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Zig laughs. “And that’s my cue to leave. Crew and Wilder have to fly out in an hour to help Nash and Hendrix with a case, but the rest of us are around to help. You just need to point us in the right direction, Ev.”
“How much longer will Nash and Hendrix be gone?”
“I’m not sure. They have a couple of active cases to wrap up, so they won’t be back until they’re done. One of the cases is personal.”
“Seems to be the norm these days.” Greg chuckles.
“What about heading over to Cooper’s old house? We haven’t been there since Kay died, but now might be a good time to see if he has anything hidden there that might help us.” Ev spins around and faces Zig.
“I’ll get Slade and Jagger to go over and search the place and keep you posted.”
Once he leaves, I go through the columns on the screen, focusing on the one titled Scorpius. I remember each and every case, and only a handful had input from Cooper. I take the iPad Ev gives me and start eliminating the cases I know for sure Cooper had no hand in—until I’m left with three.
“Hey, Avery, I’ve narrowed down mine and Hawk’s section to three jobs that involved Cooper. If I pull up the details, do you want to see if anything looks familiar?”
“Sure.” She gets out of her seat and walks over to sit on the edge of the desk. I pull up the files on the iPad and hand it over.
“This one.” She moves two of the jobs off the screen so she can focus on just one. “It says here that Cooper was contacted by an anonymous source with information about an aid worker that was reported missing after a convoy delivering supplies to the clinic she was working at in…” She keeps reading, but I reply for her.
“Somalia. They couldn’t send in US soldiers and escalate the issue, so Hawk and I went in to find her.”
“And did you? It’s not in the file.”
I take the tablet from her and frown. Sure enough, the file has been altered, showing only that the case had been closed.
“Yeah, we did. She was being held by a group of al-Shabaab allies. We managed to get her out undetected. She was medevaced to a hospital in Germany,” Hawk states, walking over.
“But once we rescued her, we came back home. We had another case waiting for us. It was Cooper who accompanied her to Germany,” I add, remembering how I bitched on the flight back about needing a holiday.
“What was her name?” Avery looks at me while I think about it.
“Emily something. Hold on. Ev, can you recover the missing info from this file? I need the name of the hostage we rescued.”
“Sure, give me the case file number,” he shouts without looking up.
I read it out to him and then wait. It doesn’t take long before an image of a young brunette woman appears on the screen.
“Her name is Emma Snow. I’m tracking her details now, but there’s nothing since her time in—Fuck.”
“What?” I look at him a second before a death certificate appears on-screen. “Well, that explains that.”
“Not quite. Look at the date.” He points to the screen.
I do as he asks and growl when I see it. “That’s bullshit. That was the day before we rescued her.”
“And you definitely rescued the woman in the photo?” Avery asks.
“Positive, why?”
“Because I’ve seen her.”
My head whips around to look at her, and her eyes find mine.
“She works at the Division. She doesn’t talk to me. Actually, she doesn’t really acknowledge my existence. But I know of her because she is praised for the work she does with the victims we recover.”
“What kind of work?” Hawk asks. I wonder if, like me, he’s questioning if we saved someone who went on to torture others. If so, I’d find her again and kill her myself.
“The kind where she can see inside a body and tell exactly where and what the damage is.”
