Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 103231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103231 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
“Is she the one who died?” I asked.
Another nod. “She came through in a vehicle with a few other people…all teenagers, all Americans. It was one of the smaller crossings, so it wasn’t heavily populated. The kids made it across, but their car hadn’t even gone a quarter of a mile before it suddenly accelerated and ran off the road and into a ditch. Jeff and I were working that crossing. The three other kids in the car besides the girl panicked and took off and Jeff went after them. I stayed with the girl who’d been driving. She was doubled-over in the seat, vomiting.”
“One of the baggies burst inside her,” I murmured.
“Yeah. I managed to get her out of the car and on the ground. She started crying and shaking and she was begging me not to let her die. She kept saying she didn’t want to do it, but that he’d made her.” Magnus glanced at me, his mouth drawn tight. “Turns out she was the daughter of the housekeeper who worked for the guy the Feds were trying to build their case against. The junior senator from the great state of Texas,” he added.
I stilled as what he was saying registered. “That’s the case you’re testifying in?” The story had been all over the news for the past year. A sitting US senator named Lachlan Trent had been indicted for murder in the death of the daughter of a woman who worked for him. I hadn’t read any of the details of the story, but I’d garnered enough to know the man, who’d only been in office for a year, was worth millions and was no stranger when it came to breaking the law…or escaping it, rather. “He was being investigated for corruption charges right after he won the seat, right?”
“Yep. But there wasn’t enough evidence to indict him. The Feds found a connection between him and a drug lord in Mexico, but they couldn’t make it stick. They were hoping the raid would be the proof they needed.”
“Sounds like it was,” I said. “I mean, you got the connection, right?”
“Not quite. I asked the girl who she was talking about. She was able to tell me his name, but she died before she could tell me anything else. And I was the only one with her when she made the admission…”
“Fuck,” I whispered. “So, it’s your word against his.”
Magnus nodded. “We don’t know how he forced the girl to carry the drugs or why. Her mother was an illegal alien so it’s possible he was blackmailing the girl with threats of having her mother deported. But it doesn’t answer the question of why. The value of the drugs she and the other kids were bringing back was chump change compared to what Trent makes. It’s possible he had some other motive that wasn’t about money…maybe the drug lord he was working with had something on him or had something he wanted…doubt we’ll ever know for sure.”
“What about the kids who were with the girl? Or her mother?”
“Two of the kids got away and the IDs they’d used to get into the country were fake so we never found them. Jeff caught the third kid, but he was murdered in the hospital after the balloons were removed from his stomach. Feds never even had a chance to question him and couldn’t find any proof to link his death to Trent. The girl’s mother disappeared too…Trent says she went back to Mexico. ‘Course, there’s no record of that anywhere.”
My nerves kicked up a notch as I thought about the danger Magnus was actually in.
“Hey,” Magnus said as he nudged my arm with his beer bottle. “Trent’s an arrogant SOB who thinks his money’s going to protect him. He’s going to make his stand in the courtroom.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t so sure. The bastard was faced with spending the rest of his life behind bars and had apparently already gotten rid of two witnesses. No amount of money was a guarantee that he would walk out of that courtroom a free man. But eliminating the one person who could put him there was.
“I can’t believe the Feds didn’t put you in protective custody.”
“They wanted to,” Magnus responded. “I refused. And once they discovered I’d be spending the rest of the year in Seattle, they relented. No one besides my captain knew what city I was in. Jeff and the rest of the people at work only knew I was in the Pacific Northwest.”
“What about now? The Feds must know you’re back in town…why didn’t they offer you a protective detail or something?”
“They did,” Magnus answered as he took another long draw of his beer, emptying it. “I declined.”
“Why?” I asked, incredulous.
He studied me for a long time before quietly saying, “Because I already have a bodyguard.”