Dark Before Dawn

by Monica McGurk

  “I don’t see a choice. Do you?”

  “You don’t have to go in there, Hope. In fact, I’m not sure you should. This is clearly a place for men. The only women in there are in there to work. If you insist on going in, you might ruin our cover and prevent us from finding anything at all.”

  I paused, searching his eyes. He had a point. But did he think I couldn’t handle it? That I didn’t have the stomach to do what I had to do to save my sister?

  He leaned in close—close enough to whisper in my ear, low, so that only I could hear. “You don’t need to prove yourself to anyone, least of all me or Raph. Please, let us do this for you. Don’t let your stubbornness get in the way.”

  I closed my eyes. The sweetness of his scent and the feel of his breath against my hair were overwhelming my senses. He was too close—he was stirring up feelings I couldn’t afford to feel any longer. Oblivious to my confusion, he continued.

  “Sometimes, accepting help is the best thing you can do, Hope. Sometimes, taking help is the biggest proof of strength.”

  I shook my head, trying to chase away the old feelings I still harbored for him, and I thought about what he was saying. I opened my eyes to find him looking at me, his azure eyes intent.

  “You’re right,” I said, clearing my voice. “Me being in there will only make your job harder. You two find out what you can without me. Enoch and I will wait in the car.”

  He took a deep sigh of relief. “Thank you,” he breathed, just loud enough for me to hear.

  “Great. We get stuck going into the human cesspool while she gets a time out? Perfect,” Raph said, stomping off toward the entrance to the club.

  I rolled my eyes. Predictable Raph. Michael gave my elbow one last squeeze. “Keep your phone on in case we need you. I’ll see you in a little while. Enoch,” he said, winking, “keep an eye on things.”

  “Can do,” Enoch said with a salute. “Come on, Hope, we’ll listen to my Grateful Dead mixes while we wait, keep our mind off of things.”

  I called out one last time to Michael. “I expect you to tell me everything. Everything, Michael.”

  He nodded once, then disappeared with Raph into the club.

  I let Enoch usher me back to the SUV. As he lectured me on the finer points of Grateful Dead lyrics and influences, my mind kept wandering back to the exchange I’d just had with Michael. Why was he being so nice to me? Especially when he’d turned so cold last night?

  “Hope?” Enoch interrupted my thoughts. “Am I boring you?”

  I flushed. “I’m sorry, Enoch. I’m just preoccupied, I guess.”

  He patted my hand. “That’s understandable. I was hoping to distract you from your concern about your sister and her friend, but it may be a hopeless task.”

  “I wasn’t actually thinking about them,” I confessed. “I was thinking about Michael.”

  “Ah, yes. Of course, you would be. I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation last night.”

  I flushed, glad that the darkness hid the embarrassment and confusion that was surely evident on my face.

  “We haven’t eaten since breakfast,” Enoch noted, a tactful diversion I accepted gratefully. He patted down the pockets of his cargo vest. “It’s hard to have any serious conversation on an empty stomach. I have some granola here that we could share. Homemade.” He fished a bag of it out of his pockets and dumped some into my outstretched palm. I popped it into my mouth, wondering vaguely from the staleness just how long it had been in his pocket, but I figured beggars couldn’t be choosers and crunched away.

  “I’m not really sure what there is to talk about,” I began in between chewing. “I mean, you know everything. You were at the trial. You heard what Gabrielle admitted. You heard Michael acknowledge it. If I hadn’t forced him here, I don’t think he’d even be here right now, pledge or no pledge. What else can I say?”

  Enoch looked through the window, giving me what space he could as we spoke.

  “I heard Gabrielle say that Michael was with her,” he finally said. “That he accepted her advice when he asked.”

  “She said it didn’t matter what was happening,” I argued, my anger feeling fresh.

  “No, Hope. She said that it was not important enough to leave what they were doing. Did you never think to ask what they thought was so important?”

