Kitabı oku: «The Coltons of Eden Falls», sayfa 2
Chapter 2
“Did you see her? Was she there?”
Caleb Troyer fired the anxious questions at him the moment the thirty-one-year-old cabinetmaker walked into the makeshift, satellite FBI office.
Rather than the customary laid-back attitude normally associated with people who came from the Amish community, Caleb reminded him of a rocket that was ready to go off at the slightest provocation.
He couldn’t say that he blamed the man, either.
“Yes, I saw her,” Tate answered.
He glanced toward his sister, who’d come in with Caleb. He sincerely wished that Emma had followed protocol and persuaded Caleb to stay away and let the task force do its work.
Granted, the distraught man was Hannah’s brother as well as Emma’s fiancé. However, Caleb was also a civilian and, in his experience, overzealous, emotionally involved civilians had a way of causing a mission to fall apart.
They couldn’t afford to have that happen. Too many young, innocent lives were at stake. And Tate had absolutely no intention of watching another mission self-destruct on him.
“How did she look?” Caleb pressed. “Have they …” At a loss, Caleb searched for a word that didn’t drag a cat-o’-nine-tails across his soul, making it bleed when he considered the implication. “Have they hurt her in any way?” he finally asked nervously.
Beneath the cabinetmaker’s apparent restlessness was anger. Tate could see it in the other man’s gray eyes. Tall and muscular, Caleb Troyer, once unleashed, would be a force to be reckoned with. Not that he could honestly blame Caleb for what he was feeling. If all went well, maybe Caleb would get his chance at some payback when the operation was over.
But until then, the man had to be restrained.
“She looks tired and frightened,” Tate told Hannah’s brother.
His response was true—as far it went. What Tate didn’t add was that when he’d initially seen Hannah in the motel room with the other two girls—before he’d been given the DVD to watch, she’d appeared to be drugged, as were the other girls. It was the easiest way to control the “inventory” and keep them from escaping.
Caleb definitely didn’t need to know that. If he did, that might provide the missing ingredient that would set Hannah’s brother off and God knew that Tate had more than enough to deal with without having to worry about the father of three suddenly going ballistic on him.
He could just picture Caleb storming into the motel room, breaking down the door and subsequently getting shot for his efforts. If that happened, he’d have another body on his hands—as well as his conscience—and his sister to deal with.
Omitting certain details was the far safer way to go in this case.
“If you know where she is, then what are we waiting for?” Caleb demanded impatiently. He looked from Emma to Tate, searching for a glimmer of support. Why were they hanging back? “Let’s go get Hannah and the other girls,” he urged.
Turning on his heel, he was almost at the office door when Tate moved in front of him, blocking his way.
Tate completely sympathized with what the other man had to be going through, but what Caleb was proposing almost guaranteed a bloodbath.
“We can’t just burst in there,” he told Caleb as calmly as possible.
“Why not? Why can’t we just walk into the place?” Caleb wanted to know. He didn’t understand why this detective who’d promised to bring his sister and the other girls back was acting so reticent. Was he going back on his word? “You said there were just two godless thugs guarding the girls. There are three of us here—and you can get more,” he pointed out.
Caleb was obviously focused only on rescuing Hannah at all costs. He didn’t blame the man. But Tate was able to take several different points of view regarding the op besides the way Caleb did.
Tate did his best to make the other man understand. “Yes, I can get more manpower and maybe we could rescue Hannah and the other two without incident,” he allowed, deliberately not going into how dangerous that sort of overt action could be. “But we also want to be able to rescue whatever other girls the ring has hidden away—the girls who were kidnapped for the same reason that your sister was taken. And we won’t be able to do that if the guy who’s the brains behind all this gets wind of what happened.
“The minute he does,” Tate continued, “he’ll go underground and those girls will be as good as dead. We’ll never find them.” Tate took a breath, searching the other man’s face to see if his words had sunk in. Wondering if Caleb suspected that he was also lecturing himself as well as the victim’s brother.
Lecturing himself because Tate had the exact same reaction, the exact desire as Caleb. He wanted to save Hannah and the girls with her as soon as possible. For two cents, he’d go in, guns blazing, and take down those two worthless pieces of trash guarding the girls with no more regret than he experienced stepping on a colony of ants.
