DRAINED
EDGARS FAMIY NOVELS, Book 6
Suzanne Ferrell
Copyright © 2020 by Suzanne Ferrell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Dedication
* * *
For Sami, because you asked.
Thank you to Eric for the title and story concept.
Love you both!
Acknowledgments
The Ferrell team always deserves a big thank you!
To my critique partner, Sandy Blair, Thank you for everything you do to help me turn out the best book.
My cover artist, Lyndsey Lewellen of LLewellen Designs. I love how you take my vague descriptions and turn out such eye-catching, dynamic covers.
And my editor, Jo Davis. Thanks for helping make my stories the best they can be.
Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for trying my Indie published book. I understand that there are many options for you to spend your money on and am honored that you chose one of my books. For that reason my team and I strive to put out the best product we can from the awesome cover design through the entire editing and formatting process. For my part, I hope to deliver an entertaining story that keeps you wondering what’s going to happen next.
If at the end of this book you find you simply loved the story and characters, please consider giving it a positive rating or review. In this brave new book world, the only way for a good story to find its way into the hands of other readers is if the people who loved it let others know about it. We authors appreciate any little bit of help you can give us.
If, when you reach the end of this story, you think, “Wow, I’d love to know what’s next in Suzanne’s world of characters,” then consider joining my newsletter mailing list. I only send out newsletters a few times a year, plus extra ones in anticipation of any new releases, so it won’t be flooding your inbox on a weekly basis, but will keep you abreast on any changes I may have coming.
Also, I love to hear from readers. If you have any questions or comments, or just want to say “hi”, please feel free to visit my webpage for some extra tidbits or check out my Pinterest boards. You can connect with me via Facebook, Twitter or through my email: [email protected]
Now the important part: Here’s Brianna and Aaron’s story. I hope you will love them as much as I did while I was writing DRAINED.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
Newsletter sign-up
Coming Soon
SHANGHAIED
Afterword
Also by Suzanne Ferrell
About the Author
1
Classical music filtered through the dark, slowly pulling her to consciousness. Mozart’s Molto Allegro, if she wasn’t mistaken. She’d studied violin and music theory all through school and during her first two years at college. Even had stints with summer orchestras all over the Midwest. The word virtuoso had been bantered about when her instructors thought she wasn’t listening.
That was before the drugs. Now she played on the streets to earn enough money to buy food and support her habit.
Cold. She was unbearably cold. Not the kind where you wanted to turn up the thermostat or find another sweater to take the edge off. This was the naked-in-an-ice-storm kind that settled through to her bones. She was naked. Where were her clothes? Did some other homeless person steal them?
She tried to lift her arms.
Nothing moved. Not even a finger.
Why couldn’t she move? Through the fuzziness in her head she tried to open her eyes. As if they were made of cement, slowly they inched open just a slit. She closed them again, took a breath and concentrated, forcing them to open more.
Everything was a hazy, muted shade of grey. Except the lights above her. Painful, blinding bright in her eyes. A shiver ran through her. They looked like something from an old black and white spy movie. She shifted her gaze away, back to the shadows beyond their glaring beams. She tried to move her head to the side. Her neck muscles contracted, but her head stayed locked in place, facing the ceiling.
Her mind cleared a little more. She swallowed the anxiety crawling over her body.
She was lying on a hard surface. Not her usual spot on the hard ground of the park or the cement of an underpass below the interstate. This was metal, like a table or a counter.
With more effort she was able to wiggle her fingers and move her hands, but only slightly. Something firm, but with a little give held her head, arms—she tried to shift her lower extremities without any success—and her legs in place. Leather straps?
As wakefulness swept in like a tsunami, she realized her body was strapped in place and her left arm throbbed, like something was stuck in it.
Her heartrate doubled. Feared shot through her.
Avoiding the bright lights, she shot her now-focused gaze from the right to the left and back again. The room looked like a sterile lab or hospital room. Her mind raced with questions.
Where the hell was she? How had she gotten here? What were they going to do to her? Who had stripped her and strapped her here? Had she been in an accident?
“Ah, I see your little nap is over,” the deep, slightly familiar voice said somewhere above her head. “GHB is such a lovely drug. Too little and you put up a fight. Too much and…well, you die much too quickly. But just the right amount and like Goldilocks, you go to sleep without any fuss. Now we can begin.”
