Little did they know they just lost twelve girls and would need Cortnie.
While we waited, I called Mimi.
“How are things going with the girls?”
“We’re finished at the hospital, and I have them back on the bus. You aren’t going to like this, but they’re going to be staying the night at the office.”
I could only hope that she meant the office in the same way as Gabe had been talking about the office. No way did I want a dozen teenage girls staying in the Gotcha Detective Agency building.
“Office? As in our offices?”
There was a pause before Mimi responded. “Yes. We talked to Social Services, and they agreed that we should keep them for the night. They can stay upstairs, and use the bedrooms and bathrooms for now. Nick is on his way to grab them some dinner.”
I looked at my watch; it was after three. “You mean breakfast?”
“Sure, if you want to call tacos and burritos breakfast. Look, I’ve got to go. But what’s going on with Cortnie?”
“Gabe and I found the Volvo. It’s actually right here in Salinas. For now, we are just sitting on the house, waiting for movement.”
“You haven’t gone up to the house and scoped it out? To make sure Cortnie is still alive and safe?”
“The Volvo isn’t the only car at the house. There are three other cars visible, and there are probably cars in the garage. It’s just me and Gabe, so we are not going to rush the house, or get blindsided like Cortnie did by looking around.”
“As soon as Nick gets here with the food, I’ll send him there for reinforcement.”
“Mimi, just stay out of it. You and Nick keep an eye on the girls. Gabe and I will take care of things on this end. Max should be meeting up with us fairly soon.”
I was stretching it with Max. I hadn’t heard from him since we parted ways at the house. I’d sent him a couple of text messages, but gotten no response. As bad as it sounds, it made me question how loyal he was to finishing this.
“Fine, I’ll keep Nick here if I can. But call if you need another person.” Mimi sounded tired.
What a great alternative to a vacation, babysitting a gaggle of girls.
“Get the girls settled in, feed them, then you and Nick need to get some sleep. Remember, you’re supposed to be on vacation?”
I could hear her sigh. “Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Thanks for the reminder. Not.” She disconnected.
After about thirty minutes, we finally saw movement in the house. A shadow crossed the room to the left of the house. And then another one. They had turned on the lights in what looked to be a living room, and several people had converged in the room.
“How many shadows did you see cross that window?” Gabe asked.
“I’m pretty sure I saw four. How many did you see?”
Gabe stared at the window as another shadow crossed the light. “That makes six that I counted.”
Normally, six to two would be an easy ratio if I was involved, but heaven knew what kind of weapons these Russians had available to them. This was their lifeline, their income, and they were going to protect it with their lives. I expected there to be some pretty heavy-duty firepower inside that house. Unlike us, they wouldn’t care that this was a populated neighborhood, or that someone could be getting in their car to go to work for the early shift and be caught in the crossfire. We were out powered in the gun department, so I had no intentions of getting into a firefight.
“I’m getting get out to go around to the side of the garage, and see if maybe there’s a door that might be open.” Gabe opened his door.
“You aren’t going in there alone. If we go in, we go in together.” This wasn’t a good idea.
Gabe had already had one foot out of the car, but put it back in and close the door. “It can’t just be the two of us. I need to call for backup.”
I didn’t think we needed backup, if we were quiet. But I didn’t know what kind of experience Gabe had when it came to this kind of surveillance. I knew I could be stealthy. I knew I could step on a twig without it making a noise. I didn’t know if Gabe could. And we didn’t need our location to be given away. If anything was going to hurt Cortnie’s well-being, it would be us getting caught.
At this point, there was no way they knew we had the girls. Right? Maybe things weren’t so bad after all. No, I couldn’t second guess myself. We would sit on the house and wait; that was my decision.
“Until someone leaves the house, we don’t go in. We can’t do anything to jeopardize Cortnie. At this point, they think she’s a lone wolf. They have no idea that the girls have been rescued.”
Gabe’s entire body tensed, and then relaxed, as if he’d completely given up.
“Are we on the same page?” I asked.
Gabe looked at me. “I know you’re right, but I want to storm in there and get her. She’s my entire life. Without her, nothing else matters.”
I pitied and envied Gabe at the same time. There was no one in my life I had ever felt that way about. Okay, fine, maybe Mimi. But she didn’t really count, because she wasn’t my wife. Heaven forbid I would be married to Mimi. I shook my head to get the thought out.
My phone lit up. Finally, Max was getting back to me. I swiped the screen.
“Hey Charles, where are you?” Max asked.
I told him where we were, and what we had found out. That we were sitting at the house, waiting to go in.
“Don’t move. Don’t go into that house. That house is heavily armed.” Max’s voice sounded anxious.
I started to tell him the address, but he said he already knew.
“I’m at your house. I had to do some checking, and I have some things to tell you, but I don’t want to tell you over the phone. I don’t think these are secured lines. Mine is, but I know yours isn’t. I’ll be there in a few.” Max disconnected
“What’s going on?” Gabe asked.
“We were right about the firepower. Max just confirmed that they’re heavily armed in that house. He’s on his way here to give us more information.”