Less.
The only problem was, right now there were only two henchmen visible and he knew damn well that there had to be more thugs involved than just Tweedledum and Tweedledee. An operation this big didn’t function with just two flunkies.
There had to be more.
He put his hand on the Amish cabinetmaker’s shoulder and looked at him compassionately.
“I know it’s hard, but you’re going to have to be patient,” he told Caleb. “It’s the only way we’re going to be able to successfully rescue those girls. All of them,” he emphasized.
Caleb nodded. It was obvious that he was struggling with himself. “You are right. We cannot just go in and rescue Hannah, not when there are other girls being held prisoner as well.” And then he sighed and shook his head. “But this is hard,” he complained.
Caleb would get no argument from him. “Nobody ever said it wouldn’t be,” Tate agreed. He looked at his watch. The handler should be getting the money right about now.
It was the handler whose job it was to pick up the funds from Gunnar that were needed for the exchange. At least that part was easy. Securing the funds would have been a great deal more difficult if he didn’t have a billionaire brother who was willing to bring down this sex trafficking ring.
“So what’s your next move?” Emma asked her brother as Caleb retreated to the far side of the room. There was tension in her voice.
“I’ve set up a private one-on-one session with Hannah,” he told Emma. “Seems my credentials are so good that the man at the top is allowing me to have a private ‘preview’ with my future ‘purchase.’ I’m going to try to convince Hannah to trust me, but it’s not going to be easy, given what she’s been through.”
Overhearing, Caleb looked up, suddenly alert. “Call her Blue Bird.”
Tate exchanged quizzical looks with Emma. “What?” Tate asked.
“Call her Blue Bird,” Caleb repeated, crossing back to them. “It was a nickname I gave Hannah when she was a little girl. She was always running around, fluttering about here and there, so full of life, of energy. One day when she seemed to be going like that for hours, I laughed and told her she was like one of the blue birds we saw in the spring. The comparison pleased her so I started calling her that. Blue Bird.” A wave of memories assaulted him from all angles and he shook himself free, unable to deal with them right now. “If you call her that, she’ll know you talked to me and she’ll trust you.”
Tate nodded. It was worth a shot. “Thanks. That’ll help.” As he switched his cell phone to vibrate, he saw the way Emma was frowning. “What’s bothering you?”
There was a time she would have told him he was imagining things, that nothing was bothering her. But that was when the job was all important to her, and nothing came ahead of that. Now a lot of things did. And she was worried.
“Frankly, I don’t like you walking back into the lion’s den unarmed.” She knew he was pushing his luck. “You made it out twice unharmed. The third time—” she began skeptically.
“Will be the charm,” Tate assured her, finishing her sentence in a far different way than she’d intended to finish it.
But Emma continued to look unconvinced. “The people involved in this sex trafficking ring have already killed twice,” she reminded him. “What’s to stop them from killing you?”
He shrugged indifferently, as if she were worrying for no reason. “Well, for one thing, killing me off would be bad for business,” he told her glibly. “They’re after the money I told them I’d pay for Hannah. Word gets around that they’ve killed a client and their little virgins-to-the-highest-bidder scheme suffers a serious setback.”
He put his hands on Emma’s small shoulders. Funny, he never realized how fragile she could feel. Or how touched he could be by her concern. “Look, we’ve both been in law enforcement for a while now and nothing’s ever happened to either of us, right?”
“That’s my whole point,” she insisted. She put one of her hands on top of his, silently bonding with him. “Our luck’s bound to run out eventually.”
“Eventually means someday—not today,” he pointed out with conviction. “Now stop worrying—that’s an order,” he told her. “The sooner we get the information we need about whoever’s pulling those strings, the sooner we get to wrap this up and Caleb over there gets to make an honest woman out of you.”
Emma’s mouth dropped open for a second, and then she shook her head. “I can’t believe you just said that. Do you have any idea how incredibly old-fashioned that sounded?”
Her choice of words amused him. “You’d better get used to that, honey,” Tate told her, kissing the top of his sister’s head. “Old-fashioned goes with the bonnet and the butter churn.”
Emma continued to look at him, a knowing look entering her eyes. She wasn’t all that unusual, she thought. “Tell me you wouldn’t give up everything for the right person if she came along.”
