Faith tightened her resolve. She didn’t work for the FBI. She worked for Amanda, and Amanda had told Faith to give them hell. “My boss is tired of your bullshit. She wants information.”

Murphy exchanged a look with Van.

Don’t take anything they say at face value. There’s always an ulterior motive.

“Well?” Faith asked.

Murphy hesitated. Then she reached into her briefcase. She pulled out a folder and slapped it open on the table.

Adam Humphrey Carter.

This was why Carter had two warrants on his head but no one had picked him up. The FBI had turned him into a confidential informant.

Faith said, “Your CI has abducted two women. One of them is an agent with the GBI.”

“And the other is an infectious disease specialist with the CDC.” Murphy opened a second file. A color photograph was clipped to a stack of official-looking documents.

Michelle Spivey was standing in what looked like a Third World country. Water flooded around her boots. A green Army tent was in the distance. She was in combat fatigues. There were captain’s bars on the collar. Faith always forgot that the CDC was attached to the uniformed services through the Marines. The agency had started out quarantining ships to keep diseases out of ports and evolved into a world-wide response unit for public health.

Murphy said, “This is Dr. Spivey in Puerto Rico after Maria hit.”

So, not a Third World country, just an abandoned US territory.

Faith asked, “What was she doing there?”

“Monitoring and preparing for cholera and the associated pandemics you see with these types of natural disasters.” Murphy pulled out two chairs and sat down. “Spivey is an Epidemic Intelligence Officer attached as a rapid responder through the emergency ops center.”

Faith sank into the chair. She took out her notebook. EIOs were field investigators deployed into hot zones. They could work on anything from tying a lettuce farm to a salmonella outbreak or trying to stop the spread of Ebola.

Faith said, “The news is making Spivey out to be a scientist who spends all day with her eyes stuck to a microscope.”

“She is a scientist. But she’s also a licensed MD with a master’s in public health and a Ph.D. in diseases and vaccinology.”

“Vaccines?” Faith asked.

“Her recent focus has been the resurgence of pertussis, or whooping cough, in the United States. But she’s worked on other classified projects. Her clearance is 0-6. Top Secret.”

Faith looked down at her empty notepad. “How does Carter enter the picture?”

Murphy nodded toward Van.

He said, “The locals assumed Spivey was the victim of a kidnap and rape. Carter’s image was pretty clean in the CCTV. They kept the video from the media and ran it through RISC.”

The Repository for Individuals of Special Concern.

He said, “When we signed him up, I entered Carter’s biometrics into the database in case he showed up somewhere else.”

Faith said, “You mean in case he kidnapped and raped another woman, like he did back when he was a police officer?”

Van let her sarcasm slide. “Carter was feeding us solid intel from the IPA.”

Faith nodded, though she had no idea what the IPA was, other than an abbreviation for India Pale Ale. Traffickers didn’t tend to name their organizations. They were part of mobs—Russian, Yakuza, Sinaloa. Hurley and Carter were white, so that ruled out street gangs like the Latin Kings and the Black Disciples. That left the Hell’s Angels, the Hammerskins or whatever else the neo-Nazi club-of-the-month was calling itself—all of which Carter would’ve come into contact with during one of his many incarcerations.

Faith asked, “Did you recruit Carter out of prison?”

Murphy hesitated again. Faith couldn’t tell if it was a manipulation or true reticence.

The woman said, “He came to us through a separate, unrelated investigation.”

Faith doubted it was unrelated. This woman oozed bullshit.

Van said, “What we can tell you is, in the beginning, it was clear Carter wasn’t a true believer. He joined the IPA for the joy of being a violent shithead. Picking bar fights. Knocking heads at political rallies. A few months ago, I had to jerk his leash. It seemed like he was turning into a good solider. Cut his hair. Shaved off his beard. Stopped drinking, which was a giant neon warning. He went radio silent after that. That’s when the chatter started on our channels telling us something big was in the works. The next time I saw Carter was in the video snatching Spivey.”

Faith said, “The IPA directed him to kidnap her.”

“Not necessarily,” Murphy countered. “The Bureau isn’t convinced that the IPA is involved in the abduction. Carter is a bad actor with a lifetime of crimes under his belt.”

The lightbulb over Faith’s head turned into a solar flare.

Kate Murphy was the “they” Amanda was referring to when she had talked about removing the sex-trafficking angle from the equation. If the FBI was running a joint operation with the GBI, the FBI would be in charge of setting the parameters. If Amanda didn’t play by their rules, then it would no longer be a joint operation.

So it was up to Faith to convince the FBI that they were wrong. Michelle hadn’t been abducted for sex. She had been abducted for something far more sinister.

Faith told Murphy, “My partner already identified Adam Humphrey Carter as the man who abducted Michelle Spivey. He recognized Carter’s face because Carter was one of the men who took Sara Linton.”

Murphy’s eyebrow raised, but that was all she gave.

Faith said, “Carter was part of the team that brought Michelle Spivey to the hospital. She was going to die without surgery. They risked everything to keep her alive. You don’t open yourself up to that kind of exposure if you’re trafficking a woman for sex. She gets sick, you cut her up and cram her into a suitcase, or you dump her in a field and drive away. You can always grab another woman off the street—assuming you’ve got a kink for forty-year-old lesbian mothers.”

Without thinking, Faith had leaned forward the same way she would during an interrogation, cutting off Murphy’s personal space to let her know who was in charge.

She went with her body’s instinct. “Either Michelle Spivey’s got a golden pussy, or she’s integral to whatever the IPA wants to do next. That’s what the chatter is about. They’re planning a large-scale attack, and they need Michelle, a doctor from the CDC, to do it.”

Murphy sat back in her chair. She looked at Faith as if she’d just seen her for the first time. “Everything you’ve said is conjecture. Show me the concrete pieces that link them all together. Give me the evidence to present to a judge so I can get warrants.”

Faith so badly wanted to roll her eyes. “You’re the FBI. Break down some doors. Carter gives you all the probable cause you need.”

Van took over. “There are no doors to break down. The IPA is nomadic. They live in tents in the middle of nowhere. We find one camp and they’ve bugged out to the next. They have people on the inside. Our inside, your inside, every inside you can imagine. And no offense, but your boss hasn’t been a lot of help.”

Murphy said, “Georgia and New York are the only two states in the country whose constitutions do not explicitly subordinate all military groups to civil authority. But in all honestly, every state has been looking the other way on these private militia and paramilitary groups.”

Paramilitary groups.

Faith felt her body break out in a cold sweat.

This was the nail Faith had been hammering around all day.

Martin Elias Novak, their high-value prisoner, had spent time with a so-called civilian border patrol in Arizona. These were men who felt like the federal government wasn’t doing enough to secure the southern border, so they set out with rifles and shotguns to do the job themselves. From what Faith could tell, most of the men were just looking for a reason to camp out, get away from their wives, and pretend they were more important than their actual lives as accountants or used car salesmen would indicate. The more dangerous factions were steeped in the theories of the Posse Comitatus, who believed that the government should be violently overthrown and returned to white Christian men.

Apparently, they lacked access to photographs of the majority of the United States Congress, the president, the cabinet, and most of the judges packed onto state and federal courts.

Murphy provided, “There are around three hundred paramilitary groups active in the US right now. This isn’t a regional issue. Every state has its share. So long as they keep their heads down, there’s no reason to poke the bear. We don’t want another Waco or Ruby Ridge.”