have to know something, but they’re not clueing me in.”
“So who’s in charge with Garrett gone? I’ve never seen him work with anyone in particular who could step into his shoes.”
“Yeah, I haven’t either, not with the secrecy above his level. But this can’t go on forever. If Garrett is AWOL, someone’s got to assume his duties.”
“You have any idea who?”
Tanya only shook her head. She was normally unflappable, but seeing the grimace on her face told Alexa all she needed to know about her concern.
“We’d have to be careful looking into this. We could blow his op and put him in danger if we barge in without knowing what’s going on.”
“Does that mean you and Jessie will be looking into this?” Tanya asked. “I’ve tried tracking Garrett, but I’ve got nothing. Maybe if we trace other movements within the organization, we’ll have better luck.”
Tanya was right. If Garrett was involved in a covert op that excluded his top analyst and his most trusted agent, it had to be really big. But that also meant Sentinels’ resources would be dedicated to the operation. And if Alexa could handpick someone to dig through the veiled secrecy of the Sentinels—an organization of international vigilantes who operated off the global grid to dole out their brand of justice—she would have Tanya Spencer at the top of her list. The woman had connections in and out of the organization. And with her internal systems knowledge, she could slip through virtual backdoors without anyone noticing.
“I’m meeting Jessie later for breakfast. She’s pretty new to how things work within the Sentinels, but we’ll see.” Alexa sat back on her sofa and crossed her arms. “If we do this, we’ll need your help.”
Tanya nodded and said, “Count on it.”
Alexa knew that what she was planning to do—using the organization’s resources to trace a covert operation involving her boss and former lover—would not be sensible. It could turn into a career ender at best. Or a death sentence at worst. And to involve her new partner, Jessie, would not be wise either—especially for Jessie’s sake.
Relying on gut instinct, she’d have to make that call when she talked to Jessie. If she read anything in her that raised a red flag, she’d let it slide and go it alone with Tanya. But one way or another, she’d take the risk for Garrett—because he would do the same for her.
New York’s Lower East Side
The ringing of a phone early in the morning was never a good thing.
Jessie Beckett pulled the bedcovers off her face and fumbled for the light switch. And after she flicked on her lamp, she squinted at the alarm clock on her nightstand.
“Six twenty? Who the hell—?” She winced, grabbed the cell phone off her nightstand, and flipped it open without looking at the caller’s number. “You better have a damned good reason for breaking into my beauty sleep.”
The sun had barely made an appearance. And that meant she didn’t give a rip about winning Miss Congeniality.
“Jessie? It’s Sam.”
She recognized the voice of her best friend. Samantha Cooper was a vice cop in Chicago. And she had better sense than to call her at this hour if it wasn’t important.
“Sam? What’s up? Is Seth alright?”
Her worry barometer worked double-time when it came to Seth Harper, a guy who had nestled into her heart and made a home. The whacked-out computer genius had a habit of getting into trouble, and not only because he knew her. The boy had a serious way of attracting it himself. And with his recent recruitment into the Sentinels for his mad skills with a keyboard—the same organization Jessie worked for—Seth had more than doubled his gift for luring trouble.
“No, Seth is fine, I guess. I haven’t seen him lately, but I was calling you about…something else.”
“Oh?”
Her friend cleared her throat and stalled, which wasn’t like her.
“Spit it out, Sammie.”
“Chicago PD received a bulletin from a sheriff in La Pointe, Wisconsin.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“It’s at the northern tip of Wisconsin. On Madeline Island in Lake Superior, to be exact. I looked it up on a map.”
“Thanks for the geography lesson.” Jessie ran a hand through her dark hair. “Explain why I should care about this?”
Sam cleared her throat again. Definitely stalling.
“You should care because the sheriff was working an old cold case. A pretty gruesome murder that happened over twenty years ago.”
“Twenty years. We were both kids back then. Why are you calling me about this, Sam?”
Jessie didn’t like where this was headed. Twenty years ago she was a child in the hands of notorious pedophile Danny Ray Millstone. At least, that was what she believed. She was too young to really know the truth about how she ended up with him—or maybe she’d blocked it out. And insult to injury, after she was rescued by Detective Max Jenkins of the Chicago PD, no one from her family stepped up to claim her. Not even the national media coverage afterward shed light on what had happened to her. That aspect of her past had remained a black hole. And she’d given up trying to find where she’d come from.
Looking into the details of her childhood nightmare had always been too painful.
“Yeah, well, back then DNA wasn’t used to solve crimes like it is now,” Sam said. “But an old case caught the eye of this sheriff. And he sent in evidence he had stored in archives to the state crime lab. When the lab ran its findings against the CODIS and NCIC databases, the sheriff got two DNA hits—and his first new lead in over twenty years.”
Jessie’s mind worked quickly, thinking how a DNA test would link to her. The FBI maintained both the Combined DNA Index System and the National Crime Information Center. The first held DNA profiles in a database while the other was a repository for specific criminal records on known fugitives, missing persons, stolen property, and other details. Such database information was available to state and federal law enforcement types and was meant to share information across jurisdictions. Since she’d been a missing person as a child, her gut twisted with the implications of where Sam might be going with this.
“Got two hits…on what?”
“Since you were a missing kid, your DNA is on record, Jess. The Wisconsin crime lab got a hit on your DNA. It puts you at that crime scene over twenty years ago.”
“What?” Jessie grimaced. “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t either. That’s why I called that sheriff. His name is Tobias Cook. I only asked questions and didn’t tell him anything. I wanted to talk to you first,” Sam told her. “Apparently the DNA hit on you was a dead-on match, but that’s not all.”
“Oh, great. The hits keep coming.”
“They found more DNA that suggests you were with a family member. The second hit showed a 95% probability match to your DNA.”
“What does that mean?”
“You were too young to be alone. That second DNA sample came from a family member. Your
“My mother? How would he know that?”
“I tried getting that out of him, but he wouldn’t say.”
Hearing the word “mother” always flashed her back to a haunting memory that had been with her since she was a little girl. She recalled a sunny day with fall colors and a woman’s smiling face. She held those images close to her heart, of a woman playing with her in a park. She must have been someone very special because the memories always made her happy. Although she still couldn’t be sure the woman in her dreams was really her
