by Dawn Mattox
We had come to a small private lake in the middle of the desert. Amazing stuff for sure. I had expected to find a dungeon filled with chained children, not a swimming hole resonating with the sound of laughter.
A cell phone playing a snappy tune went off nearby. We dropped and flattened ourselves against the ground behind a rock pile. My eyes widened and heart thrashed as I found myself eye to eye with a scorpion big enough to saddle and ride out of there. The scorpion made a short dash at my face. My eyes bulged as his tail swung up in an arch over his back. I froze. My heart stopped, my breathing stopped, time stopped.
A rock whipped down, turning the creature into scorpion jelly with only a couple of twitching legs remaining. Travis let go of the stone. “Let’s go,” he mouthed.
Better than hand signals.
Travis led, bent over as we skirted the lake—running behind the wall of boulders that shouldered the bank that kept us hidden, except for the narrow openings that led down to the water. I paused at one such path to peek around the corner and gasped at the sight of naked children swimming and sitting on the rocks. A man’s back was to me, a rifle hanging easily at his side, more interested in watching than guarding. We slipped across the trail and headed for the cavern that looked a whole lot like the scorpion’s house.
The entry to the structure was recessed. Two Harleys were parked to one side. A surveillance camera goose necked from the wall above an intercom. Travis drew back, frowning in thought.
“What do we do?” I asked.
Travis shrugged. “Beats me.”
I rolled my eyes and made a face. “What kind of superhero are you? Superheroes never say, ‘Beats me.’”
Travis’s eyes widened, and I grimaced in reply. Just because a door is closed doesn’t mean it’s locked. Gun clenched in both hands and pressed tight to my chest, I darted around the corner, opened the door, and slipped in. Travis followed on my heels.
The room in front of us looked like a millionaire’s version of the Chinese tunnels turned whorehouse. The great room was decorated in every shade of red on red: from plush ruby-colored furniture to the thick crimson carpet beneath our feet. The rock walls and ceiling remained untouched. Half-dozen overstuffed chairs and three imposing U-shaped sofas that could comfortably seat ten, arced before three giant plasma screens designed for viewing God knows what. I didn’t want to know. Several doors spoked off at the back of the room. One was open.
Travis finally gave me a signal I could understand, and we separated, moving along opposing walls so we would approach the open door from opposite sides.
Travis held his gun to his chest, then extended it as he pivoted into the hallway. A woman’s voice with a distinctive Cajun accent bounced down the hall and grew louder as we approached.
“Oui. Miasma se mouri.” Followed by a pause. “Biznis kòm dabitid.” The woman raised her voice, saying, “Of course. Ah, not stupid. You haf till tonight. You want— you come get. Nou fini,” followed by a resounding bang of a phone being slammed onto a desk.
Travis spun into the room where Deirdre sat behind a sleek oversized desk. “You want—you get. Give me reason shoot you, yeah?” Travis said, aiming his gun. The whites of her eyes grew as round as twin crescent moons. “You unna arress.”
“Fo’ wha’? You got warran’? Shew me a warran’,” she said in a singsong voice, and then tipped her chair backward. “Ey, I know you. You da Paige bump-bump.” Her dark face lit with a lewd smile. “Sheet.”
“Sunny.” Travis fired off instructions. “Shoot her if she moves. I’m going to look for Quincy.”
The gun shook in my hands, alerting the voodoo queen. The wolf inside of her smelled fear. Deirdre spoke a bastard mix of French and Cajun in an oily lilt, probably tailored for its hypnotic effect. She rambled on about chillens and bebes, moving her hips, hands, and mouth in explicit ways that sickened and angered me. Travis told me to shoot if Deirdre made any moves, but he didn’t say what to do about her mouth.
“Shut up. Where’s the baby?” I snarled.
“Just so. Shut up or talk? Bebe? Lemme tink now.” She lifted her brows, arching and flexing them like a pair black cats on Halloween. “Wha’ kine you like you? Blaa, brow’, got no mo whi’ . . . all gone.” She shrugged.
