easy target.
“I promised the guys I’d–.”
I opened my door. “Fine. You want to come inside? Great. But, you better be ready to answer some serious questions, which you have probably been instructed not to answer. Correct?”
He growled as he flopped back against his seat. “Whatever. Just take my number in case you need help, all right? I can text it to you.”
I pulled out my phone. “No need. Let me have it.”
After he rattled off his cell number, I punched it into my phone. I saved it under my contacts just in case for some asinine reason I needed to place a call to the one person I didn’t want to be around, then I made my way inside. The first thing I needed to do was talk to the Chief about getting permissions to operate within their boundaries.
Then, I had to ask him if he knew of any cops he was supposed to be keeping an eye on.
That idiot actually thinks I need his help. What a dud.
I left Finn in the car and walked into the building and the signs on the walls pointed me directly to the Chief’s office. I knocked on his door before clasping my hands behind my back, trying to come in as unassuming as possible. But, when he opened his office door with his cell phone propped against his shoulder, I saw a cascade of files open on his desk.
He ushered me in with the flick of his finger and I had to push papers to the ground in order to sit on the only available chair in the room.
“Yes, that’s what I meant. No, you can’t quote me. I don’t give a shit about your job, especially since you’re making mine harder. Uh huh. Yeah. Right. Sure, uh huh, I can do that. Wonderful. See you tomorrow. Yep.”
And when the Chief hung up the phone, he stuck out his hand. “You must be Detective Riley.”
I shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Chief Lundson.”
He sighed. “Have a seat. I hear you want to be read in on the Black Flags, correct?”
I nodded as I sat down. “We’ve had an influx of women being shipped into the Santa Barbara docks here lately and I’ve been put on the case.”
He flopped down at his desk. “That sounds like them all right. Give me a second, I pulled their files and set them somewhere.”
“Files? As in, multiple?”
He scoffed. “About twelve of them.”
My eyes bulged. “Excuse me for my triteness, sir, but how in the world do you have twelve files on a crew like this and no arrests?”
He chuckled. “Bullshit, that’s how.”
I giggled along with him. “Sounds about right.”
“Here we go! All right,” he said as he slapped a stack of folders on top of his cluttered desk. “We’ve been tracking these guys for a while, along with their counterparts in the area. Those guys are called the Dirty Misfits.”
I kept my best poker face on. “So, two crews are wrapped up in this?”
Lundson shook his head. “We believe it’s just the Black Flags wrapped up in the sex and human trafficking syndicate that’s reared its head in our strip clubs as of late. But, we also don’t believe the Dirty Misfits are completely innocent in their own right.”
I nodded. “Okay, so keeping on track: where do you believe the Black Flags are getting their women from?”
He pushed the files toward me. “Mexico. But, we also have reason to believe that they’re trafficking underaged girls right here in the area. Snatching them right up off the sidewalks of our lower income neighborhoods.”
It made me sick to my stomach. “Have you interviewed any of the girls?”
He leaned back in his chair. “We had a group of girls come through a little while back. They came from a place called The Body Shop. Some girl named ‘Spring’ or whatever brought them in. Another girl that stripped there.”
Shit, he’s talking about Summer. “All right, what did they have to say?”
He shook his head. “Nothing about Santa Barbara, if that’s what you’re asking. But, that girl that came in with them gave us a statement of some things she overheard and saw during her tenure at the club. It’s in those files somewhere, and I’m pretty sure Santa Barbara was mentioned.”
I drew in a deep breath. “That makes sense because the girls I’ve rescued and interviewed on my end were actually in Santa Barbara at one point. So, I’m glad I came.”
“Well, if you’re looking for permissions, you’ve got it. This thing has grown so out of control that I can’t keep enough of my men on the case to make any sort of break. Those Black Flags guys are really good at killing the people we need to testify and give us statements on where to look for the evidence, so right now all we’ve got is some testimony, some girls, and a bit of hearsay with no way to back it up.”
I stood to my feet and gathered the files in my hand. “Leave it to me. I come with knowledge from my end and I’ve been working on this case for months. I won’t leave the area until I can hand something over that will help you take these guys down for good. Now, are these files I can remove from the station? Do I need to formally sign them out?”
He pointed toward his door. “Yep. Sign them out with the front desk and make sure to write down all of the file numbers. And whatever you can help us with, we’re grateful for it.”
And after leaving his office with arms full of files, I felt a sort of dread spread through my gut.
Because that conversation felt a little too easy for my taste.
