She was confused by his answer, and his apology. She didn’t understand what any of it meant. This was the same guy, supposedly, that killed Ariana a week earlier. How could he tell her she was safe, in such a gentle and tender fashion? How could he threaten to kill her family in the same voice that he asked her what music she liked?
The car pulled into an apartment complex, which Allison knew was on the far south side of Henderson. He drove around one of the buildings and pulled into an open garage door attached the bottom level of a townhouse. The garage door shut behind them as he put the vehicle in park, and he disengaged the ignition. They sat in the dark until the garage door was fully closed.
He got out of the car and opened the door for her. “Get out slowly and keep your hands in view. I don’t want to bind you and I don’t want to hurt you, so don’t make me,” he said.
She did as he instructed, keeping her hands up and over her head. She felt like a prisoner. She was a prisoner. “Now walk, to the door. Stop at the door and I will open it for you.”
Allison walked to the door that led into the apartment. As she stood in front of it, the man reached around her to open it. The door led into the kitchen of the apartment. It was clean and bright, with stainless steel appliances and beautiful marble countertops.
“Walk to your left,” he instructed. “There is a door on the right. I will open it for you.”
She walked to it, he opened it, and she looked into a bedroom. It was bare except for a twin bed with a white comforter and solitary pillow in a matching white pillowcase. The carpet was a dark navy. “This is yours for the rest of the night.”
“What is happening?” she asked.
“You’re being sold,” he said.
“To who?”
“A buyer.”
“But, why?” The pit in her stomach was heavy. She could feel panic coming in.
“Sit down on the bed,” he said. She hesitated. “I said sit.” He was more forceful with his tone and she followed his instruction.
“Thank you. I don’t want to be angry.” He stood in the doorway.
“Why did you kill her? Why did you kill Ari?” Tears started to flow down her cheeks. She wondered if that same fate was coming for her, despite this man’s calm demeanor.
He looked down at the floor and sighed. His arms crossed in front of his chest. When he looked back up at her, his eyes were full of genuine sadness. “That,” he said with a pause, “was an accident.”
“What do you mean? I saw you put her body in your trunk.”
“I know. It started out easily, just like with you. But she tried to run, and when she did, she slipped and hit her head on the concrete. She had a seizure. And then,” he shook his head, “she was gone.”
“So why dump her in the woods?” Allison said.
“I didn’t know what else to do. But my buyer is expecting a teenage girl, and I have to provide one.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know you don’t, and I know it’s a lot of information to process. I’m so glad you followed my instructions, though. This will be very easy for you.” He stepped toward her and she tensed up. “It’s okay. Like I said, I’m not going to hurt you.”
He crouched down in front of her, still sitting on the edge of the bed, and he took her hand. “You’re beautiful. I’m so sorry I have to do this. I know you’re scared, and I wish I could make you not be.”
“Why are you doing this?”
He looked at her with those caramel eyes. “Because this is how I take care of my family.”
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Friday March 21 | 12:30am
“HE TOOK HER!” Lucas screamed. His voice, shrill and pitchy, echoed through the neighborhood.
Tyler and Elijah stood slack jawed next to Lucas in the middle of the street as the car drove away, its taillights, dimming as it disappeared in the night.
Lucas jumped off the back of Tyler’s bicycle and ran toward the spot where the car had been parked. The man had thrown something into the yard of the house across the street. Searching through the grass of the neighbor’s lawn, he found it. It was Allison’s phone, face down in the yard with dirt and grass clippings sticking to the case. The screen had a crack diagonally down its face.
He picked it up and held it in the air. “It’s her phone!” he said as he ran back to his friends, still standing in the street. Several times in the past, he had seen her use the lock code to unlock it, and it was a pattern that he hoped he could replicate. He tried it, carefully pressing 1-3-4-6-7-9, and the screen opened for him. “We’re in!”
“Let’s get out of the middle of the street, bro,” Tyler said. Rolling the bicycles beside them, they ran across the street into Lucas’s front yard.
Tyler and Elijah huddled over Lucas’s shoulders as he opened up her text messages. The most recent ones were from Brandon.
“Isn’t that your sister’s boyfriend?” Elijah asked.
Lucas nodded as he read the messages. He then opened the most recent calls. The call log showed Brandon’s as the last number to call her.
“Bro. I think your sister’s boyfriend is a serial killer!” Tyler said.
Lucas checked the time stamp on the phone call and then on the text messages. Brandon had told her he was coming over, and then he called her. After which, Allison got in the car with him. The same car that tried to run him over. He couldn’t believe it.
The light on the front porch of Lucas’s house turned on and the front door swung open. Bobby Beaker stood in the doorway in a pair of gray Nike sweatpants and a Houston Astros t-shirt. “What the hell are you boys doing out here?” he asked with a voice full of irritation and sleep.
“Dad!” Lucas exclaimed, holding Allison’s phone in the air. “Brandon took Allison!”
