by Susan Stoker
TJ had been tempted to follow her. See where she was living. Who she was living with. But had talked himself out of it every time. He knew himself, and knew seeing firsthand that she’d moved on, probably gotten married, maybe had a family, would kill him.
He knew Cruz had questions about his intense interest in Milena, but the other man had let him have his privacy.
After tonight, however, TJ had a feeling the space Cruz had given him was going to be a thing of the past. But talking about Milena, and the best and worst times in his life, wasn’t something he’d ever be comfortable doing.
TJ watched, a silent shadow, as Cruz entered the small, brightly lit interrogation room and handed Milena his jacket. She looked surprised, and TJ couldn’t blame her. She’d been sitting in the small, windowless room for an hour while the agents were busy talking to some of the children and teachers who’d been at the school. She was low on their priority list.
There weren’t a lot of “teachers” at the school, but that was because they weren’t actually instructing the students in reading, writing, or math problems. Everyone knew what was happening behind closed doors and they’d all go down for it.
As she shrugged on his jacket, he saw her eyes widen right before she turned her head to bury her nose in the collar.
* * *
Milena was exhausted. Not only tired, but scared out of her mind at the same time. She had no idea how long she’d been sitting in the sterile room, but it seemed like an eternity.
Not only that, but she was freezing. Living in Texas, she’d gotten used to buildings being overly air conditioned to combat the heat outside, but this was ridiculous. It had to be fifty degrees inside the tiny room. Her hands shook and her nose was ice cold. All she wanted to do was curl up in her bed at home and hide under the covers. But she was stuck in the ice-box room until someone came and questioned her.
Maybe they’d forgotten about her. Maybe everyone had gone home and she’d be found in the morning when a bad guy was dragged into the room to be questioned about some awful thing he’d done, and they’d be surprised to find her frozen, dead body lying on the floor.
Shaking her head, Milena tried to concentrate. She was being overly dramatic. She wasn’t going to freeze to death. She was chilled, yes, but she honestly wasn’t all that surprised. And all things considered, she’d rather be cold than hot. She wasn’t an idiot. The temperature had probably been turned down on purpose to make her uncomfortable. She’d watched enough forensic and cop shows to know how it worked.
Jumping in her chair when the door to the room was suddenly opened, Milena turned toward it. A tall man with short black hair entered. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a long-sleeve, black button-down shirt. He held out a leather jacket as he came closer.
“I apologize for the temperature of the room, Miss Reinhardt.”
She stared at the jacket for a beat, then reached for it before he changed his mind. As the man got settled in the seat across from her, Milena shrugged on the jacket.
She froze when a familiar scent wafted up from the leather.
Turning her head to see if she was simply losing her mind or if she’d smelled what she thought she had, Milena brought the collar of the leather jacket to her nose and inhaled. An earthy, musky scent filled her nostrils.
Goosebumps broke out on her arms and she squeezed her eyes shut, lost in the memory of the only man she’d ever loved. A man who had crushed her heart.
His parting gift was the only thing that had kept her from falling into a pit of despair after he’d left.
“My name is Agent Cruz Livingston, and I work for the FBI. I need you to tell me everything you can about your employment at the Bexar County School and Orphanage for Girls.”
His words brought her out of her reminiscing.
“Where’s Sadie?”
“She’s fine. She was questioned and sent home thirty minutes ago.”
Milena nodded and relaxed. She might be in trouble for working at the school, but since she’d brought Sadie there, she didn’t want her to be in hot water as well.
“I don’t know where to start,” she said quietly.
“How long have you been working there?” Cruz asked.
“About three and a half months. I was working at the women’s clinic downtown and was approached by Mister Jonathan…he’s Master Jeremiah’s son. Anyway, I’d noticed him before, kinda hanging out around the clinic, and when I approached to find out what his deal was, he told me that he worked at the school and they were looking for an experienced nurse to help with the pregnant teenagers. I sent him away, but researched the school when I got home. Everything seemed on the up and up. Did you know Master Jeremiah was given the key to the city a couple years ago for the philanthropic work he’s done over the years?”
