“Does all of this seem completely surreal to you?” Rachel asked Conrad when they were once again alone in their room. “I’m struggling to wrap my brain around the fact that we’re here with a bunch of spy-types getting ready to infiltrate a human trafficking ring – especially when it feels more like a dorm during finals week.”
A hint of a smile tugged at Conrad’s mouth. “So now wouldn’t be the time to mention that Veronica wants us all to go out for tapas tonight? She says it’s our last chance to do something fun before we get started tomorrow.”
“It won’t be dangerous, all of us being seen out together?” Hope crept into Rachel’s voice. She dearly wanted to go out.
“Maybe we’ll go incognito. I knew there was a reason I hadn’t bothered to shave yet.”
“Well, that and the scruffy look you’ve been sporting lately is kind of hot.”
“Is it? I thought you were a clean-cut kind of girl.”
“So did I,” she eyed him. “But there is something pretty fantastic about you right now.”
“Wow. You want a baby, and you like my beard. I’m struggling to process all the changes.”
“It’s not a Grizzly Adams beard. It’s scruff; that’s totally different,” she protested. His look said he wasn’t buying her argument. “Nevermind. I’m sorry I complimented you.”
With a chuckle rumbling deep in his chest, Conrad wrapped his arms around her when she would have walked away.
“Brat. Stop it. You can’t be a butt to me and then win me over with…” Rachel’s admonishment died off, her mind unable to process what was supposed to come next. It was impossible to think of anything with his mouth roaming the base of her neck like that.
It was a while before Rachel and Conrad got around to dressing for dinner, and they didn’t get much studying done. She did spend a lot of time relishing what it felt like to hold his beautiful face in her hands, the silk of his hair slipping through her fingertips.
When the time came, she donned a strikingly feminine sundress with rich blues and splashes of yellow in its floral print. With its v-neck and tailored waist, it had a certain ‘60s flair that appealed to Rachel. She wondered who had stocked her closet and if she got to keep the clothes when this was all over. She immediately felt guilty for worrying about something as frivolous as stupidly cute clothes – until she found the heels that went with the outfit. Then she wondered if she could keep those too.
She swept her golden hair into an up-do. After days in the sun with Conrad, her skin was already several shades darker than usual. It wasn’t much of a transformation, but it was different enough from her typical style to make Rachel confident that unless someone looked closely, they wouldn’t recognize her as the face on the evening news.
Conrad had dressed in a pair of jeans and a white button-up shirt, the crisp, clean fabric standing in stark contrast to his deep copper skin. It was a simple outfit, but he still looked like a present waiting to be unwrapped. He wasn’t exactly the kind of man who could go incognito – he had a very memorable presence. Still, between the hair and the facial hair, there was enough of a change in his appearance that someone would have to be looking for him to recognize him – or so Rachel hoped.
Rick was adamant that no one seemed the wiser that any of them were in Atlanta, and human traffickers certainly weren’t staking out the Carroll Street Café waiting for them to go to dinner.
“Besides,” he promised her, “traffickers think people like you are a joke. If they’re going to go after someone, it’ll be one of us.”
“That’s not comforting in the least.” Still, Rachel decided if Rick thought it was safe, she should stop worrying and simply enjoy the evening.
And it was an enjoyable evening. About halfway through their second round of tapas, Rachel realized this was her and Conrad’s first date in over two years – an amusing thought, given the current status of their relationship. She leaned her head against his arm and let a happy sigh escape.
Across the table, Harmony was offering Vance some of the portobello caprese off the plate in front of her. Rachel knew little of the young couple, except for bits and pieces she’d caught at the dinner table. She knew Vance had been in Rome on a rescue mission when Julia’d been taken, but never found out why. Harmony was a mystery altogether. They fascinated her, though – so beautiful and so in love.
“How did you and Vance meet?” Rachel asked Harmony.
Harmony paused for a beat before responding, making Rachel wonder if she had misread the body language between the young couple. “I was a prostitute, and he was hired muscle for my pimp.”
It was Rachel’s turn to pause before answering as she wracked her brain for a possible response to that statement. It was Conrad who came to her rescue.
“And here I thought our story was the interesting one,” he replied with an easy grin.
“Sorry if I made you uncomfortable just throwing it out there like that,” Harmony apologized, a blush stealing across her features. “We’re going to work together, though, and I’ve found it’s easier to just get it out in the open early on rather than have my past hanging over me. I hate it when I grow to like someone only to have them flip out when they find out my former life.”
“My uncle used to say that opinions are like belly buttons: everyone has one.” Rachel impulsively reached out to take Harmony’s hand. “I would venture to say that pasts are too. Anyone who would reject you for yours is most likely in serious denial about their own.”
Vance noticeably relaxed at her words. “I knew I liked you better than that other reporter guy.”
“Brian? I will be sure to tell him you said that,” Rachel laughed. “Actually, he’s a good guy, probably one of my favorite people in the business.”
“You know, he might be able to help us,” Veronica said, her mind turning to business. “Time is of the essence; if you brought him on board, he could help chase down the rest of the story while you’re here.”
“I thought about that. And truthfully, having both of us on the story would give it more impact. He’d probably be willing. I can call him once we have something to go on.”
