WINDERMERE SURFED THE INTERNET until dawn, hunting down leads and trying to chase the sense of foreboding from her mind. When the sun finally showed itself through the eastern windows, she forced herself to stand, washed up in the ladies’ room, pulled a change of clothes out of the suitcase she hadn’t had a chance to take home yet, fixed her makeup, and rode herd on the morning shift at the various law enforcement agencies around town.
Around eight, Stevens straggled in, looking like he’d taken her advice to get a little sleep and straight ignored it. He gave her a weak smile and a cup of fresh coffee. “How was your night?”
“Restless and uneventful.” She told him about the news from Reno. “You?”
“Dramatic,” he said. “Walked in on my daughter playing grab-ass in the living room with some punk from school. I took umbrage and World War Three erupted.”
Despite her fatigue, Windermere had to smile. “You shoot the poor kid, or what?”
Stevens gave her a sheepish look. “Sent him packing, anyway. Told him to keep his hands to himself or I’d lock his ass up. Andrea didn’t take it so well.”
“I bet she could have just died. The living room, huh? She doesn’t have a bedroom of her own?”
“Not for entertaining gentleman callers,” Stevens said. “No boys on the second floor, house rules.”
“Damn,” Windermere said. “You know this kid?”
“Only from what Nancy tells me.” Stevens sighed. “It’s not even the kid himself who’s the problem, I guess. I just don’t like my daughter running with that kind of crowd.”
Windermere laughed. “What crowd, Stevens? The hormonal teenage crowd? She’s, what, sixteen? It’s going to happen.”
“Not yet,” Stevens told her. “Not if I can damn well help it.”
She was about to tell him he’d have better luck reversing the earth’s rotation, but then Mathers walked in, Drew Harris right behind him.
“Good morning.” Harris regarded Windermere, then Stevens. “I take it from your general state of bedragglement that we’re not making much progress.”
Windermere shook her head. “Every law enforcement agency in the region has Irina’s picture,” she said. “Her face is on the news. We have people looking, but—”
“But so far, no good.” Harris walked to the front of the situation room. “Where do we figure she went?”
“Nobody’s sure,” Windermere said. “We know she’s trying to find her sister, so we’re watching the bus stations, train station, airport, major highways.”
“Except she doesn’t speak English and she doesn’t know the country,” Stevens said. “How in the hell would she know where to go?”
“And how would she find her sister when she got there?” Windermere made a face. “Hell, we don’t know how to track down these bastards.”
“So we’re waiting on Facebook to point us to little sister,” Harris said. “Odds are the traffickers have the girl locked up somewhere on the East Coast. And you guys have the name of the delivery driver and an address where he might be found.”
“Yes, sir,” Windermere said.
Harris looked at her. “But you came back here instead of going to find him.”
“Yes, sir. The Newark guys have an eye on Nikolai Kirilenko’s apartment. He hasn’t shown up since they started watching.”
“Still,” Harris said, “that’s your lead, isn’t it? Wherever this guy is, he could crack your case open.”
“Yes, sir,” Windermere said.
“So why’d you come back to Minnesota?”
Windermere felt her temperature rising. “Sir, I thought we should help with the search for Irina Milosovici. She’s a key witness in this whole thing, and—”
“And she doesn’t speak any English, doesn’t have any money, doesn’t know the city,” Harris said. “Moreover, she didn’t do anything technically wrong by leaving the safe house. She’s free to travel the country, Carla. And Agent Mathers is perfectly capable of chasing down Catalina’s Facebook account.”
Agent Mathers keeps screwing up my investigation, Windermere thought. Mathers met her eyes, his expression guarded, like he was just waiting for her to sell him out. Windermere looked away. “Sir, I just didn’t feel comfortable leaving my witness in danger like this.”
Harris leaned against a table. “Agent Windermere, this is a major investigation,” he said. “The biggest of your career, so far. It’s your ball to carry. If you want to worry about every little thing that goes wrong, you won’t get the damn thing solved. You have a lead in New Jersey that could save a girl’s life. Farting around with a missing person’s case in Minneapolis isn’t going to help the big picture.”
Windermere could feel Stevens watching her. Mathers, too. She made herself meet Harris’s eyes. “Yes, sir,” she said. “You’re right.”
“Good.” Harris looked at her, then Stevens. “Now get your butts on a plane and go solve this thing.”