Gabe sat straight up in his seat. “Why couldn’t he tell you over the phone? It’s not like it’s a matter of confidentiality here. Now we have to wait until he gets here.”
“Look, Gabe, Max isn’t a rookie. He knows what he’s doing. He’s not just some homicide dick, he’s FBI. He knows more than you will ever know, and he has connections that even I wish I had. So let’s just sit here and wait for him to get here. If he wants us to sit tight, there’s a good reason. And if he doesn’t want to tell us over the phone, there’s a good reason for that, too.” I felt like I was lecturing a kindergartner.
I knew that Gabe knew better, but his instinct was to save his wife. He was thinking like a husband, not a cop. I needed him to think like a cop.
It didn’t take long for Max to arrive. By that time, the men who had moved into the living room had left the room and shut off the lights.
I got out of the car to talk to Max. I felt it best to leave Gabe out of it for a moment.
“What was it you couldn’t tell me over the phone?” I asked.
Max got out of the car, shut the door, and stood in front of me. You don’t have to worry about Cortnie. She’s safe.”
I cocked my head and looked at him. “What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
The news the Max gave me was the last thing I expected. The car that we had tracked was FBI, and this was an FBI safe house. They had rented the Volvo in order to stay incognito. FBI cars stood out just a little too much, and people with the kind of knowledge the Russian mafia had would spot them from a mile away.
When Max repeated what he knew to Gabe, the relief that rushed through his body was palpable and visible.
“I just called, and it’s okay to go up to the house. Let’s go.” Max led the way.
He knocked on the door, and the three of us stood there quietly. I didn’t know about them, but I was holding my breath. The man who opened the door looked to
be about forty-plus years old. Slim, he wore an inexpensive pair of suit pants with cheap leather shoes. I could see a white undershirt beneath his dress shirt. They were here to work, as his sleeves were rolled up.
“Hey, I’m Agent Ogilvy. Sorry to have given you such a scare.”
He stepped back from the door and held it open wide so we could all enter. Max, Gabe, and I walked in just enough to stand in the entryway. To the left was a large living room with a sofa, a loveseat, and a chair all arranged around a wooden coffee table. The floors were hardwood. When I looked to my right, I saw the kitchen and dining room combo where Cortnie sat at the dining room table drinking something from a coffee mug. As soon as she saw Gabe, she jumped up and ran to him.
Cortnie wrapped her arms around Gabe, but he did not hug her back. She squeezed him tight, and said, “I’m so sorry. They wouldn’t let me call you. My phone fell when they took me, and I had no way to call you.” She turned her head to look at one of the agents. Well, if they had let me use a phone, I could’ve called you.”
Gabe put his hands on Cortnie’s hips and pushed her away from him. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”
Now that the reunion was over, Agent Ogilvy introduced the other agents who were dressed similar to him only in different colors. “These are Agents Jackson, Carmichael, and Reagan. We’ve been working on this case for four months.”
Being me, I said “Four months? We’ve been able to take them down in less than, what, three days?”
Agent Carmichael raised his brows, “Really? So where are the kidnappers?”
Okay, he had me there. We were able to find the girls, just not the guys who took them. “You got me there.”
“Max tells us that twelve girls have been rescued from the house on Somo Road,” said Reagan.
Max nodded. “Twelve girls.”
“My partner at the agency, Mimi Capurro and her partner, Nick Christianson, who is a homicide detective, bussed the girls to the hospital to have them checked out. Currently, they’re staying at our offices for the night. Our building happens to be an old Victorian home, and we have three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs.”
“That’s very nice of them. But we will need to contact these girls and talk to them soon. How soon do you think they’ll be ready to talk?”
I had no idea. I hadn’t even had any contact with them. “I don’t know what’s going on with that end of things. I just know that the girls have been removed from the house, taken to the hospital, and are spending the night at our office.”
“What I’d like to know is why you took my wife?” Gabe asked.
“Let’s all go into the living room and sit down,” Jackson said.
Everybody filed into the living room, and found a place to sit while the agents stood.
Ogilvy began the explanation. “Agent Carmichael had been sitting in the rented Volvo about a hundred yards from the house. He was tucked behind an access road, and was pretty much out of sight because there was a line of sunflowers. They kept him slightly obscured from the view of the house. It didn’t hurt that the house was surrounded by that tall fence. Earlier tonight, he saw movement outside the house. There hadn’t been any movement for almost eight hours prior. We just found this location earlier in the day and weren’t ready to move in yet. He slowly crept up to the house and saw someone climbing around in the bushes alongside the fence.” Ogilvy looked over at Cortnie. “He grabbed Cortnie and took her to the ground. He had no idea who she was. He didn’t know if she was with the trafficking ring, or someone who was going to mess up our case. Turns out, you could’ve messed up our case.”
I looked around the room at the people with me and the FBI agents. “Turns out, we saved a bunch young girls from being prostituted again.”
Now it was their turn to look around the room.
Agent Reagan asked, “Can you tell us what you know, and how you ended up in that house?”
