Her jaw dropped as she processed that bombshell. “You want me to go in as a student?”
“Yes.”
“Sarge.” She gaped at him. “Let’s be serious here. I’m thirty-three. Seventeen is a distant speck in the rearview mirror.”
“Not that distant—and age is nothing more than a number. With appropriate hairstyle and clothes, you won’t have any difficulty convincing people you’re seventeen.”
She shook her head. “This is crazy. I could be a seventeen-year-old’s mother.”
“Cate.” Sarge leaned forward again. “When were you last carded?”
Dang.
He would bring that up.
She cleared her throat and flicked a speck of lint off her slacks. “I don’t drink.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
Okay.
Fine.
She did buy wine on occasion as a gift for party hosts—as Sarge knew, since she’d not only brought a bottle to the retirement barbecue he’d thrown last summer for one of the detectives but joked about having to produce her driver’s license for the clerk.
“So I get carded now and then.” Like always if she went makeup-free off duty and pulled her hair back into her usual ponytail. “So what?”
He looked at her in silence.
As seconds ticked by, sweat beaded on her upper lip. The moisture in her mouth evaporated. A wave of nausea rolled through her.
Huh.
Who knew that being backed into a corner would have the same effect on her as being trapped in a small space?
Not the best time for her latent claustrophobia to rear its head.
Chest tight, she rose and began to pace. “Maybe the school has nothing to do with this. Stephanie and Alex could have run into trouble away from the campus.”
“That’s possible—and we’ll continue to work that angle with a conventional investigation. But given the high-level interest in this case, we want to cover all the bases—and you know firsthand how much more you can learn from the inside.”
Yeah. She did.
If she hadn’t befriended the key people in the trafficking case, convinced them she was on their side, the ring would still be operating.
Instead, thanks to the evidence she’d been able to amass, the operation had been shuttered and the leaders rounded up and charged.
“Look at it this way, Cate.” Sarge leaned forward, using his most persuasive tone. “If Stephanie told another student where she and her boyfriend planned to go for the weekend—and you can get that girl to confide in you—we can realign our resources. As soon as we have a trail that leads off campus, we’ll cut you loose. That could be as fast as a week or two.”
She narrowed her eyes. “The trafficking job wasn’t supposed to last long, either.”
“It didn’t—not for an investigation like that.”
That might be true . . . but it had felt like forever.
Another reason to write off undercover work.
Hardened as she’d become to violence and gore and man’s inhumanity to man during her decade in law enforcement, it was a whole different ball game to live that seaminess every day from the inside.
But the lieutenant and Sarge had presented a compelling case.
She was the best candidate in the department to pass for a seventeen-year-old.
And if foul play was involved in the girl’s disappearance, as the new evidence suggested, they should use every tool at their disposal to track down the truth whether there was political pressure being brought to bear or not.
She let out a long, slow breath. “You’re not giving me much choice here.”
“Yes, I am. We won’t force you to take an undercover assignment. If this isn’t a role you think you can pull off, we’ll try to come up with an alternative plan. For the record, we did check to see if the school has any open staff or faculty positions. It doesn’t. But even if it did, the ideal is to place someone who can talk to the girls—especially Stephanie’s roommate—as a peer. A student is the best candidate for that.”
His rationale was difficult to refute.
She was stuck.
Much as she disliked undercover work, her passion for justice wasn’t going to let her walk away from an opportunity to help solve what appeared to be a crime.
“When would I go in?”
“You’d move into the dorm January 4.”
That gave her eight days to psych herself up for the assignment and get up to speed on the players—and her cover story.
“Won’t it seem odd for a new student to arrive with one week’s notice?” She was stalling, delaying her commitment as long as possible.
But Sarge played along, giving her a minute to adjust to the reality and accept the inevitable. “We’ve got it covered. Your father’s been transferred here, and while he wraps up loose ends on the East Coast and makes arrangements to relocate, he’s sending you ahead rather than have you join the spring semester in progress.”
“From what I’ve heard about Ivy Hill’s price tag, this operation will require significant up-front money for tuition—unless you’re clueing in the administration to our presence.”
“We’re not—and we’ll tap the reserve fund for the tuition.”
She did a double take. “We have a reserve fund?”
“So says the lieutenant, and I’m not asking any questions. Finances are his problem. I just go after bad guys. So what’s the verdict?”
Her brief reprieve was up.
She exhaled . . . and gave up the fight. “I’ll do it.”
“Great!” Sarge pushed a bulging file folder across the desk. “Case notes to date. Bone up. And this”—he slid a much slimmer file in her direction—“is your cover. The minute you walk out the door, we’ll begin setting this up. We wanted to be certain you were on board first.”
She picked up the latter and flipped through the material. “A lot of work has been put into this.” She looked at him. “You knew I’d say yes, didn’t you?”
“I thought the odds were in our favor. You like challenges—and you don’t like puzzles with missing pieces. That’s why you’re an exceptional detective. I assumed this case would pique your interest enough to overcome your aversion to undercover work—and convince you you’re the right person for the job.”
“I’m the only person.”
“You’re also the right person. We want someone on this who will dig deep and ferret out the truth, and—pardon the cliché—you’re like a dog with a bone when you’re on a case.”
“I appreciate the compliment if not the analogy.” She gathered up the files.
“There is a bright side to this, you know. Going undercover at a cushy girls’ school will be a cakewalk compared to the trafficking gig.”
“That depends on what I find.”
“If there’s anything to be found. Our team on the street may end up solving this before you do.”
“Hold that thought.” She transferred the files to the crook of her arm and stood. “I’ll let you know if I have any questions after I get up to speed on all this. Any special instructions?”
“Just keep your ear to the ground—and keep this gig under wraps. We’re sharing details on a need-to-know basis. The fewer fingers in this, the less risk of leaks.” His phone began to ring, and he picked it up. “And do something fun this weekend.”