The Emergency Department at Gaffney Chicago Medical Center carried the familiar mixture of disinfectant, exhaustion, and anxiety.
Jack Stacy walked through the automatic doors with the rest of Intelligence, hearing distant cries and the constant electronic beeping of monitors before he even reached the waiting area.
Kevin Atwater and Kim Burgess were waiting for them.
Both patrol officers looked exhausted, their uniforms wrinkled and marked from the struggle they had just gone through.
“What happened?” Hank Voight asked as he approached.
Atwater still looked shaken.
“Sergeant, we were near 63rd and Western when we found a young white woman wandering in the street.
She was barely dressed, covered in blood, and swinging a steak knife at anyone who got close.
Her abdomen had been badly stitched before the wound opened again.”
Kevin swallowed hard before continuing.
“It was bad.”
Burgess took over.
Her face was pale, but her voice remained steady.
“We tried talking her down, but she charged us.
Her pupils were completely blown, and she wasn’t acting like somebody who was just drunk.
Kevin struggled with her long enough for me to use the Taser, then we called an ambulance.”
Jack studied the two patrol officers.
Kevin’s hands were still trembling slightly, while Kim’s hair was disheveled and her posture unusually rigid.
Whatever they had seen on that street had rattled both of them.
“Where is she?” Hank asked.
“Trauma Three,” Atwater replied.
“The doctors found something inside her abdomen.
They rushed her into emergency surgery.”
Hank nodded and motioned for Intelligence to follow.
Before leaving, he gave Kevin and Kim each a brief pat on the shoulder, silently telling them they had done their job.
As they moved deeper into the emergency department, Hearing Positioning Lv.1 automatically separated the sounds around Jack.
He could make out the rhythmic monitor inside the treatment room, medical equipment, quiet instructions from nurses, and the faint unconscious groans of the patient.
The attending physician was a tired-looking middle-aged man whose badge identified him as Dr.
Rajani, Emergency Medicine.
The young woman lay unconscious on the hospital bed while several machines monitored her condition.
Dr.
Rajani removed his gloves when he saw the detectives.
“You’re here about the body packer?”
Hank frowned.
“Body packer?”
The doctor switched on an X-ray display.
The image showed numerous oval packages arranged through the patient’s digestive tract.
“Thirty packets,” Dr.
Rajani said.
“All packed with high-purity cocaine.
One ruptured and released the drug into her system, causing acute cocaine toxicity.
We removed the remaining packets during emergency surgery.”
The Intelligence officers stared at the image.
Thirty packets.
The doctor continued, “She also had crude sutures across her abdomen.
Whoever did that wasn’t working in a hospital.
The wound is badly infected.”
Catherine looked toward the unconscious woman.
“When can we talk to her?”
“Not anytime soon.” Dr.
Rajani shook his head.
“The cocaine caused serious cardiac and neurological stress.
Right now, keeping her sedated and stable is safer than trying to wake her.”
Hank’s expression darkened.
“Do we know who she is?”
A nurse handed over the patient’s belongings.
“Amber Morris, nineteen,” Dr.
Rajani said.
“Student ID says she attends Chicago Central University.”
Erin Lindsay was already searching through departmental databases.
“Sophomore.
Art major.
Lives in campus housing.
No criminal record.
Parents live in Ohio, middle-class family.”
Jay Halstead frowned.
“How does a nineteen-year-old college student end up carrying thirty packets of cocaine?”
“That’s what we find out.” Hank immediately began assigning tasks.
“Erin, Antonio, contact the family.
Al and Ruzek, go to the university and start working her friends and classmates.
Jack, Catherine, Jay—you’re with me to search her dorm.”
Jack raised a hand slightly.
“Hank, we should check her travel history too.”
Voight stopped.
“This doesn’t look like something a local street dealer would normally arrange,” Jack continued.
“If she was moving that much cocaine internally, there’s a good chance she recently crossed a border.”
Hank considered it for only a moment.
“Good point.
Change it up.
Erin, handle the parents.
Antonio, take Jay and pull Amber’s travel records.
Al and Ruzek still go to the school.
Jack, Catherine, you’re with me.”
Everyone moved.
At Chicago Central University, the dorm manager met them near the entrance.
Shirley Bates was a Black woman in her forties with glasses hanging from a chain around her neck and the expression of someone who kept the entire building under control through sheer force of personality.
“Amber Morris is quiet,” Shirley told them.
“Never caused trouble.
But she hasn’t been back for almost a week.
I figured she went home to see her family.”
“Any visitors recently?” Catherine asked.
“Especially men?”
Shirley thought about it.
“About a month ago, some young guy came asking for her.
Tattoos, bad attitude.
I told him to sign the visitor log, and instead of his name, he wrote an obscenity.”
Jack raised an eyebrow.
