Page 3 of Hannah's Truth

“I will.”

As far as mornings went, he thought, this could only be worse if it was a Monday.

Chapter 2

Baltimore, Maryland

“Your witness is dead.” The statement was accompanied by the loud slap of a file hitting the desk. Pictures of the crime scene spilled out.

Special Agent Hannah Thalberg didn’t want to look. Not at the pictures and definitely not at her boss. But she was a professional so she straightened the paperwork and opened the file properly.

A few days ago, she’d met with the young woman who wanted to exchange information about a mobile meth lab for a better life for her and the baby she was carrying. Instead, they’d been ambushed by three gangbangers loyal to Carlos Gonzales, the witness’s boyfriend with known ties to an ambitious Mexican cartel.

Outgunned, three to one, it was only a matter of time before the crew sent to recover Krystal succeeded. Hannah had taken a grazing shot across her upper arm, but they’d taken her witness and disappeared. Considering the cartel’s established pattern ofbrutally silencing witnesses and then going after the agent who’d tempted them to turn, she’d been leashed to her desk for her own safety. For three days she’d seen nothing but the inside of this office and been shadowed every step by the mandatory protective detail.

Hannah was weary of the restrictions and extra eyes watching her every move. There was no privacy and some things she just wasn’t ready to share. Not even within the parameters of a mundane report. Especially since… but she couldn’t think about that now. She had to focus on one thing at a time.

“When and where was she found?”

“Last night in the dumpster out back. She couldn’t have been there more than a day. The garbage men found her during their route, called it in.”

Hannah looked up. “I beg your pardon? She was dumped here at our office?”

“Sends a message, doesn’t it?”

Maybe the protective detail was a good thing after all. She forced herself to examine the pictures, willing her stomach to settle. Having never been squeamish about these things, it would raise too many questions if she turned green—or worse—now.

Gruesome didn’t begin to cover it. The scene was raw and her heart dropped at the sight of Krystal’s body marred head to toe with burns, bruises, and lacerations. Evidence of a lengthy, violent interrogation. She’d done that. In her determination to break up the mobile meth lab system, she’d gotten this girl and her baby killed.

Hannah turned the page and skimmed the coroner’s report. The photos attached were worse. Somehow cleaning away the dirt and gore only illuminated the terrible pain Krystal had endured in her last hours.

She reached over for a sticky note and wrote down two names, then pressed the note to the preliminary report.

“What’s that?” Her boss tilted his head.

“Baby names. She deserves to have her baby listed as a victim. By name.”

Her boss raised an eyebrow, but didn’t argue. “You know what’s next.”

Hannah swallowed the surge of bile and met her boss’s grim gaze. Special Agent Henry DeVries had led the Baltimore office for three years. He’d welcomed her when she transferred in and if she wasn’t careful he’d soon be escorting her out the door.

She wanted to argue, but knew it would be a waste of breath. This crime scene, this sadistically clear message, marked the end of her involvement with this investigation. It might well mark the end of her time in Baltimore.

DeVries pushed his glasses up his nose. “Come on into my office. Bring the file with you.”

Her stomach rolled again. Anxiety. Guilt. Sympathy. A woman and her unborn child had been murdered to show Hannah and the DEA that the cartel was untouchable.

She paged through the file as she followed her boss to his office. Yeah, she knew what was next for her: a transfer to a different assignment far away from the life and friends she’d made here. It was a standard risk of the job and she’d gone into it eyes wide open. She’d never expected the lowest point of her career to collide with the most stressful moment of her personal life.

As much as she tried to put it out of her mind, to focus on the file and the case, her mind wandered back to the little pink plus sign on the pregnancy test she’d taken this morning.

Her stomach clutched. The inevitable relocation wasn’t just about her anymore. The father of her child deserved to know and he deserved to hear it from her.

How much time could she buy?

She sat down, waiting for her boss to drop the relocation bomb when her eyes lit on an order for a wiretap, but the area code was Virginia, not Maryland. The phone number and business listed were for the truck stop owned by her friend Karl Bartholomew.

Her office and investigation were trying to run down the cartel’s mobile meth lab system, but she hadn’t seen anything pointing to Bart’s place until Krystal had mentioned the store a couple of weeks ago. It was the reason she’d tried to turn Carlos Gonzales’s girlfriend into a witness against him. The reason she’d pushed hard enough to get the woman and her baby killed.

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