“Where is Paige’s daughter?” I took a step closer and pressed the gun to her forehead.
Her wicked grin stretched from ear to ear as she tipped her head away and tapped a finger on her jaw. “Lemme tink, you. Ahhhh, yeah.” Her fingers slid to the leather gris-gris bag around her neck, stroking the small leather bag that traditionally contains items infused with black magick and is etched with verses from the Qur’an. “Whi’ girl. Much much money. She be wit yo’ honee, you . . . Monsieur Logan.”
My face scrunched like a piece of wadded foil, wrinkled with disdain, fury, and disbelief. I jabbed the pistol hard, smack between her eyes. “Why would Logan have her?”
“Much, much money. Yes? Chillins much money. Bebes so much mo’. You like money, you?” She lowered her voice, soft and seductive. “Deirdre make you very rich. Maybe some powda? Maybe some movie? Efryone wan’s someting. Whacho wan’? New bebe? Git you one. Git you two.”
A voice came from behind. “Shoot that bitch,” said Travis.
I squeezed the trigger.
A surreal time warp enveloped the scene—the kind where everything happens so fast that time slams on the brakes and slides into slow motion. A delicate spray of blood-red mist seemed to shimmer and hang in the air—like a soft red fog rolling in off the ocean. There was a burst of automatic weapon fire from the front room as Deirdre’s head dissipated and I dropped to the floor. Somewhere in the background, children’s screams magnified and echoed, their cries intermingling with the chatter of gunfire ripping down the corridor. A short pause, and then a series of shots were exchanged as Travis jumped into the hall and unloaded his gun. I heard the bawl of a man whose life force was leaving him—followed by three rapid-fire shots—and then—silence, except for the wailing of children.
“Sunny?” Travis called from outside of the room. “Sunny. You okay?”
It didn’t matter that Deirdre had been reaching for a gun under her desk. I was still sickened by the knowledge that I had killed someone.
“I think so,” my voice quavered. I joined Travis in the hallway where he was bent over the body of one of the men we had seen at the lake, pressing his hand to the man’s throat as he searched for signs of life. There was none. We didn’t have to search the second man whose head had a tight pattern of three holes tapped across it.
“Just the two?” I found my voice, keeping my gun trained on the hall door.
“For now,” said Travis.
“Quincy?” I asked anxiously.
Travis shook his head and slapped a fresh clip into his gun, his face set, hard and grim. He glanced toward the great room and the sound of children. “Put all the kids in one room,” he said, “and make it fast! I’ll try to get help. Other people will be here soon.”
I lowered the gun and tried to steady my breathing. “I don’t want to be trapped in a room. Let’s run—we can hide out in the desert.”
“No, we’ll be targets. They’ll kill those kids before they let them escape. We have to protect them until help comes. I need to make calls.”
Naked, big-eyed children were huddling in the great room, quiet now, except for sniffles and muffled sobs. One little boy’s face was buried in the shoulder of a pretty girl who looked about nine or ten, going on thirty. She had long blond hair and purple-blue eyes that were the color of the Pacific Ocean, but without any depth, as though painted on a flat canvas without any dimension.
“We’re here to help you. What’s your name?” I asked the girl.
“Tiffy,” she said, mouthing the word more than speaking it.
“Is that your real name? The name your mommy and daddy gave you?”
The waters stirred, and she seemed to wake. “Jakki.”
“Nice to meet yo
u, Jakki. My name is Sunny. My friend and I are going to help you. We need a big girl like you to help us. Can you do that?” I was careful not to touch her without permission. “Would you like a hug?”
She shook her head no.
“That’s okay. Do you know this house? Someplace safe where we can hide.” The girl dove into my arms, shaking and sobbing as the other children, about eight in all, watched, clinging to one another.
Travis went outside to place his calls.
