Descending the hillside, she slipped. Although she caught herself before she went sprawling, she went down on one knee. Facing the opposite hill, she looked up and saw the distant silhouette of a figure on horseback.
Brady stepped in front of her, cutting off her vision. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
When she looked around him, the horse was gone. Nothing there. She’d probably imagined it.
* * *
EVEN THOUGH THEY HAD no evidence that pointed directly toward an arrest, Brady wasn’t disappointed with their progress thus far. When he turned the address of Smith’s house to the FBI techs and researchers, he knew they’d come up with some interesting connections. The sheer luxury of that house was an indication that serious money was involved.
The route leading to Smith’s last stop was fairly desolate. Unlike the forested approach to the house, they drove through open terrain with barbed wire fencing. As far as he could see in the night, the land was covered with dry brush and low scrub. If they got too close, their truck would be noticed.
“It’s about two miles from here,” he said. “Find a place to pull over and park.”
“There’s nowhere to hide the truck.”
He pointed. “There’s a turnoff.”
She drove down a short dirt road to a metal gate fastened with a chain and a lock. He figured this was a field for grazing cattle, but there were no animals in sight. “Back around so we’re facing nose out.”
“Right,” she said, “so we can make a quick getaway.”
He hoped a speedy escape wouldn’t be necessary. Finding no evidence was preferable to finding danger. “We’ll walk from here.”
With the truck parked, she climbed out from behind the driver’s seat. “I wish I’d eaten more dinner. Did you happen to bring any water?”
“Always prepared.” He kept a six-pack of bottled water in the back of the truck for use in just this sort of occasion. He climbed into the bed and grabbed one for her and one for himself.
After they climbed through the barbed-wire fence and started walking in a southeast direction, he considered the preparations he’d made for tonight and admitted to himself that he’d fallen short. At the very least, Petra should be wearing a bulletproof vest. She should also be armed with two extra clips of ammo.
It wasn’t like him to be haphazard. Clearly, he was distracted by her. Half his brain was thinking about what was going to happen later tonight, when they were alone in the house. He concentrated on bringing his focus back to the investigation.
Keeping his voice low, he said, “This is another good dropoff point for the traffickers. There’s nothing around. No witnesses.”
“What happens to these people when they’re dropped off?”
“It’s like any other type of distribution,” he said. “They’re delivered to the highest bidder. The lucky ones are used as low-paid or nonpaid field-workers or given jobs in factories.”
“Why don’t they escape?”
“Fear. Not only are they scared of what the traffickers will do to them, but they’re also afraid of being picked up by police and tossed in jail.”
“No hope,” she said.
In the distance, probably a mile away, he saw lights and the shapes of a couple of barn-size buildings. “We should be quiet from here on. Stay low.”
He jogged in a crouch toward the lights. They were bright. Floodlights. The compound was lit like a prison yard. What the hell was going on here? He wouldn’t be surprised to encounter armed guards, and there could well be surveillance cameras as well. He and Petra needed to stay invisible.
A barbed wire fence marked off the property line about a hundred yards from a barn, a trailer and a low, flat-roofed building. He signaled Petra to halt and they crouched beside a fence post. There were only a few scraggly trees and the ruins of a former ranch house that looked like it had been destroyed in a fire. Five vehicles were parked outside the barn; one was a motor home.
Petra whispered, “Should we take license numbers?”
“No need.” He took out his binoculars. “Tomorrow, I’ll make sure the FBI has this compound under aerial surveillance.”
The barn door was closed and latched. Using the binoculars, he scanned the side entrance. That door was also closed. Anything could be happening inside the barn. It was big enough to hide a semi. Lights inside the trailer were lit, and Brady figured it was being used for living quarters.
He couldn’t guess at the function of the low building that looked like it had been constructed recently. There was only one window. The center entrance was a double-wide door.
Two men emerged from the trailer. Their voices carried in the still night, but they were too far away to make out the words. One of them laughed. A young guy, he was wearing a backward baseball cap. When Brady focused in, he saw the guns on their hips. What were they protecting?
The guy with the cap entered the low building with the double doors. The other went to the vehicles and started up a commercial van that was painted brown and looked like a delivery truck.
“What are they doing?” Petra whispered.
He signaled for silence and passed her the binoculars. Starlight shone in her hair, making him think again of possible surveillance cameras. They needed to get out of here.
The van pulled up to the building, and the guy got out. He opened the back of the van, and then went into the building. They were preparing to transport something.
Petra handed the binoculars back to him, and he watched as the double doors were propped open. The two men came out. Between them, they carried a body bag.
Chapter Seventeen
Petra watched two body bags being loaded into the van. The fate of these victims would never be known. Their families would never be notified. They were just…gone.
All along, Brady had been telling her about the horrors of human trafficking, but it took this visceral, visual experience to make her fully aware. She was shocked. And saddened. And outraged beyond any anger she’d ever felt before. “We’ve got to stop them.”
“Hush.”
