by C. G. Cooper
The engine groaned as he eased us down the driveway and out to the road.
“Do you think she’s okay?” Walker asked, keeping his eyes on the road ahead, pedal depressed as far as he dared.
“She’s a smart girl,” I said, as if that was enough. I didn’t want to talk about what could happen. There were too many variables to think about, too many what ifs.
What if a neighbor saw them and called the police?
What if one or more of the slave girls turned on Anna?
What if someone was helping them and that person turned on Anna?
“If she called someone for help, who do you think she’d call?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I guess she could call someone from our congregation, but I can’t think of anyone who would be of any real help. Most of them are old or completely ordinary. Anna would know that.”
I agreed with his assessment and could’ve kicked myself for not acting sooner. She’d asked for my help, and when I didn’t give it to her, she’d felt compelled to act on her own. Regret was a powerful drug, and I was getting a double dose at the moment.
We cruised along as fast as the little truck would go. When I glanced at the RPMs, I saw that we were dangerously close to the reds, even though the truck was speeding at a fraction of what any decent car could go.
I scanned the roadside as it flew by. Other than trees and the occasional house, there wasn’t much to look at. We came upon the first major intersection and I ordered Walker to slow down. My eyes looked over one tree line and then another. I did three passes, just in case, but there was no sign of movement or the telltale flicker of the color of clothing.
“Let’s go to the next one,” I said, the dread in my stomach growing. Something told me it was too late.
+++
As promised, the two vehicles pulled off the road and onto the mottled grass. Like she’d been told over the phone, there was one of those fancy Mercedes passenger vans and a Lincoln Town Car. Anna swallowed her nervousness and motioned for the girls to get up. She had the distinct feeling this was the moment where everything would change. It was impossible for her to understand how much.
+++
There were red tail lights up ahead and I screamed for Walker to go faster. The pickup sputtered down the road at its pathetic top speed of just over fifty miles per hour.
I could make out forms now, and they were all getting into the vehicles. My eyes strained to see that far, and that’s when I saw Anna’s slender form duck into the black car.
We were probably two hundred yards away when the taillights flickered and started moving.
One hundred yards.
Now I could see two heads in the Lincoln Town Car.
Fifty yards.
They must have seen us because I detected an increase in speed on their end. The convoy matched our speed and then went faster.
Twenty yards.
One of the heads turned, and I saw the beautiful face of another woman. She smiled at us, lifted her hand, and gave us the middle finger.
My eyes went wide as I heard the clunk followed by a loud hiss.
Pastor Walker didn’t seem to notice and still had the pedal stuck to the floor. Steam and smoke rose from the hood, obscuring our view of the fading automobiles. Walker slammed on the breaks and we jolted to a stop. I braced myself against the dash and turned.
“Who the hell was that?” I asked, pointing to where the Town Car had just been.
Pastor Walker’s chin dropped to his chest and he said, “That’s Anna’s mother, my ex-wife.”
Chapter 11
Anna kept stealing glances at her mother. She couldn’t help it. They’d been apart since her parents had separated, and Anna couldn’t remember a vivid image no matter how hard she’d tried. She had the fuzzy memories of muffled arguments and breaking glass, but she never knew what was real and what was just her childhood imagination. Her father never liked to talk about her mother, so for years they’d pretended it was just the two of them.
That hadn’t deterred Anna from looking. One dreary morning while her father paced back and forth in his room overhead, a ritual before Sunday sermons, Anna had found a faded picture of her mother tucked away in the back of a desk drawer.
And now here she was, more beautiful than in the sun-smeared photograph from her father’s desk. Her hair matched Anna’s, long and dark. But where Anna’s face was clean of all but the faintest wisp of lip gloss, her mother looked liked she’d just stepped off a New York runway. She even had the air of some high up CEO’s wife, like she’d been bred to bathe in money.
And to think that she’d come up from Boston at a second’s notice. One phone call was all it took. The thought filled Anna with regret, thinking of all the nights she’d stared at the piece of notebook paper with her mother’s phone number. She’d stolen that from her father too. While she felt bad about it before, now she only felt relief. Her mother was there and she said she would help.
It was almost too much for Anna to handle, and she clasped her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking. The early morning ordeal threatened to burst the excitement out of her body in the form of endless questions and a flood of tears. Anna bit it all back, wanting to put on an adult face for her mother, the elegant Natasha Varushkin.
+++
I gripped the door handle to keep from punching Anna’s father.
“You have exactly one minute to tell me about your ex-wife.” I stared at my knees instead of making eye contact with him.
His answer came out slowly despite the viper sitting next to him.
