“Doctor Skillman, we need you to scrub in immediately,” Gutierrez said. “We have a bad one.”
Bad one turned out to be an understatement.
Wren
Wrung out was an understatement.
I’d had a dream two nights before and managed to get a full ten hours of sleep. Between that and the amazing night of nearly nonstop sex Fisher and I had, I had woke hopeful.
And then came the page from the hospital.
The migraine was horrible. I didn’t know why I expected anything different. Truth was I should have been grateful I was home and able to lay down.
Sleep was being elusive. After what I had seen and heard the night before, it was going to be that way for a while. I had spent most of the night to midnight at one hospital, then made a break for it to St. Chris’ to spend the rest of the night there. Then, as the sun came up, I wound up at UPenn for another six hours.
Finally, at noon, I had to go. The migraine was stopping me dead in my tracks, and I couldn’t see the letters on the papers anymore.
I was able to get home, and able to crawl into my bedroom, swallow the migraine meds, and basically pass out. It wasn’t really sleep, and it wasn’t really passed out. I called it my migraine state. It was more just complete inability to think or move.
Somewhere in my mind I watched the sun slide through the sky by the shadows in my room. The curtains were drawn, but nothing was ever truly completely dark, unless I had the sleep masks on. Which, again, no energy. I just laid there, numb.
Numb not only because of the pain. What I had seen in the past eighteen hours.
I was not a freshman social worker—I’d started volunteering at domestic violence shelters when I was sixteen. I’d been immersed in the shit that was humanity for years, and certainly I didn’t get senior positions at both hospitals by not knowing my shit.
The forty-four children I had help process into the state’s care were like nothing I’d ever seen. Certainly, this wasn’t the first sex trafficking case I’d dealt with, at all. This was the first that was a high-end clientele, with children who were beaten into obedience. This was one of the first times I’d dealt with the end point of the trafficking, the owners who pimped out these children for their perverted customers for their twist pleasures.
Fourteen of the kids hit on AFIS or CODIS. Haden was beyond thrilled that they were going to be able to tell the parent their kids were alive. Then I reminded her how damaged these kids were and how long it was going to take to rehab them.
Most of them would never really be completely okay again.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy these parents were going to have their children back. It was that what they were getting back were not their children. They were shells. Still, fourteen would have warm beds, loving families, and a real chance to survive.
The other thirty were not quite as clear cut. Particularly the ones that had to undergo surgeries—ranging from a splintered ankle to someone who had recently been hit so hard on the back of the head, their spine was swollen.
That was Fischer’s patient. She was going to live.
Haden had found me at UPenn before I couldn’t move for the pain. She gave me the low down on everything that had happened everywhere, and then dropped another bomb on me.
“This is the first bust. Just the first. We think there may be as many as ten other houses with about twenty kids each.”
“Jesus,” I said, running a hand down my face.
“We’re moving slowly because we don’t want to lose this chance. It’s why we’re keeping it from the press as much as we can.”
“Understood, I’m not talking to them.”
“Oh, and thank you for calling in those other two…Rana and…”
“Doctor Laxmi Rana and Miriam Crownin,” I supplied.
“Yes. Thank you. They were great helps. Rana was able to run over here and handle some of the smaller issues with their patients. And Miriam stepped up for the really little ones.”
The implications of the phrase ‘really little ones’ in conjunction with sex trafficking made me want to puke, which just made my head throb even more. Haden grabbed my arm.
—We sat across the table from each other, laughing while Lucifer looked at her darkly, trying to hide his humor.—
“Take it easy, Doc. We’re doing good. I wish that we could have stopped this long before they were even taken, but barring that, these kids are all going to have a chance at their own lives.” She paused and considered me a moment. “I wanted to ask you a favor, but I can see you’re about to drop. I’ll find you tonight and we can talk then. Good deal?”
“I’ll try to be functional, but no promises.”
Staring at the ceiling, I could feel the drugs fighting for dominance. I would at least be pain free for now. The other symptoms would still be there after this.
I was still wondering if Haden had seen that flash of hallucination, or was it all me? She didn’t seem to be phased by it at all.
From the shadows on the wall, it was nearly six in the evening by the time the meds had enough of a grip on me that I could move. Five hours of just laying there, hoping for medicine and time to help the migraine.
The phone in my hand—that was impressive, it was still in my hand after all this time—started to vibrate and I moved it closer to me to look at the face.
Fischer: Hope you’re okay. We need a makeup date. And maybe more sex.
I smirked, not letting myself chuckle as I wanted to. Since I was starting to get hungry, I wanted to be able to stand up soon.
Wren: Alive, but down with the brain pain. Sex helps headaches, did you know that?
Fischer: I did. I helped with one of the studies.
Wren: Helped…how?
Fischer: Surveys, Wren. I wasn’t dipping my wick.
Wren: You could survey me. With wick dip.
Fischer: You, my dear, are fantastically filthy. Relax, take it easy. I’ll be over with Haden later.
I sent a smiley face and dropped my arm and the phone to the side.
Wait.
