Searching for Cate by Marie Ferrarella Read Free Book Online Page A

amended, they’d died the moment he’d come up behind her.
    She didn’t exactly hold it against him. Lydia knew she was one of the lucky ones. Like her mother had been before her.
    Love was a funny thing. The right kind of love lit things up, made even the worst that life threw at youbearable. Made life exciting. She didn’t take it, or Lukas, for granted for one moment.
    She realized that she’d had love all her life. First from her parents, from her mother who’d doted and from her father, whom she’d emulated by entering the world of law enforcement. And then from Lukas. She didn’t know if she would have turned out to be the same person had she grown up the hard way. Without love.
    Main Street, which went from Bedford straight through to Santa Ana, lost a lane, when she entered the latter city. While every bit of Bedford was modern, Santa Ana was comprised of both the old and the recently renovated.
    Traffic moved slowly on the older streets, and there was no use fighting it.
    Her mind turned to the case, where some young girls’ lives were over before they had even begun. Their hope, their very souls, were stolen from them, leaving behind empty shells. Girls barely into puberty who did what they could to survive in a world they hated.
    The task force she headed was trying to break up a teenage prostitute ring that had far-reaching tentacles. In some cases, the girls weren’t even teens yet. Just yesterday, it had come to light that kiddie porn was involved. Videos depicting awful, awful things that little girls shouldn’t even know about, much less take part in.
    She knew most of the girls had either run away from intolerable conditions at home, or been sold into the life by a family member. Somebody needed crack but had no money, so he passed around a daughter, a younger sister, any means to an end. It happened moreoften than she wanted to acknowledge and made her sick to her stomach.
    And if it was the last thing she did, she was going to break up the ring and send whoever was responsible to prison. But first, she wanted to hang them upside down by their genitals. And leave them there for a week. Maybe longer.
    She owed it to her cousin Susan.
    Traffic cleared up a block away from the civic plaza. The difference between the blocks that housed the federal buildings and their surrounding area was astounding, like going from one world to another. Every so often, like today, it hit her anew.
    After making a left, Lydia drove into the structure, not even bothering to look for a place in the open lot. You had to arrive at six to get a spot there. She parked her car, made her way back into the daylight and hurried across the grounds to the second federal building. She took the stone steps leading to the glass doors two at a time. The doors parted automatically, and she sailed right through. It was a quarter to nine and already busy.
    The second she got off the elevator on the seventh floor, she walked into Mike Santiago, narrowly avoiding his jelly doughnut. Considering that Mike’s reach cleared him to over seven feet, there was little danger of jelly smearing across the navy blazer she had on today.
    Once he lowered his prize, he took a bite, then nodded his head toward the rear of the room where the A.D. had his office. “New girl’s here. She’s in with Sullivan.”
    Lydia made her way to her desk. They were all out in the open here, unrestricted by cubicle walls. That was both good and bad, depending on which side of a private conversation you were on.
    â€œWe’re not girls, Santiago,” she told him mechanically, knowing he expected it, “we’re women.”
    Married, with two kids and one on the way, Santiago was as faithful as they came. But he liked perpetuating the image of a Romeo. “You can say that again. This one makes me glad God made me a man.”
    Lydia deposited her purse into the bottom drawer of her desk, then shut it with