by Sophia Reed
I'd never stopped mourning Emily. People talk about wasted potential when someone young is killed. I don't know that Emily would have had a lot of potential. She was beautiful and brilliant but our childhood had wrung something out of her. Not that just because someone is smart means they have to do something with those smarts. It's possible Emily would have just been Emily.
She never got the chance to do that. I never got to find out which way she'd go.
Now, watching Annie from a distance, helpless to interfere with what was happening, I was starting to regret my blue room crew were afraid of me. "You think so?" I asked April. My voice coiled with tension but none of it was directed at her. I felt several other techs cautiously relax.
"Sure," April said. She gestured at the screens we were all avidly watching. "They chased her down but they didn't stop her until there." The drone moved minutely, not enough to catch the attention of anyone on the ground. Just enough to show a different angle.
I swallowed over the need to tell her not to focus away from Annie. Why the fuck didn't we have a dozen drones in the air? But I knew that one. Because more were more chances to get caught. Even if the police didn't figure out the drones were part of the Annie story, they might freak out at all if they knew that they were being watched. Maybe they'd just shoot them down.
Maybe they'd shoot her, instead.
My stomach turned. Bile filled my mouth.
One of the techs near April, Charles, said, "Those rocks they've stopped her by? Those are cover. The formations lead into the mountains. It's not a great cover but considering where she drove to, they may have chased her and stopped her there because she could have run into the rocks. It's a plausible story to go with the body cams."
"If they have to use that footage," offered Henry. Henry didn't usually speak, mostly because even in this room other people didn't speak and think in code. He did. "If they can scramble their cams enough, they'll move the car and where they said they were on the second stop."
"Because she rabbited," I said, looking at the screen again. April had returned the angle to the cars but of course I couldn't see Annie.
"And they stopped her farther along," said Henry. "That'll be the footage. The stop of the car. The girl already gone from it."
I shook my head. "And the reason why two two-man units couldn't keep her stopped the first time?"
"They'll think of something," April said grimly and adjusted the camera on the drone. It blew up with the window of the cruiser where Annie was. Her head rested against the window, and she was looking up. She, at least, knew the drone was there.
I couldn't tell what she was thinking. Her face was shadowy and the image unclear. I just hoped it wasn't me she was thinking about. All of her attention needed to be on what she was doing and the people she was doing it around.
She had to be awake and aware and on her A game. Nothing else was acceptable. Anything else would win her time in the playroom that would be no game and time over my lap that would leave her unable to sit for a week.
When she came back.
Because she had to come back. The idea of them chasing her, of them actually letting her run and then jumbling the cameras was revolting. Too many opportunities for someone to lose his temper and hurt her. Or for Annie to lose her nerve or lose her temper and lash out at them. The desert was too vast, too unforgiving, too full of things that could go wrong.
"She's valuable, Boss," April said.
I looked at her, one brow raised.
She nodded at the screen, as if I could possibly think she meant anyone but Annie. "They're not stupid enough to hurt her. She's worth a lot of money."
"Not to them," I said quietly, meaning the men who had stopped her. I knew better. I just wanted to hear it.
April complied. "No. But to the people who pay them. Those guys, on the street, they're probably getting regular money to look, and a bonus to deliver."
The muscle in my jaw popped.
"But the people who ordered all of it? She's worth a lot of money to them, Boss." There was a pause and then she said, "They're not going to fuck that up. The guys on the ground there, they're more than just interested in their paychecks and bonuses."
I bit back a grim smile and looked at her.
"They don't want to disappear either," April said. "She's probably safer where she is than ever before."
Which stung a little since before had been with me. But she was right.
I hoped.
Unexpectedly, Henry added, "Especially the way she was having fun with that 'Vette," and there was a ripple of subdued laughter.
Before we all went back to watching the screen.
11
Annie
People can just disappear in the desert. Deserts are inhospitable environments. Specially adapted animals live there but humans die there. Often.
I could see the drone overhead, some distance off. Cole's, no doubt. Watching over me. That was okay. I had no idea if drones had to be registered and if the FAA or some other agency tracked them. If so, and if any of the men around me saw it, I didn't think it mattered.
The idea that Cole would have it registered in any way that would lead back to him was laughable.
There was only so much the drone could do. It could watch and record. It could probably pinpoint license plates to say where these guys had been at exactly what time. That should have made me feel better.
It didn't. There was no way Cole could have known what casino parking garage I was going to hit because I hadn't known. There was no way he could have known where I'd go once I had the car, for exactly the same reason. I'd made it up as I went along because I didn't trust him not to jump the gun and come rescue me all too soon.
It's what I'd have done if our situations were reversed.
That made me very uncomfortable. I'd been safe much of the time I was undercover in one way – I had nothing I was longing to get back to.
