Tenderloin (Abby Kane FBI Thriller) (3 page)

The young woman giggled as she rolled on top of her boyfriend, pulling a part of the blanket over her. Their mouths embraced, and his tongue slipped between her lips and swirled around hers. His hardness pressed against her thigh, unrelenting since they first fell upon the blanket. It made her feel special. Wanted. Needed. Her own fire between her legs burned equally hot for him. She pulled away for a breath and stared into his brown eyes. She traced the side of his face with her finger, running it along his strong jaw to his bottom lip where she playfully tugged on it. He slipped his fingers through her hair, grabbing the silky strands before pulling her back to him.

The two were virgins: masters at foreplay and clueless of how to move forward. She wanted him to lead. His shyness got in the way. So virgins they remained.

“We should get going. Your father will be home soon,” he mumbled in their native tongue.

“Forget about my father. I love lying in your arms. I could stay this way forever.”

The young man kissed her again, and then thumbed her ribcage to wake her out of her dream state. She yelped and shifted away from his thumbs. “Stop. You know I can’t stand that.”

The boy rolled her off and stood up. His manhood pressed his loose shorts out like a horn. She couldn’t help but stare and wonder why he didn’t give in.

He extended his hand. “It’s almost nine. We must hurry.”

After she grabbed hold of his hand, a low growl emerged from the darkness. The girl stood up quickly. “What was that?”

“I don’t know, but I think we should gather our stuff quickly and get going.”

The two hustled their belongings into their backpacks but were distracted by the same noise they’d heard earlier. It was louder and closer. Neither said a word as they hurried.

The boy heard it move first. He stopped and added the remaining branches he’d collected earlier to the fire and fanned it.

“What are you doing?” the girl asked, panicked.

“If that thing gets closer, we’ll need this fire.”

His first thought was that a wild dog had found them, but the growl was too throaty. The only other predatory animal he could think of was a jaguar, but rarely if ever did they leave the safety of the jungle. Whatever it was, it had decided to circle them.

He strapped his backpack on then took a branch that had a bunch of leaves at the end and let it sit in the fire.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

“You go first. I’m going to distract the animal. When I do, I want you to start running back into town. Don’t stop until you reach the road.”

“No. What about you?”

The boy picked up her backpack and strapped it onto her back. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be right behind you.” He then kissed his girlfriend. “Remember: Don’t stop, no matter what you hear. Keep running until you’re safe.”

He then pulled the branch out of the fire and had, in effect, a torch. “Okay,
run
.”

The edge of the city was two hundred feet away, but it looked like a mile. The girl hesitated, but the boy gave her a gentle push.

She started to walk and then jog with her head still twisted back, looking at him. She watched him walk in the opposite direction. He swung the torch back and forth and shouted. She continued to watch him, running only half-heartedly. She kept wishing he would stop and turn toward her, but he didn’t. He continued in the direction of the jungle. And then without notice, the boy vanished. So did his torch, as if someone snuffed it out like a candle. She stopped. Her eyes scanned the area where she had last seen him. She detected no movement in the moonlight and heard nothing for a few moments.

Then the screams came, forceful screams that started low in the lungs and erupted out. They came in short bursts. These were screams that only intense pain could give birth to. The calls for help were more like guttural screeches. Then, as fast as the screams came, they stopped.

She turned and started running toward the city, but she already knew it was too late. Whatever had attacked her boyfriend was fast upon her heels, quicker than she could have imagined. The growls grew louder. The steps behind her were suddenly in line with hers. She started to scream—not because she had been attacked, but out of fear. She shouldn’t have stopped. He had warned her.

Chapter 6

The media had a field day with Ballard’s suicide. It was all they reported on in the days that followed. To add to the hoopla, multiple neighbors caught his last hurrah on their cell phones and posted the videos online within the hour. While I wished we could have apprehended the amateur acrobat and prosecuted him in federal court, we had heard through the rumor mill that the victims were happy to see something about the Prince that was “hung.”