The FBI agent in front of her didn’t nod, but didn’t shake his head either. “So did Jonathan come back after that?” he asked.
Milena nodded. “Every day. He begged me to come work for his dad. Said they were desperate, and that his father had looked into my credentials and decided I was just the person they needed.” She shrugged self-consciously. “I’m not stupid. I found out as much as I could about their philosophy, entry requirements—which I now know were completely bogus—and history before I agreed to talk to Master Jeremiah.”
“And how did that conversation go? Did you go out to the school for an interview?”
Milena shook her head. “No. He came to the clinic one afternoon. He was well-spoken and genuinely seemed to care about the girls at his school. I still wasn’t sure…I mean, he wanted me there three days a week for only four hours at a time. Twelve hours a week wasn’t all that much, and it would mean sacrificing my full-time hours at the clinic, taking me down to part-time there. I’d be losing my insurance and everything.”
“Let me guess, he made you an offer you couldn’t refuse,” Cruz said dryly.
Milena blushed but nodded. “Yeah. Said I could go on the school’s insurance, and the pay was more than what I was making at the clinic, full-time. I thought it was too good to be true, and said so. He reassured me that my expertise was worth it, and that I’d also be on call. If one of the girls needed me, he said I’d be expected to come out to the school no matter what time it was. I finally agreed.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you agree? No offense, but you live with your parents. You can’t actually be hurting for money.”
Milena’s hands clenched into fists in her lap. She hated when people judged her. Hated it. They had no idea what she’d been through and how much she owed her parents for helping her without making her feel like a burden. “I pay my way,” she said firmly. “I pay for groceries; I give my parents rent money even though they don’t ask for it. I haven’t taken a cent from them.”
“Then why live at home?” Cruz asked, leaning back in his chair.
Milena glared at the agent. “Why not?” she countered, not wanting to tell this man her reasons if she didn’t have to. She wasn’t ashamed of why she’d moved in with them, but she wasn’t about to tell this stranger her secrets.
Cruz was silent for a long minute. Milena refused to squirm under his assessment and resisted the temptation to ease the awkward silence by speaking.
Finally, he smiled, as if he was impressed with her ability to keep quiet. “Right, so…tell me about your job there at the school.”
And she did. She explained how she was responsible for the pregnant teenagers’ well-being. That she taught them what to eat and not eat while they were pregnant. She answered their questions about the upcoming birth and what would happen.
Cruz leaned forward when she was done speaking and put his forearms on the table in front of him. His eyes narrowed and he asked, “Did you ever come into contact with the other girls at the school? The younger ones?”
Milena shook her head.
“Not ever?” Cruz insisted.
“No. I wasn’t allowed to
go anywhere but the C ward.”
“Why was it called the C ward?”
Milena shrugged. “The only thing I can guess is because the names of all the girls there started with the letter C.”
“And you didn’t think that was odd?” Cruz asked, his brown eyes piercing in their intensity.
“Well, yeah, but that’s what they told me their names were. Christine, Cora, Callie, Cathy, and Claire.”
“Did the girls ever talk about their lives before they got pregnant?”
Milena shook her head again. “No. They seemed…scared to, if I’m being honest.”
“By all means, please be honest,” Cruz drawled.
She flushed, but forced herself to continue. The sooner she told this guy everything he wanted to know, the sooner she could go home to her family. “The girls were really well behaved. They were almost too obedient. They weren’t like the teenagers I treated in the downtown clinic. They seemed almost too innocent to be pregnant. The other weird thing was that Master Jeremiah didn’t want me to tell them what gender their babies were, although he insisted I tell him.”
“And you didn’t find that odd?”
