kid—I mean that. She got in a bad situation because of her brother, who ended up doing serious jail time. Their time overlapped by about six months, but Marie was released before Elise. And she’s doing well.”
“I’d like to talk to her, see what she might know about Elise’s plans.”
While Kathy was clearly skeptical, she agreed. “She’s sixteen, lives in a group home, and is going to school. I don’t expect to see her back here.” She gave Lucy the group home number and address.
“If you can think of anything else, please call me,” Lucy said. She made sure that Kathy had her contact information before they left.
As soon as they got back into the car, Garrett said, “You have a knack for getting people to talk.”
“Kathy wants to do the right thing and if she could give me Elise’s records, she would. At least we confirmed her Los Angeles address—and one more thing. She didn’t have any visitors. Not one, other than the psychologist who testified on her behalf.”
“Maybe we should talk to her. Dr. Oakley, right?”
“She won’t talk to me. She refuses to see Elise as who she is. Insists that she’s a terrified, abused teenager who was used by her family. Even when Oakley was confronted with the truth—that Tobias was her half brother, not the foster brother she claimed, and all the stories she told about being abused in the foster system were lies, she refused to assign any blame to Elise, claimed that the lies were Elise’s way of protecting herself.”
“That could be true.”
“It wasn’t,” she snapped. “She lied about everything. She set me up to be killed. She takes pleasure in torturing people. She will say and do anything to get what she wants when she wants it—and that might be the way we get to her. Because she is young and impatient.” She paused, considered everything Kathy had said. “Though the warden said Elise made no calls, criminals sneak in phones all the time. Notes could be passed to guests of other inmates. So I have to assume she had a way of communicating outside the facility.”
“Reasonable,” Garrett said.
“I need to talk to the corrections officer who resigned. She might not have told Kathy why she was quitting, but I have to find a way to convince her to talk to me. And the girl from the Saints … that one might be harder, but I have some ideas.”
Ideas that Jack wouldn’t like, but Lucy didn’t care because Jack wasn’t here to stop her.
“Do you know what’s happening with Sean?” she asked, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice.
“He’s still in interrogation, as far as I know.”
Keep your cool, Sean. Please. I need you back.
* * *
Aggie had never contradicted a direct order. Martin Salter was a good agent, just like she’d told Lucy, but in this case she thought he was being too cautious. He listened to her, but then dismissed her assessment that Brad’s kidnapping might be related to the Hunt family and corrupt DEA agent Nicole Rollins.
Why wouldn’t he have even considered that Brad’s kidnapping was retribution for killing Rollins?
Aggie agreed with Lucy that all three cases were connected—probably because Brad had already planted the idea that Nate’s and Sean’s situations weren’t a coincidence. Aggie hadn’t been here during Nicole Rollins’s reign of terror, but she had heard stories, not just from Brad but from the staff who had stayed on after Houston DEA cleaned house. Brad was nearly untouchable, Martin reminded her, because he had institutional knowledge coupled with his ability to close tough cases. But he was a maverick, took risks, and had more autonomy than most ASACs in the DEA.
“I know Donnelly hand-picked you and you have a strong sense of loyalty to him, but we need to be cautious and careful. Because Donnelly is a good agent, he has made a lot of enemies, and I don’t want to be the one to tell your family that you’re dead.”
She tried to justify her decision to sit outside the SAPD waiting for Nate Dunning to emerge as not actually violating a direct order so much as not asking for permission. She’d done everything she could in the office, and they were waiting for the digital recordings from the warehouse to see if it showed anything that would be useful in tracking Donnelly’s kidnappers.
She didn’t want to get Zach in trouble, but she had been communicating with him, and he seemed to want to help. He’d