“What if he won’t?” Vance asked.
“Then I’ll go back to New York and run the story myself,” Rachel decided, earning nods from around the table. They all knew the importance of getting the media to break the story and of having a respected household name be the one to bring the tale to American living rooms and water coolers.
Human traffickers might consider those raising awareness a joke, but in truth, they relied heavily on the American public being unaware and unconcerned. The moment parents started registering that it was their own children in danger and doing something about it was the moment the scales would begin to tip in the fight.
The conversation grew light again. The wine flowed freely, and they all ate more tapas than they intended. When they made their way back to the house, it was to curl up in the chairs and couches scattered around the living room, sipping coffee and having the conversations they couldn’t have in a public restaurant.
“I have to ask – what happened in Rome?” Rachel saw her chance to get the scoop on where Vance had been during Julia’s rescue.
“That was an amazing rescue.” Harmony beamed proudly at Vance. “I still can’t believe that all came together the way it did.”
“I picked up some Internet chatter that suggested a child was going to be trafficked from our Eastern seaboard to the Mideast,” Rick began the tale. “We knew what state he lived in, his age, and his general appearance, but we had no name and no clue which town.”
“But Rick was able to track the planned route, and we knew the last leg of the flight was out of Rome,” Veronica explained.
“So I contacted a friend at Interpol, and they reached out to the airport in Rome to explain the situation. The airport delayed the flight with a made-up story about engine trouble,” Vance recounted, taking over the story. “It was a nightmare, staking out the airpor
t with no idea which child we were looking for – or if they were even still there. Rick kept saying they were, but we just couldn’t find the child who matched the description. Then a boy who’d been asleep on a man’s shoulder woke up, looked at the man, and said, ‘You’re not my father.’ The guy took off, but Interpol jumped him pretty quick.”
“Wow. How old was the boy?” Rachel was stunned at what she was hearing.
“Twelve. A buyer had seen his picture on Chatspace. He’d been drugged to sleep through the flight, but it was delayed long enough that he finally woke up.”
A chill ran the length of Rachel’s spine. She’d give anything to rewind the clock so she could prevent her own sister from ever having posted a picture on that website.
“Is the boy okay?” Conrad asked.
“He will be. Physically, he’s fine. He’s back with his parents, though they’ve relocated as a safety precaution,” Vance told them.
“Do you guys ever get discouraged? I mean, do you ever think maybe this thing is too big to fight? It feels like they’re everywhere.” Rachel often broke a story and then moved on to the next. She wondered how hard it must be to stand and chip away at the same iceberg every single day, knowing you weren’t even making a dent in its tip.
“Sometimes it feels a little futile,” Veronica admitted. “But then I look at the ones we have saved. All our efforts might seem small when you look at the big picture, but they’re worth everything to the one person we just set free. So we keep going because we know there’s one more out there, waiting to be rescued.”
“Besides, once you see this thing, once you know what they’re doing to our babies, how do you go back to normal?” Rick lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug, his gesture belying the sheen that had formed in his eyes.
“I know what you mean.” Rachel thought of her own sister. “My whole world was about my career until they took my sister. Now my career is the farthest thing from my mind. It definitely gave me a radical change of perspective.”
Rick looked Rachel dead in the eye. “I can’t promise that after this mission you’ll have your life back. These guys are big, and they’re organized. You might always have to look over your shoulder. But we can hopefully slow these guys down. Atlanta is a major hub – human beings are brought in from North Korea like they’re cattle, girls are shipped over from Eastern Bloc countries because johns here think they’re exotic, our own children as young as eight are shipped out of the country in droves, headed for some other country’s red light district. If we can cripple their ability to move victims freely through this town, then that’s a dent.”
“We already struck one blow in Atlanta when we took out one of the major players,” Veronica added. “Now the cartel that took Julia is trying to step in to fill the power vacuum left when the Kulenović operation fell.”
Vance sat up a little straighter in his chair. “If we move now, before they’ve fortified themselves, we have a good chance to deliver a crippling blow. Then maybe we can get the attention of enough people that laws will start to change and parents will start to think about what information they’re sharing and how. And we haven’t even begun to look at the foster care system. Those kids deserve so much more than where they’ll end up when they fall through the cracks.”
Vance’s voice took on a different tenor as he spoke of the foster children lost to the black hole of human trafficking. Rachel didn’t miss the calming hand Harmony placed on his arm. It made the reporter in her wonder what she didn’t know about his story. Thoughts of Vance tickled the back of her brain as she drifted off to sleep that night. There was something about his quiet strength that made Rachel want to peel back the layers to get at the heart of that story.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
RACHEL HAD BEEN UNDERCOVER BEFORE, but she’d never been as terrified as she was walking into the upscale office building in the heart of Atlanta. Her stomach fluttered with so many nerves, she was moderately concerned she’d throw up on someone or pass out before the hour was over. She was also fairly certain she’d sweat right through the makeup Veronica had applied to change Rachel from the face America knew and loved to that of a rather hard, if not plain, businesswoman in town for the purpose of buying people.
