Fischer leaned forward. “We like to sleep in. We’re in our thirties and we’re just going to get more tired from here on out.”
Ellie stifled the laugh. “Okay, fair enough.”
“I’d leave the lightbulb strands on, just for tonight,” I suggested. “You don’t want to wake up in complete darkness and not know where you are.”
“Good idea,” she said.
“We’re going to bed,” Fischer said, grabbing my arm. “Holler if you’re bleeding heavily or have detached a body part.”
Wren rolled her eyes, and shoved me at the stairs. She was just about to follow me when Ellie jumped up and ran across the room. She tackled hugged Wren and then yanked me into an awkward hug.
“Thank you both so much.”
And then she was gone back to the bed. I heard the little stereo that Laxmi bought her start playing some music softly as we reached the bottom. I shut the door quietly and we headed to my room.
We both saw the kitchen light at the same time.
“Can’t be good,” I murmured, and we headed down the hall.
It wasn’t good.
Haden was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and two very concerned women. She looked up as we walked in, and swallowed, putting down the mug.
“It’s late,” Fischer said.
“It’s important,” she answered, and pushed a very thick file folder to the middle of the table. “The information you were able to give me about the CPAP was perfect. We were able to locate him, and even better,” she gestured to the folder, “he has a rap sheet.”
“That’s not a rap sheet, that’s rap ream,” Miriam said, flipping the top of it open.
“You’re absolutely right,” Haden said, tapping her hand nervously. “It goes all the way back to a sealed juvie record I can’t get my hands on at all.”
There, on the top of the pile of papers was a mug shot, dated just eight months before, of the same man in Ellie’s drawing. The same plain face, the muted brown hair in a common style. No tats, no scars, no life in his eyes. But it was the same face.
“His name is Scott Woodall.”
“Jeeze, even his name…” Wren murmured.
“Nothing about this man stands out as a dangerous person when you pass him on the street. Absolutely nothing,” Haden said. “So I drew up an arrest warrant for him and sent it through the system. Went and got myself a soda, came back, the entire thing had disappeared off my screen, out of the system. I drew it up again, and went to the bathroom. Same thing. Gone. Third time, I wrote it up and sent it through and watched what happened.”
She let out a long breath. “Disappeared. I watched it disappear off the screen. Nothing I did could bring it back up. I didn’t know what to do. I stared writing it a fourth time, because it had to be a glitch that I needed to talk to IT about it.
“That’s when the phone rang. An Agent Barry Northwater introduced himself as a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He calmly explained that the warrant I was trying to process would disappear every single time I tried.”
She flipped the pages on their faces, nearly the whole pile at once, just leaving a few sheets at the end. “You see, our friend Mister Woodall has made himself invaluable to the Feds. He is a protected witness in a RICO case. Which means, he is untouchable by law enforcement in exchange for his testimony.”
It was dead silent in the room for a moment. We stared at the information on the federal case in front of us, and I finally broke it.
“That’s money…these are children’s lives.”
“I realize that, and Agent Northwater heard the same words out of my mouth. He said that as sorry as he was, there was no evidence he committed the pedophilia and sex trafficking crimes at this time, so the RICO case had to take precedence.”
“There is a young woman upstairs who would be more than happy to testify against him, and chop his balls off at the same time,” Laxmi growled.
“I know that,” Haden snapped quietly. “We all know that. The whole fucking city of Philadelphia knows that. But Agent Northwater said there was nothing to be done at this time, and every warrant would be voided.”
I could see that Fischer wanted to punch the wall, and I couldn’t blame him. We had a face, a name, a goddamn address, and absolutely no recourse to take this bastard out and stop this sex trafficking ring.
I grabbed Fischer’s hand, and murmured his name.
“I don’t trust them, and this is why,” Fischer said, his voice tight.
“If they put him away—” Haden started.
“If the feds put him away for a racketeering charge, he’ll go to Club Fed and be able to continue running his sex empire,” he snapped.
She was quiet, then nodded. “I know. You’re absolutely right. And there’s nothing I can do about this. Nothing.” She stuck her finger in his face. “And if you think I’m cool about that, you are dead fucking wrong. I don’t care how much you hate the courts and don’t trust them, you have no idea what it’s like to battle with these assholes all. the. fucking. time.”
Haden sighed and sat back. “If I didn’t see the good they did, I’d give up and go home forever.”
It was quiet in the kitchen. For all the anger I knew Fischer had over the shit court system, none of it bubbled up. None of it. I didn’t sense an iota of misplaced anger. I knew we were doing everything we could to make this right, and I hoped his non-reaction was his way of showing he knew that.
“If the fed case falls through, we can go after him,” Laxmi said.
“As far as I can tell, it’s a strong case.” Haden sighed.
“I’m not going to just give up,” Laxmi said. “But for now… We just need to concentrate on keeping Ellie safe, getting Ben here, and making sure your officers on the inside are doing what they can to bring this empire of shit down on itself.”
