by Matt Lincoln
I rubbed the back of my neck and pretended to laugh nervously.
“So it was just a coincidence?” he asked, not sounding totally convinced. “What brings you to the island?”
“Family vacation.” I shrugged. “The wife decided to tuck in early. Long day at the beach and all that, you know? I told her my brother Dean and I here were going to head out for a drink, and we just happened to notice this little cutie outside. You know how it is, right? Sometimes you just need a little something different.”
“Ah, I understand you perfectly well.” The man smiled. He sounded more relaxed now, which was a relief because my stomach was churning after the nasty crap I’d just said, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could have kept it up.
“Well, the price is five hundred each,” the man stated, getting down to business immediately. “That’s for two hours. The rooms are upstairs.” He gestured with his head toward a staircase behind him. “You can both go in if you’d like, or I can have another girl down here in a few minutes if you’d prefer to wait.”
“I’ll wait,” Holm replied immediately before shooting me a look. “I’m not keen on, uh, sharing. You can go ahead. I’ll just wait right out here.”
“Sounds good to me.” I shrugged easily. Holm had put just a little extra emphasis on that last sentence, and I realized immediately that it was his way of telling me that he’d keep watch while I went in to speak with the girl. I dug my wallet out of my pants pocket and pulled out the bills. I made a show of looking around before discreetly passing the money over.
“Get up.” He sneered at the girl as he stood up from the table himself.
She obeyed without protest and immediately got up.
“Follow me,” he said before turning and heading toward the stairs. I felt just a little trepidation about splitting up from my partner, but I trusted him and knew that he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, and this way, he could give me a heads up if it seemed like something was wrong.
The staircase led up to a dimly lit hallway, lined on either side with two doors each. I could easily imagine what was going on behind those doors, and it was disgusting to think of what was happening here just above the bar, where tourists were happily enjoying drinks and having a good time.
“In here,” the man directed us toward the first door on the right. The girl stepped inside first, and I stepped in behind her.
“I’ll be back in two hours,” was all the man said before shutting the door behind us.
I turned around to look at the girl. She had moved to sit on the bed, one of the few pieces of furniture in the sparsely decorated room. In fact, aside from the bed, the only thing inside the room was a cheap-looking table and a wooden chair. The walls, which had once probably been white, were stained a dingy yellow and covered in suspicious-looking dark stains.
The girl hadn’t moved since she’d sat down. She was completely still, the same way she’d been outside, and her eyes were glazed over as she stared at something far away.
“Hello,” I murmured softly as I moved to crouch in front of her. I reached into my pocket to pull out my badge. “My name is Ethan Marston. I’m a federal agent with an American agency called MBLIS. I’m here to help you.”
“What?” the girl yelped, the blank look in her eyes gone in an instant as she stared down at me.
“I’m a federal agent,” I repeated. “The man I came here with is my partner. I’m sorry about what we said before. We just needed to get that man’s trust so we could speak with you.”
“No,” she whimpered as she looked around the room wildly. She looked terrified, which really wasn’t the reaction I’d been expecting. “You need to leave. I don’t want any trouble.”
“You won’t get in trouble,” I tried to reassure her. She was beginning to raise her voice, and I needed her to calm down before the man got suspicious and returned. “We’re here to help you. Just please calm down--”
“No!” she suddenly screamed. “No! Help! Help!”
“What the hell?” I hissed. Why was she reacting like this? Had I made some massive error in judgment? No, there was no way. It was evident from her body language and how she’d been behaving the entire time we’d been here that she was being abused and manipulated, so why was she panicking at my offer of help?
I tried to plead with her to stop yelling, but the door burst open with a bang just moments later. The man from before was standing there, a gun clutched in his hand.
“What’s going on here?” he yelled, his eyes bugging out as he looked between the girl and me.
“H-he’s a cop!” she shrieked as she pointed an accusing finger at me.