“Natasha was here on a student visa when we met in Boston. I fell in love with her the moment I saw her. She was cultured and well-traveled while I was just a small town kid. I was overmatched from the start. Natasha got pregnant six months after the wedding, and for a while after Anna was born we tried to make it work. I plunged into the party scene with her and we had some good times. But then one morning, when I was reaching into the fridge for something to combat my hangover, I looked over and saw Anna in a playpen staring up at me. I’ll never forget that look. She was barely eighteen months old, and yet she looked at me like an adult. It wasn’t until I walked over that I noticed she was covered in her own poop. Apparently Natasha and I had forgotten to change her the night before, and it was almost noon. Something in me broke. I picked her up and held her for a long time. I cried and she just kept her head on my chest. I don’t know how long we sat like that.
“Once Natasha woke up, I told her what had happened and suggested we make a change, maybe move out of the city. She laughed at me and said I was welcome to take Anna and leave. I really thought she was kidding, or maybe that she was still drunk, but her tone never changed, not that day, not the next week. We fought and I pleaded. Natasha just kept partying and some nights never came home. So I did what I had to do. I took Anna to a friend’s and filed for divorce the next day. The papers came back quickly, and Natasha never asked to see Anna again. That was over thirteen years ago.”
We sat in silence for a long moment. What do you say to that? Sure, I felt for the guy, and he’d done the brave thing back then, but why hadn’t he followed through?
“How did Anna contact her mother?” I asked.
“She must have found the phone number in my office. I kept it in case of emergencies. I thought I’d hidden it, but…”
I actually laughed a little. Anna had already shown that she had ample intellect to outsmart her father. In the span of less than a day, the teenager had managed to steal from her father’s safe, release five prisoners, disable a vehicle, and contact her mother who she hadn’t seen in over a decade. The girl would either make a perfect criminal or a talented operative if given the chance.
“Your ex still lives in Boston?”
“She does.”
My next question was cut off by flashing lights and gentle honk behind us. I turned and saw a tow truck pulling up to our right.
“Someone you know?” I as
ked.
Pastor Walker nodded, and then shook his head like he was casting off invisible cobwebs. When he looked up he had the “church face” on again. He almost looked normal. I rolled down the window as the face of an overweight driver came into view.
“Having trouble with your truck again, Pastor?”
The guy looked like he would’ve been more at home south of the Mason-Dixon, playing the part perfectly with a heaping mound of chew in his cheek. He spat a glob onto the pavement.
“Good morning, Melvin,” the pastor greeted.
The man grinned and said, “Can I give you boys a lift?”
Pastor Walker smiled.
“That would be wonderful.”
Melvin spat again, the tobacco juice hitting the pavement with a muted splat. And then from years of practice, Melvin maneuvered the tow truck in front of the pickup, and prepared to hitch us up.
I went to get out of the cab, but Walker grabbed my arm.
“There’s something else I need to tell you,” he said, his eyes wide with renewed alarm.
“There’s more?”
He nodded and let go of my arm.
“Natasha’s the one who told me where to get the loan.”
“But what does she have to do with it?” I asked. I wanted an explanation.
Then the pieces fell into place in my head. The money for the church. The late payments. The visit from the Boston money guys. The trafficking operation. I stiffened, an image of Anna bound and gagged screaming its way into my head.
“It was my ex-wife’s friend who gave me the money.” He looked up at me, real fear blotching his complexion, and tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. He said, “Natasha’s family bankrolls the entire operation, and now they have Anna.”
Chapter 12
I stared at Walker for a long moment. What sort of twisted web had I fallen into? I had questions, but now wasn’t the time. Melvin the tow truck driver was watching us as he hitched up the pickup.
“We’ll talk when we get back to your place,” I said, my heart pounding at the thought of Anna falling into her mother’s hands. I promised myself in that millisecond that I would do anything in my power to return her to safety. The beast in me grinned.
The ride back took longer than expected. Maybe it was my impatience or maybe it was the fact that Melvin, whose body odor did an impressive job of filling the cramped cab, was in no particular hurry. He chatted away with Pastor Walker, informing the church leader about who got a DUI over the weekend, and that Mrs. Brambleton had fallen and broken her hip. He ignored me, and I him. I chose to look out the window and let Walker keep the man distracted.
The tow truck hadn’t even stopped when I burst from the cab and made for the guest house.
“Nice meeting you, too!” Melvin called after me.
I answered by slamming the door behind me.
Pastor Walker came in a couple minutes later. I was in the middle of taking stock of my belongings. There wasn’t much. It was pathetic, really. The entirety of my personal belongings that I kept in my rucksack lay on the bed. Well-worn clothes, a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels, my lock pick set, and a tattered magazine I’d picked up some time in the past week. I didn’t have a phone. My wallet held my old military ID card, an ATM card, a credit card, and a driver’s license. I didn’t even have a knife, let alone a gun.
“Sit,” I said, pointing to the chair in the corner without looking up. My mind was still processing what our next move—scratch that—what my next move should be. If anything, Pastor Walker had proven himself to be a worthless teammate and a failure as a dad. In my head, what needed to be done could easily be accomplished without him.
He did as commanded, and I stuffed my belongings back into the bag.
