“Bridget Ann, we’re worried,” Da said.
“About what?”
“What aren’t we worried about?” Callum asked sarcastically. Ma smacked his hand.
“About how you and your friends have gone all rogue?” Aiden added. “You’re lucky that I haven’t brought this up to Lieutenant Christakos, or all four of your friends would be out of a job. You’re new, you don’t have anything invested, but did you even stop to think about your friends? They are all on motors, which is a promoted assignment. That means they can all be demoted.”
I snapped my head to glare at him. He was a motorcycle deputy along with them, and to threaten their jobs was a low blow. “Fuck you. I’m done here.” I pushed my chair back to get up.
“Sit down,” Da ordered. “Aiden and Callum, I’ve had enough of you two. You are not going to gang up on your sister.”
“Bridget, honey, we’re worried about you. You need to leave this alone. If the FBI is having trouble—”
“FBI? I’m taking it you’ve spoken to Eli?”
My mother looked taken aback by my outburst. “Well, yes, he came to see us.”
“To complain about me and my friends?”
“No. He’s worried about you,” Da added.
“He’s worried about his plaything,” Callum practically snarled.
“Callum!” Ma, Da, and I all shouted at the same time.
“The boy’s in love with you.” Ma’s words were soft.
“Boy, right? He’s a fucking man. It’s Bridget who’s the girl,” Callum mumbled.
“What the hell is your problem?” I had to fight the urge to reach over and smack him.
“Let’s see, my best friend is robbing the fucking cradle with my little sister? Good god, Bridget, what can the two of you have in common? You’re a kid. You’re into parties and getting drunk, and he’s, he’s . . . I don’t know. Not who I thought he was, that’s for sure.”
“How old do you think I am? I’m not twenty-one. I’m a deputy, for fuck’s sake. I’m not out partying and drinking. Hell, the last time I got drunk was . . . I don’t even know—wait, yes I do. It was at a friend’s wedding and you were the one feeding me drinks! Finally, if Eli and I want to go out, it is none of your business, or yours.” I glared at Aiden. “Neither is it your job to go tattling on my friends. You want to know who’s acting like babies? Then you two need to go have a long look in the mirror.”
“You two weren’t even born in the same decade! Hell, he was losing his virginity while you were still losing baby teeth.” Callum’s words were full of anger, anger that I had never had directed at me before.
“Aiden, Callum, I’ve ’bout had enough from you two,” Da snapped.
“Us? What about her?” Callum asked.
“Wow, that sounded real mature,” I said as I fought the urge to storm from the house and swiped away the traitorous tear that ran down my face.
“Oh, now you’re going to cry? If you think that you’re grown up enough to make these decisions, then you should be grown up enough to take the truth of the matter.”
“I’m not crying because I’m sad, I’m crying because I’m mad. I’m furious at the two of you, who in fewer than ten minutes have shown me how little you truly think of me. Ma, Da, I love you. I love that you’re concerned about me, but if you’ll excuse me, I’m leaving.”
I pushed away from the table, grabbed my purse, and stormed out of the house. My heart was racing and blood boiling. I was so mad at my brothers; how dare they speak to me like that? And Eli? Why in the hell didn’t he tell me that he went to see my parents about me?
Dialing his number, I waited for him to answer.
“Hey, I was just think—”
“You went to my parents?”
Oh, the silence was so telling.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I wanted them to know that I was in love with you.”
His sentence made me pause and took a little starch out of my anger. “What about tattling on me and my friends?”
“I love you, and when you love someone, you worry about that person’s safety. I wanted them to hear it from me before Callum, who is Justin’s commanding officer, told them. My reasons are selfish, I get that, but since I kind of like having you in my life, I’m going to protect you. God, Bridget.”
“I’ve spent the last ten minutes having my brothers say all sorts of horrid things about me. It was a real eye opener, I never knew they thought so little of me.”
“Like what, what did they say?” I could hear the anger laced in his voice.
“Um, let’s see, I was called a baby, a drunk, a partier, everything in the book that made me basically sound like a wild college student. And let’s not forget Aiden threatening to go to his LT about my friends and have them demoted.”
“I thought Callum would have calmed down by now.”
“Calm? Callum? How long were the two of you friends? He’s fucking Irish! There’s no such thing as calm. It wasn’t your job to go to my family about us. That needed to come from me when I felt the time was right, or for us to do together when we decided the time was right. What you did wasn’t protect me. You pitted yourself against my brothers with me in the middle. There’s no way they are going to leave this alone, not as long as we’re together. A line has been drawn in the sand. I feel like I’m being forced to choose between you or them.” My knuckles popped as I gripped the steering wheel. “Eli, I need to be able to fix what I screwed up. I made a rookie mistake, if I had trusted my gut, I had a lot of options, there’s always something I could have found, or just based on the straps and scratch marks and what I learned about human trafficking in school I could have detained him. But no, I let him go and now how many other girls’ lives have I risked?”