The man lifted his gun, and I jumped out of the way just as he pulled the trigger. The girl screamed as the bullet tore through the mattress just a foot away from where she was sitting. I reached for my own gun but couldn’t quite get to it from my current position on the ground.
The man turned his gun toward me again, and for one terrifying moment, I was staring straight down the barrel of it.
Before he could pull the trigger, though, I heard a dull thump, and the man collapsed to the ground with a groan. As he fell, I realized that Holm was standing just behind him, his own gun held aloft in his hand. He’d pistol-whipped him just a moment before he’d gotten the chance to shoot.
“Thanks, brother,” I breathed as I got back onto my feet.
“No problem,” he replied as he crouched down to handcuff the unconscious man. “What the hell happened, though? We heard screams.”
I turned to look expectantly at the girl sitting on the bed. I was honestly wondering what that was about, too.
“I-I’m sorry,” she stuttered, her eyes welling up with tears. “I didn’t mean to—I mean, I was just scared that…”
She kept cutting herself off as she gasped for breath between sobs. Despite the mess she’d caused by screaming, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. It was obvious that the poor girl had been through a lot.
Before doing anything else, I reached into my pocket to pull out the listening device, ready to give Olivia and Crowley an update as to what had just happened. Before I could, though, someone else burst into the room.
“What the hell is this?” the newcomer asked as his eyes flitted between me, the girl, and Holm, who was still on the ground, getting the fallen man’s hands cuffed. He seemed familiar, and it took me a second to realize that it was the same man we’d seen on the beach a few days earlier—the one who had shot our first police liaison, Walter, before escaping.
It seemed he recognized me at the exact moment because his eyes suddenly lit up, and his face twisted into an angry snarl.
“You!” he roared as he reached behind his back.
I lifted my own gun just as he was drawing his, and I managed to pull the trigger a fraction of a second before he could. He cried out in pain as my bullet struck him, and he fell to the ground with a loud thump.
Holm leapt up from his position on the floor and quickly rushed to the newcomer’s side to retrieve his fallen gun.
I let out a shaky breath as I looked around for the listening device. It wasn’t in my hand anymore, which meant that I must have dropped at some point while I was focused on the new suspect.
“We’re here,” Olivia’s voice suddenly called, to my surprise.
I looked up and found her rushing into the room, her own gun drawn.
“We heard the gunshots over the transmitter,” Crowley explained. “We thought we did, anyway. Once everyone started rushing out, it became obvious that something bad was going on. We came as soon as we heard, but it was a struggle to make our way through the crowd. Everyone was rushing out the same door.”
“He’s dead,” Holm declared as he took the pulse of the man I’d just shot before nodding toward the other man who was still unconscious. “We could call for an ambulance for that one.”
“I’ll do it,” Crowley volunteered as he reached for the radio at his hip.
I re-holstered
my gun and took a deep breath. Things had gone from zero to a hundred really fast there, and my mind was still reeling.
While Crowley called for an ambulance, Olivia stepped further into the room and passed me until she was standing right in front of the girl.
“Hello,” she greeted softly as she knelt down in front of her. “My name’s Olivia. Can you tell me yours?”
“Jenny,” she mumbled faintly. “It’s Jenny.”
“Hi, Jenny.” Olivia smiled warmly at her before pulling her badge out of her pocket, just like I had done earlier. “I’m an agent with the FBI. My job is to help women and children who are in bad situations, like you. What do you say we get out of here? You can get cleaned up and have something to eat, and then we can talk. How does that sound?”
“Good,” she replied softly.
“Okay.” Olivia nodded. “As soon as the ambulance gets here, we can go, okay?”
“Okay.” The girl, Jenny, nodded tersely.
Olivia gave her one last smile before standing back up straight and turning to look at me. There was a pained expression in her eyes, but I was impressed by how she had handled that. Considering how the girl had reacted to me, I wasn’t sure what would have happened if she hadn’t been here with us.
