by Peg Brantley
Shit. Am I next? Not here. Not me. This can’t be right.
And why me? I don’t even hang out in the part of town where this might happen. So not Alexis Halston.
Relief and surprise flood me when I realize I’m still fully clothed. They haven’t even removed my shoes. I push up from the cactus-blanket and swing my legs to the floor. A wave of dizziness crashes through my head and slams into my bones. I think if I don’t lie back down I’m going to hurl. I steady myself. Breathe normally.
A door, twenty feet away. Gotta get out of here.
No one’s watching. I stand and immediately want to barf. Be strong. The door’s right there. No way I’m going to stay in this stink hole another minute.
I inch toward escape using the wall as support. I can do this. I have to do this.
“Where do you think you’re going?” A well-muscled guy in a taut t-shirt stands between me and freedom.
“There’s been a mistake.”
He grins, showing perfect white teeth. He’s clean. I bet he even smells nice. Not like the rest of the people here, myself included.
I try again. “Look at me. I know I’m a mess, but do I look like I belong here?”
He’s still grinning.
“I can make it worth your while. I have money.”
“Let me see it.”
“I don’t… I don’t…” I feel a tear roll down my face. Shit.
My back against the wall, I sink to the floor. Bright Smile is laughing out loud.
I’m in trouble.
It’s become more lucrative and much safer to sell malleable teens than drugs or guns.
—Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girl Next Door
CHAPTER SEVEN
Present Day
Cade slipped off her jacket, tied it around her waist, then closed her eyes. Turning her face toward the morning sun, she reveled in the gentle warmth that awakened her spirit to the day. She rotated slightly and opened her eyes.
The scene before her took her breath away.
As much as she loved Louisiana, these Colorado mountains stirred her soul. At once, they called to her inner strong adventurer and illuminated her insignificance. They beckoned her to discover their sweet beauty and recognize their capacity for violence. Nature lived in both Louisiana and Colorado, but in Colorado it seemed bigger, more vibrant.
It was almost eight o’clock. Her morning habit was to take a hike whenever weather permitted. She began the walk back to Mex’s home. Constructing the house had been the dream of Mex and his late wife, Maria. Mex had survived the horror of murder—his family’s murders—in part by building it. A fabulous property, every inch boasted views and quality and craftsmanship, as well as sadness and loss and a dream forever dead.
Back at the house she busied herself in the kitchen and decided it would be a fine morning for mimosas. She checked the fridge. No champagne. There were two more possibilities. The wine cellar in the walkout level or Mex’s office refrigerator. The office was closer.
When Cade walked into the room, Mex’s cellphone was vibrating on his desk. By the time she got to it, the phone had gone silent. She opened the small refrigerator and extracted a bottle of champagne. As she left the office, she grabbed the phone and looked at it.
Fourteen missed calls. All but one were from the same number. Someone with a Denver area code wanted to get in touch with Mex Anderson. Badly.
Cade put the phone near Mex’s favorite place to sit in the kitchen. He loved the views from this room. Who wouldn’t? Floor to ceiling windows that looked out on everything the high country had to offer. Wildlife, mountains, blue skies.
She inserted a pod of bold coffee into the Nespresso machine and stood back to receive the first fragrant burst of heaven. After the coffee finished brewing, she emptied the full capsule container into the recycle bag, added warm cream, then settled in to wait for Mex. If there was an emergency, and with thirteen calls an emergency was a good bet, mimosas might not be appropriate. An emergency also meant Mex could use a few minutes to enjoy a bit more of the morning. Cade didn’t know exactly when she’d become this protective, but she had.
Mex walked in to the kitchen. “Enjoy your walk?”
“Always.”
She waited for him to make his coffee selection. The tough guy tended to like a lighter coffee choice and she loved to tease him.
When he sat down, she barely glanced in his direction. “Think maybe that’s got too much kick, Kemo Sabe? Don’t want you overdoing it or anything.”
“Watch it, woman. This helps me stay calm and in control. You don’t want me amping the meter.”
Cade laughed. She loved everything about this man. Except maybe his house. The house was Mex Anderson’s Taj Mahal, and Cade felt Maria’s presence everywhere. “I was going to make mimosas, but those might have to wait.”
“For what?” He waggled his brows. “Do you have something in mind that involves heavy breathing?”
“You wish.” She flicked a finger toward his phone. “I think you should see who’s been trying to get hold of you. If it’s your other girlfriend, tell her I’m on to her and her hours are numbered.”
Mex keyed in his voicemail number and put it on speaker. “Just in case you’re even half-way serious.”