Begin what? She wanted to ask, wanted to scream, but realized her mouth was sealed with something. Duct tape?
Panic set in. This was not a hospital. She’d not been in an accident. He—whoever he was—had drugged her and brought her to this…this place.
“It’s okay,” the voice whispered, hot air breezing beside her ear as he spoke. “You’re finally going to fulfill your destiny.”
Metal rattled beside her as he moved something into her line of site. A smaller metal table with an odd-shaped opaque plastic bag lying on it sat nearby. Attached to it was a tubing made of the same odd plastic. She adjusted her gaze and saw dark red fluid coming out of a tube attached to a needle in her left arm, which was stretched out to her side.
She’d sold her plasma a few times when she was desperate for cash, so knew exactly what was happening. He was taking her blood!
“The human body has between four and a half and five and a half liters of blood.”
She focused on the side table where f
our more bags lay in a neat row.
Oh God!
2
Detective Aaron Jeffers’ favorite day of the week was Wednesdays.
Mondays sucked. Not like it did for regular nine-to-five workers. No, Mondays held a special suckiness when you were a homicide detective. If he worked the weekend, he spent Monday bringing the higher-ups up to date on any case he caught over the weekend, explaining why he hadn’t closed it, and all the other fun paper-work parts of the job. If he was lucky enough to be off the entire weekend, then his name was first up for whatever tragedy brought on by human greed, jealousy, evil or stupidity resulted in a dead body.
Fridays weren’t any better. While the rest of the working world was busy getting excited about their weekend off—planning family activities, get-togethers, sporting events and parties—the detectives were trying to close up cases and praying that the phone didn’t ring before they could get out of the office if they had the weekend off. And if they had the weekend on call, that was a whole other problem.
Actually, any day could suck when you worked homicide. Wednesdays held a bright spot for Aaron for a totally different reason.
He looked up as the front door to the restaurant opened and in walked the reason, Brianna Matthews. As the tall, statuesque blonde hurried through the lunch crowd to their usual table almost every male head in the place turned to admire her beauty and the soft sway of her hips. Not that she paid them any attention. In the three years he’d known her, she not only ignored the unwanted attention, she tried hard not to elicit it—jeans, and a loose turtleneck sweater, that didn’t quite fit her form, but hinted at all the lush curves underneath; the messy pony tail meant to hide its natural curls, instead gave the illusion of having just climbed out of bed; the lack of makeup couldn’t quite hide the lovely complexion and small freckles scattered across her cheeks and pert nose.
As she reached the table, he stood and took her hand for a second of hello. No hug, not fake kisses on the sides of the cheek. The brief hand holding was all the touching she’d allow him. It was all she allowed anyone.
“Sorry I’m a little late,” she said after she’d draped her wool coat over the back of her chair and they were seated, scooping the big dark sunglasses off her face and leveling her deep blue eyes at him. The small scars around her left eye were barely visible these days and most people would think them early wrinkles. But he knew the truth of how she’d gotten them. “I’ve had a bit of a bad morning over at the shelter.”
“Something happen?” he asked, fighting the tension in his voice. Right before they’d first met, she’d been kidnapped and tortured in the state-wide sex trafficking scandal. In fact, the night they met, he was the one who carried her out of the ringleader’s mansion. He knew she’d been seeing a counselor since the incident, and he suspected she had some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder going on. Who wouldn’t? The last thing he wanted to do was trigger her anxiety with his natural tendency to see danger in anything that strayed from the status quo.
She gave a little shrug then smiled at the waitress and gave her order for a tea with lemon and a side glass of water. Once they were alone, Brianna glanced around the room before answering him.
“Nothing unusual, except one of our regular workers didn’t show up and we had a woman with two children arrive in pretty bad shape.”
She paused, nibbling on her lower lip and he could see the moisture in the corner of her eyes before she blinked hard to gain some control of her emotions. Aaron didn’t have to ask in what she meant by bad shape. If the woman’s situation disturbed Brianna, she must’ve had signs of being beaten or worse. Possibly the kids, too. The shelter she worked at was for women escaping a highly violent situation. Its location was kept secret except for a few law enforcement personnel. Only those women whose lives were in immediate danger were accepted. Once the threat was dealt with, the women could remain or move on to other shelters out of the district.
“It just took a while longer to get them processed into the system without Paula.”
“Paula is the employee?”
