Nate mulled over the events of the night before as he drove slowly to the diner–slash–truck stop where he was meeting Natalia Gomez, his partner and self-appointed spare big sister. The Sunday traffic was lazy, and he allowed himself to be pulled along while keeping half an eye on the other drivers.
He felt unsettled, like something intrinsic and unnameable had shifted and now he was walking slightly off-kilter. Nate didn’t think he’d imagined a spark of something between him and Miguel. Heck, he was pretty sure he’d been propositioned before they even pulled up at the house—something that had had happened to him exactly zero times before. He chided himself; based on his experience, or lack thereof, he wouldn’t recognize interest (sexual or otherwise) if it jumped up and bit him in the face.
What about his face? Why did Miguel seem to be fascinated by it? And not the way people usually reacted, as if Nate was a zoo animal to point and stare at. His skin so blanketed with freckles strangers stopped to stare, and his fiery red hair had been a topic of jokes as far back as he could remember. And, no, of course he hadn’t heard sarcastic references to the ‘soulless’ ginger more times than he could count. It had stopped being funny the first time.
He’d peeked around Buck’s house on his way out – excusing the trespass as the natural curiosity of a Federal Agent. Everything Nate had seen spoke of belonging, of years of molding a space so it became one’s own. By contrast, Miguel’s room was spare. Not empty, but not stuffed full of personal belongings either. There were a few tattered paperbacks stacked next to the bed. A pretty painted wooden box on a nightstand. It’d shone brightly in the general blandness of the room, glowing with glossy red paint and shimmering gold accents.
Once he’d herded Miguel to bed, Nate had covered him with a faded blue comforter that had been wadded at the foot of the mattress. After making sure the house was secure—thankfully he’d found a spare key under the mat on the back deck, so he hadn’t had to break in after all—Nate had left for his own bed and a long night of wondering what the hell had happened.
The truck stop was on the outskirts of Skagit. It wasn’t anything special, but it was somewhat easy for Gomez to get to and filled twenty-four hours a day with truckers needing a break from the mind-numbing traffic on I-5. Skagit sat smack in the middle of the I-5 corridor between Seattle and Vancouver, making it the middle ground for everything criminal between the two countries: drug running, gang activity, prostitution rings, trafficking (child and adult), and anything someone with a criminal bent could think of. For a small town it had a supersize capacity for crime.
Gomez had been tapped for undercover work as a farm laborer. They were hunting for ties to a human smuggling ring. Like everything she did, she did it well and had managed to get work through the network migrant workers used in the area. Gomez topped out at about 5’1” and had a baby face. Put her in torn jeans and a hoodie, and she looked like the fifteen-year-old girl she was pretending to be. It was a little frightening.
Scanning the diner, Nate spotted an empty booth toward the back on the way to the restrooms. He’d been nursing his watery, yet remarkably high in caffeine, cup of coffee for ten minutes when someone slid onto the seat across from him. Gomez had her hood pulled up over her wild curls and a forty-four-ounce soda clutched in her hands.
“I fucking hate this,” she spat before he could say anything. She looked worn and had dark circles under her eyes.
“We could pull you off—”
“Don’t,” Gomez growled. “Don’t even go there.” She took a long slurp of her soda. “It’s just that it’s like living my own recurring nightmare—except it’s not a nightmare, it’s real. I’m really out in the fields picking, and it’s as terrible as I ever thought it would be. The conditions are awful, half the time the water truck doesn’t make it to where we’re working… and I hate that I can’t care about that. That I can’t be outraged, because we’re investigating something even worse than mistreatment of migrant workers.”
Nate wanted to put his hand over hers, but he couldn’t on the off chance someone might see. They had to be so careful. Meeting at the truck stop was a risk, but even more of a risk was Gomez carrying around a smartphone that no migrant worker could afford. She carried a cheap pay-as-you-go, and they met when she sent the right code.
“Anything?” Nate asked.
“Maybe. I’ve only been there three weeks; this group isn’t super friendly. I did hear a rumor that one of the Marias is going to be having a visitor.”
The two Marias were, according to Gomez, the de facto leaders of this particular community of workers. They were the gatekeepers. All information, placements, even sleeping arrangements on the farm went through them. Gomez disliked both of them and suspected they had a part in bringing trafficking victims to the region and specifically their farm, but hadn’t managed to gain either’s trust yet.
“Which one?”
She shot him a droll look. “You think I wouldn’t tell you if I knew? Gimme some money; make it look good.”
Nate did his best to look like the kind of sleazebag who would hit up an underage girl for sexual favors at a truck stop. To look like the idea of sleeping with a woman turned him on.
“God, stop. You look constipated,” Gomez said, snatching the two twenty-dollar bills he slid across the greasy table. “And, my friend, if you think forty bucks will get you much, you are more naïve than I thought.”
Nate blushed. Gomez shook her head to hide the smile threatening to form on her face. Without a goodbye, she tucked the two bills into her pocket and sauntered out the door into the June sunshine. Nate waited about thirty seconds before following, trying to look like a John, but sure he looked like an errant schoolboy instead. He hated this assignment. Gomez was swinging without a net. If anything happened while she was out there, he wouldn’t be around to have her back.