I agreed, “Let’s focus on the kids here, and let Lily handle the shit with the sex trafficking.”
Haden nodded. “I’m good with that. Keep her safe, help her heal. We’ll deal with everything on the other side.”
“Tomorrow should be fun,” Miriam said. “Shopping for a teenage girl who doesn’t know what it’s like to be a teenage girl.”
Fischer smirked. “I don’t envy you.”
I slapped him on the back. “You shouldn’t. You’re going with me.”
Laxmi leaned forward and smiled. “I’ve got all of tomorrow’s patients handled neatly.”
He looked around the table at all the toothy grins. “I’ve been hornswoggled.”
We had dozens of bags. My arms were completely covered in bags, and Fischer and Ellie were also loaded to the gills with just stuff.
We’d wound up at Moorsetown Mall and a nearby Target and I could swear I could hear my credit card screaming at me when we hit the Barnes and Noble.
But seeing Ellie smile, and be a teen, and pick out cute clothes and some makeup was worth it. The delight I felt in teaching her about being a normal person was extraordinary.
Picking out the bag for school was heart wrenching. She hadn’t realized she’d have to go to school since it’d been so long, and she had a mini panic attack in the store. It took me and Fischer about twenty minutes to calm her down and then she carefully looked at every school bag possibility, and considered all the ins and out of each of them. She decided on a messenger bag with about one million pockets for all the little things that she said she might need.
And then Miriam had texted me that she’d bought something for Ellie and it was waiting at Best Buy.
It was two somethings and I wanted to punch her. The woman had bought her a brand new Surface computer and a iTouch. Then Laxmi texted me and said that there was another package there—which was a brand new Samsung phone.
Fischer laughed. “Great. Are we going to start the Apple-Android battle?”
“No,” Ellie said. “Because I am not going to complain at all about someone buying me these ridiculous electronics and computers
. I don’t care what it is—I haven’t had a good phone ever.”
I put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a serious hug. “I like you. Let’s get some dinner and we’ll head home.”
We’d wound up at the local diner, and I had to stop her from ordering most of the menu. Finally we were on our way home and it felt good to say that to her.
I was liking this big sister-guardian thing we had going on. A lot.
Fischer noticed the doorknob was wrong.
He pulled us all back and kept his voice quiet. “Put everything back in the car. Quick.”
We all moved back to the car and put all of the bags in the trunk. I looked at the two people with me and sighed, reaching deep in the trunk and dislodging the handgun I kept hidden there. I slipped the clip into the handle and locked it in position.
“What the fuck?” Ellie breathed as I shoved it in the back of my waistband.
“I sometimes have to work in the worst part of the city,” I groused. “I have a concealed carry in both NJ and PA. New Jersey demands I carry it locked in the trunk unloaded, which is fine.”
“You can…” Fischer coughed. “You can use that?”
I smirked. “I go to the range once a week, and I’m really damn good with my own weapon.”
He was totally hard right now. I knew it without even asking. His girlfriend with a concealed carry in a state that barely allowed guns? I had no doubt he was harder than a granite rock. I smirked as I pulled the coat around me, and headed back for the front door.
Walking next to me. “You can clear a residence?”
“Been with the cops plenty of times,” I answered.
“Jesus,” he whispered.
“You stay right behind me with Ellie. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he breathed.
Well, now I was wet. Great. This was not the time to think with my libido. I shoved all the images of me and Fischer naked and tangled together to the back of my head and pushed the door open with my foot.
Making sure it went all the way back on the hinges, against the wall, I walked into the house. The dining area and the kitchen were immediately on the left, and there was no one there, but…
Everything was flipped over and smashed. The canister set Miriam and I had loved was in pieces, the sugar, flour, and coffee were everywhere. There were dents in our newish fridge, and the window on the stove was destroyed.
I slowly turned the corner from the foyer into the living room. I didn’t see anyone moving so I walked in carefully taking in all the damage. The couches were torn to shreds, the television ripped off the wall and slammed face down on the floor. The pictures on the wall were all cracked and smashed. The armchair had both arms broken off.
“Holy shit,” Fischer gasped.
“This is only going to get worse,” I said. “Stay here. I’ll get the rest of the house cleared.”
Heading down the hall, my bedroom was on the right. Destruction, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed or replaced. Mattress flipped, sheets ripped. The biggest mess was the smashed full-length mirror.
The bathroom at the back of the hall was wrecked. They’d smashed the toilet, which was miraculously draining into itself, and the shower doors were destroyed. The mirror was cracked and crumbling, but since it had been glued to the wall, it wasn’t going anywhere.
Miriam’s room was much the same. Sheets, mattress—her dresser mirror had suffered a terrible fate though.
Then I saw the attic door. Or, what was left of it.
It had been pulled away from the wall and hung at an odd angle. There was a hole in the middle, and a giant crack down the center.
I climbed the narrow steep stairs and gasped when I reached the top.