“Do you know where your ex lives?” I asked, my brain shifting into operational mode. I needed intel.
“Somewhere in Boston,” Walker answered lamely.
I shook my head in disgust, but held back the snide comment I could’ve shot his way.
“Tell me again how you know where to pick up the girls.”
“I get a call and someone tells me where to go. Sometimes I take a cab and sometimes I get a ride. When I get there I get the keys to whatever vehicle they’ve got and I come straight back here.”
“When do they tell you how many girls there will be?”
“During the initial call.”
I turned from my things and pointed a finger at him.
“Here’s how this works, Pastor. When I ask you a question, tell me everything that comes to mind. I don’t care how mundane you think the detail is, you tell me. We don’t have time for me to ask you a thousand questions. Now, tell me everything they told you in that initial phone call.”
Walker nodded and said, “They tell me where to go, what time to be there and how many girls to prep the shelter for.”
“Okay. And how about the back end? They call to tell you where to take them, right?”
“They do,” he answered. He continued, thankfully remembering my previous instructions. “I get a call, usually a day or two later, the longest was a week, and they tell me where to go.”
“No other demands, like extra things to bring with you or what state the girls should be in?”
“No. As long as I give them the medication with their food, that seems to do the trick.”
I’d almost forgotten about the drugs.
“Have they ever told you what’s in the medication?” I asked.
“I questioned them once, but they told me it was none of my business. From what I’ve observed, it seems to be a rather mild narcotic.”
“You have much experience with drugs?”
Walker nodded. “From my time in Boston and the occasional drug addict that stumbles into my church.”
His answer reminded me that this man wasn’t naive to the evils of the world, just clueless about his role in it. I’d realized that on the way home, and wondered how many people lived their lives that way, going along with things because they felt like they had no control over anything. That’s what my gut told me anyway: that Pastor Walker, while not an evil man, had succumbed to evil nonetheless. It wasn’t my place to change him, but a small piece of me hoped he would come to see that he did have a choice, that everyone has a choice unless they were chained to a wall in a windowless prison cell. But even those people had choices, the main one being whether to keep on living or just give up.
That line of thinking made me shiver, the reality hitting too close to home. I hadn’t gone that route yet, but there’d been ample opportunity. Luckily for me, the two-sided coin kept landing in my favor. One day it wouldn’t, and I was okay with that.
For now there was work to do, and I tried to think of something I could ask the pastor that might give us some clue as to where Anna had been taken.
“What about the pickup and drop-off locations? Are they ever the same?”
“No.”
“What kinds of places are they?”
“Out of the way. Places like here. There’s plenty of vacant land in the surrounding states.” But then I saw it, a flicker of something in his eyes, like he’d just remembered something.
“What is it? What did you just think of?” I asked.
His face twisted in thought, and then he said, “There was this one time where the drop-off changed. I was on my way there and I got a text with a new address.”
“Where was it?”
“It was an address in Boston.”
My pulse quickened.
“Had there ever been a delivery in Boston?”
“No.”
“So why did they change this one?”
“They didn’t say, but when I got there things were more rushed than usual, like something had spooked them. I didn’t recognize any of the guys, like they were using another crew.”
“And where was it? Where was the drop-off?” I asked, finally smelling the beginning of a lead.
“That was the weird thing
. It was a car wash. Usually they take the vehicle and give me a ride to somewhere I can catch a cab. This time I got out at the car wash entrance and they told me to go through the lobby and wait. I did, and when they gave me the van again, the back was empty.”
“What did you do with the van?”
“They told me to take it someplace downtown and leave the keys in the ignition. I left it two blocks from the first place I’d lived in the city.”
“What was it called?”
“The place I left the van?”
“No,” I said, “What was the car wash called?”
He pursed his lips thinking, and then said, “It was something with shine or…wait, Sunshine Car Wash. Yeah, that’s what it was. Sunshine Car Wash.”
“Do you remember how to get there?”
“No, but I can look it up on my computer.” He rose to do just that, but I held up a hand.
“We’ll do that next.”
His face scrunched in confusion.
I answered his question before he could ask.
“First, you need to make a call.”
I watched him gulp slowly, but he nodded and asked, “Who do you want me to call?”
I crossed my arms and said, “It’s time to call your ex-wife.”
Chapter 13
He didn’t flinch. Two points for the good pastor. He slid his dented cell phone out of his pocket, holding it with two fingers like it was going to bite him. I expected him to fetch the phone number from the house, but he didn’t. Pastor Walker dialed it from memory.
I put my head next to his as the other line rang once, twice, and then a third time. A female voice that oozed a certain haughty air—or was it disdain?—came on the line after the fourth ring.
“Hello, Eddie,” she said. They were two words, two words that conveyed her mood like a punch in the face. Her tone was proper, like a foreigner trying to mask a childhood accent. Walker did flinch this time. I did have to squeeze his arm so he would remember to talk.