  “The refugees. The rest of the world. Gabrielle said so herself during the trial. It just proves I was right all along—Michael would have never given up his role as guardian of God’s people. And if I’d given up my life to join him, my family would be exposed, unprotected. Not that what I decide about him matters now,” I added bitterly.

  Enoch tilted his head and turned to me. “Are you sure?”

  I felt a pang of sympathy for Michael, remembering how frustrated he’d always been by Enoch and his endless questions. I was in no mood to entertain them now, myself. I let his question sink like a stone to the bottom of a pool, swallowed up in the stillness that enveloped us.

  “Hope,” Enoch tried again, “do you remember what you said to me when we first re-encountered one another, after you’d found the key and after Michael had been reunited with you?”

  I sighed. “Enoch, I don’t want to think about that. Those memories are painful now. Please, will you just let it drop?”

  “Humor me,” he coaxed. “Humor this old angel in hippie’s clothing. For old times’ sake.”

  I threw up my hands. “Fine. Have it your way. We talked about lots of things, then, Enoch. To what, specifically, are you referring?”

  “You told me your biggest regret, the two years while you waited for Michael, thinking he had truly died, was that you had not trusted him.”

  It was like a punch to my solar plexus.

  It was not what I expected him to say.

  But it was true.

  I had ruminated on it for a long time, feeling guilty and regretful that I hadn’t put my faith in the one person I loved more than anyone else in the world. That because I hadn’t, I’d unwittingly betrayed him and led him to his death.

  I swallowed, hard.

  “You’re telling me I’m wrong?”

  Enoch picked up my hand and patted it. “My dear. You are professionally trained to follow the evidence. To be logical. But you have also been trained by painful experience to recognize that not everything is always as it seems. Talk to him. You may be surprised by what you learn.”

  “But what if I’m not?” I whispered, my eyes filling with tears.

  He squeezed my hand. “Ah, but what if you are? Why are you so eager to give up your love? If, after you talk to him, you still find he betrayed your family and your trust, then you are no worse off than you are now. And even then,” he added with grandfatherly sternness, “I would not be so loath to forgive him. After all, your whole journey together has been shaped by the very idea of forgiveness.” He patted my hand once more. “Just think on it. Promise me that, at least.”

  I nodded mutely.

  Just then, the door to the club swung open, and Raph and Michael came spilling out, tucking their hands under their arms for warmth.

  “Don’t say anything to him, Enoch,” I asked.

  “About what?” Enoch responded, winking. I smiled a tentative smile and wiped my face, trying to compose myself.

  They piled into the car, blowing on their hands.

  “You wouldn’t believe it in there,” Michael began, shaking his head. “One of the, um, dancers told me she makes over $2,000 a night. As packed as that place was, I guess it makes sense.”

  “Just more evidence of the depravity of your race,” Raph sniffed.

  “Now is not the time, Raph,” Michael snapped.

  “What did you find out? You must have learned something if you came out so quickly,” I asked, eager to hear what they had learned.

  “One of the bartenders filled me in on the prostitution that’s going on. He was pretty nonchalant about it—except when it came to underage girls. I guess he’
s a dad and the whole idea of it makes him sick,” Michael began.

  “Once they turn eighteen, however, treating human beings like chattel is perfectly acceptable to him,” Raph commented dryly. “How upstanding of him.”

  “Anyway,” Michael continued, shooting Raph a poisonous look, “it turns out they had a major scene in the club a month ago when someone tried to put a young girl on the floor in there. He and another bartender got wind of it—didn’t take much detective work, it sounds like; the poor kid was terrified and looked like she was playing dress-up in mommy’s clothes—and they ended up kicking the pimp out. They also tried to get the girl out of it, but no dice; she left with the scumbag. The thing is, the whole incident upset one of their regulars—a newish guy, been working the rigs maybe six months. The guy tried to stop them from intervening on behalf of the girl, and he ended up storming out and didn’t come back. Until tonight.”

