“Switching off infrared,” Sasha said before she removed the goggles from her eyes.
Cooper did the same, and Sasha switched on a flashlight.
It was then that it all came together.
Sasha was on autopilot, scanning the wall with a camera so the base had it instantly.
Cooper recorded the rest of the room, down to the trash can.
In there, pictures had been removed from the wall and discarded. He picked up a few and looked through them. He found a picture of Ally. He dug further and found Elsie.
Sasha touched his arm and pointed.
Jax was on the board.
At the end of each column was a date sometime in the future.
“Two minutes.”
Cooper and Sasha exchanged glances.
They’d gotten what they came for.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Claire heard noise from the kitchen and assumed Jax had woken up before her and was making coffee.
When she descended the stairs, she found Cooper rummaging through the cupboards. “This is a nice surprise.”
He turned, looked her up and down. She had worn a T-shirt to bed. On it was an image of a bear with the caption “Screw Mornings!” The shirt barely covered her butt. “Yes it is.”
She walked up to him, knowing she looked worn out, but not giving a damn. “Good morning.”
Cooper’s lips reached for hers, and his hands took firm hold of her ass.
She laughed through their greeting. “What are you doing here?”
He rested his forehead on hers. “We need to go over some things.”
“Coffee first.” She turned out of his arms. “I should tell Jax to put something on before she comes down.”
“Good call.”
She turned to leave the room. “I feel your eyes on my ass.”
“Affirmative.”
Ten minutes later, they were sitting at the kitchen island and not the table since it was still littered with the work from the previous day.
Claire and Jax sat in stunned silence at the photographs obtained the night before.
“It’s just like you said. They place an order and people like Brian go out to fill it.”
Jax took her cup of coffee over to the dining table, held one of the photographs from the storefront wall.
Claire looked at Cooper, both had concern in their eyes. Jax had gone white when she saw her picture next to the call for a curvy white blonde, seventeen to nineteen years old.
“No one can say we don’t know what we’re doing,” Jax told them. “We identified Elsie and Ally and obviously I managed to hit the club.”
Cooper rubbed Claire’s shoulder when she stood to go to her friend’s side. There were still tutors they didn’t know and didn’t have pictures of. “I’m guessing Neil’s got someone working on identifying all these kids.”
“There’s a lot of coffee being consumed at headquarters,” Cooper confirmed.
“With Elsie and Ally’s pictures in the trash, we have to assume they didn’t fill some kind of box,” Jax summarized.
“We’ll find out tonight what those were.”
“I’ll see if I can get some information out of Ally today at school.”
Cooper made a noise from the kitchen. “That’s a negative.”
Claire and Jax both turned to him at the same time.
“It’s too dangerous. We have until the end of the school day tomorrow and Neil is calling it in. Since your picture is on that board . . .”
Jax opened her mouth, then closed it.
“You’re more useful at headquarters putting this map together. Tonight at your girls’ party, we’ll have the team close by. You two get the girls talking.”
“And if we don’t flush out Eastman or Tony, and one of them is dirty?” Claire asked.
“At some point we have to hope the feds are good at their job. Whoever put them undercover did a Neil-precision job of it. We’re not finding anything on either one of them. And without a positive ID, we can’t check cash flow or travel records.”
Claire turned to Jax, put an arm over her shoulders. “Use the Force, Yoda. Work Neil into that Bahamas trip.”
That helped Jax smile.
“I’ll get all this together,” Cooper said. “You guys shower. I’ll follow you on the way to school. And Lars should be here when we leave to drive you to headquarters.”
Jax rolled her eyes. “I can drive—”
“That’s a negative. Maybe on the next case where you’re not a direct target.”
Jax glared at him. “You know, Loki . . . your boyfriend is bossy.”
Twenty minutes later, Jax was safely tucked in the passenger seat of Lars’s car, and Cooper was following Claire.
Because Cooper had access to the shop parking lot, which was right off the student lot, he took advantage of that so he could keep an eye on her.
As she was walking by, Claire said hi to several students she’d managed to get to know.
He stopped himself from staring, but did catch her out of the corner of his eye as she looked over her shoulder one last time before disappearing on campus.
This would all be over soon. And if Neil didn’t send them on vacation, Cooper would make it happen.
He unlocked and rolled open the shop doors. I’m going to miss the place. He looked at Tony’s car as he walked by. He had a bug in place and hoped the feds could nail him if in fact he was one of the bad guys. Eastman was tracked as well. Not one of them wanted a loose end, but taking out the biggest players and keeping Marie safe had to be their primary goal.
The bell rang and his students started walking in the room. “Hey, Mr. Mitchel.”
He heard that name so often, he was starting to adopt it.
“Hi, Coach.”
“Morning, Gavin.”
The bell rang and the stragglers ran in.
“Everyone, pull out a piece of paper, put your bags on the floor. Time for a pop quiz.”
A collective moan went through the room.
He turned around and picked up a pen for his whiteboard.
Not one spitball.
He dropped the pen. “Never mind. Let’s have a shop day.”
Moans turned to cheers and they all filed out of the classroom and into the shop.
Sometimes it’s good to be the boss.
Claire sat in homeroom, watching the backs of kids’ heads. Her shortest class of the day had the last standing suspect in this end of the investigation.
She really hoped she wouldn’t be staring down a courtroom testifying against him.
Every once in a while, Eastman would look up at her and she’d look away.
Sean ignored her altogether.
Claire found herself tapping her fingers when she was thinking. Just like Cooper.
“Have you taken to doing your homework before you get to school these days, Porter?”
“I’m fresh out of homework all week, Eastman,” she told him. “Do you want me to do yours?”
There were a couple of snickers.
“I’ll be sure and let your teachers know they’re not challenging you enough.”
Claire sat back, placed a hand over her heart. “Ahh, and I was starting to think you didn’t care.”
He actually started to laugh, and when he did, the kids in the class felt like it was okay to laugh with him.