“Okay, good.”
“You can drive this time. But just because you seem sort of bummed out. And because next time it will be warmer, so it will be nicer in the convertible.”
Zachary nodded. “Good. Thanks. Next time you get to drive for sure.”
It was a couple of hours, and mostly they didn’t talk, but just listened to the music on the radio and enjoyed the smooth highway under the tires. The pavement was dry, so there were no worries about having to slow down for ice. Zachary drove a little above the speed limit. Still low enough that he didn’t think any cop would bother to pull him over and Kenzie wouldn’t complain that he was being reckless. He was very good at driving at high speeds. It was one of the few TV-private-eye skills that he actually had. But he didn’t want Kenzie to think that her life was in danger. And he didn’t want a ticket or to be delayed for dinner.
Mr. Peterson greeted them at the door, giving both of them warm hugs and Kenzie a peck on the cheek. He ushered them into the house. Zachary was surprised to see Tyrrell and Heather sitting in the living room. Mr. Peterson hadn’t mentioned that they would be there. But Zachary was happy to see them. It was amazing to be able to see his siblings after decades of being separated. He still couldn’t quite believe that it was true. Heather’s husband was also there, sitting beside her, with his arm around her. And another woman was sitting next to Tyrrell.
Zachary hadn’t expected Tyrrell to bring a girl with him. He hadn’t told Zachary that he was going out with anyone.
“Uh, hi,” he greeted, a little awkward. He didn’t know how to address her.
Tyrrell smiled, putting his hand on the woman’s arm. “Zach, this is Jocelyn.”
Zachary stared at her for a minute, trying to process this. Jocelyn was the name of their older sister. Tyrrell was dating a woman with the same name as their sister?
Tyrrell kept looking at Zachary, and the woman looked up at him, both of them waiting for his response.
“Jocelyn?” Zachary repeated.
She kept staring at his face. “Joss,” she said.
Everything finally connected, and Zachary’s jaw dropped. “Joss?” He gasped for breath, finding that all of the oxygen had suddenly been sucked from the room. “Oh my—Joss?”
When he had met Tyrrell, they had hugged each other, both eager and excited. With Heather, she’d been less certain. A reserved handshake. She’d been dealing with her own troubles, trying to figure out how to ask Zachary for help and wondering whether he could do anything for her.
With Joss, it was like there was a wall between them. She didn’t look inviting. She didn’t stand up to hug him or reach out her hand to take his. She just sat there, waiting.
Zachary swallowed. “It’s so good to see you, Joss. How are you?”
She nodded, a strained smile. “I’m good. Nice for the four of us to see each other again.”
Zachary nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t know you were going to be here. I’m sorry if I seem a little… I’m just surprised. I didn’t know it was you.”
He’d had practice in trying to recognize the faces of his siblings. Tyrrell’s eyes had given him away, even if nothing else about him had seemed familiar. Heather looked very different, and he had trouble seeing anything of the little girl she had been. But every now and then he caught a glimpse of that little girl. One of the little mothers who had tried to look after him and keep him out of trouble before they had gone into foster care.
And Joss had been the other.
As a child, her hair had been blond, but it had darkened over time. Not the almost-black hair that Zachary and Tyrrell sported, but darker than Heather’s. They were all sitting, so he could see that she was a little shorter than Heather. She looked older. The two of them were only a year apart, but she looked a decade older than Heather, at least. Her mouth was pinched, wrinkles and frown lines around it and her eyes. She looked like she’d lived a hard life. Probably a smoker. That aged the face and skin. Although she was smiling at Zachary, she didn’t look even remotely happy to see him. She smile was just a mask. A social convention.
Zachary turned slightly toward Mr. Peterson, hoping for some help. Mr. Peterson was socially adept, he got along with almost everyone, and he was good at drawing people out. Zachary had no idea how to talk to Joss or what to say to her.