The flight attendant’s instincts told her something bad was happening on that airplane. [Shelia] Fedrick says she was able to tell the teenage girl to go to the bathroom, where she had left the girl a note. The teenager responded on the back of the note: “I need help.”… The group Airline Ambassadors is hoping to train more flight attendants to be as vigilant as Shelia Fedrick was on that 2011 flight. The nonprofit is training flight crew to spot signs of human trafficking, like passengers who appear scared or drugged, have visible bruises, or aren’t allowed to speak for themselves, NBC News reports.—Flight attendant says she saved girl from human trafficking with a secret note, by Alex Martichoux,
San Francisco Chronicle, updated February 6, 2017
CHAPTER EIGHT
The first voicemail spilled into the sanctuary of the kitchen. “Mr. Anderson, my name is Steven Halston. My daughter has been missing for three days and I want to hire you to find her. Call me as soon as possible.” He sounded like a businessman calling to discuss a fine point in a contract negotiation.
The tone in the next message, roughly one hour later, was slightly more stressed. “Look, Mr. Anderson. I can pay you whatever you want. You found that drug cartel girl, and my missing daughter can’t possibly be more difficult to locate. Call me.”
Mex skipped to the last recorded communication, expecting to hear that the wayward daughter had turned up and that he should ignore all the previous messages. Something like, “I’m so embarrassed, blah blah blah. Please disregard everything. I’m sorry. I look forward to running into you on the golf course one day.”
Instead, he heard sobbing. “Please. They found her car.” The next bit was unintelligible. Then, “I know I’ve been a lousy father, but she shouldn’t have to pay for that.”
Mex disconnected and sat the phone back on the counter. He looked out the window, lost in a father’s pain.
Cade slipped a warm poppy seed muffin in front of him. “You’re gonna need your strength, and this is all we have available at the moment.”
Mex shook his head. “Damn.” He pushed the phone away.
“What are you doing? Why aren’t you calling him back?” Cade sat next to him, her entire body on high alert.
“I can’t do this again.”
“Bullshit.”
“She’s just another runaway.”
“You won’t know until you meet with the man,” Cade said. “And you won’t be able to live with yourself if you don’t.”
“Fuck,” Mex said as he reached for his phone.
* * *
“Hey, it’s me,” Mex said when Darius picked up. “I need you to get me everything you can on a guy named Steven Halston. He’s the father of a missing teenage girl. I’ve talk
ed to him and think he’s legit. You’ve got a contact in the Greenwood Village PD, don’t you? Can you contact him to get us up to speed on the case?”
“Hi, I’m fine. Thanks for asking. And you?”
Mex rolled his eyes. “Sorry. I’m also fine. Did you notice that tomatoes were on sale at City Market and isn’t the weather wonderful?”
Darius chuckled. “My Greenwood PD contact moved to Chicago.”
“You got someone else?”
“Easily done. What’s up?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Feel like a trip to Denver with Cade and me?”
“Like old times, huh? When are you leaving?”
“In about thirty minutes.”
“Wish I could, buddy, but I’m heading out tonight for a two-day signing stint in California.”
“Do you have time to check on Halston for me?”
“No problem. Give me fifteen. The Greenwood PD info might take longer. Give me the details.”
While Mex told him what he knew about the missing girl between bites of poppy seed muffin, he made himself another coffee. Cade signaled from the hallway asking if he wanted to take an unopened bottle of his meds with him. He nodded and then answered another question from the journalist turned true crime writer.
Fifteen minutes later Mex received an email from Darius. Steven Halston was the managing partner of Halston & Barrow, an international law firm with offices in fifty cities including Dubai, Milan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Mex wondered why Halston would choose to live in Denver, but it didn’t take long to get his answer. At least in part, Steven Halston liked being a very big fish in a medium-sized pond. His name was associated with at least seven boards of major corporations headquartered in Denver, and linked prominently with the same people over and over again who all appeared frequently in the society pages for their philanthropic gestures.
Halston’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary was a big enough story to warrant a full-page spread in The Denver Post. Mex wondered if the law firm had paid for the coverage as a soft-sell piece. He looked for more information on Adele Halston but the pickings were meager. There were a few photos of her at charity events in which she looked disconnected and bored. Mex felt an immediate sympathy for the sad Mrs. Halston. He didn’t see any mention of children.
Mex sent a return email to Darius, thanking him for the information and asking for more on the wife.
Cade had made reservations at the Ritz-Carlton. They would have everything they needed from the parents this afternoon so there was no reason to book more than one night. They’d have dinner at Elway’s. Mex could already taste the steak.
“C’mon, Cowboy. Let’s hit the road,” Cade called as she walked out the door to the garage.
Mex followed and tossed his gear in the back of the black Range Rover.
They were forty minutes into the four-hour drive when Mex’s phone rang. He hit the Bluetooth button and the jazz they’d been listening to was replaced by Darius’s resonant voice.
“Adele Halston is just this side of a ghost, my friend. She was active and social her entire life as a debutante, and for a few years after she married Steven. There were reports that she was pregnant, even a fuzzy picture of her at a garden party with a child on her lap, then nothing.”
“I can’t use nothing,” Mex said.
“Nor will you have to.”
Mex knew his friend. “What do you want?”
“If this is another epic kidnapping, I want in.”
“So you can write another book that will make you money at the same time it makes me miserable?”