“Paula Nowak.” Brianna nodded. “She’s very good with computers and data entry. When she first came to the shelter, the only thing that would get her out of her room was time on the computer. We only have a few so all the residents have to take turns. It also keeps them from connecting with their abusers, since anyone can get on them. There is no privacy.”
“You keep them safe and the whole place secure by not giving them private internet?” He couldn’t help the surprise in his voice.
“I know. It sounded odd to me the first time I heard about it, but my mentor explained that any contact with their abusers would put everyone in the house at risk. So, if one of them faltered in their efforts to start a new life away from the person abusing them, then everyone would know and precautions would be doubled.”
“Genius.” He gave her an approving nod and was rewarded with a wisp of a smile. Then he thought about what she’d said. “So, Paula was a former resident at the shelter?”
“Yes.” Brianna paused again.
Aaron knew he’d crossed the line by asking for details about Paula. Brianna took the safety of the shelter’s clients and staff very seriously. The last thing he wanted to do was compromise her ethics. Then he realized the waitress was headed back their way and that’s why she’d stopped talking.
They placed their usual orders—his, a burger cooked well; hers a Cobb salad sans avocado. He’d asked her once why she always had them take off the avocado, and she’d explained she was allergic to them. She waited until the waitress had left before continuing.
“Paula was one of the first clients I met when I started at the shelter. I would sit in on group chats sessions, more of a survivor since I was still trying to deal with the aftermath of the sex-trafficking scandal. Paula sat in, too, but rarely commented, just sort of listened to everyone else’s stories. Whenever I was working in the office on the financial statements for the shelter, she’d wander in and ask what I was doing. Her pimp had only allowed her a non-smart phone to contact him, so unlike most girls her age she had little social media experience. She’d also had almost no computer exposure.”
“I thought kids learned about computers in all the schools these days,” he said, not quite hiding his surprise.
Brianna shook her head. “They do, if they attend. Paula didn’t get past fourth grade. Her father was in prison. Her mother worked as a housekeeper in a hotel until she lost her job and then the family ended up homeless․ By the time she was fifteen she’d been working the streets for a few years.”
“Damn,” Aaron muttered. He knew young kids were victims of the sex trafficking trade. As a beat cop he’d talked to some of them, tried to get them out of the life. And unfortunately, he’d run across them in his role as a homicide cop.
“Anyways,” Brianna continued, “we bonded over the computer. I taught her what I knew, how to use an accounting program, write with the writing program, and when the city finally updated their intake file system, Paula, who was in online classes to finish her GED, was our first choice to attend the training seminars with the paid staff.”
“So, she’s one of the shelter’s success stories?”
Brianna gave another one of those barely-there smiles. “Yes. Every client’s situation is different. Sometimes the only solution is to move the woman and any children she may have out of state and help them start a new life. Sometimes they heal physically but aren’t ready to move on and go back to their previous lives. Paula found her own strength. She went to court and got the SOB put in jail for the next forty years.”
A worried tension settled on Brianna’s lips and in her eyes. Before he could ask more, their meals arrived. They tucked into their food as they always did, since both had only an hour to eat before having to head back to work. As he ate, Aaron considered Brianna’s bearing. He knew she was worried about Paula. Even though she hadn’t said as much, her body language spoke volumes.
She’d eat a bite, push some food around and around on her plate before spearing another forkful.
“Do you ever wonder what it’s like to live in Florida or Texas or California?” she asked, staring out the window into the grey Northern Ohio autumn afternoon.
“Not really,” he said after swallowing the last bite of his burger. “Why?”
“I wonder what it would be like to have mostly sunny days. The US has an average of two-hundred and five sunny days in a year. Cleveland has one hundred and sixty-six.”
He didn’t have to ask how she knew. According to her best friend Abigail Edgars, Brianna was a math savant, a fact she hid from most people—especially men and bosses. She not only could do math in her head that would cripple most people using a computer, she often pulled obscure facts and figure out of her brain at the oddest times. “Could be worse. We could live in Seattle or Portland.”
“One-fifty-two and one-forty-four respectively,” she rattled off without a pause and he hid the grin that threatened to come out. Of course, she knew those facts, too.
“It’s depressing,” she continued, setting her fork aside and wiping her mouth, her meal only half finished. “No wonder people look for ways to lift their moods, like drugs.”
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