Eight girls, Peter counted. And three boys. All with perfect oval or heart-shaped faces, full lips, gracefully arched brows. One, he guessed, might be as young as six, none older than twelve. Jesus, but the Thais were gorgeous! No wonder Bangkok was the sex capital of the world.
For most of the men present, Peter speculated, this was merely a floor show. These children were not intended for Thai consumption. They were on display for the middle men who would pedal them on the international market. Whether sold by their parents or taken from the streets, they would never be children again. Some would become sex objects; a few lucky ones might live the good life for a few years until they grew up. Others would immediately be put to work in brothels, their life expectancy minimal.
Peter scalded his mouth with his first gulp of hot tea. Pain stabbed into his brain. It hurt like hell, but his head was clearing. Thun Udom was staring at him, at the tea. Wariness was creeping into the Thai’s happy haze of bonhomie. He had, after all, trusted this Big American who had done such a fine thing for his second son.
Once again, Peter reminded himself he was a journalist. He had to watch this awful thing. See it through, even though he couldn’t betray his host’s trust by revealing what he had seen. At least not now.
But someday. Someday, Peter vowed, he would have to do something. Or lose his tenuous hold on the human race.
His hands shook as he used them both to guide the steaming tea bowl to his mouth. Up to now he’d enjoyed a remarkably lax social conscience. On a daily basis, he mouthed all the right words, easily crafted all the socially and politically correct commentary for his articles. But never before, no never before, had he felt this utter conviction that it was his personal duty to save the world. At least this small, very small, very young, helpless, hopeless part of it.
The children, legs crossed, had seated themselves around the edge of the dais. The auctioneer took his first offering by the hand, raised her to her feet. She was, perhaps, nine years old, all brown eyes in a heart-shaped face. Erect carriage, a perfectly calm slight smile. The children, too, had been offered pretty candies.
Stomach churning, Peter took another slug of tea and settled grimly into watching the tragedy unfolding before him.
Chapter Eleven
“Oh, there you are!” Glenda Garrison erupted from her fifth wheel, having no difficulty catching up with Mandy who was plodding toward her RV as if each step might be her last.
Glenda. Mandy almost groaned out loud. Could anything be more bright, cheery, and all-American than her rotund energetic neighbor? What would Glenda do if Mandy repeated Peter’s tale? Shout, “Filthy voyeur!” and the ladies of Golden Beach in a boycott of Peter’s books? Filthy Voyeur! The explosive energy of the right sentiments expended in altogether the wrong direction?
No. More likely, after a goggle-eyed exclamation, Glenda would simply shrug it off. The selling of children was too far away. Too foreign. Heathen. Impossible. This was the good old U S of A where things like that didn’t happen. Golden Beach was Middle America, filled with solid church-going citizens who paid their taxes while golfing, boating, fishing and just plain enjoying the way of life they’d worked so hard to achieve. The rest of the world was vague rumor, pictures on a TV screen, words spouting from a commentator’s mouth. Ephemeral phenomena in Glenda Garrison’s world, which was bounded by Movie Nights, anti-litter campaigns and admonitions about no bicycles left lying on the lawn, nothing but plastic drink containers by the pool. What reality could there be for a comfortable American matron when she heard about a few tragic children in Thailand? Or a young schoolteacher from the Urals turning tricks for the Russian mafia?
If Glenda knew about Nadya, forced into prostitution just across the river, would she shrug in an American version of mai pen rai and happily return to arranging bridge tournaments and shuffleboard matches? In all fairness, Glenda would probably give Mandy advice that matched Brad Blue’s: Dial 911, girl. Let the cops handle it.
Sensible, pragmatic Glenda. After all, everyone knew these horrors couldn’t be fixed. There was nothing one person could do. Even four hundred years ago, Cervantes made that indelible point when he had Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
But Peter wasn’t a disempowered, slightly crazy old man. His voice, added to others around the world, might actually start a tide of revulsion, something that could nip this modern flood of slavery in the bud.
Except that it was already in full flower.