Milena was getting sick of his suspicious tone. “Actually, I found it really odd. But by that point, I had already signed a nondisclosure agreement and had received my first month’s pay. I’d told the clinic director I’d be working part-time, and I was reliant on the school for my living expenses and insurance. Ultimately, I figured it didn’t matter if the girls didn’t know the gender of their babies. How I treated them wouldn’t change.”
“Hmmm,” Cruz murmured, leaning back in his seat and staring at her again. He chewed his lip for a moment before seemingly coming to a decision. He took a breath and began to speak. “The Bexar County School and Orphanage for Girls was a front for a massive child-abuse and sex-trafficking organization. Jeremiah Jones was orchestrating the abuse of every girl living under the school’s roof. Not only that, but when they ‘aged out,’ the girls were sold online to the highest bidder.”
Milena felt the blood drain from her face—and all she could do was stare at the agent with her mouth open in disbelief.
He continued. “He had separate sections of the school for the girls, depending on their ages. The babies were kept in one room. They generally weren’t abused. But on a girl’s second birthday, she was moved to the ‘littles’ room. From the ages of two to five, those girls were slowly introduced to the ‘rules’ of the school and how life would be for them from that point on. If the students were lucky, they weren’t raped…but all of those girls were exposed to the attentions of the ‘visiting teachers.’ Then, when they were five, the littles became ‘smalls.’ That’s where the more physical abuse started. For two years, those girls had to attend ‘classes’ with the visiting teachers.”
“Oh my God,” Milena said, covering her mouth with her hand. She felt like she was going to puke. But Agent Livingston wasn’t done.
“Some of the men who visited the school preferred the younger girls, but Jeremiah catered to everyone’s tastes. When the girls turned eight, they were called ‘bigs.’ As a big, they were expected to have learned all the rules. They weren’t allowed to speak unless ordered to. They did whatever the perverts who paid Jeremiah big bucks wanted them to. These girls literally didn’t know any other kind of life. All they knew was doing what they were told by Jeremiah and his ‘friends.’
“When they were teenagers—known as ‘misses’—the abuse slowed down, but it didn’t stop altogether. You were hired to make sure the babies they carried were healthy. If the baby was a girl, it was placed in the school system to suffer the same fate as her mom. If it was a boy…” Cruz shrugged. “It conveniently disappeared. Adopted by a couple desperate to have a child. And they paid handsomely for the privilege of having Jeremiah Jones broker the deal.”
Milena was afraid to ask, but she did anyway. “You said when they got too old…they were sold?”
There was no emotion on Cruz’s face, but somehow Milena knew he wasn’t as stoic as he appeared. “Yeah. When they turned eighteen or so, too old to appeal to Jeremiah’s…customers anymore, he set up an online auction on the dark web. Sold them to people all over the globe as sex slaves.”
The tears Milena had been holding back slipped over her lids and down her cheeks. “Have they been found?”
Cruz scoffed. His voice wasn’t harsh, but he definitely wasn’t holding back in order to spare her. “Miss Reinhardt, these girls had no names. No real names, that is. When they were babies, they were only assigned a number. Baby One. Baby Two, etc. Then when they were littles, their names started with L’s. Smalls started with S. Bigs started with B. Misses with M. When they got pregnant, their name was changed yet again to start with a C. If they were young enough, they went back to being a miss. When they were put up on the web to be sold, they were merely numbers once again. Full circle. We’re trying to find Jeremiah’s records on the sales but for all intents and purposes, those girls are gone. Probably dead…or wishing they were.”
Milena dropped her face into her hands and sobbed. She thought about Christine, and how she’d been so surprised and hopeful that she’d get to keep her baby when the school had been raided. Milena hated the thought that the baby boy could’ve been taken away to be adopted by someone without the girl’s consent, but that was better than the alternative. If the baby had been a girl, it would’ve gone into the “system” and had a lifetime of abuse in front of her.
Then something occurred to her—and her head whipped up. “I was helping him abuse those poor girls?”