Fischer was coming here? To my house? With Haden in tow? I didn’t even know what the place looked like after weeks of inattentiveness on the part of the staff. Namely me.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I sat up. Giving myself a moment, I flexed the fingers of my hand to make sure that I could feel all of them.
I needed a shower. Desperately. I always slept on top of the covers if I couldn’t make it in there. I needed to try and wash away the filth that clung to the kids. It wasn’t that the kids were actually physically dirty. There was always a sense of grime when we removed kids from a bad situation. They could have showered just five minutes before I walked in, and that feeling of grime that was not theirs hung in the air. That was what I needed to get rid of, the cloying sense of terror, abject fright, desperation.
There was nothing more comforting than a hot shower anyway, so I managed my way to the bathroom. The scalding hot water sluiced down me and started to unknot some of the tension and I was able to stretch and relax a little. The drug had killed the pain in my body, but like I thought, everything else was still there—the aches, the soreness, the flashes of light.
I enjoyed the shower as much as I could, and took a long time to towel off and dress. Yoga pants and loose shirt were all I managed, along with a house bra—the kind that are over-worn, stretched out and don’t really do anything except keep the boobs from getting out of control.
And the boobs I had needed to be controlled.
I wandered out into the living room and kitchen area and found it brimming with people. Miriam had broken out the coffee tank, and it was still three-quarters full.
Why were all these people in my kitchen?
A moment later, my skin tingled and I glanced up to find Fischer standing against the counter, looking at me. There wasn’t a smile there, but I could see that he was glad to see me through the shine in his eyes.
“Uh, hi?” I finally sa
id, looking at the table.
“Oh! You’re up!” Miriam said, jumping up from the table. “Are you feeling any better?” She snagged a coffee mug from the cabinet and got my coffee for me.
“Drugs are working for now.”
“Did we wake you?” Haden asked from her spot at the head of the table.
“I don’t really sleep, so no. And I didn’t hear all of you come in, so…” I took a sip of the liquid of the gods and let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Miri.”
She winked and sat back down, right next to Laxmi after dropping a kiss on her head. Those two got really comfy really fast.
I immediately amended that in my head as Fischer finally worked his way over to me and gave me a kiss that curled my toes. Apparently, love was in the air. Or at least really good sex.
“Tongue wrestle later.” Haden smirked. “We’re here on a mission. We have thirty children who don’t have families that we can easily locate. We need to deal with them, and we need to come up with a plan.”
“That doesn’t involve much more of Paige Domingues,” Gutierrez said from the chair in front of me. I hadn’t even realized the man was there until that moment.
Then, I realized what he’d said. “Oh no.”
Turning in the chair to find me, he nodded. “Someone asked her in. It wasn’t me and I know it wasn’t anyone in this room.”
Haden raised a hand. “It was one of my officers. He didn’t know about the moratorium I’d put on contacting her about this. She showed up and I managed to shuttle her into a room and give her only the ones who were…”
“Not overly damaged,” Laxmi said. “The new ones. Just four of them. They would still need help, but not like the others.”
“Which is why we’re here,” Haden said. “Gutierrez suggested that we have a confab outside of the city so we don’t have to be on the record about anything.”
“Can you even legally do that about something like this?” Fischer asked.
“Off the record?” She grinned.
“Fair enough.” He laughed.
“So, now that our wayward social worker has appeared,” Miriam said, “Can you tell us what happened?”
“We got a tip from a guy we caught with a minor about two years ago. The kid was a missing child from upstate New York and they were ready to throw the book at this guy. He turned, and started singing about the sex trafficking ring that he rented the kid from. Rented. The Kid.
“In order for us to start getting on the trail of this, we had to give him almost no jail time. I was disgusted, but I also understood what was going on. We needed to get into this and get these kids out. I went undercover for about three months on this, and decided that no one was going to be undercover for more than that. You can’t handle it, no one can. It’s psychologically scarring and some of the strong guys I know barely made three months.
“We managed to get all the information and close the place down last night in a sweep. We’ve got the runners, the owners, the bookies, everything. A few of them are already singing about the other ten houses we suspect operate so they don’t have to go to jail. I talked to the DA and he’s not interested in pleading out most of these fuckers—we’re still going to have to.”
“Who are the end users?” Laxmi asked quietly.
“This is a high-end operation. Really high-end. The kind we usually can’t touch for the money that rides behind them.”
“Elite?” Gutierrez asked.
“The One Percent, yes,” Haden said. “We have trouble getting in up there because we don’t have a lot of people who can walk the walk. It’s a different world up there.”
My eyes shot to Miriam for just an instant and hers caught mine. I didn’t know if anyone else saw the exchange, but she let out a sigh and leaned into the table.
“I can get in.”
“Miri…” I warned.
“No, this is my choice. I have the fucking pedigree.”
Laxmi leaned away to look at her better, but then, so did everyone else.
“Miriam Crownin. It’s a shortened, and legal version of Crowninfield, an old, old Boston family. I’m legally a cousin or something to John Quincy Adams. I grew up in all that hoity-toity shit, but most of the family didn’t want much to do with me because my parents adopted me. We moved down here and no one cared that I was adopted, they just cared that I had the inheritance. I don’t run in those circles anymore, because most of my fellow one-percenters think that my work at the charity is a cute but pointless endeavor.”
