by Sam Mariano
Not that Max cared about their comfort, obviously.
He guessed it might have been a break room at one time, but even for a break room it was small.
Turning to glance at the girls, he saw that the gray-eyed one had seated herself on the cot farthest away from him. Lorena sat with a short-haired girl on one of the beds closest to him and the exit, while the girl who spoke no English sat on his other side.
Pointing to the gray-eyed girl and then the one who didn’t speak English, he told them to switch beds, first in English, then in Spanish. The gray-eyed girl didn’t move.
“I’m fine here,” she stated.
Sighing, he said, “I need you over here.”
“Why?”
“Just in case.”
“Just in case what?”
It was like arguing with his four-year-old.
“Just switch fucking cots,” he said impatiently, then he took a step outside the door to check in each direction.
When he turned around, the gray-eyed one still hadn’t moved, but the non-English-speaking girl was perched next to her on the bed, looking at him cautiously.
Ethan shook his head, but since he couldn’t risk blowing his cover, he didn’t repeat himself.
A couple minutes passed and then Chuck came down the hall and ducked into the room. “Having fun back here?”
“Loads,” Ethan said dryly.
“We’re ‘bout to get out of here so say your goodbyes. Hey, look on the bright side—at least you know where she is if you wanna pay her a visit.”
It was a stupid, insensitive joke, but Chuck was a stupid, insensitive guy so Ethan wasn’t surprised.
Shifting his weight, Ethan glanced behind him at the girls, four faces, all of them shadowed by fear.
Just as he was about to make his way out of the room, Tito came running down the hall, panic all across his features. “We gotta go!”
“What’s wrong?” Chuck asked with a frown.
“Five unmarked cars—get the fuck out!”
That was the last thing Tito said before turning around and booking back out of the place himself.
Chuck cursed and went off in the other direction, then turned around uncertainly toward the exit. He must have been more afraid of Lane than the cops, because he went the other way to warn them.
Okay, the shit was hitting the fan. Turning around, in a tone that brooked absolutely no argument, Ethan shot the stubborn girl a hard look. “Get over here now!”
She tensed, but she didn’t get up.
“Now!”
She jumped up, her gaze darting toward the door, but she finally listened and got on the cot behind him. While she did, he turned to his other charge and told her to get on the same cot, and that one moved without question.
“What’s going on?” Gray Eyes asked.
“The cops are busting us. Stay behind me,” he said, pulling his own gun out, checking it to make sure he was ready in case he needed to use it.
“If the cops are here, you’re already busted,” she said desperately. “Let us go!”
“I’m not holding you prisoner, I’m keeping you safe. If it ends in gunfire, guess who isn’t armed?” he shot back.
“Says the bad guy holding the gun,” she fired right back. “If that’s illegal, you’re going to get additional charges.”
He spared her a look of disbelief. “Are you really lecturing me on the law right now?”
She shrugged, stretching her neck toward the door. “Just saying.”
“Listen,” he said lowly. “I know you hate me, and you have every right to hate me, but for the love of God, if I tell you to stay or run or anything else, I need you to listen to me, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” she said sarcastically.
“I mean it,” he said. Looking back one more time, he said, “I have a wife and three kids at home, so I’d like to survive tonight and not get shot at trying to save your ass.”
Her eyes widened and she didn’t respond immediately, so he turned his attention back to the door, peering out into the hall one more time. No one was running down it, so that could be a good sign.
When he pulled back, he heard the girl mutter, “I guess even bad guys have families.”
“Yeah, well, I’d like to return you safely to yours, so just…listen to me for 10 minutes, okay?”
“Return me to my family?” she demanded, the disbelief evident in her tone. “Please, I’m not a fucking moron.”
Even though he knew it shouldn’t give him any satisfaction, he glanced back. “Lauren Kensington and Ashlynn Sanders?”
The girl’s face froze. “How do you know those names?”
Ethan sighed. “I’m a private investigator, this is what I do for a living. Now please… stop distracting me right now.”
Instead of complying, she demanded more answers. “You’re what? This is your fucking process, are you kidding me?”
“I had to blend in, if they knew I was lying to them, they wouldn’t have thought twice about killing me. I can’t explain this to you right now, I’m sorry.”
Still nothing in the hallway, and he had really expected running by now if they were going to try to escape out the back way. Lane didn’t strike him as the type to roll over that easily.
Behind him, he heard a gasp, so he turned to see what was going on.
The fourth girl, the short haired one who hardly spoke, was standing, and she had a gun pointed at his face.
Ethan froze. He had no idea what was going on.
Then it hit him.
Three beds.
They were only selling Max three girls. The fourth girl was a plant, probably because Lane didn’t trust him.
Well, if he hadn’t already been having the worst week of his life, he was now.
The other girls were skittering around, but he couldn’t focus on their nervous shuffling. All he could focus on was the barrel of the gun that was pointed in his face. Not the first time he’d ever had a gun pointed at him, but definitely the first time at such close range. In such tight quarters, even if she’d never fired a gun in her life she wouldn’t miss, and he was positive she had fired a gun before.
