by Alice Sharpe
His attention was diverted for a moment as Chelsea walked across the patio carrying a couple of trays she deposited in an icebox next to the grill. She wore a red apron that hugged her body and he fancied the slight bulge that was his baby that had grown a little in the past week, a fact that made him grin. She stopped to chat for a moment with Miguel and then left the patio.
Adam shifted positions in order to change his angle of observation, but it was no use. He would never find out why Nolan brought along a bodyguard unless he got out there and mingled.
Studying the patio for possible hiding places solved nothing, but he did make an observation that gave him an idea. Some of the guests had dressed in bright Hawaiian wear, some of them even to the point of costumes. He studied the walls around him and considered options, then snatched a grass skirt, straw hat and several leis. In a flash he went from the guy-on-the-street to the whacko-at-the-party, but the leis and hat covered most of his face and the skirt confused the issue. He walked outside and grabbed a cocktail glass someone had abandoned on a table. The trick would be to stay off the bodyguard’s radar.
The safest place to get the lay of the land was near Miguel so he walked that way. “Need some help?” he asked when he reached the grill.
Miguel looked up from turning chicken kebabs. “No thanks,” he said, then a flicker of recognition lit his eyes. That was quickly followed by a disbelieving glance at Adam’s clothes.
“I’m incognito,” Adam said softly.
Miguel smiled, his teeth very white against his brown face. “You look like a cheesy ad for a tiki bar. I wouldn’t have known who you were if I hadn’t heard your voice. What are you doing here, of all places? You have to know there’s more than one gun on this patio that would shoot you dead in an instant. You should go.”
“I can’t. I’m snooping on Tom Nolan.”
“At least tell me you’re armed.”
“Yeah, I’m armed.”
“Brilliant.”
“What do you know about Tom Nolan and Aimee?”
“They’re tight. I call Nolan ‘Little Devin,’” Miguel said.
“Why do you call him that?”
“Well, he took over Holton’s wife and his business.”
“What about his own wife?”
“She left him a couple of months ago.” He handed Adam a pair of tongs. “Make yourself busy. Take the skewers off the grill and put them on that platter.” He raised his voice and called his wife, who showed up seconds later. Adam handed Sofia the tray and she winked at him.
After she’d left to distribute the chicken, Adam lowered his voice. “What do you mean he took over Holton’s business?”
“Not the human-trafficking thing, that’s too much for a lightweight like Nolan. I’m talking about the drug smuggling Holton ran on the side. Small-time, perhaps, but lucrative. Word is Nolan has rubbed a few people the wrong way, though. Ms. Holton better watch it or she’ll get caught in the crossfire.”
“That explains the bodyguard.” Did it also explain the violence against Adam? Why would Tom Nolan care what happened to Adam Parish? As long as he stayed away, so what?
Unless Holton was paying Nolan, but was Nolan connected enough to come up with all these hit people?
Miguel looked around, then lowered his head and spoke. “Don’t just stand there thinking like that. There’s an icebox by your feet. Hand me something.”
Adam did as asked, lifting from the chilled box a tray covered with raw seafood. He glanced over at Nolan as he handed the tray to Miguel. The bodyguard was scanning the crowd and Adam looked away before they made eye contact.
“How about Ms. Holton? Does she know Nolan took over for her husband?”
“Probably. Maybe they’re in it together.”
Well, he knew she needed money and that her father had turned into a dry well. Maybe she was a partner in this.
“I heard about your marriage,” Adam said. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks. Ms. Holton said she’d pay us our back wages next week along with a bonus. Once she pays up, I’m taking Sofia away from here. I’m sick of sleeping apart from my bride and I don’t want her up here when things go sour.”
“I don’t blame you,” Adam said. He felt the same way about Chelsea. That’s what love was—the desire to protect at any cost.
But, as he was learning, love was also sharing good and bad, danger and peace, everything. In a way, love was allowing yourself to let go of the illusion of control.
What if he’d approached Miguel two days ago? Instead of slinking around learning next to nothing, he could have gotten all this information on Tom Nolan and made inroads into understanding what Aimee was up to. Lesson learned.
He was about to risk moving closer to Aimee and Tom when his phone vibrated in his pocket. “Keep an eye on those two,” he said. “Watch for some kind of drug exchange or money or...I don’t know, something.”
Miguel laughed. Adam picked up a couple of dirty trays and made his way toward the gate that led to the kitchen. Outside the gate, he put the trays down on the table placed there for that purpose and dug his phone out of his pocket.
“Hello?”
“Hey, hombre, this is Diego. I didn’t see you today.”
“I was on an errand,” Adam said. “Listen, can I call you later? I’m in the middle of something—”
“No bother. I just wanted you to know that I heard from every one of those kids and their parents this evening. It was like a parade at my house. Two written apologies and one kid is going to weed the yard every week this summer. Who says there aren’t still some responsible parents out there? I’m grateful for what you did. And ultimately, those kids will be grateful, too.”
“Thanks,” Adam said. “Sounds like you had quite the day what with the refrigerator thing up here and all that down there.”
“Yeah. Wait. What refrigerator thing?”
