Travis Justice by Colleen Shannon Page B

stayed wide so he could hear the slightest sound. Even the motion detectors inside their house were activated now at night. And he seldom sat down during his duty hours.
    He half listened to the introductions going around the table, adjusting his bristling arsenal by shifting his body weight. Standard-issue Glock in his visible hip holster, six-shot featherweight revolver strapped to his calf beneath his jeans, fifteen-round custom Browning. 45 in the hidden holster under his armpit. His last backup was a Silver Trident sheath knife with a double-serrated edge strapped in the small of his back. It weighed over a pound and because of its supreme balance, it was perfect for throwing, which was why he stored it where he could grab it easily.
    As Ross recapped the forensics conclusions based on the remains of the victims, facts he’d already heard, Zach still couldn’t get comfortable. Even in one of the most secure buildings in the state, he was on edge. But as Abby took center stage, he began to listen.
    After Abigail hooked her laptop to the room’s projector system, she began flashing PowerPoint slides. “These are some of the samples of this new designer drug we’ve sourced back to China. It’s only been on the streets in Austin for a couple of months. It started in Europe and has since moved to the East Coast and is now spreading through the South and Midwest.”
    Zach eyed the bright, appealing packaging, tilting his head to read the label: Blue Moon incense . Or Zinger tea , and so on. All innocuous home products.
    â€œI’m sure I don’t need to tell this audience how hard these drugs are to interdict,” Abby said. “The distribution is different from any of the usual illegal pipelines: mom-and-pop stores, raves, independent gas stations. Sometimes the proprietors don’t even know what they’re selling. And increasingly, people buy them on the Deep Web, often using digital currency like Bitcoin that makes the transactions difficult to track.”
    The next images were even more troubling. She flashed through them quickly with obvious distaste: people of every shape and size, but mostly young, in various states of illness, hooked to IVs. Some looked as if they were in comas and more than a few looked as if they’d overdosed.
    â€œThese designer drugs hit the streets before we even know what’s in them,” she continued. “All too often they mimic the highs of heroin, or cocaine, or methamphetamine. Equally addictive; in a few cases, even more so. They obviously have no quality controls so one packet can be much stronger than the next on the same rack. Users are taking enormous risks without realizing it. As soon as the labs identify the chemicals used to make these drugs, and we get the legislation through to ban them, they reformulate and add plant products that are used for such things as tea and incense and release them with new packaging under innocuous new names.”
    DEA chief Dexter Rhodes was nodding impatiently. “We know all of that. We tried banning them several years back when they had the all-encompassing label bath salts , only to have them reformulate, exactly as you said . . . But what does this have to do with the murders of our people?”
    Abigail switched to a different picture: A muscular man of medium height. A chill crept up Zach’s spine. He’d seen a similar apparition before, though the black nylon had molded a much different form. He was looking at a male version of Hana, the Japanese girl. Like her, this man was garbed head to toe in black. He wore a samurai sword strapped to his back, and another shorter one in a belt sheath. His hood looked very similar to the one the girl had worn the night he’d fought with her. The photo had a grainy nature, as if it had been taken from a distance, but the man was still imposing in his menace.
    â€œWe believe this is the leader of the Edo Shihans gang, which as