“We can’t let them drive away with those bodies.” As soon as that plain delivery van joined in regular traffic, it would never be noticed. The dead would be erased. And the victims deserved more than that. Their passing needed to be recognized and acknowledged.
A third man came out of the trailer. He had a rifle slung across his shoulder. After a brief pause to talk with the other two, he sauntered toward the barn, which was closer to where they were crouched beside the fence post.
“Lie flat,” Brady whispered as he stretched out on the ground.
It seemed impossible that the man with the rifle was coming after them. How would he know they were here? Unless there was a surveillance camera. Brady had mentioned that possibility when they were at Smith’s house. If a camera was hidden on top of the barn, the rifleman could have been sitting in the trailer watching them on a screen. He might know exactly where they were hiding.
She did as Brady ordered and lay down on her belly. The earth beneath her felt cool. It smelled like dust and mildew. Peering through the brush, she could see the man with the rifle coming around the side of the barn. He wasn’t far away, less than the length of a football field. She and Brady were within easy range of his rifle.
Beside her, Brady moved cautiously to take his gun from the holster. At this distance, a handgun against a rifle was no contest, not even for the most brilliant marksman on earth. She figured their only advantage was the darkness, and that didn’t count for much. Any decent hunting rifle had a night vision scope.
Her muscles tensed, preparing to take off running if Brady gave the signal. She was scared. Didn’t want to be, but couldn’t help it. Her fingers closed around her amethyst necklace. If ever she had needed protection, now was the time.
At the side of the barn, the man with the rifle stepped beyond the glare of the floodlights. Even though he was in shadow, she could still see him as he
leaned his weapon against the side of the barn, reached into his pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes. If they were lucky, he’d just come outside for a smoke. If not, he was toying with them, choosing his moment before he opened fire.
His lighter flared as he lit up. He was too far away for her to smell the smoke, but her senses were so heightened that she imagined the nicotine scent and wrinkled her nose.
The other two called to the man with the rifle. He picked up his weapon and sauntered back toward the others.
Brady gave her a nudge. “Go. Stay as low as you can.”
Crouched nearly double, she ran beside him as he dashed toward a clump of trees. When they made it to that shelter, Brady looked back over his shoulder. She did the same.
All three men were talking and laughing, paying no attention to them.
Brady spoke quietly. “Move fast. We need to get away before that delivery truck sees where we’re parked.”
Following his lead, she ducked and dodged and ran in a crouch that strained her muscles. Her back prickled as though expecting at any moment to be shot. Were they really safe?
It was a huge relief when they could finally stand upright and run. The wind swept across her cheeks. Her hairline was damp, and she realized that she’d been sweating.
When they got to the truck, her hands were trembling. She handed him the keys. “You drive.”
Even though she could have managed to pull the truck around and get back to the house, she needed a chance to catch her breath. The inside of her head was raw confusion. They could have been killed. She and Brady could have been zipped into body bags of their own. What was going on at this secret compound? What was Smith doing?
As soon as Brady drove onto the road, he hit the accelerator. The truck sped through the dark. No headlights.
Acting on pure reflex, she threw her arm out straight to brace herself against the dashboard as the truck careened onto the shoulder of the road. The back end swiveled and swerved.
“Lights,” she yelled, “turn on the lights.”
“We’re okay.”
Not really. The truck went flying over a bump. She should have bought new tires. These all-season tires weren’t gripping the way they should. “Brady, please.”
“I’ve got everything under control.”
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride had nothing on this. “Lights on. Now.”
“Fine.” He was still speeding, but the truck wasn’t plunging into darkness. “Better?”
“Why were you driving like a maniac?”
“Couldn’t take a chance on being spotted.” His utter calm infuriated her. “Those guys don’t know we’re on to them, and that is our best advantage.”
She glared at his profile. “This truck is my only vehicle. I don’t want it wrecked.”
He had the nerve to grin. “It almost sounds like you don’t trust me.”
“Because you don’t make any sense, none at all. When I was going to Lost Lamb, you were all nervous about having me in danger. But you dragged me to this compound without even giving me a gun.”
“I didn’t expect this to be dangerous.”
The body bags changed everything. People were being killed. “What are we going to do? You can’t let that guy drive away with the bodies. It’s not right for those victims to just disappear.”
“Agreed. When we get back to the house, I’ll make the necessary phone calls. That delivery van will be tracked to its final destination. Where and how they dispose of the bodies is important.” Half to himself, he added, “Too bad the ITEP task force is mostly disbanded. I could use the extra man power.”
How could he be so calm? His hands were steady on the steering wheel. His features were relaxed, as though he was thinking of the answer to a clue in the crossword puzzle.
On the other hand, she felt as though she was being buffeted by a wild tornado, swirling through questions that spun into more questions. She wanted to scream, but that wouldn’t do much good. She got a grip on her emotions, concentrated on her breathing and tried to settle her mind.
After one more slow exhale, she asked, “What was going on at that compound?”