Since I was the ringleader on our end, I considered myself the designated spokesperson. I told them how Alma had come to the agency asking for her friend to be rescued, how she told us how to find the house, and how we ended up there. I told him about our trip to Oakland, to International Boulevard, and how it had yielded nothing.
“Actually, if you hadn’t taken Cortnie, we probably wouldn’t have saved those girls. My business partner, Mimi, went back to the house when Cortnie didn’t respond on the radio. That’s when she decided to go in the house and look for Cortnie. In hindsight, it was a stupid move, because she could’ve gotten killed. But in reality, that’s not what happened. The only people home were the young girls, chained up in the house and stark naked.”
“Yes, we saw the girls being brought into the house earlier in the day. But before we could do anything, the people who drop them off were gone. That’s why we were sitting on the house, waiting for them to come back.” Agent Jackson paced the room as he spoke.
“What about the girl who came to you? What’s her story?” Agent Ogilvy asked.
“She says they were abducted from her car in the carport at her apartment. She said she was able to escape, but her friend wasn’t.”
Max said, “Crap, I forgot to check on Alma. I’m going to head back, while you guys get caught up. I want to see what she’s been up to.”
Max stood to leave, and everyone shook hands are all around. I walked him to the door.
“Do you think there’s anything to check up on?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to look into it. I want to see if she’s been watching movies, or who knows what else.” Max walked out the door, and I closed it behind him.
When I walked back into the living room, Reagan was in the middle of the story of how they had gotten so close to catching them. Catching Cortnie had been a kink in their routine, but after the girls had been removed from the house, they had put a new agent at the location. Knowing the type of people they were dealing with, they wanted to be heavily armed.
“If those monsters come back, we will know. And we’ll take them down,” Reagan said.
Carmichael added, “At least the girls are safe. This group anyway.”
“There are more?” Cortnie asked.
The look on Ogilvy’s face told us everything, but he said it anyway. “There are always more.”
Carmichael stepped forward and said, “Nothing more is going to happen tonight. Let’s go home and get some sleep.”
Jack said, “This is home for now.”
Gabe, Cortnie, and I stood.
“Thank you for giving us the details of your investigation. I’m sorry if we did anything to screw it up for you, but it was my job to save that girl,” I said.
Ogilvy said, “No harm, no foul. The girls are safe, and we’ll get these guys. My only fear is that we won’t get the other group of girls that they have stashed. We just need to find their Achilles’ heel, so we can get them to start talking. They’ll definitely be more afraid of the mafia they work for than they will be of the FBI.”
“Can’t you offer them immunity? Witness protection?” Cortnie asked.
“Yes, that’s an option. But these men are lifers. They’ll go back to doing what they do, only now without a boss, or they’ll hook up with another boss. I hate to leave child sex traffickers on the street in any way whatsoever.”
Gabe took me back to the office, then he and Cortnie went home. I stood outside my car, and for one second, I thought about going inside to see how things were going. Then I thought better of it, got my car and drove home. I was almost too tired to care.
Seventeen
Mimi
Nick and I had slept on the couch in the office, and didn’t wake until Lydia and Uta arrived. I ran up the stairs to check on the girls, who were just waking. Nick stayed downstairs to explain to Lydia and Uta that we had company.
A few hours of sleep had done wonders for the girls. They were definitely more animated and coherent. The oldest of the girls came forward and hugged me.
“Tha
nk you. Thank you.” She squeezed me so hard, I didn’t know how she could have this much energy.
“What’s your name?”
“Adriana,” she said.
“Well, Adriana, do you think that you can wrangle these girls, get them up, and get their teeth brushed? By the time everyone is ready, we should have breakfast downstairs.”
Adriana nodded her head. “Absolutely.”
She’d already turned around and begun to herd the girls into the two bathrooms before I was down the stairs.
At the bottom of the stairs, Nick said, “I’m going to the store for groceries. It will be cold cereal and milk, because I’m not going to cook for a dozen girls. I’m not cooking for a dozen anybody.”
I stood one step above him and loved that I was almost taller than him. I kissed him on the lips and said, “I’m the luckiest girl in the world. And I love cold cereal.”
“And I love you. But I have to get to work. I’ll drop off the groceries, then head into the office.” He lifted his right arm and sniffed his armpit. “Nothing a little deodorant won’t take care of.”
I laughed. “Gross.”
Nick elbowed me. “I’m going home and take a shower first. I promise.”
And with that, he was out the front door.
I never realized how small our kitchen was until we tried to fit Lydia, Uta, and twelve girls in it. Uta, being the brilliant woman that she is, shuttled half of them into the living room and let them eat at the coffee table. The noise in the house was more than my brain could handle.
I closed myself away in my office, opened the bottom drawer of my desk, and pulled out an Excedrin Migraine tablet. I planned to take one, but ended up taking two. I dry swallowed them, because I’d forgotten to bring a bottle of water into the office with me. I nearly gagged and puked them back up.
I heard a knock at my door. “Come in.”
Standing in front of me in the open doorway was Cortnie. My headache suddenly forgotten, I dashed across the room and wrapped my arms around her.
Trespassers Will Be Prostituted. Page 12