Lucas ran up to the porch and both Tyler and Elijah followed, dumping their bikes in the grass. Bobby Beaker stood in the open glass pane door and Lucas wrapped his arms around the man’s waist.
“Dad, we know who killed that girl in the woods. And now Allison is in trouble.” Bobby held his son and tried to calculate in his head what the boy had just told him.
“What are you talking about, son? C’mon, let’s go inside.” He waved at Lucas and Elijah. “You boys get in here.”
They walked in the house and Bobby turned on the light in the dining room. All three boys surrounded the man and tried talking all at once. “Hold up, hold up,” Bobby said, calming them down. “I can’t understand what you’re saying. One at time. Now what is going on?”
“Dad, we know who killed that girl, out in the woods. It was the same guy that tried to run me over. And, we just saw him take Allison. It was her boyfriend. Look,” Lucas handed his dad the phone. “The text messages.”
Bobby read the messages on the device and the color ran from his face. He dropped the phone on the table and ran back to Allison’s bedroom, where he found the bedroom window was still open.
“Stephanie!” he called out into the hallway. “Wake up, Allison’s gone!”
Bobby ran back into the dining room, where Lucas and his friends sat at the table. He had his cell phone in his hand and he dialed 911. “Yes, my name is Bobby Beaker. I’m at 3612 Locust Dr. My daughter was just abducted from her bedroom. We believe it was her boyfriend.”
After a few seconds, he hung up the call. He turned to the boys and rested his hands on the back of the chair at the head of the table. “Okay, I need you to tell me everything.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Friday March 21 | 12:52am
“I DON’T GET it. What do you mean, take care of your family?”
“This is how I make money. I have three sons. My youngest has a heart defect. My wife lost her job about a year ago, and we lost insurance. This is how I take care of them. I sell young women, like you, to buyers from Mexico.”
“I’m going to Mexico?”
“Just for a little while. You’re sixteen, so you’ll age out in a couple of years. The
men there that buy girls like them young. As long as you’re good and don’t make any trouble, you’ll be released, and you will be able to eventually find yourself back home.”
She began sobbing again. “You called me from Brandon’s phone. Is he in on this too? Is that why he was with me?”
“Oh, no, not at all.” He stood up and pulled a tissue from his pocket. “Here,” he said handing it to her.
She took it from his hand and pressed it against her eyes, soaking the tissue with tears.
He continued, “No, your boyfriend is unaware of your current situation. Or, ex-boyfriend, if I read the messages between you correctly. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to clone a cell phone’s SIM card.”
She looked at him, bewildered. “Clone?”
“Yes. It’s very simple. I saw you two across the street from the park last week. I followed you and him the next day, to see if you were a threat. I followed him to his house. I was able to cross-reference his address with the billing system at,” he paused, not wanting to tell her the exact place, “the cell phone store. Once I had that, I looked up the account information. I saw which number on the account showed the most activity congruent to a teenager’s usage and cloned his SIM card.”
“So, you sent the messages? Not Brandon?”
“Nope. As far as I know, Brandon has moved on from you. Looking through the messages he’s been sending lately, he seems to really have a thing for your friend.” He pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through the screen. “Amilyn? That name mean anything to you?”
Allison felt the sting in her chest. That must have been why Amilyn never showed back up tonight. She and Brandon were hooking up at that party, leaving her waiting and wondering. She felt used and tossed aside. Her best friend and now ex-boyfriend left her and now she was this man’s hostage.
“I can’t believe this. How? How did you even see us at the park?”
“How did I see you? Well, that car of his isn’t exactly inconspicuous. Teenagers,” he said with a huff. “You all have to show off all the time. There’s nothing subtle about being a teenager. In fact, I bet he and your friend are enjoying themselves right now in the same backseat that you and he did last week.”
“Please stop. I don’t want to hear about it.” She sobbed. Changing the subject, she asked, “What about my brother? Why did you try to run him over? He didn’t do anything to you.”
“I wasn’t actually going to hit him,” he said, leaning into the doorframe and crossing his arms. “He and his little friends were getting too curious. I needed to scare him off. I thought if I could put the fear of God into him, he’d not dabble in little boy spy fantasies, trying to find the man in the woods. You know how boys can be.”
Allison couldn’t stop the tears from flowing down her face. She could not believe she was in this situation. And now, faced with the idea of being sold into sex slavery, she could barely keep it together.
“Don’t cry, Allison,” the man said. “I know this is a lot right now, but you’re not going to die. To be honest, I was scared when I got into this business.”
“Yeah, but you’re not the one being sold.” It was getting late and her eyes were feeling heavy from crying and lack of sleep.
The man, standing in the doorway, shook his head and said, “You’re right. But I also can’t stop. I’m in this longer than you are. You’ll be out of the market in two years, tops. Me? If I don’t give them what they want, they come after me. There’s no out for me. But, my son is still alive because of this. Because of your small sacrifice, a little boy gets to live.”
“But surely you can get out! Just leave!” she was almost pleading at this point. “Take your family to some other city.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that easy. Besides, why do you think we’re in Henderson? No one is going to pay attention to a couple of missing girls from a tiny Texas town. There’s some heat now but it will die down, and we will move on to the next town.”