These women wanted something more than closure; they wanted the world to see him for who he was: a weak man. He was a coward and had taken the easy way out.

Of course we still had the girlfriend; she was guilty of aiding Ballard and would take the heat in court. Goodbye, catwalk. Hello, cellblock. Before Agent Stone left, I thanked him for his help. In the end, he came through with our guy, and I had officially closed the first case the FBI had assigned to me.

I sat quietly at my desk and gave myself a few pats on the back.
You still got it, Abby.
It felt good. I thought of treating myself to a slice of Napoleon from the small bakery two blocks north of us in Little Saigon. Theirs was so delicious. Not dry at all, flaky with generous amounts of cream.
Yummy
. It would be perfect with a cup of green tea. As I grabbed my purse, Reilly poked his head out of his office.

“Abby.”

“Dammit,” I muttered. I put my purse back down and headed over to his office.

“Take a seat,” he said as he looked up at me over his reading glasses. “I don’t have much time, and I’d rather not repeat myself, so listen carefully.”

I took out my notepad and pen, knowing I wouldn’t jot anything down.

“Our friends at the Drug Enforcement Administration sent a file over. They want us to look into a death,” Reilly said as he flipped his laptop around so I could see the picture on the screen. “The victim is a white male. He was found badly beaten—multiple contusions over every inch of his body.”

“It looks like he was a punching bag.”

“You could say that. Almost every bone in his body was broken.”

“Talk about trauma.”

Reilly tapped a few keys, and another picture appeared. “This is the victim’s face.”

I nearly fell out of my chair.

He didn’t look human. The swelling was well beyond what I had ever seen. He looked like a blow-up doll ready to burst at the seams. Dark discoloration signified intense bruising. I didn’t want to imagine what his torso looked like under his shirt.

“We’re still waiting on the autopsy results,” Reilly added.

“No noticeable lacerations or holes,” I noted. “Blunt trauma, mostly.”

“It looks that way, but like I said, let’s see what the medical examiner has to say.” Reilly flipped his laptop back around and leaned back in his chair.

I shook my head. The questions were coming. “Who’s the victim?”

“He’s a DEA agent. His name is Fernando Riggs.”

My stomach tightened a bit. It always did when the victim hit home. He wasn’t FBI, but the DEA was a sister agency. “Was he killed in the line of duty?”

Reilly shook his head. “The locals found his body in a ditch.”

“Locals?”

“Special Agent Riggs was on assignment in Colombia.”

“South Carolina? Missouri?” I guessed.

“Try South America.”

“Colombia… the country.”

“The DEA has agents in Bogotá conducting mostly counternarcotics. Their primary mission is to keep the drug czars from using El Dorado International Airport as a waypoint for moving their drugs out of the country. They nab the mules.”

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest. “Why are we getting involved?”

“The DEA is better at curtailing the drug trade, not solving murders. Also, Riggs’s death didn’t happen during a mission. He was found dead in Mitú, a small town located in the southeastern part of Colombia near the edge of the Amazon forest. We’re unsure as to why he was there.”

“Maybe one of the cartels kidnapped him.”

“They’re looking at all the possibilities.”

“Don’t tell me they think he was working with the cartel.”

“They’re not telling us anything. They want our take on it.”

I sat there a little dumbfounded.
Colombia?
I had never been there. I knew nothing about that country. “Do we know anything else?”

“We’re hoping to get answers from the autopsy. If you didn’t already know, the medical examiner’s office in San Francisco is top notch. They’re one of the best. The body arrived here yesterday.”

My eyebrows shot up. “This is moving fast.”

“They lost an agent. They’re eager to get to the bottom of this. That’s why I’m putting you on this case.”

“Wait, what? I know nothing about the drug cartels.”

“You’ll have help,” he said. “You saw that body. It didn’t look human. We need to nip this in the bud, fast.”

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have a problem taking on a case like this, but the whole drug/South America thing threw me off balance.

“There’s one more thing I should tell you, Agent,” Reilly said, shaking me from my thoughts. “There’s a witness, but it’s a little suspect.”