“Aimee Holton’s refrigerator.”
“What refrigerator?”
“I heard you discovered the special-order fridge that was delivered last night is the wrong model.”
“A refrigerator was delivered last night?” Diego said. “Why wasn’t I informed? And it’s the wrong one? Wait, we only ordered it a few days ago and it was on back order...it can’t be here already.”
“I’ll ask around and let you know,” Adam said. “There’s a party here tonight, maybe I misunderstood in all the confusion.”
“Man, it’s always something with that woman. Okay, I’ll check in the morning.”
Adam knew he hadn’t misunderstood anything. The refrigerator had to be some kind of diversion for a drug drop or something. He needed to talk to Chelsea. He entered the kitchen, where he found both Maria and Sofia fussing with food. “Where’s Daisy?” he asked.
“She left with Mariana,” Maria said.
“Mariana? The kid with the bruise? What’s she doing here at this time of night?”
“I don’t know. She was all dressed up but really upset. She and Daisy talked a minute, then Daisy went off with her.”
“How long ago?”
“Fifteen minutes or so.”
“Where did they go?”
“No idea. She told us to tell you she went to see the goats, whatever that means.”
The old goat barn was next door to the shed, where the phony refrigerator had supposedly been delivered. He threw aside his costume and took off through the house, exiting out the front door. The slight breeze whispered an omen through the dead grass as he veered off on the path to the left.
Had someone forced or coerced Mariana into laying a trap for Chelsea?
Had Devin Holton finally organized his next attack?
Chapter Sixteen
Chelsea pulled on Mariana’s bloody hand to halt their dash down the hill. In the distance, thanks to the moonlight,
she could see what appeared to be the outdoor light for a large new building and the darker shapes beyond it. That must be the old goat farm. The girl stopped abruptly and the two of them almost collided.
“Mariana, tell me what’s wrong,” Chelsea urged.
The dark shadow of Mariana’s head turned to look toward the buildings. “Shhh,” she whispered as she turned back. “He’ll hear.”
“Who’ll hear?”
“The guard.”
A guard? On a refrigerator?
“What’s going on? Where did you get that dress?”
“That man bought it,” she said. The girl was attired in the pink dress Chelsea had tried on. The saleswoman’s comments played themselves out in Chelsea’s mind. “Who is ‘that man’?” she demanded.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mariana said, “Please—”
“First tell me where you went after you broke the glasses and where we’re going now and why,” Chelsea insisted.
“I was sent to the barn in the valley,” she said so quickly and through so many tears that Chelsea had to concentrate on each uttered word. “Then the fire came and burned some of it and I was brought up here. Last night a truck delivered a whole bunch more girls. Lucia, she’s one of them, she was pregnant. One of the men hit her and hit her. Now she’s moaning and bleeding—I think she’s dying. Please help her.”
“How do we get past the guard?” Chelsea asked.
“The way I got out,” Mariana said, and took off. Chelsea followed. Once near the building, Mariana slowed way down and the two of them crept past the well-lit front door of the shed and the man sitting on a chair outside of it. They continued their careful trek around the side of the structure until they turned a corner. They were now standing outside the back of the building.
It was very dark. Mariana reached above her head, apparently searching for something on the side of the building. Chelsea suddenly recalled the phone Adam had given her and dug it from her jeans pocket. She turned it on. The light from the screen was enough to reveal that Mariana was attempting to grab a windowsill eight or nine feet off the ground. Chelsea leaned over and cupped her hands, her phone clutched in her teeth. She hefted Mariana up farther against the wall until she could pull herself into the window, where she scuttled about a few seconds, then disappeared inside. That left Chelsea stranded on the ground.
A noise to her left sent her heartbeat racing. She used her phone with the intent to blind whoever was approaching, but the light wasn’t bright enough. She directed it to her feet. Shards of broken glass littered the rocky earth and she quickly used the hem of her apron to pick one up to defend herself.
“It’s me,” a man whispered as he came to a stop a foot or two away. She dropped the shard as his hands grasped her arms. “Chelsea, are you all right?”
“Oh, Adam,” she said. “Thank goodness you’re here.” She pointed up to the window and stuffed the phone in her pocket. “I need a lift up.”
“It might be a trap,” Adam said. “I’ll go first.”
“No, you’ll terrify Mariana. It’s not a trap. Someone is in trouble. Just help me.”
He cupped her face and kissed her lips, then pressed his gun into her hands.
“Adam—”
“Please,” he said.
She tucked the gun in her waistband as he leaned over. She stepped into his folded hands. As he pushed, she caught the windowsill, cutting her palms on the broken glass caught in the frame. No wonder Mariana’s hands had been slippery with blood. She paused in the shallow window, looking down at the dimly lit room below, preparing herself for the jump to the cement floor almost eight feet below. Her body and the baby it nurtured had already been through so much—could she withstand this punishment, too?
Then she finally saw the teetering stack of boxes and old appliances piled up against the wall to her right. Turning to look down at Adam, she gave him a thumbs-up. The very fact he was here, close by, gave her courage she didn’t know she possessed. She turned back to the interior. Mariana appeared below, motioning with one hand for Chelsea to hurry down. Chelsea tore off her apron and laid it over the sill to protect Adam’s hands when he followed, then found the top step with the toe of her shoe and climbed down to the floor.
