Cavanaugh's Secret Delivery. Marie Ferrarella

would that be hard to do?” he asked. “Send your mother a condolence card,” he prompted when she said nothing.

      She thought about getting up and walking out. She also thought about telling him it was none of his damn business. Neither option really worked for her. At the very least, neither would get her what she wanted and she wanted that story. A huge drug bust as it was happening.

      So she told him the truth.

      “She died when I was born. She insisted on being with my father while he went after stories no one else would. She had the bad luck of being one of those women who didn’t look pregnant when she was, so nobody told her she shouldn’t fly late in the pregnancy.” Her voice was almost robotic, as if she was reciting a narrative that belonged to someone else. “She went into labor on the flight home. There were complications. She didn’t make it. At least Dad was with her when she—didn’t make it,” she concluded in a voice that was far too cheerful for the subject she was narrating.

      Tossing her head, she asked him, “So, do I really get to work with you, like you said, or are you going to make my life more complicated by making me shadow you for every piece of information I want?”

      For just a moment, Dugan understood what she was going through and what she had to be feeling. “My mother died, too.”

      Her eyes narrowed. “That’s not what I asked you,” she informed him almost coldly.

      He didn’t know if she was trying to push him away or if he had managed to embarrass her somehow just now by cracking a wall he hadn’t realized she had up around her. For that matter, he reminded himself, he really didn’t know if she was on the level. For all he knew, she could have just made that whole thing up to get on his good side because she knew that his mother had died when he was young and highly impressionable. After all, his life wasn’t exactly a secret.

      “No,” he replied, his eyes on hers. “It isn’t.”

      “So do I?” she asked him again. “Do I get to work with you for a week while you make up your mind whether or not having me around is beneficial to your trying to break up the Juarez drug cartel?” she asked him again.

      “And if I said no, you really would wind up shadowing me?” he asked.

      There was no hesitation on her part. “Yes,” she answered.

      “Well, then, I’d better save us both some grief and just say yes,” he told her. “Temporarily,” he added before she could say anything to either thank him—or tell him that he had made a wise choice.

      Either way, he felt he had no other option. And he had learned a long time ago that it was better to have the source of his problem with him at all times than somewhere behind him.

      There was less chance of being shot that way.

       Chapter 5

      “This is what you have?” Toni asked, looking at the bulletin board.

      They had returned to the precinct and were now in the Vice squad room. There were close to a dozen photographs pinned to the bulletin board, arranged in a staggered tier formation, with the current head of the Juarez Cartel in the US located at the top.

      All the photographs were of men. In addition, there were a few sheets of white eight-by-ten paper posted amid the photographs. These blank sheets represented the key figures in the organization who had not been identified, men within the cartel in different positions of importance who were able to make things happen, to have shipments sent out or received, but hadn’t been named.

      Yet.

      Whether this was because they were so important that their names were kept secret, or because the people who had been questioned previously didn’t know their names was unclear to Toni at the moment.

      “This represents over eighteen months of work,” Dugan told her. It had taken that much time and effort—and more—to compile these names and faces.

      “And these?” Toni asked, tapping one of the empty pages. “How long did it take you to put these up on the board?”

      Unfazed, Dugan told her, “Those represent works in progress. The people exist, we just don’t know their names yet. We thought perhaps we were getting close to finding out some of their identities, but our latest CI turned up floating in a lake just around the time you gave birth,” he said grimly. “The one before that disappeared off the face of the earth.” He sighed. “We’ll probably find him in a shallow grave sometime in the future. The life expectancy of a CI who’s associated with this particular cartel isn’t exactly what you might call long.”

      “Maybe that other CI you mentioned decided that it was healthier for him not to play both sides against the middle and just disappeared,” Toni guessed.

      But Dugan shook his head. “Even when they stop giving us information, it’s only a matter of time before something gives them away to a superior. The cartel has a lot in common with a school of piranha. If they have nothing to feed on, they turn on their own. The trick is not to give them a reason to feed on you,” he said.

      Toni shivered and ran her hands up and down her arms. “Makes you wonder why anyone would ever get into that way of life.”

      He considered her question. “Other than stupidity, for some it’s the promise of money. A great deal of money,” he underscored. “For others, it’s an easy pipeline—at least at first—to something that they think that they can’t live without.”

      She could see supposed informants clamming up, refusing to talk to the police. She tried to understand how any of the Vice detectives ever managed to get anyone to volunteer any actual information.

      “Given that, how would you hope to be able to cultivate a CI?” she asked.

      That was simple enough from where he was standing. “Some people are smart enough to realize that they’re standing in quicksand and they feel that making a deal with us—i.e., trading us information for a reduced sentence, or at times no sentence at all, is their only hope of keeping out of jail.”

      Toni eyed him rather skeptically. “And you let them believe that?”

      Dugan frowned slightly. He didn’t see a problem with the method and rather resented her insinuation that he was lying.

      “We let them believe that because it’s true. We’re their last hope,” he told her. “At least we won’t put a bullet in their heads,” he added.

      “Not directly, anyway,” she countered.

      His eyes narrowed as he regarded her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

      “Didn’t you say that your last CI won’t be making any more reports about possible shipments because he wound up going for a swim he hadn’t counted on—with a bullet in his brain?”

      Dugan became a little wary. “I didn’t tell you that,” he said.

      “Sorry,” she apologized offhandedly. “Must have been in the report I read.”

      “That happened on the day you gave birth,” he said. “That was the phone call I got so I couldn’t go to the hospital with you,” he told Toni, looking at her. “How did you...?”

      Toni shrugged, passing it off. “Like I said, I must have read it,” she admitted. “I’ve been boning up on the cartel,” she reminded him. “I didn’t want to come to the party empty-handed.”

      “So far, you’re only offering me leftovers,” he told her, far from pleased at the way this investigation—and her part in it—was going. He still didn’t see an advantage to having her working with him. As a matter of fact, he could see it going the other way very quickly. To his way of thinking, journalists were not known for their caution.

      She