Sinclair Justice (Texas Rangers #2)(16)
“Do either your sister or your niece have any distinctive habits or needs that might set them apart and give us a paper trail? An ailment, a special food they have to eat, or a custom shoe, that kind of thing.”
She frowned, concentrating, then she said, “Yancy has a mild case of hemophilia A. She usually controls it with oral meds, but if she goes off them for long she has to have intravenous shots. She’s allergic to the other protocols.”
“You know the name of this drug?”
She stared into space. “I’ve seen her take it often enough . . . Effluenatasis. It hasn’t been available long and it’s made in the US. It’s got to be hard to get in Mexico.”
“That at least gives us somewhere to start.” He scribbled down the name of the drug.
She worried her shawl fringe again. “Do you . . . think they’d quit treating her and just let her bleed out? If she’s been off her meds most of this time . . .”
He wanted to tell her no, her sister was valuable, and they’d try to keep her healthy, but he couldn’t lie to her. All the cartels were notorious for cutting their liabilities ruthlessly, and Yancy was much older than their usual targets. He stayed silent.
Her mouth trembled, but she managed, “Thanks for not lying to me. I guess there’s really no way you can give me an answer to that.”
He almost reached out to take her hand but stuck his hand in his pocket instead. It was dangerous to touch this woman, even in comfort. He cleared his throat. “Her picture is on all the missing persons sites?”
She nodded. “And the police in Baltimore distributed it, but the only hit we had didn’t lead anywhere except . . . maybe here.”
“What is your sister’s last name?”
“Russell. Yancy and Jennifer Russell.”
The names didn’t ring any bells, but Ross seldom saw the case files themselves because he was managing the investigation. He rarely got involved in fieldwork. “You have pictures of them?”
She pulled her cell phone from her dress pocket and flipped it open. The picture of two gorgeous blondes who looked more like sisters than mother and daughter had a background of the Bellagio hotel in Vegas. Ross recognized it instantly. “So your sister likes to gamble?”
She nodded.
Ross handed the phone back. “Thanks. Well, I don’t know how much good it will do, but it always helps to associate a name with a face. I’ll do what I can to get you into the evidence room, but I’ll have to clear it with our attorneys.” Privately, as she wiped the granite while he washed the few dishes they’d generated, Ross suspected her sister and niece would never be seen again. Women that beautiful were just too valuable. . . . And Yancy resembled her younger sister, at least in the perfect bone structure and sparkling intelligence in her eyes, and no doubt, in determination. One sister had gotten herself taken by conducting her own investigation, and it was his duty to see that Emm didn’t suffer the same fate.
For about the sixth time since he’d met her, Ross wished this woman had never come to Amarillo. It was hard enough remaining impartial about human trafficking so he could dispassionately conduct his job, but now he would be haunted by those two gorgeous blondes, not just how they’d looked on their fun vacation spree but how they probably looked now . . . if they were even still alive.
The next day, Emm rose late after a night of tossing and turning. Because she’d barely touched the second martini, she’d been fine to drive last night and had insisted on returning to her hotel even when Sinclair halfheartedly offered her a guest room. She sensed he didn’t want her embroiled in his private life, and given the circumstances, she could hardly blame him. But to herself, at least, she could admit she was strongly attracted to the iron-haired and iron-willed Ranger captain of Company C. “Horrid timing, you idiot,” she said under her breath as she dressed. “He’s only the key to successfully resolving my first case and to finding my sister and niece. Hands off.”
With that resolve in mind, Emm quit looking at her cell phone, hoping to see it ring with his name, called the structural engineer she knew from Fort Worth, and explained the issue, plus that this was something of a rush as she was staying in Amarillo until the results came in. Then, after a quick light lunch, because she still hadn’t gotten the approval from Sinclair to go to the evidence warehouse, she decided to visit the downtown Amarillo library.
The Web was fabulous for research, but only to a point. Older research materials, such as newspaper articles from several years back or old case files from prior kidnapping cases, were seldom online. She’d already performed some cursory research before she’d come here and had stumbled across mention of a cold kidnapping case from three years earlier that had been reopened after a body had been found in a shallow grave in the scrub outside Lubbock. The dental records had matched a missing girl from Baltimore, and the little she’d read about the case had eerie similarities to Yancy’s circumstances. Black truck, two men, girl missing from a downtown Baltimore bar. The case had been referred to the Baltimore police and then handed back to the Texas Highway patrol, who had jurisdiction over the area of the grave site.
But Emm knew local papers often carried stories the big dailies wouldn’t. If she searched the database the library subscribed to, she was hoping the Amarillo paper had been digitized at least three years back and would carry more detailed information. After she registered and was given a swipeable ID card, she sat down before a vacant bank of computers. She entered the girl’s name and was surprised when five hits came up. All but one of them were highlighted in blue, which meant she could click on the full article. She clicked on the oldest article first, her pad beside her so she could make notes. She could print the articles and read them later, but Emm loved libraries and was grieved they were struggling. Just like seeing a movie in person, researching next to other seekers of knowledge held its own charm.