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Daniels was involved in sex crimes, specifically kidnapping minor female runaways for Internet pornography.
    Xavier Jones’s name had come up in the course of investigatingDaniels, but there was nothing substantial in Daniels’s records implicating Jones in criminal activity. The major impetus was an old photograph of Jones and Daniels with a group of known or suspected criminals. It was primarily Dean’s gut intuition after seeing that photo that had him looking closely at Jones for the last two years.
    Dean suspected that Jones was involved with the illegal sex trade, but there was no evidence pointing directly at him, and until he learned that ICE was involved, he had assumed it was prostitution—Jones had contact with known prostitution rings. Dean knew less about the international scope of Jones’s activities than ICE agent Sonia Knight—human trafficking was primarily under the domain of Homeland Security. And while he
should
have known about the ICE investigation, even in this new era of sharing information, not all information trickled down—or up—to the right people.
    He wanted Sonia to look at all his information immediately. He had a feeling she’d see things he didn’t because her experience tracking the buying and selling of people was legendary.
    That Sonia Knight had been sold into slavery as a child, then escaped, was in itself an incredible story; that she’d become a decorated special agent in immigration was even more extraordinary. He hadn’t been blowing smoke up Sonia’s very attractive backside when he told her there was no one else he’d rather work with. She had a reputation for being not only a hothead, but intelligent, extremely knowledgeable, and compassionate. She took risks, probably too many, but in Dean’s experience it was only those agents willing to put their reputationand life on the line for justice who made the difference. He’d admired her from afar for years, but in all honesty he never thought he’d have a chance to work with her. DHS and the FBI were completely separate agencies; he hadn’t even known she worked from the Sacramento field office.
    If she had records of shipments in and out of the area that Jones was suspected of orchestrating, maybe adding that information to his database would make existing information pop, and he could follow that thread to the proof he needed for the U.S. Attorney to indict.
    Tracking money wasn’t the sexiest job in the FBI. Most agents wanted to work counterterrorism or violent crimes; those who were technology savvy, like Dean, usually found themselves in cybercrimes. But white-collar crimes pulled Dean in like nothing else. It came down to trust: if you couldn’t trust your government, your small businesses, your corporations, society fell apart. Criminals reigned, and law-abiding citizens suffered financially, emotionally, and physically. Anarchy was the end result of doing nothing.
    And, frankly, crunching numbers and pattern recognition were his strengths. His father never understood. Clint Hooper had been a beat cop, working the streets of Chicago until the ravages of too many cigarettes and too much fat put him in an early grave. He’d been a good cop, had taught Dean and his younger brother, Will, right from wrong, but a cop was all he was. When Clint Hooper was home, he wanted to be out on the streets. When he went to their ball games, he was always with the other cop dads. As a result, Dean lived with cops, socialized with cops, didn’t know anything else but the life of a cop. He’d wanted something else.
    So he joined the military through the ROTC program and planned to be a career Marine. It wasn’t his first choice—he’d always excelled in math and had considered teaching or being a CPA—but the pressures of a blue-collar father thinking accounting was for wimps had him looking to prove his manhood when he really should have had nothing to prove to anyone except himself.
    He’d learned his lesson, but not