“Mandy,” Glenda complained, her short hair flopping in an indignant bounce, “I don’t think you’ve heard a word I said. I suppose if I was working for Peter Pennington, I wouldn’t pay much attention to an old lady like me either,” she added with a lascivious twinkle.
“Sorry, Glenda. I was thinking about a problem at work. What can I do for you?” What campground rule have I violated this week?
“Nothing, child.” Glenda flashed that slightly superior ultra-competent clubwoman smile Mandy so detested in Eleanor. “I just wanted to warn you we’ve received notice the county is going to do a controlled burn tomorrow, a few miles upriver, just north of the Whitlaw ranch. There’ll be a lot of smoke, but nothing to worry about.”
Mandy stared. “Controlled burn?” The words had an ominous ring, like something Smokey the Bear wouldn’t like at all.
“Burns off the undergrowth, helps control wildfires.” Glenda peered at Mandy. Sighed. “Never heard of it, did you?”
“Guess not,” Mandy mumbled.
“Okay, back to Square One.” Glenda pursed her lips, obviously crafting words at the kindergarten level. “Florida’s rainy season is pretty much from June to September. After that, rain is intermittent. Makes for a great tourist season, not so good for the woods. Anyway, by February things are getting real dry, and the tourist season becomes the fire season, which isn’t great for either the natives or the snowbirds. So the county deliberately burns the junk growth and storm debris on the ground to lower the fire danger.”
Mandy nodded, suddenly aware of just how ignorant she was about this huge state that could swallow Massachusetts without so much as a burp. “The danger of wildfire never occurred to me.” She frowned. “But what about the Whitlaw ranch? Do they burn there too?”
Glenda made a wry face. “Wade Whitlaw’s a law unto himself. I doubt he’d let the county set foot on his land. Especially not with those flame-thrower things. Scary. Saw them on TV.”
“Glenda . . . what about Amber Run? I know they’ve got the brush under control, all neatened up, but I just realized all those trees around the houses—beautiful as they are and great for shade—they’re a fire hazard, aren’t they?”
“That’s what the experts keep telling us, but people love the woods. I hear Amber Run is up for some kind of award. Ambiance beats practicality every time.” Glenda winked. “Sort of like high heels.”
Mandy’s lips curled into an answering smile. “Right. Thanks for the warning. I can’t imagine what I would have thought when I saw the smoke.”
Glenda, looking pleased with herself, waved and headed back toward her oversize trailer.
Mandy dragged herself up the steps of her RV. She hadn’t needed to add wildfire to her other worries. Why couldn’t she have stayed in her perfectly crafted, Mandy-sized niche at AKA? Ignorant of the world outside her concrete underground bunker, except where its aberrations intersected with the work of Armitage, Kingsley & Associates?
Two words. Peter Pennington. Though terrified of another failure, she wasn’t such a slave of AKA that she would have accepted the assignment with Peter unless she’d wanted to.
Wanted him.
Unless she was willing to risk pain and heartbreak all over again.
For Peter. For a real marriage. Children.
Reality check. She, too, needed a controlled burn to devour the deadwood impeding her life, so she could soar like one of Florida’s towering pines. Grow solid sturdy roots like a hardy live oak.
Or would her personal burn roar out of contr
ol, plunging her into choking darkness and searing pain?
Blindly, Mandy made her way to her bedroom in the rear of the RV and sank onto the edge of the bed. She didn’t want to think. She refused to think.
Relentlessly, the images stalked her anyway. The unmoving infrared image that was Kira. Eleanor’s implacable features as she exiled Mandy to Florida. Peter roaring, “Where the hell have you been?” Nadya’s wraith-like form rising above the mist. Jade, Delilah, and Fawn. Peter and the Thai children.
Pennington the Penitent. Did that old saying about reformed rakes making the best husbands still hold true?
Kira’s dark eyes, dancing with life in her strong-boned face, swept Peter’s image away. What were Mandy’s personal problems compared to the death of a friend?
Reality was, Kira Malfi died for a cause Mandy Armitage had never quite embraced. Probably because it was Eleanor’s shining, hopeless Grail.