“They also don’t talk to her because she’s a lesbian,” I added. “And it’s not that they care that she likes women, but that she wants to live openly as a lesbian.” I’d heard this argument so many times between her and her parents.
Miriam nodded. “True. They don’t care if I sleep with every woman on the planet, as long as I get married and get enough D to get them an heir.”
Haden’s hand slammed over hers and a grin spread on her face. “If your girlfriend is willing to go along, can we mockup a fake marriage for you and get you in there? I’ll walk you through everything you need to know get the right information and you’ll never have to deal with the actual dealers—”
“Slow down, Detective!” Miriam said. “I don’t—”
“I can’t slow down, Ms. Crownin. Those people have hundreds of children as sex slaves they rent out. I need as much information as I can get as fast as I can get it.”
Miriam looked at me, and I tipped my head in an ‘up to you’ gesture. She looked at Laxmi, who kissed her knuckles in the same, more intimate gesture.
“You can’t just throw me back in there,” Miriam said. “This has to be a little controlled. There’s like a six month window here to get me back into the scene.”
Haden ran a hand down her face. “Fucking rich mort…morons.”
The words were grumbled, but I caught the redirect from another word to morons. I was probably the only one in the room who would have, too.
“Fine. We’ll work you back in. If your girlfriend agrees.”
“I’m not—” Laxmi began, but the look that Miriam pegged her with had the words halt instantly. Laxmi sighed, then smirked. “Fine. I am, and I’m okay with it. As long as I get you on weekends.”
Haden grinned. “I can probably do one better than that. Let me talk to my people, and we’ll set all this up. Good deal?”
“Rotten deal, but I’ll go with it for the kids.” Miriam nodded.
“Thank you.” Haden nodded. “In a lot of cases, we are literally all they have.”
Miriam and I nodded. We were both familiar with that fact. I also saw Laxmi and Gutierrez nodding.
“Doctor Warner, I have a favor to ask of you,” Haden continued, glancing over at me. “We need, desperately need, to keep Paige away from a few of the kids at St. Christopher’s. I sent four very bad ones over there, but they are teenagers. Fourteen through sixteen. If Paige gets to them, she’s going to use them as poster children, and we can’t have that.”
“Oh, hell no, we can’t,” I agreed.
“So, I need you to personally take charge of those four over there. If you need a restraining order, I’ll do it.”
I waved her off. “I shouldn’t. St. Christopher’s isn’t the high-profile place. She wants the big shiny building and the hard luck cases. Not the ones that are really fucked up. She won’t make it over to Port Richmond for four fucked up kids.”
“I want to say thank you, but at the same time,” Haden sighed, “it’s pretty screwed up that we have to keep her away.”
I nodded. There was no argument there, and the room was quiet for a moment in evidence of that.
“All right,” Gutierrez said. “Who’s hungry? And what’s the best pizza place that delivers?”
I grabbed Fischer’s hand before he could walk out the door with the others, and pulled him back.
“Stay.”
He put a hand on my cheek. “Wren, it’s late. You need to rest.”
�
�I never sleep, Fischer. Stay.” I twined my fingers with his and studied them. “This is not a request for sex—I don’t have a problem asking for that.”
“I know,” he said, quirking an eyebrow.
Smiling lightly, I rewrapped our fingers. “Stay. Sleep next to me.”
I didn’t know if he could sense what I was really asking. I was so tired of being alone in my bed. Having him there the night at the hotel hadn’t gotten me the whole night’s sleep, but it had gotten me a good four hours that I needed.
He nodded and I closed the door as the last of the house guests left. We walked back to the kitchen hand in hand and found Laxmi and Miriam cleaning up.
“There’s still a bit of coffee,” Miriam said.
“I’ll take it,” I answered. Caffeine didn’t do anything bad or good for me. I’d cut it out completely years before to see if I could fix this, but nothing happened. Well, that wasn’t true, something did happen. I couldn’t focus because I was used to the caffeine in my system. Never let me sleep, though.
Miriam put the enormous mug in front of me and I watched Laxmi nervously drying some dishes at the sink, glancing over her shoulder once in a while.
Fischer chuckled. “Laxi, relax, please. You’re an associate, and I like to think a friend. We already had this talk in the office. I’m not going to the ethics board if you’re not going to the ethics board.”
She put the towel on the drainboard. “Well, that’s just fine, but are you going to listen to me bringing my girlfriend to climax while you’re here?”
“Not if you’re not listening to Wren’s screams of delight,” he answered with a smile.
“People,” Miriam said, looking between all of us. “There’s a reason why there is a hallway and a bath between our rooms. And closets.”
I laughed. “Look, we’re all adults here. We know what happens behind the doors. We don’t have to play Dueling Orgasms tonight, all right? I actually just want to sleep. For real.”
“Do you think you can?” Miriam asked.
“Who knows. I want to try.”
She nodded and put the last coffee mug back in the cabinet.
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