The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set

by Danielle Girard

  “You have an iPhone charger in here?” Ballestrini asked.

  “I think my sister borrowed it.”

  She saw the black screen on his phone. “You can use mine.”

  “No. It’s fine.”

  Cameron looked in her rearview mirror and watched as a white moving truck pulled into the parking lot of the pier they’d just left. Whatever words had been on the side of the truck had been painted over. Cameron put on her blinker and pulled over.

  “Why are you—” Ballestrini started.

  Cameron twisted around in her seat. “See that truck.”

  Ballestrini turned back. “What about it?”

  “No logo. That was one of the things to look for.”

  Ballestrini stared at his phone. “But there’s no boat. It’s probably delivering produce to one of those farm booths.”

  “Pretty big for a local farmer. I say we check it out.” She eyed Ballestrini.

  He nodded, a little frustrated.

  Cameron made a U-turn in the road and sped back. The truck had backed up against the small port building. She couldn’t see behind the truck.

  “It doesn’t look like anything is happening,” Ballestrini said.

  Cameron reached the parking lot as the truck driver was getting back into the cab. Another man rounded from the back and climbed into the passenger side. “Were there two men before?”

  “Yeah,” Ballestrini said. “They’re Hispanic, but so is everyone else here.”

  She scanned the people selling fruit. It was true.

  The truck pulled out past them. The men appeared normal. What did traffickers look like? Cameron pulled up to the place where the truck had been parked.

  “What are you going to do?” Ballestrini asked.

  “Look around.”

  Cameron walked to the door of the port building and knocked. When no one answered, she tried the knob, but it was locked.

  “There aren’t any windows low enough to get a look inside.”

  Cameron eyed the side of the building. The truck stopped at a stoplight. They were heading onto the freeway. It was probably nothing. The buzz of adrenaline she felt was the result of days of no action. On the way to the car, she caught sight of something on the ground. She stooped down and picked up a silver earring.

  “What is it?”

  The truck drove onto the onramp as Cameron ran to the car. “Come on.”

  “What are we doing?”

  “Following the truck.”

  Ballestrini barely had his door closed before Cameron sped off. “Get the light,” she said. “It’s behind my seat.”

  “Are you sure? What did you find?”

  She pointed to the earring in the center console.

  “Shit. Seriously, Cameron. That could be from anyone.”

  “Get the damn light, Ballestrini.”

  Ballestrini put the light on the roof and switched it on. Cameron honked at the cars in front of her. As they slowly crept out of her way, she swerved around the line waiting to turn onto the freeway. “Do you see it?”

  “It’s up there. Get into the left lane.”

  Her view was blocked by an 18-wheeler as she moved into the left lane. “Where?”

  “Get around this next truck and you’ll see them.”

  Drivers were slow to acknowledge them as police officers, so Cameron kept one hand on the horn as she moved in and out of the lanes. Ballestrini had his window down and was waving cars to the side.

  Cameron came around the second truck and scanned the lanes of traffic.

  “Shit,” Ballestrini said, peering out of the car. “Where the hell did it go?”

  Cameron sped up and moved out of the fast lane in time to see the tail of the truck at the bottom of the off ramp. “Damn it, they’re getting off. I’ve got to get over.” The ramp was almost behind her, and a suburban was coming up fast. Cameron moved forward and changed lanes. Ballestrini was waving at the traffic in the lanes to her right, trying to help create space, but drivers kept passing.

  Cameron had no choice but to keep moving forward as she tried to get right. By the time she was in the right lane, she’d missed the exit.

  “What the hell?” Ballestrini yelled into the car. “Doesn’t a police light mean anything to these assholes?”

  Cameron drove onto the shoulder and put the car in reverse.

  “What are you doing?”

  She drove backward along the shoulder. “Going back for them. Honk the horn for me.”

