Hard to Come By Read Free

in Afghanistan. More recently, though, they’d discovered him providing muscle at a major drug deal for the Church Gang, whose kidnapping of Charlie—resulting in the amputation of two of his fingers—almost two weeks ago, provided the initial incident that necessitated the team’s reunion. An overheard conversation at the deal revealed that Garza knew and probably also worked for the party on the other side of that exchange—and finding out who those players were had comprised a lot of Marz’s research the past few days. Someone somewhere would provide the link between the Churchmen who had been after any information Charlie might have on his father’s illegal activities and what had gone down in Afghanistan. And Marz’s gut was on Manny Garza.
    One by one, three records returned. Fuckin’ A. One of those three was their guy. Charlie clicked on the first listing.
    Marz leaned in closer, barely resisting the urge to crawl into the screen and grab the information with his hands. “Just open and print. We’ll read the details after you’re out.”
    The printer came to life. “Already ahead of you.”
    Filled with anticipation, Marz could barely stand still. He paced behind Charlie, exchanging looks with Nick and Beckett, both appearing to be every bit as eager, and then leaned over Charlie’s chair again.
    File one, file two, file three. Done.
    “I gotta get out so we don’t get traced,” Charlie said.His fingers snapped over a series of keys and the screen went black. The lines of code returned. He typed in a few more lines and the machine powered down. Charlie stood up, turned around, and looked at Marz with wide blue eyes.
    “Holy hell, Charlie. Holy fucking hell. You did it,” Marz said, grinning and staring between Charlie’s amazed and excited expression and the stack of paper on the printer’s tray.
    The guy pressed his hand to his chest. “My damn heart is pounding.”
    Everyone laughed. Elation almost made Marz’s head spin. “That was a rush just watching it, my man. For real.”
    Charlie shook his head. The high of success was half the reason hackers did what they did. “Let’s hope we got what you need.”
    Marz grabbed the papers from the printer, heart in his throat. Please don’t let this be another dead end .
    For days, he’d had a Web crawler looking for any mention of Garza. But nothing had turned up, which was ten kinds of fishy. Even if someone steered clear of social media, most people would turn up in a newspaper mention, a professional newsletter, a staff listing, a public record, or even a basic people-search database. The fact they’d come up totally fucking empty on both Garza or any possible relatives seemed improbable in the extreme. Nobody lived that far off the grid.
    Marz’s eyes raced so fast over the words he barely absorbed what the first file said. But his shoulders fell as the data sank in. The information detailed a man tooold to be their Manny Garza. He chucked those sheets to the desk.
    He couldn’t have made himself disappear from these records, too. Could he?
    Problem was, it wouldn’t be the first time in their investigation that they’d come up against erased evidence. Charlie’s sister, Becca, had made 9-1-1 calls to report break-ins at both her and Charlie’s houses, and the records of both had disappeared, leading the team to question the integrity of the Baltimore City Police. Fact that someone had taken the trouble to hide Garza’s presence from the world was just more proof it was no coincidence they’d encountered another SF guy hanging with the drug-dealing scum who’d kidnapped Charlie and tortured him for information about his father’s dealings. Namely, that Colonel Merritt had been running a black op, cashing in on the heroin the team had confiscated in their counternarcotics missions back in Afghanistan. It’d been a lucrative side business, if their commander’s twelve-million-dollar Singapore bank account was any indication.
    The