"Okay, thanks for reporting this. I promise you we're on it." Detective Javier Ramos put the phone down and rubbed at his eyes while he waited for the document to finish printing. Grabbing it, he stood up and started for the case map he'd been assembling all day. "Got another one, Carmichael," he said over his shoulder towards his partner's neighboring desk. "This is what, number nineteen?"
A grunt behind him made Ramos turn, heart already sinking. Detective Kevin Carmichael was in his fifties, portly and graying, with a lexicon of grunts as expansive as his mustache. He held up an all-too-similar file to the one already in Ramos' hands. "Got one while you were on the phone," he said.
"Son of a bitch," Ramos muttered, taking the file. "Twenty in one night? Seriously?" He put the two new files up on the board at the end of the depressingly long double row already present. Stepping back, he stared at two rows of young faces. "What the hell is happening out there, Carmichael?" he asked.
"Beats me," his partner responded. "I've never seen anything like it, and I've seen a lot."
"Who could even do something like this?" Ramos realized he'd started pacing in front of the board and made himself stop. "I mean, two or three in one night would be one thing. It's a big city, people go missing. But all taken in the same way, all at once?
Twenty?
"
"It's not twenty," came a deep voice from behind them. The pair turned to find another duo approaching them. One was tall and male, and presumably the speaker from the voice, as the other was a petite woman.
"And who're you?" Carmichael demanded, though Ramos suspected he already knew.
As one, the two strangers pulled out little leather wallets and flipped them open, confirming Ramos' instinct with the sight of those three big letters. "Special Agents Reed and Chang, FBI," said the man. "Seattle field office. Are you Ramos and Carmichael?"
Before replying, Ramos took a moment to study the newcomers. Though both wore similar dark suits and hard expressions, they were otherwise a study in contrasts. The speaker--probably Reed given the woman's Chinese features--was thirtyish, broad-shouldered and fit enough that it showed in the hang of his suit. He had short-cropped, dirty blond hair and bright blue eyes as sharp and cold as chips of ice. His companion, presumably Chang, was a foot shorter than Reed and a delicate beauty with a heart-shaped face and gleaming black hair swept up in a flawless bun. There was nothing delicate about those piercing dark eyes, though. Or the holster under her suit jacket.
"I'm Ramos, this is Carmichael. And what do you mean, there aren't twenty?" Ramos asked.
By way of answer, Chang pulled a slim tablet out of her shoulder bag, swiped and tapped a few times, and turned it to show the two detectives. Ramos' heart sank as he beheld an alarmingly familiar double row of young faces--photos which didn't match the board behind him. "Boston," Chang said, indicating the twenty photos on the screen. Then she swiped across, and Ramos' blood went cold as yet another set appeared. "Miami." Another swipe, another twenty faces. "Chicago." Swipe. "Los Angeles." She nodded over Ramos' shoulder at the board. "And here."
"So when you said there weren't twenty missing last night..." Ramos trailed off, unable to say it.
"I meant there weren't
only
twenty," Reed finished, voice grim. "There are one hundred."
"How can you be sure they're all related?" Carmichael asked, speaking for the first time. "People go missing all the time."
"You tell me," Chang replied, then pointed at the faces on her tablet again. "Ten female, ten male, all between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one. College students, mostly, but one or two might not be. All good kids, no criminal records, no gang affiliations, no drug or alcohol problems, good health, good grades, lots of scholarships and extracurriculars. All vanished without a trace last night, leaving personal effects like keys and phones behind. Roommates--many asleep not five feet from where the missing person was--insist they didn't hear or see anything. Some of the missing even had romantic partners literally in bed with them at the time of their disappearance, and still, nothing. No witnesses, no sign of forced entry, no trace on any surveillance footage. How am I doing so far?"
"We haven't had time to check all of that for all of ours, but...yeah. I'd say our twenty match that profile, from what we know so far," Ramos admitted. "So what does that mean? What the hell happened to them? Who could even do something like this?"
"We don't know," Reed said baldly. "Gentlemen, someone very capable, highly organized, and extremely dangerous took a decent chunk out of the next generation of America's best and brightest last night," he went on. "And we have no idea how or why."
"You say that like it's a terrorist attack," Carmichael said. "Do you suspect foreign actors?"
"Our friends at the Department of Homeland Security are certainly watching this closely," Chang said. "But for now, the case is ours. With this many states involved, it has to be."
"But we can't do it alone," Reed continued, smoothly picking up where his partner left off. "The Bureau is coordinating--and believe me, it's all hands on deck--but we need people on the ground at each location. As the primary investigators on the local set, we were hoping you'd join our task force."
"Absolutely," Ramos said immediately.
"Try and stop us," Carmichael grunted.
"Good," said Reed, nodding sharply. "Then the first thing we need to do is check to make sure all of yours..." he nodded to the board behind Ramos, "...match the profile. Is there somewhere we can set up?"
"Conference room's over there," Carmichael said, pointing. "We'll grab our case files and be right there."