“They wanted it to be a surprise,” Mr. Peterson said, his round face wreathed with smiles. “We know how much you can worry over things, and didn’t want you to spend the last few days and your whole ride here wondering about how things were going to go. Jocelyn said she would like to meet you, so we just went ahead and set it up.”
Zachary nodded as if it all made perfect sense to him. He looked for somewhere to sit down, and Kenzie steered him toward the seat on the couch next to Jocelyn. Kenzie herself picked the easy chair close by that Mr. Peterson usually sat in. Zachary wanted to move everyone around to more comfortable places. His three siblings on the couch together. He and Kenzie on the adjoining love seat. Mr. Peterson in the chair he belonged in. Everybody in the right, most comforting places. He didn’t want to sit next to Jocelyn, with her fixed smile.
He swallowed, trying to think of something to talk to Jocelyn about. He should ask her about herself. How her life was now. He couldn’t mention their childhood, how Zachary had destroyed the family, the abuse and hard life that each of them had suffered through as a result.
“So… really nice to see you,” Zachary said, though he thought he might have said it already. “What are you doing with yourself? How are things? Are you… I don’t know where you live.”
“I’m on my own,” Joss said, in a clipped tone. “No current spouse or partner. No kids that would claim me. Just looking after myself.”
Zachary nodded. “Uh-huh. That’s great. I’m… I guess you already know I’m a private investigator. Do you… have a job? Or…” he trailed off, unsure how to end that question. Was she just a bum? Living on the street or in some halfway house? Trying to get her life together? Where did he think he was going with that question?
“I have a job,” Jocelyn said defensively. “I work at a restaurant.”
“Oh, great. Anywhere I would know?”
“By the looks of you,” she cast an eye over his narrow frame, “you don’t eat out much.”
“Well… now and then. Just not… very much at a time. It’s my meds… they suppress appetite…”
She told him where she worked. It wasn’t anywhere that Zachary knew. He shrugged. “Sounds like a nice place.”
She rolled her eyes.
Zachary looked at Heather and Tyrrell for help.
21
“What have you been working on lately?” Tyrrell asked.
Zachary cleared his throat and swallowed, considering how much he wanted to share—or not to share. As long as he kept names out of it, he wasn’t breaking any confidences. “I, uh, just finished up with a missing persons case.”
“You should tell them about it,” Kenzie encouraged.
“If you finished with it, does that mean that you found him?” Tyrrell asked.
“Her. Yes, I did.”
“It wasn’t—not like that other case?” Heather said tentatively. “You mean that you found her and…”
“She was fine,” Zachary hurried to assure her. Not like Jose. He flashed for a minute on Dimitri’s bloated corpse. He hadn’t seen Jose after his death, but he’d seen Dimitri. Zachary wouldn’t want to bring up Jose in front of Mr. Peterson or Pat. He had searched for Jose at Pat’s request, and the results had not been good. He didn’t want to risk setting Pat back on the progress he had made in recovering from his friend’s death. “She was voluntary—that means she had disappeared because she wanted to, not because someone had kidnapped her.”
“I think we all know what voluntary means,” Jocelyn said dryly. “I may have dropped out of high school, but I still know basic vocabulary.”
“Sorry… I didn’t mean it to sound like I was putting anyone down.�
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“So why did she want to leave?” Tyrrell asked. “Was this like a battered spouse, or a runaway kid, or what?”
“A teenager. Ran away to be with her boyfriend.”
“Figures,” Joss said. “Waste of your time.”
“I guess,” Zachary said. “But she could have been in danger. I’m still glad that I took the case and could make sure that she was okay. Even if she did choose to stay with her boyfriend, at least her parents and friends know that she’s safe. They know that nothing happened to her.”
Jocelyn snorted.
They all looked at her. Zachary wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand why she was being so scornful.
“Wouldn’t you rather know where your daughter was?” Kenzie asked.
“Just because they know where she is, that doesn’t mean that they know what’s happening to her. Most parents haven’t got a clue what’s going on right under their own noses.”