“Bridget, stop. You pulled him over for a traffic stop and had no probable cause to haul him in. If you had tried, he would have walked out of the precinct and disappeared, and that would have been it because they wouldn’t have had reason to notify us about him being in custody. Do you really think that would have been better? It wouldn’t have been, so stop beating yourself up. You had nothing, and you didn’t know what we did. To you, he still had his fourth amendment rights.” Eli paused, and I wanted to come back with something, but I wasn’t sure exactly what to say. “Let me ask you, how many lives have you saved by discovering the other letter? You found us material that we didn’t have.”
A lot.
So, why didn’t that help ease the guilt festering inside me?
“This is all too much, I’m overwhelmed.” I disconnected as I turned into my apartment’s parking lot. I traipsed up the stairs, each step taking me farther away from where I truly wanted to be but couldn’t, not until I figured out what to do with my brothers and got rid of this guilt over Oman and Justin. Hell, I wondered if I was cut out for this job, god. Ugh.
Chapter 19
Bridget
“Orange County, signal twenty-one Romeo, Silver Star and Ashland, fifty-six the owner at the residence.” After being off for a week, I was a little sluggish. I wracked my brain for a second because all the ten codes and signals we had to remember sometimes got a little jumbled. I was pretty sure the signal twenty-one was burglary, Romeo was residence, and fifty-six meant meet. Since I was near the crossroads of Silver Star and Ashland, I took the call. This was my area, and I was learning all of the cut-throughs and side streets, since I patrolled it every day that I was on shift.
“Thirteen-nineteen, reference to signal twenty-one Romeo, I’m nearby, assign it to me.”
“Orange County copies, eleven forty-four.”
I clicked on my computer for the exact address and to see any other details.
* * *
“4714 Ashland, caller states that upon returning home they noticed their garage was opened and several items were missing. Home is secure.”
* * *
Feeling resolved that this was simply a take-a-report kind of call, I headed over. The street was in an older
area of Orlando, but at one time, it was a nice working-class area. Over time, it had eventually evolved into part of the Pine Hills area—or, as we called it, Crime Hills. It had taken on that air of funk that seemed to hover over places you knew to avoid.
When I pulled into the driveway, I called in to dispatch.
“Thirteen-nineteen, put me ten ninety-seven.”
Once I let dispatch know that I had arrived on scene, I got out and took a look around. The first thing I noticed was a man tinkering in his garage. I walked toward the edge but didn’t go in, this allowed me to keep my peripheral vision on anything that would come from either side of the house. “Hello, are you the homeowner who called in about items missing?”
He looked up, and something about the man made my skin crawl. “Yep, I called in.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“I can show you.”
“Nope, I’m fine, just tell me. I need it for the report anyway.” I rested my hand on my holster, as much for my own peace of mind as it was to send him a warning.
“I had just come back here and saw that the garage door was open.”
“And it was closed when you left?”
“I always close my garage door.”
“Okay, go ahead.”
“The first thing I noticed was that—” I jerked as a hand came around my head and then another shoved a sharp object into my neck, like, right in the front. I tried to get to my gun, but the hand that had stuck something in my neck had dropped to band around my arms. I kicked, bringing one foot down onto the guy’s foot as hard as I could, but the motion lacked strength and felt slow.
Water, was I swimming in water? No, I was dry. But something wasn’t right, my head wasn’t clear. I squinted to try to focus, but everything was blurry. It was like looking up from the bottom of a swimming pool as the ripples of water distorted the image above you. I needed to scream, but not even that was achievable.
My neck was sore, that throbbing pinch when you sleep wrong. I tried to lift my head but couldn’t. Things were slowly starting to come back to me. Burglary call, man in garage, pinch in my jugular, fighting under water. No, I’d been drugged and that was what made me feel as if I were underwater. Who was here? I heard his voice, but . . . fuck . . . I tried to clear my mind.
“You need to get here, I don’t want her. Just bring me my money and take her.”
Justin.
My stomach acid curdled, and I fought to hold back the vomit that was trying to work its way up.
I was moving at a snail’s pace, so when my brain finally told my hands to cover my mouth in case I threw up, I couldn’t. I tried again, but couldn’t. My hands were fastened behind me. Trudging through my muddy brain, I tried to analyze this feeling, narrow, tight, cutting into my wrists. Zip-ties, he had used zip-ties on me. Concentrating on my legs, it didn’t take as long to realize that those, too, were zip-tied. As everything started to clear, I became cognizant of the true gravity of the situation I was in.
Zip-ties were gone. Legs fastened to the legs of a chair. Arms tied behind me through the back of the chair. Duct tape across my lap and chest securing me to the chair. I was in a house, small, older. Not a lot of light, but there was some sunshine coming in. It was still daylight, but was it still Sunday?
Justin was still on the phone. “That isn’t my fault, I told you that if I snagged her then you would have to get her immediately. I warned you about the fucking cavalry. But you insisted and now all the officers on duty have been notified of her failure to check in.”
Check-in, that’s right, when I didn’t check in with dispatch, they would alert other officers. They had to be looking for me.