  “What are you thinking?” Enoch asked. Michael looked gravely at us.

  “The bartender said that if we were trying to find a young girl, we could do worse than to follow this guy when he leaves the bar tonight. I think he’s right.”

  “That’s assuming he has another girl lined up,” I said, thinking it sounded like a long shot.

  “I believe the odds are in your favor on this one,” Raph sniped. “You couldn’t swing a stick inside that club without hitting someone with a nasty habit. The question is whether we’ve picked out the human with the particular nasty habit we’re looking for.”

  I felt dirty, like I needed a shower just from thinking about this.

  “So we just wait?” I asked.

  “We wait,” Michael confirmed. “We wait, and we follow him wherever he goes.”

  Michael switched seats with Enoch, and we settled in, each of us preoccupied with our own thoughts, the low rumble of the engine the only sound. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to huddle into myself for warmth and let the rolling engine lull me to sleep.

  “Wake up,” Michael whispered, jabbing me in the ribs. I bolted upright, wiping my bleary eyes, and I looked at the dashboard clock. It was just after three in the morning.

  “That’s our guy,” Michael said. He nodded toward a young man, maybe twenty-five years of age and dressed in a leather bomber jacket and a baseball cap, as he wove his way across the parking lot toward a pickup truck. “Wake up, everybody. It’s time.”

  We watched the young man climb into the cab of his truck and back out. Michael shifted into gear.

  “Not too close,” I cautioned. “We don’t want him to realize he’s being followed.”

  “Are you kidding?” Michael answered, his voice dripping with disgust. “Did you see him stumble across the parking lot? The guy’s too drunk to notice anything. But I’ll be careful, just in case.”

  We trailed him, staying a healthy distance behind him, across town to one of the older motels. It was a double decker with doors opening up right to the outside, the kind always associated with truckers. The lot was packed. The sign along the highway read No Vacancy.

  We pulled in, parked a row away from him, and watched. He didn’t go to the office to check in. He climbed up the stairs, heading straight for a room. Once there, though, he didn’t take out his own key. He knocked and waited for someone to open up, disappearing into the room after darting a paranoid glance behind him.

  After a few minutes, a muscle-bound man in a windbreaker emerged from the room. He leaned casually against the wall and lit a cigarette, waiting.

  “Bingo,” Michael whispered.

  I felt a surge of anger. My hands were trembling with it, the adrenaline that coursed through my veins spurring me to action.

  “Now what?” I asked, gripping my armrest to quell my hands.

  “Now, we wait.”

  “Shouldn’t we do something?”

  Michael shook his head. “As much as I’d like to, we have to wait this out. We need to get as much information as possible, and we can’t do that if we act too soon.” He reached over, placing his hand over mine.

  “Just a little while longer. I promise.”

  The idea of what was going on in that room filled up the car. As we sat, waiting, we saw more men coming and going in and out of the rooms, a constant pattern of traffic. Supply. Demand. Supply. Demand. A cold business, trading on the innocence and youth of girls who had no choice.

  As I watched the ebb and flow of customers, I began to have doubts.

  “Maybe we should go to the police,” I ventured, staring out of the window into the dark.

  “The police are just going to tell you they don’t have enough manpower to search for girls who may or may not actually be here, Hope,” Michael chided gently. “If we want to find your sister, it’ll be faster if we do it ourselves.”

  I settled back in my seat, knowing Michael was right.

  “There might be another way, though,” he began, a note of excitement in his voice. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. We keep hearing that people are posting these underage girls online. On that website—what did they call it?”

  “Backpage,” Raph answered from the back seat.

  “That’s it,” Michael nodded, turning in his seat so he could see us all. “What if we monitored Backpage to see if we could find them? Or even pose as interested buyers?”

  From the dark of the backseat, Raph spoke up. “It just might work.”

  I cringed in distaste, but I knew he was right. “Get on it, Raph,” I urged. “Get on your phone and start scanning the ads while we wait.”