“I saw her,” Zachary said slowly. “She told me right to my face that she wanted to stay there with her boyfriend.”
“And you can’t see what’s right under your own nose, either. I thought you’d at least have some sense, after being in foster care.”
“What does foster care have to do with it?”
“Lots of kids are trafficked in foster care.”
Zachary stared at her. He didn’t argue the point. He’d been too worried about Madison and what might have happened to her. He remembered the man in the bathrobe downstairs saying that he would have to talk to Madison’s manager. Not her boyfriend, but her manager.
Madison hadn’t been bruised. Her body language hadn’t said that she was afraid. But Zachary had still been worried. He’d sent the police there, despite her saying that she wanted to stay of her own free will, because he wanted to make sure. If she were being trafficked for sex, he wanted to make sure that she could get out. The police wouldn’t let her stay there if she were being victimized. Campbell said that his officers confirmed back that she was voluntary. She had confirmed to them, even with Noah out of the room and out of hearing, that she wanted to stay there and that she wasn’t being harmed or coerced. The police had dealt with situations like that before. They had their tricks. They could arrest the girl on some pretext to get her out of there, and her pimp wouldn’t know what had happened. They would think she had just been arrested. People were arrested every day in that business.
So he didn’t repeat ‘trafficked’ like he didn’t know what Joss was talking about. And he didn’t say that Madison couldn’t be. He just looked at her, wondering how Jocelyn had focused in on trafficking with the little he had said.
“She wasn’t being trafficked.” It was Kenzie who objected, not Zachary. “She had just run away with her boyfriend.”
“Not her boyfriend,” Jocelyn said, “her Romeo.”
Kenzie frowned. “What’s the difference?”
“A Romeo isn’t a boyfriend. She might think he is, but he’s just there to get her into the business. Romance her and make her think that they’re in love, so he can get her to trick for him.”
Zachary thought about this. He pictured Madison and Noah together. They had seemed like a genuine couple. But they would, wouldn’t they? If that’s what she was supposed to think, then that was what her body language would say. And if he had set out to play her, then he would have the act down pat.
“But they’ve been together for months,” he said. “He wouldn’t take that long to turn her out, would he? That’s too long.”
Joss’s expression changed ever so slightly. Zachary couldn’t identify what it was that changed but, for the first time, she seemed to be viewing him with some respect. Not just the tolerant older sister, there to put on an appearance and make nice. Realizing, maybe for the first time, that he was no longer the little boy who had accidentally set the house on fire. No longer the bratty little brother who didn’t know anything and was always getting everyone in trouble.
“Yes, he would have turned her out by now. But she might not realize what’s going on.”
“How could she not know what’s going on?” Kenzie demanded. She looked over at Zachary, reading his warning look. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound like I doubt you, I just mean I don’t understand it. Please explain it to me.”
Zachary hoped that was a humble enough apology for Joss to decide to forgive Kenzie’s question. As he remembered it, Joss could hold a grudge. She was scary that way. She’d been in charge of all of the kids when they were away from their parents, and she could be mean. Zachary had felt the sharp side of her tongue many times, and she’d been bigger and stronger than he was too. She hadn’t been abusive like their mom and dad, but she’d done everything she could to keep their little gang in line.
Jocelyn studied Kenzie for a minute, glanced aside at Zachary, then focused again on Kenzie, since she was the one who had asked the question.
“There’s no way for someone like you to know what it’s like to be trafficked,” she said coolly. “Someone like you doesn’t have any idea what it’s like on the other side of the street. None at all.”
Zachary expected a protest from Kenzie. Saying that she wasn’t that privileged. That she knew what things were like in the real world, even if that wasn’t one of the things she had experienced herself. But Kenzie just kept her mouth clamped shut and let Jocelyn speak.