Rick had supplied her with credentials to get her through the door. Vance had coached her for days on how to behave during the meeting. Conrad had given them all a character profile on the players he’d known and worked with in Atlantic City.
Harmony was absent, having already been inserted into her role. Rachel hadn’t been comfortable with that portion of the plan. Now that Rachel knew Harmony, it downright horrified her to know the girl was once again walking the streets undercover in hopes of picking up the chatter that wouldn’t make it to the Internet. Most sales of girls happened online, but certain information could still only be picked up by being on the street and keeping one’s ears open.
Still, now that she was sitting across from an actual trafficker, a man who made a living torturing and selling other human beings, Rachel could only think about one thing: playing her role without blacking out in terror. She prayed her bubbling emotions wouldn’t show as she recited her lines to the salesman, letting him know she was looking for a girl who could not only keep an orderly house but also take care of her husband’s peculiar tastes.
“I honestly just don’t have the time or patience for either.” Rachel held her hands up in a helpless gesture. “I can’t tell you how happy I was when Marissa referred you to me.”
“Marissa is a valued customer. I can assure you her trust is well-placed; you’ll be pleased with the range of product we have to offer.” The wiry man with immaculate hair and hygiene held out a catalog of children as if they were carpet swatches.
Outwardly, Rachel arched a disdainful eyebrow and flipped through the pages organized by age, gender, and coloring. Inwardly, she swallowed back the bile that rose in her throat and said a silent prayer that the camera embedded in her contact lenses would capture the images she was seeing.
“Beautiful catalog. How do you get such candid shots?” Rachel ran her fingers over the image of a little girl who looked much like Julia had not so very long ago. Luminous brown eyes looked back at the camera, and a smile lit up the girl’s face as she ran through a sprinkler in her two-piece swimsuit, obviously enjoying the summer sunshine in her own front yard.
“Chatspace,” he answered matter-of-factly, looking down at the picture Rachel had paused over. “That one is a fine selection. Very exotic-looking, but she’s right here in Georgia. Since transport won’t be high, we could deliver her to your door with papers for fifty thousand.”
“With papers?”
“You’ll be able to prove she’s yours and take her anywhere you want around the globe.”
“Impressive,” Rachel murmured, flipping through several more pages. “Do you have anything older than these for sale?”
“Most of our clients prefer to choose from this catalog. The trend is definitely for youth.” The man pulled another full-color glossy book from his desk. “But we do have another catalog. They cost a little more; there is more involved, and the product can be a bit more difficult to handle.”
Rachel pretended to think. “I want something with red hair. About 17. Brown eyes. No freckling, though.” She wrinkled her nose in disdain, glad for the layers of makeup that covered her own smattering of freckles.
“I’m afraid we don’t have anything like that on the shelf.”
“Are you saying you’re unable to deliver?”
“Not at all,” he promised smoothly. “Let me make a few calls. I would imagine we’ll be able to make delivery within the week, for the right price.”
“You have my contact information.” Rachel rose, giddy with relief that she was in the home stretch of her performance.
“I’ll be in touch,” he promised again, rising as she did.
As Rachel slid into the sterling gray Town Car waiting for her at the curb, she felt it had almost b
een too easy. She made the mistake of muttering as much under her breath as she leaned back in the seat, closing her eyes and letting the tension ebb from her body.
In the driver’s seat, Rick harrumphed. “Easy? Do you have any idea how many hours I put into building your front? How many hours it took to even get you through that door?” He sounded only halfway kidding.
“It’s so hard to get good help these days.” Rachel gave a weary but playful grin and waved her hand dismissively. “Home, Jeeves.”
“Call me Jeeves again and you’re walking.”
“That would blow the cover,” she reminded him.
He opened his mouth to retort, then shook his head and muttered “Jeeves” under his breath instead. Rachel chuckled, earning a look that was a mix between amusement and irritation.
“Did I do okay?” she asked, leaning back against the seat.
“You did well,” Rick acknowledged. “Ronnie is tracking their movement online and any phone calls. The second you left, they put the word out to some of the street gangs that there’s a special order to fill. Vance is watching Harmony in case they make a move to grab her.”
“But he won’t let them actually take her, right?”
“Ideally, we catch them in the act.”
“Ideally,” Rachel repeated, closing her eyes again. If the order she put in wound up causing Harmony pain, she’d never forgive herself.
Rick dropped her off at the Four Seasons. She went straight to the room that had been booked as part of her cover, not stopping until she could kneel before the immaculate toilet to lose her breakfast. She was alone in the room. Conrad was still with Rick and Veronica at the house on Carroll Street. Harmony was on the streets doing God-knows-what in the name of saving unknown children from slave traders.
It hit her like a tidal wave: her little sister had been in the clutches of these monsters. Julia had been a picture in a glossy catalog. Some creep out there had pointed to a picture of Julia Phelps and said, “That’s the one.” And because he’d uttered those words, Julia’s life would never be the same. Rachel’s stomach took another vicious turn. She clutched at her mid-section and curled up on the floor, not bothering to take off her makeup, even though it weighed heavy on her skin. She wanted to claw it away from her face but couldn’t muster the will to do anything other than lie there in sickened shock.
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