Face it, idiot. You were nearly as clueless as John Q. Public. But now’s your chance to do something useful. Nadya you can save.
Too bad hadn’t taught her the nastier tricks of his trade.
From his third-floor office with the wraparound view Peter watched Mandy’s car disappear into the parking area under the house. It was now or never, he supposed. Rejection Nine Hundred Ninety Nine coming up. Well . . . maybe not. She wanted her very own Bubba or Bubette, and he was only too willing to cooperate. Since when had Peter Pennington been above the oblique approach, or even a bit of skullduggery, to achieve his goals?
With carefully contrived nonchalance he arrived in Mandy’s office just as she was tossing her cardigan sweater into a corner of the counter. “I’ve stopped counting birthdays,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound as awkward and defensive as he felt, “but I don’t mind celebrating. How about joining me for dinner tomorrow? I was thinking The Pelican. Great view of the gulf.”
Mandy looked him over from head to toe, slow and penetrating as an X-ray. “Not too bad for a day short of thirty-seven,” she pronounced. “How does it feel, old man?”
“Like one more word and you may have to run for it.”
Mandy flashed a smirk. “Okay, big boy, you asked of it. I’ll cook. My RV, seven o’clock.”
Not even Peter’s surge of pleasure at Mandy’s invitation could dull his shock. “Uh, that’s okay, Mouse. No need to fuss. You’ll, uh, love the view at The Pelican,” he stammered. Mandy gave him Eleanor’s glassy stare. Damn!
“I took a course,” she informed him stonily. “I’ll go easy on the arsenic. No gulf view, but we can walk down to the river after supper.”
Thumb over his big mouth, Peter eyed his wife warily. “You learned to cook?”
“Scared you won’t make it to thirty-seven plus one?”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you learn to cook? I presume AKA hasn’t started starving its employees.”
Mandy shrugged and swung her chair around, presenting her back.
“Mandy?”
She ducked her head, her words little more than a defiant whisper. “You . . . you used to make fun of me. Said I wasn’t a real woman—”
Oh, shit! “I was only teasing, Mouse.”
“But you were right. I was about as one-dimensional as a girl could get. Mega computer nerd. Learning to cook seemed a good place to start branching out.”
Why was he standing here questioning his good fortune? Mandy had just invited him to her RV. Even if the food was inedible, she’d opened a crack in her armor. He was in.
Peter made a formal bow. “Mrs. Pennington, may I say that I would be delighted to accept your invitation to dinner tomorrow night.”
The doorbell rang.
No need to look at the wallet badge being held up by the man standing outside Peter’s front door. Dark suit and tie, the face of the boy-next-door turned forty, serene blue eyes only slightly dimmed by the weariness of the world, a physique only an eighteen-year-old might challenge in a foot race. The FBI had arrived.
“Special Agent Doug Chalmers,” the visitor said, his face lighting in a remarkably attractive smile as Peter invited him in. Several minutes later, coffee cups in hand, the three sat in the living room, the air alive with speculation.
“Brad gave me a translation of the recording,” Chalmers explained, “and it certainly has a ring of authenticity. I understand you’re the contact here, Mandy. Would you mind telling me the whole thing from the beginning?”
Mandy began with her surprise at catching her first glimpse of an indistinct figure on the far bank of the river where, she’d been told, nobody lived. How her exploration of the area beyond the small settlement of homes upriver had deadended against a chain link fence, barbed wire, and a militant Middle-Eastern male. Enough for even a newcomer to sense a mystery.
Chalmers gave Mandy an encouraging smile. “That could do it. Go on.”
“I decided to be nosy,” Mandy admitted. “I took a row boat upriver and found this truly lovely girl—long blond hair, blue eyes, wearing a flowing white caftan—sitting on a log in the middle of nowhere. She was Russian, with only a little English. Voilà! An exponential increase in my mystery.”
Mandy continued with Garrett Whitlaw’s explanation about the old house on the ranch’s outer boundary, followed by Nadya’s sudden disappearance. “I told myself she was just another visitor. She’d gone home, and that was that. Mandy paused, her closed fist slicing the air in frustration. “I was a thick-headed idiot. I deserted her. Yuri could have beaten her to death, and no one would ever know.”