“I warned Amber to stay away from him,” Shirley continued.
“She smiled like I was overreacting.”
After the interview, Hank, Jack, and Catherine entered Amber’s dorm room.
It was unusually neat for student housing, with art-show posters covering the walls and unfinished sketches stacked across the desk.
Jack opened the closet.
Several pieces of bright summer clothing hung at the back with the tags still attached.
They looked more appropriate for a tropical vacation than Chicago.
“Catherine.”
He reached lower and pulled a crumpled boarding pass from beneath a bag.
“Cabo San Lucas.
Mexico.”
Catherine took it and checked the date.
“Return flight was yesterday.”
She opened a nearby drawer and found Amber’s passport.
Mexican entry and departure records matched the trip, but there was nothing in the room proving Amber had actually cleared back into the United States normally.
Hank looked over the documents.
“If she boarded home but didn’t make it through regular entry, something happened between Mexico and Chicago.”
His phone rang before anyone could say more.
Antonio.
“Hank, we found the travel records,” Antonio said over speaker.
“Amber went to Cabo four days ago, and she wasn’t alone.
Sarah Haynes, Megan Benson, and Alisha Davis traveled with her.
All four are students at the same university.”
“Return records?”
“They boarded their flight back, but CBP has no corresponding entry record for any of them.”
Jack frowned.
“Four girls, all missing from normal entry.”
Catherine immediately understood where he was going.
Jack looked toward Hank.
“Amber had around thirty cocaine packets inside her.
What if the other three were carrying the same thing?”
Catherine’s face tightened.
“Then they could be in the same condition.”
“Or worse,” Hank said.
Al Olinsky and Adam Ruzek arrived shortly afterward after speaking with students around campus.
Their findings matched the travel records almost perfectly.
“The four of them were always together,” Al said.
“Amber, Sarah, Megan, Alisha.
Same social circle.
Most people assumed they went on a girls’ trip.”
With Shirley’s help, Intelligence checked the other three dorm rooms.
Each looked mostly ordinary, although Mexico travel guides were found among their belongings.
Jack then went to the building’s security office.
After reviewing footage from the previous night, he found what they needed.
Four young women entered the underground parking area together.
They were smiling and talking, but their movements looked stiff and uncomfortable.
A black Chevrolet Express van pulled in, and two men got out before helping the girls inside.
The license plate had been obscured.
Jack saved the video.
“Got them.”
Hank studied the footage and immediately made the call.
“Everybody back to the district.
We put everything together there.”
Half an hour later, the Intelligence Unit office was active again.
Erin remained downstairs with Amber’s mother, who had already been in Chicago and arrived quickly after being contacted.
The middle-aged woman was crying uncontrollably, repeatedly asking how something like this could have happened to her daughter.
Lexi Olinsky happened to be nearby.
She watched silently from outside the room.
Only hours earlier, she had defended Brayden’s drug use as though it were nothing serious.
Seeing Amber’s mother breaking down because her nineteen-year-old daughter was fighting for her life made those words suddenly feel very different.
Upstairs, Sheldon Jin projected the parking-garage footage onto the main screen.
The four women climbed into the Chevrolet Express looking like friends returning from an ordinary vacation, except their pale faces and careful movements now carried a much darker meaning.
“Zoom in on the driver,” Hank ordered.
Sheldon enhanced the frame until the man’s face became clear enough to identify.
He was white, early thirties, with short hair and a snake tattoo running along his neck.
Sheldon immediately opened a record.
“Sean Collins, thirty-one.
Prior drug arrests.
Runs a tattoo shop in the Cicero area called Underground Ink.”
Another file appeared beside it.
“His brother is Brandon Collins, twenty-eight.
Also has a drug history and works at the same shop.”
Antonio studied the screen.
“Tattoo shop could be a front.
Drug distribution, maybe transportation too.”
Hank immediately started assigning teams.
“Al, take Ruzek and watch Underground Ink.
Do not spook them.
Antonio, Jay, Erin—trace the van after it left the dorm.”
He looked toward Jack and Catherine.
“You two are with me.”
Jack stood.
“Where are we going?”
“To talk to their uncle.”
Catherine gave Jack the same puzzled look he returned to her.
Hank explained as they headed toward the stairs.
“Gavin Collins.
Runs a small South Side crew and owns several strip clubs.
I know him.
He raised Sean and Brandon, so if his nephews are involved in something this big, there’s a good chance Gavin knows about it.”
Jack and Catherine followed him downstairs.
Near the stairwell, they passed Al speaking quietly with Lexi.
The moment Lexi saw Jack, her face turned red and she lowered her head slightly.
Al noticed.
A faint smile appeared on the veteran detective’s face.
His daughter had already apologized to him.
More importantly, she finally understood how badly she had misjudged both Brayden and her father.