That made me feel sorry for Mark, though briefly. I'd loved him, but I didn't long to be back with him during the months that I was Lily, living with Jesse or another gang member, being the troll who would eventually topple them and in the meantime, actually living a life with people I often found I liked.
I hadn't had a real life.
The window glass was warm under my forehead. The cruiser itself was comfortably cool, whether because that's how the driver had set the AC or because they didn't want to start mistreating the newest prize.
My stomach knotted with dread. I watched the drone as it hovered. That was my connection and probably I needed to look away and it needed to go away. It couldn't follow us. It might get spotted. And Cole probably didn't need that information.
The highway I'd chosen was nearly deserted. Most of the roads leading out of Vegas were, though the bigger highways connected to other metro areas. Vegas is still a huge city surrounded by a much huger desert. The few cars that did pass did so with the usual curiosity mixed with caution, mixed with the residual guilt for being a gawker. Human nature.
Human nature also meant those people who passed registered the flashing lights and the uniforms and guns and the fact that there were two of those and a two-seater sports car with no one in it.
The story told itself. Nothing to see here and no reason to worry.
My stomach cramped again, hard knot of fear. People can disappear in the desert. It's vast and easy to get lost and no matter how many technological advances, people can and do wander to places where the search grids don't take man or machine. If it was said that I ran into the desert and vanished?
Believable.
For a breathless second I wanted nothing more than to beg, plead, bargain my way out. To time travel and never have done this. To actually run into the desert and use the only survival skill I had: Endurance. I could outpace these guys but even with Cole's training I probably couldn't outsprint them. As for desert survival skills, I'd lived in Southern Nevada for a couple years and never advanced past Always carry water w
ith you and tell someone where you're going.
Cole knew where I was going: Straight into trouble.
I didn't have any water.
They went on talking for another eight minutes. I could see a digital clock on the dash and track the time. I was comfortable and in no distress, other than the obvious – that I was caught and cuffed. That's all they knew. Every few minutes one of them would peer in the window at me.
If I were really who they thought I was, I'd just think they were having a confab out there in the desert at my expense. I'd be pissy. Scared because I'd been arrested, though Erin tended to get herself into scrapes and get caught.
I breathed through the twisted stomach churning terror with three thoughts: One, that I wasn't who they thought I was. So even though I'd gotten myself into this situation and wanted out, I had skills none of them suspected.
Second, Cole had inserted two trackers, which didn't feel good. One in my ankle, which they might find and which was fine if they did – hopefully it would make them not think to look for the second, which was a place I supposed there'd be people looking around but nothing I wanted to share.
The second tracker was deep inside me.
If they found the one in my ankle I'd cry and tell them I was an owned slave and I'd had enough and my Master had gone rogue and I'd had to get out and I didn't have any money and I didn't have a car and –
And by that point they'd probably be sick of my tears and telling me to shut the fuck up and suck it up, buttercup. The story, all the tears, it all fit into the timeline we'd designed. Plus? I was pretty sure no one who had taken me would care. Other than the fact that there was a tracker. End of story. No one was going to ask questions past what I told them.
Third thought I used to keep myself steady was the thought of all the girls this had happened to who had no idea. Popular fiction aside, I thought a lot of them were runaways, not college girls on spring break getting themselves taken during south of the border vacations. Which in no way made it any better. Some of them were probably sex workers, but they'd been working for themselves or for pimps who were still probably better than what happened to them once they were taken.
I thought about their terror at not knowing what was happening to them.
I thought about their terror when they did know.
And even if I could have turned back, I wouldn't have.
When they acted, they did it fast.
It took all my willpower not to look at the drone when the officers yanked the door of the cruiser open and pulled me out. If I'd shown the tiniest weakness, the need for Cole to come, all the discussions we'd had would have been useless.
He would have found me. Even if the vehicles had already driven on.
I didn't look.
"Get out of the car. Get out of the car!" The officer pulling on my arm was frenzied, hard and loud.
Probably a combination of things. His own panic at what he was doing, the need to just get it done and over. Along with his need to keep me subdued. The more he could scare Erin Trace, the better they could control her.
I didn't fight. I let the real live scared Annie inside come up for air. A scene like this could escalate easily. What should be a snatch and grab could turn into murder.
Stepping out of the cruiser, I kept my hands raised. "I'm coming! It's okay, it's okay. I'm doing what you said." But I let my voice tremble and I kept my hands up.
Neither of those was that hard to do. I was honestly scared. I'd have been more scared if I thought there was any way they suspected who and what I was.
The one holding on to me slammed me against the SUV cruiser. I saw stars as they wrenched my arms back to cuff me. A small part of me was floating with the drone. At that moment it mattered that Cole knew where I was.
And then he didn't.
12
Cole
"What's happening? What is that? What are they doing?"
On the screen, four new vehicles drove up, surrounding the two NHP vehicles and the stolen Corvette. One of the officers dragged Annie out of the car, slamming her into the side of it with unnecessary force. She was a cop, she was in great shape, but she wasn't huge.