Jocelyn turned her attention back to Zachary. The familiar one. It had been decades since they had seen each other, but they had some shared background. She knew how he had started out life, and it hadn’t been with a silver spoon in his mouth. She had been in contact with Tyrrell or Heather, so she probably had the broad strokes of Zachary’s life since then. Not privileged. Far from it.
“He’ll ask her to do it as a favor. Just once. Because he’s in dire straits and some leg breaker is going to come after him. Just once, and he’ll be able to pay off his debt and they’ll be okay. He loves her and he doesn’t want to ask her to do it and he’ll understand if she says no, but… it’s the only way he can see out. So she does it once. Nothing kinky. Something safe and vanilla. It’s over quick, and he gets a wad of cash to pay off his debts, and they’re okay. He loves her for what she did for him. It’s proof of just how much she really loves him. And maybe there’s enough left over for a fancy new dress. And for them to go out to dinner together. He makes it nice for her. Sets up all of those reward centers in the brain to feel good. So that when she tricks for him, she feels valued and appreciated and like she’s really helping out someone she loves.”
Zachary swallowed and nodded. “And that’s the first time.”
“The first time is the biggest barrier. After that, it’s easier. Could she just help him out this once? They’re getting evicted and they need a new place. They need to get out of that rat hole. If she could just do a couple of guys for him, then everything would be okay. And he’s nice and loving and appreciative…”
Zachary sighed.
“And pretty soon,” Jocelyn said, “he’ll be sure to get her hooked on something too. Maybe heroin. Maybe meth. If she ever resists him, he holds back the drugs. It doesn’t take long before she’s desperate, and she’ll do whatever he tells her to. Doesn’t matter if she’s not protected anymore, if she’s seeing five or ten guys a night, if she’s doing stuff she never would have considered before. She needs the drugs. She craves the love and attention he showers her with when she does what she’s told. She likes the fancy dresses and purses and all of the proof that she’s having a good time.”
“And then it’s too late,” Kenzie said.
Jocelyn shrugged. “It was too late the minute she met him. These guys know what they’re doing. He’s got a boss above him who tells him how to do everything. Who to target, how to get her to fall for him. How to keep her on a string and to turn her out. He’s given step-by-step instructions, and if he makes a mistake or she falls out of line, there’s a consequence for him.”
“So he’s a victim too
,” Tyrrell said.
Jocelyn shrugged her shoulders. “There are layers and layers of predators and victims in every organization. If you’ve been there for a few months, you’d better be looking at who you’re going to bring in. They don’t want the money to dry up. It’s like a pyramid scheme. The more people you can bring in, the more you get out of it. You get higher and higher in the organization. More money and power. More perks.”
“What makes you think that she’s trafficked and not just a runaway?” Zachary asked.
“Show me a runaway who’s not being trafficked.”
The knot in Zachary’s stomach tightened. He didn’t want to be worrying about Madison. He wanted to relax and have a nice time with his family and not to have to think about Madison again. He had finished what he had set out to do. Rhys had asked him to find Madison, and he had done so. It wasn’t his fault that she didn’t want to go back to her family.
“If she’s being forced into these gigs, then why wouldn’t she want to go back to her family? Wouldn’t she get out at the first opportunity?” Kenzie asked.
“She thinks she’s in love with Romeo. She wants to help him and protect him. And maybe she’s addicted. And proud of her new clothes and position. And maybe someone at home is abusive, which is why she left there in the first place.”
“I didn’t see any sign of it,” Zachary put in. “Seemed like she had a pretty good life. Parents were friendly and worried about her. I didn’t get a bad vibe from them.”
“But you don’t know. People can put on the best show in the world for you. You would never guess what kind of creeps they are when the door is shut and they’re alone with each other or their daughter. You have no idea what goes on behind closed doors. No idea. Trust me.”
Zachary nodded. He’d seen how different people could be once the authorities had gone home. He’d had to live with people like that.
He still didn’t think the Millers were like that. But Joss was right. You never could tell.
She Told a Lie Page 11