Agent George Martin greeted Kit Steele in the Belle Isle Marshs’s parking lot. She had never met him before, though they had talked on the phone. He looked younger than she’d anticipated. He was assigned to a joint task force investigating gang activities that crossed state lines. MS-13 had become the focus of the task force’s inquiries because it was the most active and coordinated gang in the United States. It was also the most dangerous. He and Kit Steele were ostensibly on the same team, but because they were on different task forces, there was an element of competition to their relationship.

Three police cruisers were in the lot, as well as two unmarked law enforcement vehicles. Two officers were talking to an older woman with a large dog.

Martin shook Kit’s hand and dispensed with any pleasantries. She was OK with that; she preferred to get directly to business. “Special Agent Steele, you asked me for the file on T’phong Soh the other day,” he said. “I thought you might want to know about this,” he said.

“What happened?”

“Looks like we got a war brewing. The woman over there saw three guys grab an MS-13 soldier. She got a pretty clean look at all of them.”

Steele thought about the file Martin had sent to her, which she had passed on to Cormack. The chances were high that the incident was the result of her having passed on the file. The information was sensitive, and if anyone found out what she’d done, it would likely end her career. She kept her expression impassive. “They took him in the parking lot?”

Agent Martin shook his head. “They grabbed him over here,” he said. He led her down one of the trails until they came to a small clearing. A large patch of snow was stained a deep red. “We don’t know if he was dead or not. If he wasn’t dead, he was pretty badly injured.”

“Who was it?”

“Based on the description of the tattoos on his face, the guy who got grabbed was Juan Suarez. He’s Soh’s number two. Out of El Salvador by way of Los Angeles. He’s an up-and-comer. You read the file. From what we’ve heard, Soh’s looking to take control over the harbor, and maybe even the whole MS-13 organization. If that’s true, he’s relying pretty heavily on Suarez, so the fact that Suarez was jumped is significant.”

Steele squatted down, getting a better look at the bloody snow without touching anything that might be useful in the investigation. “Could be,” she said noncommittally. “Of course, these MS-13 assholes are mixed up in a lot of different shit. There’s no way to know this is the beginning of a war. It could be a one-off.”