“It’s some kind of dropoff point. That’s probably what the barn is used for. It’s big enough to hide a semi inside.”
“And the building where they kept the dead bodies?”
“Double doors,” he said. “What does that suggest?”
“Something large is being moved in and out.”
“And Dr. Smith is involved.” Brady was still driving too fast for this narrow road. The tires squealed as they rounded a curve. “I’m thinking the wide doors are to accommodate the coming and going of hospital gurneys. That place is some kind of clinic.”
“A clinic where the patients don’t survive.” She was afraid that Brady’s logic was correct. Smith was performing operations, possibly some kind of experiment. “Do you think this involves the surrogates?”
“Let’s assume that Smith does the artificial insemination process or he supervises it. And he probably uses that building as a lab.”
Why would these women be dying? In vitro wasn’t considered life-threatening, certainly not dangerous enough to kill two women in a brief period of time. “I can’t make sense of what I saw. Two body bags. Two victims.”
“I saw more clearly than you did,” Brady said. “Remember, I had the night vision binoculars when the bags were brought out. From the shape, I couldn’t tell if they were male or female. But the second one was heavy. The two guys carrying it were struggling with the weight. That makes me think it was a man.”
“Not a surrogate.” She shouldn’t have felt relief, but she did. It was her job to help and protect pregnant women.
“There’s something more going on than making babies. That clinic or laboratory or whatever the hell you want to call it is being used for something that affects men and women.”
“Some kind of weird experimentation?”
“Nothing so exotic.”
Brady took a left turn onto a main road. Right away, she saw another truck coming toward them at a safe, sane speed. A sign by the road indicated that they were seven miles from Kirkland. The atmosphere changed from dark and scary into something approaching normal.
Gearing her breathing to a steady rhythm, she willed herself toward a deeper relaxation. Her hands rested in her lap. Consciously, she wiggled her fingers and brushed the tension away. “You seem to have an idea of what’s going on.”
“I’ve seen something similar.”
She heard an undercurrent of rage in his voice. “You’re angry.”
“It makes me mad that a psychotic like Smith can stroll around his mansion, exercise on his stationary bike and watch the news on his big-screen TV while his victims are suffering the worst possible outcome of human trafficking. I’m going to stop him, Petra. If it’s the last thing I do in this life, I will put an end to this.”
His anger was something she could understand, and she preferred it to his cool logic. “What is Smith doing to these people?”
“When they get swept into the human trafficking network, they’re chattel. Their experiences and thoughts, even their souls, count for nothing. They’re exploited for profit. They’re sold.”
“Then why would they be killed?”
“Sometimes, they’re sold piece by piece. A kidney. A liver. A heart.” He shot her a glance. “Smith is harvesting organs from these people to be sold for transplants on the black market.”
Although the process was unimaginable, she knew that Brady was correct. Inside that bland little building in the middle of nowhere, Smith was running a sophisticated operation. He had to run tests to make sure the donors were a good match for the end user. Taking a viable organ required a surgeon’s skill. Performing these operations on innocent victims meant Dr. Smith was pure evil.
As they drove through Kirkland, she caught sight of a clock in the window of a shop. It wasn’t even midnight.
She asked, “Do you have enou
gh evidence to close down the operation?”
“Don’t worry. No one else is going to get hurt.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Trust me,” he said.
She truly did trust him. If anybody could take down this complicated human trafficking operation, it was Brady.
Chapter Eighteen
Back at the house, Petra went upstairs and changed into plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved turquoise T-shirt. She unfastened her ponytail and brushed her hair to get out the dust and twigs she picked up when they were hiding by the fence outside the compound.
Brady was in his studio, talking on the phone and sending messages on his computer. She knew he was activating the full force of FBI surveillance, including choppers and satellites. When she peeked through the door, she saw him scribbling on the sketchpad where they made notes earlier today. It didn’t seem like there was anything she could do to help the investigation, so she went down to the kitchen and brewed a couple of mugs of chamomile tea.
Because they hadn’t gone grocery shopping, the choice of fresh food was minimal. She put together a midnight snack of toast, peanut butter and bananas—healthy foods that promoted a good night’s sleep. Bananas have tryptophan, magnesium and potassium to relax the muscles. And the peanut butter is a source of niacin that helps release serotonin. Good stuff, she arranged it on plates and took it upstairs on a tray.
Bringing him food and standing in the background wasn’t the way she’d expected tonight to turn out. Earlier, she and Brady had been on track to make love. Now, she doubted that would happen. The investigation had rocketed into high gear, leaving their potential relationship in the dust.
She glanced down at the wedding band with the Celtic knot design. It was beautiful but meant nothing. They’d been undercover, pretending to be husband and wife. In real life, they weren’t connected.
When she placed the plate of food and the tea on the table beside him, he glanced up. For a moment, his gaze tangled with hers. A smile flashed across his face, and his dimple winked at her as he mouthed the words thank you.
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