“Where are your bedrooms?” I asked Jakki. She pointed to a different hall at the back of the great room. “Quickly now, everyone, find your clothes and get dressed. Hurry, hurry.” The children raced down the hall, their voices freed, once again sounding like children.
I follow Jakki to a room that she shared with three other children and they busied themselves climbing into clothes. They looked so very young and vulnerable, somewhere between the ages of five and ten. They seemed well-fed and absent any apparent physical injuries. But then, I understood that the children were an investment to the cartel, and all farmers take good care of valuable livestock.
“Jakki?” I asked. “Was there a baby here? A little newborn baby?”
She smiled and nodded her head yes.
“Do you know where the baby is?”
She tugged a T-shirt over her head. “A man took her.”
“How long ago?”
Jakki bit her bottom lip, concentrating. “I don’t know. A long time.”
I wondered what “a long time” means to a child prisoner. Chance had been dead for almost six weeks, and that seemed like a “long time” in some ways, but also felt like yesterday.
Jakki and I hurried to help the younger children finish dressing. A Hispanic boy had put on a frilly little girl’s dress, and a little Asian girl had put on black fishnet stockings with a black leather miniskirt and a Dora the Explorer pajama top.
Travis appeared in the doorway. “Follow me and hurry—there’s a van coming up the driveway.”
Travis quickly led us to a large commercial kitchen where we promptly shelved the children like so many groceries in cupboards, closets, and under the sinks. Travis pressed his finger to his lips each time. “Shh. Quiet. Don’t move—no matter what,” he said emphatically. “Silencio. Ni una palabra. No te muevas.” I put the youngest child, the little boy who had been crying earlier in a closet with Jackie. “Shh. Shh.” The children understood and quickly settled themselves amid pans, cans, boxes, and bags of food.
Then Travis led me back down the hall, entering the great room just as a fist pounded on the door.
“Come on Deirdre. Open the damned door. We don’t have all day,” the voice boomed as loudly as the thumping on the door.
Travis and I slipped back down the original hall, stepping over the two dead bikers and moving to Deirdre, collecting weapons as we went. Travis shouldered the automatics and gave his handgun to me, then put me in a bedroom located a little in front of where the dead bikers lay.
“Stay in this room. Got it? Keep your head inside this room. Reach into the hall one-handed and fire once in a while with my gun. Save the revolver in case they make it past me.” He slid into the room directly across from me as the first shots rang out, blasting at the locks on the front door, followed by the sound of the door being kicked open.
I clutched the gun tight against my chest, partly to control my erratic heartbeat and to suppress sounds of fear that struggled to escape. Taking a deep breath, I peeked across the hall and was amazed to see Travis peeling back the wrapper on a stick of gum. He raised his eyebrows and thrust his hand in a silent offer to share. I must have looked stunned because he popped it in his mouth and winked at me with a devilish smile. The man makes me crazy.
The next sounds were that of cursing, jostling men coming through the door, accompanied by metallic clicks and other solid sounds of weapons being readied; unsheathed, raised, cocked, or whatever it is they do. It was all happening in the front room and in a minute, it would all be aimed down the hall at us.
A single voice directed the men to fan out when someone at the end of our hall spotted the bodies and called out. Everyone redirected to our corridor, and Travis let loose with a hail of gunfire to keep their attention from the kitchen.
I didn’t move—I couldn’t breathe. Bullets were flying everywhere, and people were yelling in the background. The chattering of gunfire seemed to go on forever before I realized that Travis was no longer returning fire.
He’s dead. He’s dead—I know it.
The sound of boots moved down the hall, closer, closer. Still, I pressed myself tight against the wall by the door and waited. Remembering something I had seen Travis do, I slid down the wall into a crouch.
As a gun and a pair of forearms swung into my room firing above my head. I also turned, firing up and sending his body flying backward. Jumping up and over the body, I continued to shoot down the hall until the only sound was a series of hollow clicks. Still, I squeezed the trigger. Click-click-click.
There was scrambling and cursing from the great room, and something more. New voices joining in the tumult shouting, “Police! Police!” A couple of more single shots rang out—and then . . . silence.