“Lane was right,” she said simply, pulling back the hammer.
Ethan closed his eyes, in a split second thinking of the things he should have done differently, of the time he should’ve spent at home with his family—the fact that he would never see them again, never read his daughter another bed time story, tickle his giggling son or give his newborn a kiss on the forehead.
And then he heard “oomph” and several pitchy screams. He opened his eyes to see Gray Eyes standing there with the lamp in her hands, pulling back to swing again and hit the armed girl in the side of the head.
The armed girl pulled her arm up to block as she swung around, undoubtedly planning to shoot the girl who was hitting her, but Ethan sprang to life, grabbing her and getting his arm around her neck, making quick work of disarming her before anyone got shot.
The girl who had easily just saved his life skittered back, as if she hadn’t just boldly attacked an armed person with nothing but a lamp. His gaze jumped to the other two girls, making sure they were okay, and there were no more decoys in the fucking bunch.
Unbelievable.
“Thanks,” he muttered, unsure what the appropriate response was. Honestly, in her shoes, he might’ve just let the girl shoot him.
She looked a little surprised at her own actions, and she merely nodded.
Now what was he going to do with the fucking decoy? She had just heard him say who he really was—had he said his name? He didn’t think he said his name, but it’s not like he could change his face; if they knew to look, they could easily find him.
He never should have taken that fucking job. The money to retrieve the other girl wasn’t even that good, her mother had just been such a wreck and he wanted to help.
Then he noticed the girls were looking behind him, and Lorena gasped, pointing toward the door.
>
When he turned, he saw Chuck standing there, a look of confusion crossing his face. “What are you doing?”
If Chuck had time to get back there, that wasn’t good. Were the police not even inside yet?
He didn’t have a good excuse at the ready, so he plucked the first thing he could think of out of the sky. “I was trying to… she thought I was trying to make a move or something. I don’t know, man, the bitch just pulled a gun on me.”
It wasn’t a good excuse for so many reasons, but he couldn’t think of a single solid explanation to give him on a moment’s notice.
Chuck’s eyes deadened. His gun was suddenly up, and he said lowly, “That’s not even the one you like, Jack.”
The girl he was holding onto struggled, probably trying to tell the truth, but she couldn’t speak with Ethan’s grip on her throat.
In the next couple of seconds, Chuck pointed his gun right at Ethan’s face—the second time in the same minute, and then dumb ol’ Chuck was poising to fire.
Ethan dropped his arm from around the decoy’s neck and ducked, missing that bullet while the girls screamed, but Chuck was already firing again.
The decoy fell to the floor and Chuck’s face fell, his gaze even angrier as he lowered his gun to where Ethan had crouched on the floor, and for the second time in as many minutes, Ethan knew he was about to die.
He heard the shots, but there was no pain. Nothing had hit him. Then he heard something heavy hit the ground and he looked up to see Chuck on the ground, his head out of view from where Ethan was at, but he wasn’t moving.
The decoy was on the ground beside him, blood seeping out of her neck, her eyes open and unmoving.
“No fucking way,” Ethan muttered, inching back away from her. The two Hispanic girls were huddled on a cot, each of them shielding themselves from view, one of them crying. The gray-eyed girl crouched on the floor under the other cot, her eyes huge and her face pale as she stared at the bloody young woman on the ground.
It seemed liked they all sat there frozen in time, and Ethan barely got his gun up when he heard footsteps heading toward them again. He couldn’t get all the girls in one place behind him, so he hoped to God that it was the police heading back there and not Lane.
There was some urgency in the footsteps, and it sounded like at least two people. Lane and Max, or two police officers?
When the footsteps stopped outside the room, Ethan felt a hint of anticipatory relief. If it was Lane, he wouldn’t have paused outside of the door, right?
And then there they were, like two beacons of light, the police, shouting at him to drop his weapon.
“They’re down,” he said, releasing a huge breath of relief and dropping his gun, putting his hands in the air. “I’m unarmed,” he added, since presumably it was one of those guys who had just shot Chuck, and he didn’t want them to be jumpy and trigger-happy while they had their weapons trained on him.
“Stand up,” the one said, jerking his gun to indicate the direction, just in case Ethan didn’t know which way up was.
It was over.
He glanced over at the gray-eyed girl who tentatively stood as the cops shoved him up against the lockers and cuffed him, and for a moment, he felt free.
The cuffs were a formality. Once everything was straightened out he could finally go home. Amanda would be happy to see him, Alison would run over and give him a hug, Jackson would run over and shove his way in. He could finally hold baby Caleb again….
The second officer came in to check on the girls, and he saw the gray-eyed one go weak with relief. Then he remembered it wasn’t over.
Not for him.
Not by a long shot.
His feeling of freedom dissipated as quickly as it had occurred, and as the policeman led him out of the tiny room, every last thought of the happy reunion that awaited him at home evaporated.