“Yep.”
Mex sighed. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
“Alexis was not the Halston’s first child. Samuel Halston, named after Steven’s father, was kidnapped when he was three years old from the Wash Park ice rink, which is near where the young couple were living at the time.”
Mex reached out to grab Cade’s hand. “I’m betting there wasn’t a happy ending.”
“The boy’s body was found a week later. He’d been sodomized and murdered.”
“He was fucking three.” Mex could barely press the words out.
“Yeah, Mex. He was.”
Silence filled the Rover. Then he felt the loss. And the guilt.
Antonio.
Darius’s soft voice gently shoved the silence into a corner. “You know I would’ve told you anyway.”
“I know.”
There were 8,042 reported cases of human trafficking in the United States last year—the most ever, according to a report released last week by the nonprofit organization Polaris. Most of those came through calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline [1-888-373-7888], which was established by the federal government in December 2007 and is operated by Polaris in a public-private partnership.—Flight Attendants Fight Human Trafficking With Eyes in the Sky, by Jacey Fortin,
for The New York Times, February 7, 2017
CHAPTER NINE
Two Days Ago
ALEXIS
I took a shower earlier. Is it morning? Not possible to tell in this windowless prison. They gave me makeup but it’s used. I get that now’s not the time to be bitchy. Now’s the time to play along. To figure out where the hell I stand. But still.
A guy is here with a camera. Are you kidding me? He centers me in front of a sheet that’s been strung against one of the cement walls.
“Look,” he says, “I’m not looking for Vogue or People or even a driver’s license photo.”
He shoves me against the wall. A creepy smile plays on his lips, sending a shiver down my spine. “I need to prove you haven’t been hurt. That you’re good to go.”
For a split second I imagine bashing my head into that white sheet, coming away bloody and battered, but I know it wouldn’t matter. I’m either screwed as “good to go” or I’m screwed to suffer another form of humiliation.
I think about Donny and then blow his lying face out of my thoughts. If I ever get out of this, Donny will be the first person I look up on my revenge list.
When I was in the shower I fantasized. I go all kung-fu (no idea where that came from) and escape this horror show. I could’ve gone to the cops, but instead I track down Donny. He opens the door to his apartment and the expression on his face when he sees me is priceless. The only question I have is whether I’ll kick the shit out of him or sell him into the same place he sold me. One would give me immediate gratification; the other would take time but be pure justice.
The flash goes off. Once. Twice. Three times. After the last flash, the photographer gives a nod to one of the guards, then leers at me. I can’t move.
“I agreed to take my payment in pussy.”
The guard hauls me behind a cheap curtain. This is not my cue to resist. “Any noise from you and you’ll wish you didn’t have a throat.” He throws me down onto a floor mat in the corner and I back into it for a weird sense of security.
I consider what the photographer has at stake, so when he comes in, drops his pants and begins to come down on top of me, I pull my leg back and kick him in the nuts as hard as I can. When he’s done screaming I lean into him and say, “If I’m not ‘good to go’ asshole, you’ll be running for your useless life. I suggest you sit back and be thankful you still have one.”
The photographer draws his fist back and strikes a blow to my upper chest, a second punch to my side. “Some things are more important than others, bitch. You’d best learn your lesson.” He continues with his punishing blows.
Terrified. I’m aware I’d blacked out. For how long?
He’s gone.
Terrified.
My chest burns with every breath. I move my legs, my arms, testing for pain. While everything hurts, there’s no sharp pain indicating a break, nothing that indicates I was raped.
Is this what my life has become? Pain and fear and survival?
My parents can’t help me now. Money can’t help me now. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole. Whatever mad
e sense before no longer does.
How long has it been? I have no idea.
These people, whoever they are, are trying to break me, and the only way I can think to survive is to treat it like a game. A game that I will not lose. A covering of fear and anger and determination descends on me.
I struggle to stand, the burning in my lungs makes me want to hurl. A hand reaches through the curtain and forces it open. Three more girls are shoved in with me. No one seems to notice the photographer as he leaves.
The man who’d brought the other girls looks at me. He points his finger. “You. Come now.”
If he would have simply walked me down the hallway to the staging area, we might have been okay. But the creep had to try and haul me. By the time we arrived, he was bleeding and I was pissed. Not my fault.
Bright lights flood my eyes. Beyond the blinding white, there are people. I can smell sweat competing with cologne. I’ve gone from pissed to full-blown angry. A moment later, sounds register. I’m being auctioned. Oh, God, how did I get here?
People were bidding. Like slavery days. Only it’s today.
And they’re bidding on me.
There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats its children.
—Nelson Mandela
CHAPTER TEN
Mex took a sip of coffee and placed his travel mug back in the holder. He and Cade were just outside the Golden area, west of Denver. They had another thirty minutes or so, depending on traffic, to get downtown to the Ritz. Their drive had been mostly quiet with a mix of blues and jazz for company, allowing each of them to reflect. Madeleine Peyroux played softly in the background.