  Ballestrini reached across and honked as Cameron backed along the freeway until she could exit the ramp. A minivan pulled ahead of her, the driver slowing down to take a good look. Maybe she was thinking she’d need to give a police description later. Instead, Cameron rode up on the van’s ass and honked her horn until the woman pulled over and let her pass. They reached the bottom of the ramp. Cameron searched for the van.

  “Where did it go?” Just then, she saw the truck heading east. She followed. She was maybe sixty yards back. The light changed to red as the truck approached, but instead of stopping, the truck blew through the light. A black sedan swerved to miss the truck and hit a pickup coming the opposite direction. Ballestrini grabbed the handset off her portable radio. Beyond the wreck, the truck barreled through a stop sign and kept going. The drivers of the other cars were getting out of their cars to assess the damage.

  “They look okay,” she said.

  Ballestrini pointed toward the truck, then gave the dispatcher details on the wreck.

  She tried to veer around the mess in the intersection, but one of the cars had ended sideways, completely blocking her lane. “Damn it,” Cameron said, trying to maneuver around it. There was a narrow space between the accident and the curb, but a car that had stopped now occupied it. An older man got out and crossed to the accident. Cameron honked her horn, but the man kept walking.

  The truck was gaining distance. “Can you read the plate?”

  Ballestrini leaned out the window to yell at the old guy. “Get this car out of the road.”

  The truck made a left and vanished from view. Cameron cranked her wheel and drove up onto the curb. She went maybe half a block along the sidewalk, terrifying a pedestrian coming out of a shop. “Sorry,” Ballestrini yelled. “Please step back.”

  She drove back into the street with a scrape and a thud. Rubber burned as she went after the truck. They swerved around the corner. Cameron eased off the gas to scan in both directions for the truck.

  Her heart was pounding. “There,” Cameron yelled, pointing to the frontage road which ran along the Berkeley side of the Bay toward Ashby. She yanked the car in a semicircle, then swerved to avoid a slow moving car. They exchanged honks. The other driver swore. Ballestrini waved his badge out the window as she punched the accelerator. She closed some of the distance, but there were two cars and a motor home between them and the truck. People on the streets stopped to stare. A homeless man yanked his shopping cart away from the curb and hurried in the opposite direction.

  Cameron kept edging into the oncoming lane, but there was too much traffic. She gave the horn a long, hard hold. The motorhome’s blinker went on.

  “Finally,” Ballestrini said.

  The beast lumbered to the curb. Cameron sped past it, crossing into the other lane, and swerved quickly to avoid an SUV coming at her. As she came around, the truck shot right onto the freeway.

  “They’re going back to the freeway.”

  “Call for backup,” Cameron said. “Tell him to get some black and whites on I-80.”

  Ballestrini got on the radio as they crossed two lanes of slow moving freeway traffic to pull in three cars behind the truck.

  Almost there. “Come on.”

  The sedan in front of her made no move to pull aside despite Cameron’s insistent honking. Damn, she wished they were in a black and white. She changed lanes and floored it past the sedan, cutting him off. From the corner of her eye, she saw the little old man mouthing what was probably a long
a string of obscenities. Ballestrini continued to wave his badge, not that it was doing much good. On the dash, Cameron noticed the orange glow of the gaslight.

  The truck was successfully swerving in and out of traffic. People slowed down to keep their distance. The result was that Cameron and Ballestrini got pushed farther behind.

  She tried to move around a beater Neon, but the BMW she pulled behind threw on its brakes. They nearly collided. “Goddamn it.”

  “If you’re going to hit one, go back to the Neon,” Ballestrini said. He pointed. “There.”

  A hole opened in the traffic. Cameron moved through it and closed the distance to the truck.

  Cameron checked her rearview mirror.

  “Where the hell’s backup?”

  “We had to end up in Berkeley,” Ballestrini muttered. He lifted the radio again and repeated his request with twice the venom and half the patience. “Stay with him.”