“Not your fault . . .”
“How many times do I have to tell you . . .” Peter growled.
“I have to go back,” Mandy insisted. “I’ve got to tell her we’re going to help.”
“No way,” Peter said.
“Well,” Chalmers hedged, “I’m afraid that might be a problem. “You’ve got to face the fact that Nadya and Karim are lovers, however weird their relationship. As much as she says she hates what’s she’s doing, I didn’t hear any signals that she hates her jailer. If you recall, she actually made excuses for him. There’s no way we can be certain she won’t give the whole show away.”
“But—”
“You can’t go back.” Peter at his most intransigent.
“We can’t just leave her there thinking she’s been deserted!”
“Okay,” Chalmers soothed, “let me see what I can work out. “There’s enough small plane and ’copter traffic around here so we ought to be able to get some pretty good photos of the terrain without raising suspicion. I’ll study the situation, see if I can find any justification for letting your girl know the cavalry’s on the alert.” The FBI agent favored Mandy with his most reassuring smile. “Will that do?” he inquired.
“For the moment,” she conceded grudgingly. Mandy could feel, if not hear, sighs of relief from her two companions. Her spine stiffened, her head came up. “Nadya asked for help, begged for help. You heard her. I don’t understand how you can leave her hanging on a limb. It must be some kind of male ego that makes a man think a woman is controlled solely by her hormones.”
Peter glared. Special Agent Chalmers stared fixedly at the high polish of his shoes.
A few minutes later, as Chalmers backed his car out of the driveway, Peter turned on his wife. “You will not, repeat not, go back over there.”
“You expect me to disobey a direct order from the FBI?” Mandy’s eyes were wide and innocent.
“I know that Jeffrey Armitage’s daughter is capable of doing anything she damn well pleases.”
“Oh.” Mandy almost let her inner glow shine past her frown. It was perhaps the finest compliment she had ever had. But was it true? She had been raised to do daring things with her mind, not plunge into actual physical danger. Martial arts training and a remarkable gift for target shooting would be of little use against hardened members of a prostitution ring. So it made sense to let the FBI agent try it his way. At least for a while.
Mandy reached up and patted her husband’s cheek. “I’ll give him a few days,” she promised.
At her condescending tone, Peter’s amber eyes flared in protest before his jaw clenched over whatever he had been going to say. With a martyred sigh trailing behind him, he headed upstairs to his cupola.
After watching Peter’s back until he disappeared, Mandy found her way to the computer room on autopilot, where her knees gave way and she sank into the chair in front of her screen, Doug Chalmer’s visit superseded by even greater evidence of her own insanity.
Hell had frozen over. Or her dinner invitation to Peter was an illusion, a chimera born of pain and anxieties that had caught up with her at last, spinning her into madness.
She was the daughter of Jeffrey Armitage and Eleanor Kingsley, her strong roots planted in a reality as solid as New England granite. So if her mouth had opened and an invitation to dinner had poured out, she must have meant it.
Which was a lot of bricks shy of a load. Just plain nuts. She had a hard enough time dealing with Peter’s pull on her senses when sharing a nine-room house. But a thirty-foot RV? At night?
Even Jeff and Eleanor couldn’t have set up a more well-crafted scenario for seduction. And she’d done it without planning, without thought. Just opened her mouth and the words popped out.
She really must have wanted to show Peter she could cook.
Ha! It was her goose that was cooked. And she had no one to blame but herself.
Melinda Mary Carlson, age five, opened her eyes to darkness. Night, not morning. Voices. Loud voices. Melinda Mary clenched her small fists, squeezed her eyes tight shut. Mommy. Daddy. Yelling. Fighting? Her friend Kimmie’s parents fought, Kimmie had told her so. But not hers. Well, almost never.
Jessie! Slitting her eyes open, Melinda Mary peeked at the room’s second small bed, where her three-year-old sister slept peacefully. Good. Melinda Mary’s tummy was kinda sick. Jessie didn’t need to feel that way too.
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