He looked at the watch on his wrist. “They’ll be here in about an hour. You’ll be able to get some sleep on the drive to Houston.”
She felt some fullness in her bladder. Now that the adrenaline and initial fear had somewhat subsided, she could tell she really needed to go. “I need to use the bathroom,” she said, her nose full of snot and tears staining her cheeks.
“Okay. Stand up and place your hands above your head.” Allison stood up from the bed, her knees shaking from shock and lifted her arms.
“Keep your hands up and walk toward me.” She did as instructed, taking the five steps to the man standing in the doorframe. “I’m going to lead you to the bathroom. There are bars on the window, so don’t even try to get out. Like I said, I do not want to hurt you.”
He grabbed her by the arm and led her down the short hallway to the bathroom. It was impossibly small, with a sink, toilet and stand-up shower cramped in a space not much bigger than a closet. The open door nearly grazed across the side of the white porcelain sink as it opened. “Can I trust you?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said sheepishly.
“Good. I will close the door and give you sixty seconds. After that, the door will open. Understand?”
Allison nodded yes. He let her go, and she walked into the bathroom. The man shut the door behind her. She went to the toilet and pulled her shorts down. She felt something in the pocket.
It was Amilyn’s phone.
A feeling of joy and elation ran through her body like lightning. She had forgotten that she’d stuck the phone in her pocket when Amilyn left for the party. She wanted to scream and shout in this little piece of providence, but she knew she had to be quiet. She also knew she couldn’t make a phone call, but she had an idea.
Thumbing at the screen, she input the lock code, Amilyn’s birthday, and the phone opened up for her. In the text messages, she typed in Lucas’s phone number, and hit “Share my location”. She then wrapped the phone in toilet paper and shoved it into the trash can beside the toilet.
The bathroom door swung open as she pulled her shorts back up. The man stood in the door. “Time’s up,” he said.
She flushed the toilet, never having had a chance to actually relieve her bladder. With a slight smile forming at the corners of her mouth she said, “I feel much better now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Friday March 21 | 12:40am
INCREDULITY STRUCK ACROSS Bobby Beaker’s face as he listened to the three boys weave the story of the treehouse they had secretly built and the body in the woods. As they waited for the police to show up to the house, Mr. Beaker wanted as much information as possible and to find out why these boys were riding their bicycles around the neighborhood at one o’clock in the morning.
“We were in the treehouse when we heard him walking through the woods. We saw him dump the body out there and bury her,” Lucas said, his voice trembling at times.
“Yeah,” Elijah said. “He buried her and rolled a log on top of the hole.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Bobby asked.
All three boys glanced sideways at each other. “We were afraid of getting in trouble,” Lucas said. “We knew we weren’t supposed to be out there. And we didn’t know what would happen if we went to the police. We thought they’d arrest us.”
“We were going to though,” Elijah piped up. “But when Lucas and Tyler went back out to the treehouse, it had been destroyed. So then we thought whoever that man was, was watching us, or had at least seen us up there.”
“After he chased me in that black car, I knew he was following us,” Lucas said.
Police lights lit up the dining room window, the hues of blue and white pulsing through the closed shutters. Mr. Beaker went to the front door to let them in. Tyler’s father, John, was with them, still in his street clothes, though he’d put on jeans and a black polo shirt instead of arriving in pajamas.
They entered the house, John with two other officers. He saw his son at the dining room table. He
went to his son and grabbed him in a hug. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Dad, I’m fine,” Tyler said. “But he took Lucas’s sister.”
Bobby came over to them. “Look at this, John. It’s her cellphone. The boys said the guy threw it into a yard across the street. She was talking to some boy named Brandon.”
John took the cellphone from Bobby’s hand and read the messages. “The last call on the log was from him. Let’s find who this kid is, and let’s get a cruiser over to his house immediately,” he said to one of the officers with him. Lucas recognized him as the handsome one that had stopped his sister just a few days earlier for running a stop sign.
He turned to the boys, “You saw his car?”
They nodded yes. “A black Ford Five Hundred,” Lucas said.
“The same one that chased you the other day?”
Lucas nodded yes.
“Let’s get everyone possible on that,” John said, turning to the other officer, a Hispanic man not much older than his counterpart. His nametag read ORTEGA. “And I want a database list of every Ford Five Hundred registered in the county.”
Tyler spoke up, sheepishly, “Um, Dad? We already have that.” He pulled out the folded paper from his pocket and handed it to John. The man unfolded it, looking at the list, the circled selections.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
“From your computer,” Tyler said apprehensively. “We figured that whoever it was that tried to run over Lucas may have been the same guy that killed Ariana Perez, and we went out to find him. We thought if we could find the same car again, we could tell the cops, and then you could arrest him and search his car for DNA.”
“Did you find him?”
“Yes sir,” Tyler said.
“It’s the third one circled, Mr. Washington,” Elijah said.
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