last couple days. It made him doubt himself, in fact, and he had no room in his life for doubt. So he forced his mind back to the issue at hand, which was that O’Connor was getting it from a local. But who?
The sheriff they’d worked with on the Spivey meth case was a distinct possibility, but Dante knew O’Connor had struck out with him in the past. Besides, Turner Halliday was crazy for the gorgeous blonde who’d nearly gotten herself killed during that bust. Dante had witnessed firsthand how Halliday was blinded by love for that woman—Candy Carmichael was her name, and she was about as different from O’Connor as a woman could get. So the sheriff was out.
Another possibility would have been the editor of the local newspaper, J.J. DeCourcy, but he’d recently married his publisher, the very pretty Cheri Newberry. So the editor was out, too.
And since there weren’t that many decent-looking, eligible bachelors O’Connor’s age in these parts, Dante was stumped.
“Oh, just stop trying, Cabrera. You’re never going to figure it out.” A small smile appeared on O’Connor’s lips. “Let’s move on here, shall we? Looks like there’s a new joint task-force operation on the horizon.”
She shoved a few aerial photographs across her desk toward him. Dante scanned them quickly and whistled. “That’s some serious acreage. Where is this, exactly?”
“Twelve miles northwest of Bigler in an area called Possum Ridge.”
Dante had to laugh. Sometimes it seemed half the towns in western North Carolina were named after either possums or pigeons. “This is in Cataloochee County?”
“Yes.”
“Mother of God, don’t these people have anything else to do but grow pot and cook meth?”
O’Connor tapped a nail on one of the photos. “We estimate it’s about twenty open acres and four large hothouse structures. We’re talking thousands of plants. We’ll start assembling the usual team—Sheriff Halliday, the state bureau of investigation, the DA’s office, the U.S. Marshal, the state national guard. It will take several weeks to get everyone on board.”
Dante stared at her, stunned. What she’d just described was as big as any domestic marijuana operation he’d worked on, even out West. “I’m assuming their ultimate buyer is Ramirez or Apodaca?”
Antonio Ramirez and Ruben Apodaca ran two of the largest Mexican cartels known to have tentacles reaching into the Carolinas. The Spiveys had been selling meth to Ramirez, but the father and son yahoos ended up killing each other during the raid. None of their crew had shared any details about Ramirez. The meth cook was killed his first night in the lockup and the remaining two suspects were so terrified the cartel would get to them that they hadn’t said boo since their arrests.
“That’s our best guess at this point,” O’Connor answered him. “We did have a development while you were gone.”
“Did you find the Fat Man?”
O’Connor shook her head. “I wish.”
It bothered Dante that there was a loose end left after the Spivey bust—an unknown middleman, possibly a local, who was only known by the blunt nickname. Dante had never met him in person, but he had the feeling he was still out there somewhere, and might have his chubby fingers in the marijuana pie, as well.
“It’s the kid.”
Dante felt himself frown. “What kid?”
“The little girl. Fern.”
“Huh?” Truly, O’Connor had lost him. “I don’t know any Ferns.”
“Oh, for shit’s sake, Cabrera—the little girl you pulled out of the Spivey compound just before the raid. Her name is Fern Bisbee. She’s twelve. The cook’s kid.”
A wave of unease went through him. That poor kid. Her father had been the rocket scientist running Bobby Ray Spivey’s kitchen, and the girl had been living in that violent hellhole for months. Dante had kept an eye on her while working undercover, but he could only do so much while the investigation was ongoing. He often wondered what she’d been through, what she’d witnessed. Just before the raid, he’d dropped her off at child protective services and, he had to admit, hadn’t thought much about her since.
But that was why they called it time off, right? You didn’t think of work during your time off. And anyway, it wasn’t like the two of them had been BFFs. Not only had Dante not known her name, he hadn’t known anything else about the girl. She had kept her mouth shut and her dirty arms clenched around her waist the whole time she was in the car with him.
“You’re going to be fine,” Dante recalled telling the scrawny yellow-haired kid. She had been