Once again, I found myself feeling glad that we were working this case together.
22
Ethan
It was late at night by the time we’d finished dealing with the aftermath of the shoot-out at the bar. Since someone had died, there was, of course, a long list of procedures that needed to be followed to document everything that had happened. Then we’d needed to deal with making sure that the surviving suspect was placed under surveillance even while at the hospital. Holm had gotten him good, and though he had woken up and was responding normally, the doctor had advised us to wait at least until the next day to interrogate him to ensure that he didn’t have any severe head injury that might affect his judgment or memory.
While Holm, Crowley, and I handled all that, Olivia had decided to head back with the victim, Jenny. Considering how Jenny had acted around us, it seemed like a better option for Olivia to go alone with her, anyway. After all, she had more experience in this, and it would probably give her a chance to build a rapport and get the girl to open up.
I was beat by the time we made it back to the Grace Bay station, where Olivia was waiting with Jenny. It was fully dark out now as we got out of the car, and with so little light pollution, I could see the stars in the sky in stunning clarity. It was a discordant sensation to look at something so pretty up above while such heinous things were happening there on the ground.
Captain Morris met us inside as soon as we entered.
“I’m glad to see you’re all okay.” He smiled. “I heard that you ran into a bit of trouble. I was relieved to learn that none of you had been injured.”
“Well, it was pretty close,” I replied. “Luckily, we all made it out okay.”
“Good.” He nodded. “Agent Hastings is waiting for you now. I’ll take you back there.”
He led us down a long hallway, past the few empty holding cells, and toward a room at the very end of the hall. Even before he’d opened the door, I could hear Olivia’s familiar voice coming from inside.
The door opened with a creak, and the talking stopped as Holm, Crowley, and I stepped inside.
“Hey guys,” Olivia greeted us, her tone light and friendly. She and Jenny were sitting closely together, side by side on the couch against the wall. Olivia turned away from us to look back at Jenny before speaking again. “Are you still okay with what we talked about?”
The girl nodded stiffly before looking up at us.
I noted at once that her hair wasn’t tangled anymore. It had clearly been washed and brushed, and even her skin had a healthier tint to it now.
“Jenny has agreed to speak with us for a while.” Olivia turned to look at us. “Which was very kind and brave of her. Of course, if you want to stop at any point, just tell me, okay?”
“Okay.” Jenny nodded again before peering up at us nervously.
I moved to sit down on the couch opposite them. We were in some kind of break room. There was a table and a small fridge at one end of the room, and even a vending machine tucked in the corner. It had definitely been a smarter choice than sticking her in some tiny interview room.
“Thank you for agreeing to talk with us,” I told her slowly as Holm and Crowley also sat down. “And I’m sorry if I scared you earlier. That wasn’t my intention.”
“No.” She suddenly shook her head furiously. “You didn’t. I mean, you did. But it’s okay. I was just—I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Jenny.” Olivia reached out to take her hand. “He isn’t mad. None of us are upset with you at all.”
Jenny’s shoulders were hunched up almost to her ears, and she looked like she didn’t totally believe us. I clenched my jaw in frustration. What kind of awful things had those monsters done to get this woman to react like this to an apology, of all things?
“She’s right,” I replied. “I’m not mad. You seemed scared, so I was just worried I might have upset you.”
“I’m sorry,” she apologized again before smiling bitterly. “I don’t know why I did that. I’ve dreamed of having someone swoop in and offer to take me away. It’s just… the first thing that popped into my mind was how much trouble I would be in if Antonio found out what was happening. Girls have tried to run away before, and it never ends well for them. Sometimes they don’t even come back… I didn’t want him to be mad, so I just started screaming. I’m really, really sorry.”
She was starting to cry again, and Olivia reached a hand out to rub her back comfortingly.
“It’s okay, Jenny,” she insisted firmly. “We all understand that you were just scared. What’s important is that you’re here now, safe with us.”