I crinkled my nose. “Why?”

Reilly scratched his forehead and then rubbed his chin. “Well, the witness mentioned the
muerto viviente
.”

I raised my shoulders. I still had no idea what my boss was trying to tell me.

“It’s Spanish for the
living dead
.”

I threw my head back and let out a loud laugh. “You can’t be serious?”

Reilly wasn’t smiling.

“Wait… you know you’re talking about ‘zombies’, right?” I emphasized my question with air quotes.

“I said it was suspect, didn’t I?”

“So then why are we following this up?”

“Zombie or not, we have a job to do. A DEA agent was killed. It’s our duty to help figure out who did it and bring them to justice. There’s a lot of pressure coming down the pipeline from above. I’m counting on you. I already got my supervisor making my job harder than it needs to be; I don’t want to give him any more reason to get up my ass. Got it?”

“Do you have a file for me?”

“I do. You can pick it up in Bogotá.”

Chapter 7

Before heading home, I stopped by the medical examiner’s office for a closer look at the body Reilly had showed me earlier. I hadn’t bought into the whole zombie thing yet, not sure I would. There had to be a reasonable explanation. The
muerto viviente
was nothing but old folklore.

Even with my Chinese ancestry, I found it hard to believe. My people had more legends passed on from generation to generation than I cared to count. I should have been hooked by the living dead story, but I wasn’t. I didn’t believe any Chinese folklore, except for one:
Ling Chi
, death by one thousand cuts. Growing up, I thought it was a tale used to scare children into being good until I came across a victim who had suffered it—well, until I came across what was left of him.

The Office of the Medical Examiner was located on Bryant Street inside the Hall of Justice. The trip here was a first for me, given that most of the cases I investigated were fraud related. Of course, that was by choice.

While serving as chief inspector for the Hong Kong Police, I spent my days chasing serial killers and taking down gangs. During that time, I was in charge of the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau. Climbing the law enforcement ladder ended when my husband, Peng, was found murdered in his office. His sudden death was hard for me to accept. There I was, a hotshot inspector fighting crime, and I couldn’t even keep my own family safe. What did that say about me? I burnt myself out proving to all the naysayers that I could catch the killer. I never did. I knew that I needed to make a change. That’s when I quit, picked up the family and moved to San Francisco. Greener pastures, right?

The examiner I was scheduled to meet with was Timothy Green. Reilly told me he was one of the better ones. “Extremely smart and known to be a big help in solving crimes,” he said. He also warned me that most deemed him to have an eccentric personality.
Didn’t most San Franciscans?

I took a seat in the cold yet functional space they called a waiting room. No magazines to read, so I counted my split ends and cursed that thirty-dollar bottle of shampoo the salon said would help. Add the humidity I’m about to face in Colombia, and I’ll have frizzies to contend with as well.
Great.
In the midst of my split end hunt, I heard the faintest of voices call out my name.

“Agent Kane?”

I quickly stood up only to face off with a man who stood no more than a half of an inch taller than me. Surely I looked like some starstruck fan; perhaps I was. At five-foot-one, I don’t often come across a man similar in height in the world of law enforcement.

He stood there with a grin that climbed up higher on one side of his face. He wore frail, wire-framed spectacles I had thought only existed in Ben Franklin museum exhibits, but there they sat, balanced on his bony nose. His brown and bushy eyebrows matched his unkempt hair, and the diamond earring sparkling in his left ear told me he wasn’t your traditional pathologist.

“I’m guessing you’re Timothy Green,” I said, offering my hand to him.

He took my hand and shook it twice. “That I am. Could I get you something to drink? Coffee perhaps?”

“No, that won’t be necessary. Thank you.”

“Well then, follow me, please.”

Green turned around and led the way. His oversized lab coat fluttered behind him like an orthodox priest’s cassock. I couldn’t help but stare. We had practically the same body size and height. We could share clothes—t-shirts most likely.

“Tell me, Agent: how much do you know about the victim’s death?” he asked without looking back.