Something shifted in Cruz’s eyes, and he said in a surprisingly gentle tone, “No. If anything, you were giving them a taste of what it was like to be treated like a human being, instead of a sex slave.”
“Oh God,” Milena moaned. She stood suddenly, knocking her chair backwards in the process. It fell to the floor with a loud clang but she didn’t seem to hear it in her agitation. “Oh God,” she repeated. “I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know! I can’t believe he was doing that to kids. I never even saw the children! He said there was a doctor employed full-time to take care of…” Her voice trailed off and she moaned once again.
“The doctor was abusing them too, wasn’t he?” She waved off Cruz’s answer when he opened his mouth. “Never mind, you don’t have to tell me. I know he was. The first time I examined the girls, they were terrified. I don’t know what that so-called doctor did to them, but it had to have been bad. Jesus…all those men who showed up at five when I was leaving were there to abuse the girls, weren’t they?”
Cruz nodded.
“The politicians, the cops, the businessmen…all of them?” Milena asked.
Cruz nodded again. “Every single one. And at the moment, they’re all being investigated and rounded up. One by one. They’re going to pay for what they’ve done.”
“How do you know who they are?”
“Jeremiah kept meticulous records on everyone who came to the school. Had cameras in all the rooms. A couple…clients…got nervous, and to make sure they kept quiet about what was happening, he blackmailed them. He held the careers of over a hundred men in this city in the palm of his hand.”
Milena bit her lip and stared at the FBI Agent. She’d thought he looked friendly enough when he’d first entered the room. He was good-looking and tall. She had a weakness for tall men. But at the moment, he looked ruthless. She had no doubt he’d do just as he said—make sure all the perverts who partook of Jeremiah’s immoral and hideous scheme would go to jail.
But wait…she was also a part of it, even if indirectly. Was she going to be arrested too? Was that why she’d been held for so long? “Am I going to jail?”
“Should you be?”
Milena stood on the other side of the room and stared at Cruz, honestly not sure how to respond. She opened her mouth to speak when a loud thump came from the mirror behind the agent.
Intellectually, Milena knew the mi
rror wasn’t really a mirror, but a window where someone, or several people, watched from the other side, but she’d blocked that out. After the bang on the window, she couldn’t ignore the fact that there was, indeed, someone observing her interview.
Someone who wasn’t happy about the turn in the conversation.
Another heavy thump sounded, and Milena jumped. Whoever was on the other side definitely wanted attention.
Surprisingly, Cruz smirked. Milena stared at him, totally confused.
“You’re not going to jail,” he told her, standing. He walked over to her chair, still lying on its side on the floor, and righted it. He held the back and gestured to the seat. “Come. Sit back down. I’ll explain what’s going to happen next and answer any other questions that you have.”
Warily, Milena inched toward the chair and sat at the very edge. Without commenting, Cruz walked back around the table and sat down. “It’s obvious you had no idea what was going on at the school. Not only that, you don’t exactly meet the criteria to be an insider.”
“The criteria?”
“You’re female, for one thing, so you obviously aren’t a customer of Jeremiah’s and his stable of girls,” Cruz told her.
Milena swallowed hard at hearing the poor abused children being described as belonging to a “stable.” It was appropriate though, as they’d been treated like animals…with no feelings or rights for as long as they’d resided at the school.
“And, I’m not trying to be rude, but you’re simply too old for Jeremiah’s tastes. You’re what…twenty-six?”
“Seven,” she told him.
“Right, you and Sadie are of no interest to Jeremiah. The school has been under investigation for quite a while, and what you’ve said you did there matches up with the records we confiscated from Jeremiah’s office.”
“I saw some of the men who came at night,” Milena said shakily. “Do I need to be worried about that?”
Cruz immediately shook his head. “I doubt it. They have enough to worry about. You weren’t blackmailing them, and they’re going to be more than aware that the evidence against them isn’t based on anything you saw. The videos, pictures, and bank records are going to do them in without any eyewitness testimony from you.”