“Thank you.” She smiled weakly at Olivia before turning to look at me again. “Um… Olivia said you want to ask me some things.”
“That’s right,” I replied. “To start with, can you tell me if you know a woman named Allison? She was about your height, with curly blond hair and blue eyes.”
“No.” Jenny frowned. “I’ve never met anyone named Allison. But there was a girl here once who looked like that. Her name was Cat, though. At least, that’s what we called her.”
“Did she have a child?” Olivia interjected. “A little boy about five years old, named Eddy?”
Jenny’s eyes went wide, and her jaw dropped at the name.
“Yeah, that’s Cat,” she gasped. “Do you know where she is? She disappeared one day a few weeks ago. There were rumors that she’d run away, been sold off, killed. No one knew for sure. Is she okay? Where is she?”
She was hitting us with questions rapid-fire, her small hands clenched into fists as she spoke.
“Jenny, I’m sorry,” Olivia began delicately.
She didn’t have to finish her sentence for Jenny to deflate, her eyes reddening as fresh tears threatened to spill.
“No,” she whimpered as she dropped her head into her hands. “But… why? She never did anything wrong. She always did just as she was told, so they wouldn’t hurt Eddy.”
She gasped again and snapped her head up to look at us.
“What about Eddy? Is he okay? Don’t tell me--”
“He’s fine,” I hurried to assure her. “He’s with his grandmother now, and his aunt. Allison, er, Cat made sure that he made it to the US safely.”
“He’s with his grandma?” She smiled with disbelief. “So she did run away. I can’t believe it… I’m so glad.”
“Was she a friend of yours?” Olivia prompted.
“Yeah.” Jenny sniffed. “She was really nice to everyone. She’d been here for a really long time too. A lot longer than I have. When they first brought me here, she was the first one to be kind to me.”
“It sounds like she was a good person.” Olivia smiled sadly.
“Yeah,�
�� Jenny sighed before suddenly frowning. “But wait, if the men didn’t kill her, and she made it to the US, then what happened?”
“We think she died of exposure,” I replied honestly. Her face fell as I spoke, and I felt a pang of sympathy for them. It must have been painful to hear that she had managed to make it so far only to die in the end, after all.
“A combination of that and dehydration, most likely. She took off on a fishing boat and managed to make it all the way to Miami. Eddy survived the trip, but unfortunately, she didn’t.”
“That’s Cat.” She nodded as she wiped her eyes clear. “She did everything for that little boy. Danny told me that she had run away, but I just wasn’t sure what to believe.”
“Danny?” I repeated, the name ringing familiar in my mind.
“She’s one of the girls,” Jenny clarified, her voice suddenly a few degrees colder. “Though sometimes it seems like she’s more on the men’s side than ours. She’s kind of like the mother hen, you know? Keeps an eye on everyone and everything when the men aren’t around. Sometimes, I’m not sure how much I can trust her, so I didn’t know what to think when she’d told me that Cat had run away.”
That was when it hit me. Eddy had talked about a “Danny” as well. He’d said that she was a friend of his and his mother’s, the same one who had taught him the names of the dinosaurs.
He’d made her sound like a friendly and caring person, but the way that Jenny was now sitting hunched and stiff just at the mention of her appeared to indicate otherwise. I’d need to keep that in mind going forward.
“Can you tell us more about the men?” I asked. I noticed that she kept referring to them with that phrase.
“They’re the ones keeping us here.” She shrugged. She looked down and shifted uncomfortably on the couch as she replied. “I don’t know all their names. I only know Antonio since he’s the one who brings us over from Cockburn Town. He stays with us most of the time.”
“Cockburn Town?” Olivia asked. “Is that where you live?”
“Most of the time.” She nodded. “Sometimes we stay out for a few days at a time, though. There’s a house there where they keep all the girls until we get assigned to a bar or hotel.”