After Willow finished the grueling process of giving the police her statement, she was finally reunited with her family—her mom, Lauren, Ashlynn, and her brother, Todd. It was jarring having all of them there, rushing her, grabbing at her, hugging her so tightly that it hurt. Ashlynn and her mother both cried while Todd stood off to the side, hands in his pocket, shuffling his feet.
Their relief was understandable—their joy that she was even alive. It had probably been a constant fear while she was missing that they might never see her again.
Willow felt a little guilty not feeling as excited as they did, but she didn’t have the energy—all she wanted was to get out of the police station and go home. She wanted to curl up in her own bed and never leave.
In the car on the way home, she sat in the back seat with Todd like they were kids again, toying with the white business card in her hands, running her fingers over the name and number of the officer in charge of her case, who had asked her to call if she remembered anything else.
Just walking into their home, Willow felt anxiety surge up inside of her. It felt like she had been away for much longer than just a few days. How could she be back so soon and yet nothing was the same as it had been when she got back from her run?
“Scott has been beside himself,” Lauren told her, coming up beside her to hug her again.
Instead of returning the hug, Willow stiffened, and after a moment her mother pulled back, forcing a smile, but unable to hide the flash of hurt that grazed her features.
“I’m not up for company right now,” Willow said simply.
“Oh, of course not. It’s late, he can stop by tomorrow.”
Another person who would ask her a million of the same questions she had already answered multiple times that night.
Since she hadn’t asked any of her own, she finally asked, “Did you hire a private investigator to come get me?”
Her mother frowned, then her expression cleared. “Oh, we tried to. We called someone Ashlynn’s boss knew of. We spoke to his assistant or whoever and she said she would forward the inquiry, but we never heard back from him. Why?”
Instantly regretting asking, she merely shook her head, not wanting to go into the conversation about Jack or whatever his name was.
“How did you know about that?” Ashlynn insisted, a frown marring her brow.
Sighing in defeat, she said, “He was there, I guess. That’s what he said anyway, I didn’t know if he was lying, or…telling the truth. I thought he was lying but he knew both of your names.”
For the next several minutes that was all they talked about, excitedly speculating about the situation and trying to pry more details out of her. She felt like they viewed her experience like an episode of Law and Order, and that pissed her off. When she couldn’t take anymore, she told them she needed to go take a long, hot shower, and the two older women exchanged looks. Her mom nodded slightly and Ashlynn asked if she could talk to her for a moment alone; Willow was pretty sure she knew what was coming.
Back in her youth—long, long ago—Ashlynn had worked on a volunteer basis with some rape crisis center. Being that Willow was a girl, essentially sold—at least she thought?—to a brothel-owner after being held by criminals for several days and rescued in terribly scanty clothing, it was not at all outside the realm of logic to wonder if she had been raped. Every girl in that room with Willow had been raped—the main reason, she suspected, that the police officer had looked slightly confused when she insisted that she hadn’t.
Just thinking about it made her want to throw up, and she didn’t have it in her to go through that for the second time in one night.
“I’d really rather not, not tonight,” Willow said, shaking her head. “I’m fine, I just want a shower.”
Turning to head up the stairs, she barely made it to the top before she heard footsteps behind her. Sighing irritably, she went into her room, pausing for a moment to look at it, just as she’d left it. Tears welled up behind her eyes and she didn’t even know why, but she ignored them, walking over to her dresser and pulling out clothes to change into.
Ashlynn paused i
n the doorway, her long salt and pepper brown hair pulled into a low pony tail, hanging over her shoulder. Her brown eyes bore the distinct look of concern.
“I need to talk to you before you get into the shower, honey.”
“I’m all talked out, Ashlynn.”
Technically, Ashlynn was like a mother to her; she had been with Lauren since Willow was four, but she didn’t refer to Ashlynn that way.
“Honey… I just… please sit down with me for a minute.”
Willow closed her eyes for a moment, her back still to Ashlynn, and searched for the strength to do it all over again. Her concerns were understandable, but Willow needed her to just leave it alone. In an attempt to put them off, she insisted she would talk the next day, but she knew she wouldn’t—not about that.
Even Willow couldn’t figure out how to feel about it, and she had been the one who endured all of it.
“I can’t help noticing you didn’t need to go to the hospital after you left the police station.”
“Nope,” Willow said simply. “Uninjured. No need.”
“If they hurt you while you were there, it’s best to go to the doctor before you take a shower. I know you just want to scrub everything away and climb into bed, but… if you decide later—”
“I don’t need to go to the hospital, Ashlynn. I’m completely fine, I’m just dirty and tired and I saw a woman be murdered tonight, so I really just want to get clean and try to get some sleep.”
Ashlynn hesitated, then said, “If you were hurt a shower will probably wash away the evidence.”
“I wasn’t,” Willow insisted. “Now please, let me take a shower.”
“If you were though, you know you know it wasn’t your fault, right?”
“Yes,” she said shortly.
“Even if… if it was more than one, especially then—”
“Ashlynn!” Willow interrupted, her eyes widening. “I don’t want to talk about this.”