“Dang Sunny, you can back me up anytime.” Travis came up from behind me and looked down the hall in awe at three new bodies. The gun clattered to the floor as I dropped it and jumped into his arms, clinging to him, shaking and crying.
“Hey—hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. Nice work.” He held me close, his strong arms wrapping around me, his face pressed tightly against mine. “I was out of bullets. Sunny—you saved my life. You saved the children.”
I had never killed anyone before, and now I had killed four people in a matter of minutes.
Travis turned his attention to the police at the end of the hall, calling out, “Hold your fire. ATF. Hold your fire!”
“How can people be so evil?” I presented my naive question to Travis on the drive back to the airport.
Travis turned to look at me curiously. “I thought you believed in the Devil. Didn’t you just give a seminar on Satanic Ritual Abuse?”
I acknowledged his remark with a sad smirk.
Travis reached over to the console and pulled out a fresh pack of gum. “It’s all about the money, honey. It’s the wave of the future. The profit in human trafficking is second only to sales of illegal drugs.” We merged onto a freeway, and as always, I was taken aback by the sheer number of people that live in the city.
Travis continued. “Look at it this way—a dealer can only sell his drugs once, but a child can be sold twenty or thirty times a day. That adds up fast in the criminal economy.”
My jaw dropped in wide-mouthed amazement and then closed. I shook my head and took the pack of proffered gum, removing the label and pulling out a piece for each of us.
“How much money?” I asked, as I peeled back the wrapper and put the gum in my mouth.
Travis pushed his sunglasses higher on his nose. “About ten billion dollars a year—just in the United States. That’s about fifty thousand kids coming into the US a year—in addition to the three hundred thousand that are already here.”
I about choked on the gum. “Oh my God,” I gasped. “How can that be? In America—of all places.” I continued to mull it over with a growing sense of righteous anger.
“Yes, America, and all across the world,” said Travis. “California, to its great shame, ranks among the top five highest trafficking cities in America.”
“Which are?”
“The port cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and beautiful San Diego.” Travis reached for the remaining gum that I still held in my hand and added, “In case you’re wondering, the other two cities are in New York and Texas—which makes sense since they have the highest immigration rates.”
We drove in silence for a time.
“My father may have been a Hells Angel, and he may have been an outlaw, but he was still an American who fought for his cou
ntry. Even after all he went through, he still taught me that America was the best country in the world.” I fairly shook with anger. “How can ‘moral’ America spend ten billion dollars a year on human trafficking?”
Travis chewed his gum thoughtfully before replying. “Moral America doesn’t,” he said.
CHAPTER 48
“It grieves me to have to tell you. It’s not the way I hoped things would turn out and it wasn’t an easy decision. But you’ve left me no choice. I am going to have to let you go.” Jack Savage leaned forward over his desk, chin up, eyes narrowed, not really looking all that sad, as he tapped his thumb on an unsigned Notice of Resignation—with my name typed across the top. “I am not firing you. It’s better that you resign. I can give you strong letters of recommendation for your next job.”
“You’re firing me and I haven’t done anything wrong.” Hot, angry tears swam at the corner of my eyes, dissolving mascara, adding to the burn and sting that chafed at my sense of justice.
Jack raised his voice, determined. “I am not firing you,” he repeated as he ran a manicured hand through his hair. “Let me be blunt—”
“Have you ever been any other way when the cameras aren’t rolling?”
Jack sidestepped the low blow. “I can’t have my victim advocate running around killing people. You’re supposed to be helping victims, not shooting perps.”
“What should I have done? Let those children be trafficked? Turn a blind eye like everyone else and let them be brutalized and victimized in some new location?”
Jack’s nostrils flared, and his face flushed as war drums began to throb at his temples. “You were supposed to do your job.”
“I was doing my job!” I leaned over his desk to meet his gaze, thrusting my own jaw forward in equally fierce determination. “I was protecting victims when no one else would.”