My fists bunched. I breathed shallow and didn't take my eyes off the scene unfolding. "You can follow." I said it flat, because they could. They had to.
"Yes, sir," Charles said, and no one else added anything.
Of course they could. The drone would follow and I'd have eyes on the scene as soon as they were in place.
Only next instant –
"What's happening?"
The techs were silent. They were hackers and coders and IT workers. Even Scott beside me hesitated for an instant before he hissed between his teeth.
"Fuck! Can you get it closer?"
"No." I said it fast. "April, don't move in."
She hadn't moved. When Scott and I were both in the room it was my room.
Scott looked at me. "They're – "
"I know what they're doing." Because now I did.
The black SUVs, the enormous ones that stretch for a block, had surrounded the scene. Even from the air it was almost impossible to see and I didn't want to tip the hand of the drone. It was possible it was some enthusiast working the thing but I wasn't taking a chance they'd believe that.
I was going to let her go without surveillance. Because that felt like the safest choice. And the worst.
We watched, tense, silent, as doors opened and people moved but there was no way to tell exactly what vehicle Annie was in. Only that almost definitely she wasn't being put back into a cop car.
It took about 90 seconds. Then the cars split up, some going back the way they'd come, others spreading out on the highway that crossed the one she was on about a quarter mile up.
They'd run her to that spot. They'd wanted her close. Far enough out they could lose her in the desert. Close enough to the other highways even the drone couldn't make out which car she was in or which way that car was going.
In seconds, she was gone.
I stalked out of the IT room and went for a run. When I came back, I pummeled a heavy bag. When I finished that, I took one of the floggers and then a crop to my own back.
There was no relief. There wasn't even any sensation.
13
Annie
It happened fast. One minute there was one stolen Corvette, two NHP cruisers, four bad cops, and some random traffic, all on the drone cameras I had no doubt.
Next instant there were four new vehicles surrounding us, all of them huge black SUVs that stood taller than the cop cars. Dwarfed the Corvette. They could probably transfer it back to its owner by driving it into one of the cars.
They surrounded the existing tableau and I was sure effectively blocked it out to anyone passing.
Or any eyes in the skies.
Someone put a hand on my head and shoved me into the vehicle. Someone inside the vehicle pulled me across the bench seat in the back and stuck a needle in my neck. I looked at his face – completely unfamiliar, unpleasant, and unkind – and the world turned upside down.
Maybe I should have been Lily, I thought, in the instants before the world went black. Like a baseball player's lucky, never-washed socks, the Lily persona was familiar and comfortable and most important, nothing awful had ever happened to me when I was Lily.
Okay, nothing permanently awful.
The world sailed backwards down a drain and I went with it.
I woke with a pounding headache and the sudden fear that I had been taken by the wrong group. Which was stupid. How many trafficking rings did I think there were? But I wasn't being taken before a Judge, that was obvious, or they would have done the fake arrest and hauled me off to the judicial chambers. Not put me in the back of an unmarked, unofficial SUV and driven me off and injected me with a sedative.
So why the change of MO? Did they have an idea I wasn't who my ID said I was? Or had something slipped? Or did my cavalier behavior warrant something different?
>
Not much I could do about it. We were still traveling. I was alone in the backseat and other than the headache, I felt okay. The back of the vehicle was cordoned off with a metal mesh. My hands were cuffed in front of me now, probably in case I had an adverse reaction to the drugs. There were bottles of cold water, a plastic tub of crystallized ginger, slices of lemon, and a small bag of potato chips. Somebody didn't want me getting carsick.
How thoughtful.
"Hey!"
The driver already knew I was awake. He'd met my eyes in the rearview. He did it again and his partner turned around and looked through the mesh at me.
"Shut up."
"What's happening? Where are you taking me? Are you police? What happened?"
He kind of rolled his eyes. The gesture was so natural and so absurdly out of place I almost laughed. "You stole a car. You've been arrested. You're on your way to arraignment. There's stuff there if you feel sick. We'd prefer you not throw up in the car."
I stared at him. As if someone could help it if the driver didn't relent and the doors weren't opened.
The driver said, "Shut up, idiot." To me he said, "You feel sick, tell me. I'll stop. You tell me you're sick and you're not, you'll be sorry."
"Okay," I said, and thought, Probably not. Not sorry. I don't think you're allowed to hurt me.
No comfort there. Even if he couldn't hurt me, there were a lot of other people who could.
I had a feeling I was on my way to meet them.
They didn't blindfold me. That was bad. They didn't restrain me other than the cuffs and my hands were in front of me. That was sensible – because that way I could reach the anti-nausea display or drink the water – but bad. They weren't calling anyone to let them know they were coming, so probably all that had been done out in the desert. That wasn't bad. It just was.