  Cameron was right behind the truck when the brake lights fired red. She pumped the brake and swerved right. But the truck stopped too fast. She hit the rear corner of the truck, sending it spinning counter clockwise. Cameron overcorrected left and skidded into the center divide. The impact knocked her toward the steering wheel, but the airbag exploded first. It was like being suffocated by a plastic bag. Her shoulder jammed against the door. The road outside spun by, then halted. When she opened her eyes, the airbag was deflated.

  She tried to focus, but her vision was a blur. She examined her arms, touched her face. She was fine.

  Behind her, the whir of sirens approached. She reached over and touched Ballestrini.

  He looked as shaken as she felt. “Damn.”

  The truck had crossed three lanes of traffic and collided with a pickup truck. The moving truck was on its side.

  A black and white pulled up beside her. She opened her door, using her shoulder when it stuck. Her back and shoulder ached, but she stepped from the car. A female officer met her. Cameron quickly explained how they’d come to follow the truck.

  “An earring?” the officer asked.

  Cameron flashed her badge and kept walking.

  “Wait,” the officer called after her, but Cameron didn’t stop. The police were setting up cones to block off the freeway and routing cars to detour off the exit ramp. Cameron jogged stiffly toward the wreckage of the truck.

  Another patrol car pulled up beside the truck. An officer emerged. “Excuse me,” he said. “Please stand back.”

  Cameron pulled her badge off her belt and hobbled to the cab and pulled herself up to look inside. It was empty.

  “San Francisco? What brings you guys way over here?” He handed the badge back.

  “We’re working with ICE on a series of boats that might be trafficking women.” Cameron limped to the back of the truck and tried to open the latch.

  “You should have called for backup. We could have helped.”

  She had no motion in her left shoulder, so she had to bend her knees and use her right side to lift it. It didn’t budge. “We did call.”

  “We didn’t—” He saw her face and stopped talking. He reached down and pushed the door up and open with a long screech. The noise was followed by human cries.

  The patrolman stumbled back. “Holy shit.”

  Inside, the women had been thrown when the truck tipped over. Metal shelves were scattered among the bodies. There was blood. Two women rose shakily and moved toward her. Many didn’t move at all. Some of the women were African while others appeared more Eastern European. One woman wore a burka.

  “Oh, Jesus.” Cameron kneeled in the truck and crawled through the bodies.

  She acted as a one-woman triaging unit. Behind her, the EMTs arrived with gurneys.

  Cameron looked around, trying to count. “We need more ambulances.”

  A paramedic was on his radio. He scanned the bodies as he did his own count. Their eyes met. Even for someone who dealt with disaster, this was extreme.

  Cameron knelt and felt for pulses. As some of the women rose, she called to the officers to escort them off. In the distance was the cry of additional ambulances and police cars. She held her left arm to her stomach to immobilize the shoulder and moved on her knees through them. Beside her, the patrolman helped lift those who could move.

  One woman sat huddled against the truck bed, which was now a wall with the truck on its side. Her head was lifted toward the ceiling. She was mumbling. Cameron moved toward her, lifted the edge of her skirt and saw bone pushing against the skin. “We’ve got a compound fracture.”

  The paramedics and officers worked to make a path for the gurney.

  Cameron touched her shoulder. “You’re going to be okay. Todo estará bien.” She repeated the two sentences until the paramedics reached her. Other paramedics loaded up the injured. Several women held onto the others who moaned softly. Their friends held them and cried. Another onslaught of paramedics arrived, taking the injured one by one.

  Cameron moved a metal shelf and saw one who had been hidden. Crumpled in the corner was a young woman who couldn’t have been older than fifteen or sixteen. She had beautiful dark red curls and creamy white skin. Her eyes closed, she might have been sleeping except for the dark blood that ran behind her left ear and down her neck.

  Her chest tight, Cameron moved toward her. She had to crawl over a bent metal piece and lost her balance. She threw her left arm out instinctively and winced when her weight shifted into her shoulder. She took a breath, shaky and nauseous. “Come on,” she breathed. Cameron reached to touch the woman’s neck. No pulse. She moved her fingers, praying to find it somewhere. Nothing. A third and fourth try. Nothing.