“No, I turned her phone off. They won’t be able to track her. Just come get her so I can get back to my life, this isn’t my part of the job.” He listened to whoever was on the other line before continuing on. “I don’t care where you take her, just get her away from me.” He paused again for a few seconds and listened to the mysterious other person. “No, I’m not going to kill her; she’s a cop. You don’t pay me enough to kill a cop. I told you that I wasn’t going to kill anyone. I still need to keep my job. I don’t care what you do with her, as long as you do it.” He paused again and waited. “You have one hour before I give her the drug with amnesiac properties and leave.” He disconnected and then turned to me. “Open your eyes, I know you’re awake.”
My eyes were so heavy, but I finally got them open and was able to look at him. His arm was in a sling. “What happened to your arm?”
“Like you don’t know.” He removed the strap on the sling and showed his arm wrapped in bandages. “Yeah, it burned. I had to have that fucking bullet cut out.”
“You’re the one who broke in.”
“Yeah, and you’re the one who stole that paper off my desk. Not that it was hard to figure out. Once I realized it went missing, all I had to do was ask around to see who had been at my desk. Low and behold, Detective Alsop said your name. Then your stunt at Sixes, I started putting it all together. I’m not sure how you got those hags to bother me at the concert, though.”
I figured now probably wasn’t a time to come clean and admit to that stunt.
“Can I use the bathroom?”
“Sure.”
I was shocked by his quick and easy answer, but when he made no move to help me get up, I got concerned. “You said that I could use the restroom.”
“I said that you can go to the bathroom, I didn’t say you could get up. Do it right where you are if you need to go so bad.”
Yeah, peeing myself wasn’t going to happen. He knew I was the one who took the paper and he wasn’t dumb enough to let me free, so I moved on to my next question that I wanted answered.
“Where am I going?”
“Not sure. I don’t know who the buyers are who want a redhead with green eyes, and I don’t care. I don’t deal with trafficking.”
“That makes what you’re doing better? You know what they do and you don’t stop them. You help them and get paid for it. You are an accessory, you’ll go down with them.”
“Shut the fuck up, I’ve kept my hands clean.”
“Really? How clean are your hands right now, Justin?” He stared at me for several seconds. “You’re despicable, and you’re in over your head.” I didn’t know Justin well, but the anger I could see in him was terrifying. He was full of vitriol and anger, I knew the second he was going to break before he even acted. Fuck. He brought his right hand back and slapped me so hard my head snapped to the side and my bottom lip split open. A metallic taste seeped into my mouth.
I needed to think about what was in store for me. We’d never found the other women, not their bodies, their clothing, nothing, no trace of them. That was going to be me; I was going to be another statistic.
I followed Justin’s movements as he shifted from foot to foot. If he was that nervous, maybe he’d just leave and abandon me. But I had a strange feeling that luck wasn’t on my side. The way he was acting, he’d be more likely to drug me and leave like he’d told the guy on the phone. He had to know that he wasn’t going to get away with this, not if I survived and still had my memory. My breathing became rapid as that sank in. He couldn’t let me go with my memory of him being involved. How much memory would I lose? Would I remember how to get out of here? Would I remember my family, my friends, Eli?
I closed my eyes and let my mind drift to Eli and all the things I had said to him Friday night, or rather, the things I didn’t say. All the things I should have said, and most of all, what he’d never hear. I love you, Eli, I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you. You’ve been my knight in shining armor, my Prince Charming, my everything. I’m sorry for being so headstrong. Please feel it in your heart, right now, I love you. Tell my family that I love them.
Chapter 20
Eli
“Grey, we have a problem.” I glanced up from my desk to see Perone standing in front of me, his face was filled with concern.
Behind him were Chiu, Lehr, and the three special agents we had asked to come in and help.
“What?”
“We believe that Justin Camfield and Nazari have made a move.”
I pushed my chair back and stood. “Why? What happened?”
“The sheriff’s office is asking for help, a deputy has gone missing—” My ears buzzed, and I knew exactly which deputy had gone missing. “She answered a call, but when dispatch checked in with her, there was no answer. They went to the address given to the 9-1-1 operator, but there was no sign of Bridget or her car. They used a GPS to track her car and found it in Apopka, about fifteen miles from where the call was.”
“Do we know where she is now?”
“No. They have all hands looking for her.”
“I have got to go.”
“Eli!” Everyone tried to get out of my office to see who was causing the commotion. “Eli! Eli! Let us in!” Someone was banging on our locked front doors.
I moved down the corridor to see for myself. “I know them, let them in.” Chiu went to unlock it, and then the girls all but ran him over. “Bridget, she’s missing,” Harley said, trying to catch her breath.
“I know, I just heard.”
“Sunday, show him.” The private investigator who had been with Bridget at the restaurant pulled out her iPad and opened a map.
“Bridget has two GPS tracking devices on her. She’s lost one, but the other is still going, here are the coordinates.”
“Get OPD SWAT on the phone,” I ordered as I stared at the map. “Tell them she’s in Wekiwa State Park.” I waited as Perone relayed the information. “Chiu, can you see what we can find on this house as far as layout?”
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