* * *
BECAUSE HE HAD approached the building from the bluff side, Adam now took the time to reconnoiter the building’s perimeter to find out exactly how well it was guarded. He was relieved when he ascertained there was only one man and he appeared half-asleep.
Then he attacked the window. His first jump fell short. In the near dark, he backed up and then ran forward, jumping at the last minute, catching a cloth of some kind and slipping back to earth with it grasped in his hand. He shook out what he now realized was Chelsea’s apron.
Ever aware of the guard, he stuffed part of the apron in his back pocket so as not to leave a red flag behind. He backed up again. This time he caught the sill with one hand, grabbed with the other and, using his feet, managed to attain the opening. Scrunched in the window frame, he peered into the room. There had to be twenty or so teenage girls standing in a semicircle and, as a unit, they turned and stared up at him.
He spied Chelsea on her knees in the middle of the group and scrambled down the makeshift ladder into the hot, humid gloom. The girls parted for him to pass. He’d never seen so many terrified faces in one place in his life. Chelsea was attending to a young girl lying prone on her back, dried tears on her battered, swollen cheeks, her clothes bloody.
“What’s wrong with her?” he asked as he kneeled down.
Chelsea cast him a swift glance. “Her name is Lucia. As far as I can tell, Davy knocked her around this morning. I think she’s miscarrying her baby or maybe he ruptured something inside her.”
“He did that here?”
“Yes. She was part of the ‘shipment’ that came in last night in that phony refrigerator delivery. They’re waiting now for someone to come load them up and take them to Denver.”
He stared at her, too angry for a moment to make a sound.
“Aimee knows what’s going on,” Chelsea added. “She’s been lying about it all day.”
“That’s why she’s so jumpy. She’s waiting for the truck to take these kids away.”
“That witch,” Chelsea muttered. “Lucia’s been bleeding for a long time. Her skin is hot and dry. She needs a doctor, Adam. But right now, I need some water to cool her down and something absorbent for the blood.”
A young girl wearing a very fancy pink dress and with a bruise on her cheek stepped forward. “I’ll take care of it,” she said.
“This is Mariana,” Chelsea said, smiling at the girl. “Mariana, this is Adam.”
“Nice to meet you,” Adam said. He turned back to Chelsea and handed her the red apron. “Have you called the police?”
“I tried but the battery is gone thanks to the fact I used it as a flashlight for too long.”
“I’ll call.” As he pressed the numbers, he asked another question. “Why didn’t the other girls escape out the window after Mariana left?”
Chelsea shook her head. “I don’t know. I think they’re too frightened to move or speak. Most of them are spaced out on drugs. Maybe they didn’t want to leave Lucia. Or maybe they don’t know where else to go.”
The call went through. Adam explained what was going on and added they needed an ambulance as well as police.
“How did Mariana get in the middle of this?” he asked. “You met her before these other kids got here.”
“She was a runaway, ‘found’ by an older man with white hair. Tom Nolan, maybe? I’m not sure. She fought him when he forced her to put on that dress and tried to sell her to his friends. He pawned her off on Aimee, who decided to use her as kitchen help until it was time to ship her off with the others. When Mariana broke the dishes, Aimee dumped her in a barn down in the valley,
which I gather is their usual place to stage these transactions, but the fire damaged that place so Mariana was brought up here to wait for the other girls to arrive.”
“But how did Mariana get back in that dress? She wasn’t wearing it when you saw her the first time, was she?”
“No. I noticed her clothes were too big. Aimee had given them to her when she got to the house, but once everything went wrong, she made Mariana put the dress back on. That woman is a bitch with a capital B.”
“She’s more than that. All this means she took over Holton’s human-trafficking deal,” Adam said.
“Along with her ‘business associate,’ Davy.”
“He must be a designated ‘recruiter,’” Adam said.
“What’s a recruiter?”
“The guy who finds lost, hapless girls, befriends them, gets them dependent on him for drugs, turns them into prostitutes and then sells them. There are too many here for one guy, though. They must have gathered kids from the whole state. There’s an underground network in this country to move children sold into sex slavery. Denver is one of the hubs.”
Mariana showed up with two bottles of water, a roll of paper towels and a few old rags and items of clothing that Adam passed along to Chelsea.
He had a decision to make. Should he get Mariana to help him move the girls’ outside via the broken window and into the old goat barn so they weren’t trapped in this building? Or did he go outside and take care of the situation from there until the police showed up? They were still almost thirty minutes away...
Once again, he scanned the faces around him and decided on the latter. The girls were frightened, impaired and cowed by abuse. He wasn’t even sure the goat barn would hold all of them or what shelter it would provide.
“It’s going on midnight,” he told Chelsea. “I don’t think we have much time before that truck gets here. I hate to leave you alone with Lucia, but I need to go subdue the guard.”
“Take the gun,” she said as she reached for it.
“No,” he said, catching her hands. “You keep it. Anyone comes through that door, use it.”