  Cameron sat back on her haunches. The woman’s dirty hands were bunched in tight fists. Cameron touched one, feeling the woman’s fear in her grip.

  “Cruz!”

  Ballestrini walked toward her, a gash on the side of his cheek.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded. Then, she shook her head, picturing the young woman in the truck. She crawled to the edge of the truck and stepped down, trembling.

  “Cruz? Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  She fought the shaking, struggled against it. “No,” she finally let out. She waved into the truck. “She’s dead. There’s a dead one.”

  The paramedics moved in. Ballestrini reached for her, but she pulled away. “I need air,” she said, limping away from the truck.

  Ballestrini followed. “We got a call back on the plate. Guess who the truck was registered to.”

  She couldn’t think.

  He waited to deliver the punch line until she met his gaze. “Diego Ramirez.”

  Chapter 15

  Ivana’s arrival in California was not how she had imagined it. The only bit she’d caught sight of was a wide slice of the bluest sky. After that, all fourteen girls had been rushed inside a tiny apartment where they had lined up for a shower that was ice cold before Ivana’s turn. They were an awkward bunch. More than half were darker, some clearly African while others might have been from India, Pakistan, or Afghanistan. Ivana knew almost nothing about those countries. There was one girl from the Ukraine. She carried a small postcard of Kiev that Ivana recognized. Her mother had studied Russian for fourteen years, something required of all Czechs until the fall of Communism. Being there with no one to speak to made Ivana wish she’d learned a few Russian words from her mother.

  Without a towel, she used her dirty clothes to wipe the water from her skin and wring her hair. When she emerged from the bathroom, two of the girls were gone. One was the blond Ukrainian. The remaining girls claimed small portions of the half dozen mattresses that lined the floor. Dinner was cold sandwiches and bottles of Coke and water that a man named Marty dropped in the center of the room.

  As the women moved in for food, Marty studied each one. He took hold of one woman’s arm as though to see how thin she was, placed his palm on another one’s backside. The woman pulled away, but Marty yanked her arm and held her while he c
ontinued palming the full round of her bottom. Ivana looked away, feeling the woman’s shame.

  When it was dark, Ivana lay on the thin mattress and pulled her jacket over her. It was warm in the apartment, especially with all the girls, but she couldn’t shake the chill she felt. The night was filled with sounds of the street, cars and horns, people screaming out, and despite the solid floor, Ivana still felt the rock of the waves beneath her. Someone was crying. Michal often had bad dreams and it was Ivana, not their mother, who got up to comfort him.

  She slept fitfully and woke early. It was dark, but the orange hues in the sky indicated morning was coming. She lifted her head and scanned the room. The others were sleeping. She wondered how many of them dreamt of home as she had. She folded her coat to put it under her head when she saw the blonde Ukrainian sitting in the corner. Her head was down on her knees. Ivana couldn’t see her face, but she was almost certain it was her. The girl who had gone with her wasn’t there.

  Ivana unzipped her bag loudly and the girl looked up.

  Ivana offered a small smile, but the girl didn’t return it. She didn’t seem at all happy. When did she come back and why? Slowly, Ivana moved toward her.

  “English?” she asked awkwardly.

  The girl shook her head.

  Ivana didn’t speak Ukrainian or Russian. The only other language she knew was her own. “Czech?”

  She shook her head again. Then, she dropped it back into her arms and cried.

  Ivana went to touch her, but as she did, the door flew open and hit the back wall with a bang, barely missing her.

  The room filled with the moans of the girls waking, but the man who entered wasn’t concerned with them. In two giant steps, he crossed to Ivana and the Ukrainian. Ivana cowered at the aggression of his movements. He ignored her, grabbing the blonde by the arm.

  She struggled, crying out, but he jerked her to her feet, holding her to his chest, then leading her to the door with one arm. Watching them leave, Ivana had the sense she had narrowly escaped something bad.