Page 24 of Love Me Darkly
“Time for what?”
He clapped Jones on the shoulder. “You did good, kid. Get that audio over to Carlisle right now, then I need you to go back to listening to that feed. Let me know what else you might hear.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Mateo stepped out of the van while retrieving his work phone. Donovan leaned against the brick side of a tattoo parlor, watching him silently.
Carlisle’s voice was deepened and thick from sleep when she answered. “Garcia, you’d better have a damn good reason for waking me up.”
“Check your email. Jones is sending you an audio file taken from the wiretap at Solstice. I think we have something. A possible exchange going down at a warehouse at the Port of New Orleans. 3:00 a.m.”
“I’ll listen to the audio and put in a request for a warrant, but it can’t happen that fast. You know that.”
Mateo began to pace the alley, running a hand through his hair. “It has to! This is the first real break we’ve had in the case in months.”
“We don’t even know if what you’ve stumbled upon can be considered a part of your case.”
“I saw a man with that fucking symbol tattooed across his back at the same nightclub Kacey Mills was trafficked out of. The same club where Suede, Wilson, and Morrison hang out, and where we recorded audio of them talking about a new shipment. A potential new crop of victims!”
“Even if all that means what you think it does, the UNSUB has never killed in the same place twice. When he’s ready to kill again, he will move on.”
“We don’t know that!”
Silence greeted him from the other end of the line. The whites of Donovan’s eyes flared bright in the dark as he watched Mateo as if he’d lost his mind. He was screaming into the phone, his neck tense and his face flushed. He was rapidly losing his grip on professional protocols.
“Garcia,” Carlisle said slowly, now sounding fully awake. “You and your team have been working overtime, and I know that you, especially, are tired and worn thin. For that reason, I intend to overlook your lack of decorum and respect and assure you that I am doing everything I can from my end to help you. After I paved the way for your wiretap, you’re asking me to demand a warrant in less than four hours for a raid!”
“Not a raid, then,” Mateo insisted. “Surveillance only. If we can get them on camera handling cargo, it’ll be enough to get a raid approved.”
“Not in four hours, Garcia.”
He tore the phone away from his ear and hurled a string of epithets into the darkness. He pounded his fist against the brick and took a slow, deep breath before bringing the phone back to his ear.
“What do you expect me to do, ma’am?” he asked, surprising even himself with how calm he sounded.
“Wait for a warrant.”
“By the time we get one, it’ll be too late. The shipment will have come and gone.”
“It’s the best I can do.”
“It’s not the best I can do.”
“Garcia.” There was a warning in Carlisle’s tone. “Don’t be a cowboy. We’re walking a razor-thin line keeping you on this case as it is. You go rattling too many cages, I won’t be able to help you.”
“Understood.”
“Good. You’ll hear from me when the warrant for surveillance is a go.”
The line went dead, and Mateo clenched his phone at his side, his fingers trembling around the plastic and glass.
“Well?” Donovan prodded. “What’s the deal?”
“The deal is, we’re expected to sit around with our thumbs up our asses while Suede and his crew move a shipment of women right under our fucking noses.”
Donovan ran a hand over his closely-shaved hair. “Fuck. Fucking bureaucracy, man. It’s what I hate the most about this job.”
In the past, Mateo would have argued Donovan down to the ground over the importance of protocol. It was the lifeblood coursing through the veins of a justice system Mateo had believed in since taking his oath of office. But this case had changed him in the most fundamental ways; not just as a man, but as an agent. He couldn’t agree more that the red tape boxing them in made them less effective in situations like these.