Every curtain was cut to ribbons. The dresser and chest of drawers were crushed to bits. The lights, all of them, were smashed, and most of the rugs were all shredded.
But it was the bed that was the worst.
There was a meat cleaver, straight in the center of the mattress, and the whole thing—mattress, pillows, sheets, blankets—was covered in bright red blood.
There were words on the rug in front of her bed.
I yanked my phone out and dialed 9-1-1.
“Wren?” Ellie called from the bottom of the steps.
“Do not come up here!” I screeched.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“There’s been a break-in at my house.”
Fischer
I sat at the table, rubbing a hand over my forehead, tired and worried as fuck about the two women across from me.
We had never let Ellie back upstairs. There was no way, once I saw the room, that we could. The words that were written in blood on the rug were enough to have me packing Ellie and Wren up as fast as I could. As soon as the cops released them from the scene, we were in the two cars and the hell out of there.
I’d called and told Laxmi to get Miriam and not let her back in the house. The cops were going to secure the house and we’d figure out what to do later.
Right now, we all needed to be away from that place.
I drove us straight to the station where Haden was working, and we were waiting to talk to her. It was an interrogation room, but I didn’t care. It was also the safest place on the planet for them right now.
Now, it wasn’t just a threat to Ellie. This was also a threat to my girlfriend. I didn’t know where the fuck this alpha thing was coming from, but it was powerful and I needed to make sure the two of them were safe.
The door to the interrogation room blew open and Paige Domingues rushed in, wrapping her arms around Wren.
“Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, Doctor Warner! I heard and I was so scared for you—”
Wren, in a shocking move, wrenched the woman away from her and slammed her against the wall. “One day, Paige. One fucking day I had the girl. I told you not to tell anyone who had her, or where we were. Was my chair even cold before you were handing out the information?”
“Wren,” I said, calmly pulling her arm off of the woman’s upper chest. “Let her breathe.”
Her other hand still pinned Paige to the wall, but at least her color was returning. Well. Turning from red to utter pale.
She ground the words out, right into Paige’s face. “Who asked you for my address? Who asked where Elutheria was?”
My God, Wren was fantastic when she was pissed. Once again, I was glad I was wearing jeans because shit, there was no way to hide my erection otherwise.
“He said he was her uncle,” Paige managed to hiss out. “He had her pictures and a birth certificate.”
“After I told you no one? After you knew the situation she was coming from?”
Paige coughed and tears pooled in her eyes. “I thought her finding her uncle was good. He could give her a good place to live—”
“And traffick her all over again,” Wren barked. “You should have called me, Paige. You should have called and cleared that with me.”
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and held up the image of the bloody bed and the words on the rug. “What do you see there? Do you see a loving uncle? Or do you see the words Talk and You Die Bitch written in fucking blood on her new carpet?”
The tears that Paige had in her eyes spilled out and ran down her face. “I didn’t know…”
Wren pulled away from the wall and slammed the phone face down on the table. “I had to clear my own house today, Paige. Someone came and wrecked my private space. They violated the space we had set up for a young girl who has had nothing but shit for luck for most of the last four years. The space we had hoped she could use to recover herself. You could have picked up the fucking phone and asked me!”
“He had all the paperwork…”
“You won’t let Ellie see her own, legally documented brother because the foster family said no—and yet you handed out my address for some random uncle who showed up?!”
The woman against the wall worked her jaw. “I only want to help. It’s a
ll I ever want to do!”
Wren was back in her face. “But it’s not for them, Paige. It’s for you. You thought getting her uncle back to her would look good for you. It would make you look like a hero.” Narrowing her eyes, she stared at Paige, hard. “What do you think you look like now?”
Paige was trembling. I had to stop Wren. The woman had suffered enough at this point. I slipped an arm between them and wrapped a hand around Wren’s wrist.
…Two of them feasted on her breasts and see her face covered in the delight they were visiting on her was magnificent. I could watch her all day.
But more was the gorgeous head of dark hair that was nestled between her legs. Long, soft, black curls flowed up her back just a little, and I reached down to gather it in my fist. I tugged and there was a grunt. I drove my cock into her a little harder, a little more.
“Eat her good,” I managed to breath out. “Make her come, gorgeous. Taste her cum on your tongue.”
“I’ll give her my cum if you give her yours,” Wren said.
“Bet,” I answered…
Both Wren and I jumped back.
What the fuck was Paige doing in that vision?
The sound of a sob behind us yanked us both back to reality before we could question it.
Ellie. She’d heard the whole thing.
I dropped into the chair next to Ellie and she threw her arms around me. Her sobs shook her whole body and her tears were soaking my shirt.
“They want to kill me,” she wept.
Paige tried to cross the room, but I saw Wren nail her to the wall with a glance before she herself walked over and sat on Ellie’s other side.
“You knew they would,” I whispered.
“I didn’t think they would really try! I don’t want anything more than to get away from them. If I never saw them again, I’d be fine. If I never had to have another nightmare about them, I’d let it all go.”
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