  On the second story, the door to the hotel room was opening. The man we’d been trailing stumbled out, closing the door behind him.

  I glanced at Michael. His jaw tensed as he watched the man work his way down the stairs. His knuckles whitened as he gripped and regripped the steering wheel. I reached out and touched his knuckles lightly, raising my brows in question. He nodded quickly, no hesitation, in response.

  “You guys keep looking,” I spoke into the backseat, opening the car door to face the frozen night. “And keep an eye on that motel room. We’ll be right back.”

  I slipped out of the car, Michael right behind me.

  We tailed the man at a discreet distance as he strutted across the icy parking lot. At his truck, he fumbled around for his keys in his pocket.

  “What’s your hurry?” Michael demanded, wheeling in to stand behind him. The man jumped and backed into the side of his truck. He held up his hands.

  “No, no hurry, man. Just a little cold, that’s all,” he said, giving a shaky laugh. He darted a glance around the parking lot and found himself alone. “But I’m good, man. Don’t need anything.”

  “Maybe we do,” I said, stepping in to block the other side. “Tell me. What were you doing up in that motel room?”

  “Me?” he looked flustered. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Just. Um. Just having a rest.”

  “Not very long to be resting,” Michael countered. “We’ve been watching you. You weren’t even in there for two hours.”

  “You’ve … you’ve been watching me?” His breath was coming in fast, nervous gasps now, puffs of steam releasing into the frigid air. A sudden look of terror flashed across his face. “Are you guys cops?”

  Michael’s grim look exactly mirrored how I felt.

  “We’re much, much worse than police,” he whispered. “You’re going to tell us everything we want to know. Or you’ll be wishing the police were here to save you.”

  The man gulped, hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his skinny throat. He blinked and shook his head, as if he thought he was hallucinating and could simply will us away.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, laughing, his eyes darting around as he looked for an escape. Burrowing his hands deep into his pockets, he shrugged. “You got the wrong guy. I’ve got nothin’ to say.”

  Michael’s face darkened and he made a move toward the man.

  “No.” I reached out my
hand and stopped him. “Let me.”

  Michael paused, looking at me thoughtfully, before stepping back.

  The man visibly relaxed. “Okay, sweetheart. Do your worst.”

  In a flash, I darted in, trapping him against the side of his truck while I wrapped my elbow around his neck, putting him in a headlock.

  “This isn’t my worst,” I said. “My worst is if I decide to break your neck. Which I can do, if I want to, in seconds. It’s up to you whether or not I decide to do so.” His face was turning red. I let up the pressure just a little and listened to him sputtering, trying to catch his breath. “Are you going to talk now?”

  He nodded rapidly, blinking hard again.

  “Good.” I let go of him, letting him fall back against the cold metal of his truck. He bent over his knees, clutching at his throat as he gasped great, freezing breaths of air.

  “Answer our questions and we’ll let you go,” I said, the steel in my voice a warning that I would do it again if I had to.

  He nodded, wiping a hand over his face as he stood up, his back rigidly straight. Michael didn’t wait for him to finish catching his breath.

  “You were with someone in the hotel room. Who?”

  The young man looked down at his boots. “She called herself Sunny online.” He kicked the snow. “Don’t know why this matters so much to you.”

  “It didn’t matter to you, you mean. Did you ever think about the fact that she’s a real person?” Michael responded tersely.

  The man jerked his head up. “Hey, man, I didn’t make her do what she does.”

  “And just what does she do?” I challenged him. My voice was raw, and my hands were shaking with rage.

  He shrugged. “She’s a hooker. You know, a prostitute.” He lifted his chin defiantly. “Out here, there aren’t a lot of women. Everybody does it.”

  “Everybody abuses children? Is that right? Is that why you’re skulking around, hoping nobody sees you?” Michael’s voice was a low growl, his anger barely contained as he moved in closer.

  The man shifted, nervous. “She’s not … she wasn’t …”