“For the right person,” he echoed, momentarily conceding the point, then quickly qualifying, “If she came along. But until she does, I’ve got work to do. And right now, I’ve got to pick up a suitcase full of money before those thugs get antsy and decide to turn Hannah over to another bidder.”
The suitcase full of money meant he was seeing Hatfield, his handler. The thought of her brother walking around with that kind of money in a briefcase made her nervous. “I’ll go with you,” she volunteered.
But he had something else he felt was more important for her to do. “No, you stay here and make sure that your cabinetmaker doesn’t decide to do something stupid and wind up breaking down the hotel suite door and hauling out one or both of those bozos.”
Emma came to her fiancé’s defense. “What would you do if someone kidnapped me?” Emma asked him pointedly, trying to make her brother see the situation from Caleb’s point of view.
“Sending his next of kin a sympathy card comes to mind,” Tate answered dryly. And then his smile faded for a moment as he gave her a serious answer. “I’d track the kidnapper to the ends of the earth and gut him seven ways to Sunday—” But he was trained to do that. It was different with Caleb. These were men they were talking about, not cabinets. “But we’re not talking about me,” he pointed out.
Emma shook her head as she laughed softly. “No, I guess we’re not.” She brushed a quick kiss against his cheek. She was going to worry until she saw him safe again. She couldn’t help it. She was built that way.
“Watch your back, Big Brother,” she told him.
“Always,” he said. Crossing to the door, he opened it then paused for a moment to look at Hannah’s brother. Lines of concern were etched deeply into his handsome, young face. “It’s going to be all right,” he promised the other man.
The expression on Caleb’s face was half resigned, half hopeful.
It echoed perfectly the sentiment Tate felt within his soul.
The same two men he’d dealt with twice before were waiting for him in the hotel suite when he arrived with the briefcase of used hundred-dollar bills, arranged in nonsequential order, just as instructed.
The bald man with the goatee opened the door to admit him before his knuckles could hit the door for a second time. Tate walked in, nodding at him and the equally bald African-American. On the latter, bald looked good. The same couldn’t be said about the man with the goatee.
“It’s all there,” Tate told the African-American man eyeing the briefcase suspiciously as he placed it on the coffee table between the two men.
The man flipped both locks at the same time, then spared him a glance. “You don’t mind if I see for myself, right?”
It was a rhetorical question. Nonetheless, Tate chose to answer it in his own way. He quickly pressed the lid back down in place before the other man could look inside. Tate met the guard’s hostile gaze.
“I’d expect nothing less,” Tate assured him.
“Then what the hell are you doing?” the guard demanded hotly.
Tate looked at the man with the goatee, then back at Waterford, the African-American. “I’m waiting for one of you to show me Jade.”
“You’ve already seen her,” Waterford snapped. “Twice.”
“You’re right,” Tate agreed amicably. “And now I just want to make sure that she’s actually here.”
“He doesn’t trust you, Nathan,” the man with the goatee jeered.
“Shut up,” Waterford ordered, obviously angry that his name had been used.
Tate pretended not to notice the flare-up. “Well, do I see her?” he wanted to know, still keeping the lid down. Tate could feel his biceps straining as he continued to hold the lid in place. It had turned into a contest of strength, one that Tate was determined to win.
Waterford did not take defeat easily. He looked as if he could snap a neck as easily as take in a deep breath.
“Bring her in,” he instructed the other guard in the room.
The latter was angry at being ordered around like that in front of a relative stranger, but he was also obviously afraid to oppose the larger man. Muttering under his breath, the man with the mousy goatee went to the back of the suite, threw open the door leading into the bedroom and barked “Get out here” to the lone occupant in the bedroom.
A moment later, Hannah, her flame-red hair piled up high on her head, wearing a green gown that looked painted on, delicately glided into the sitting room.
Each time he saw her, Tate couldn’t help thinking, she seemed even more beautiful than the last time. It almost made his soul ache to look at her, knowing what she had to have gone through. Was still going through, he amended.
He had a gut feeling that Hannah was tougher than she looked. He sincerely hoped so, for her sake.
“Satisfied?” the African-American barked, flinging his hand out and gesturing toward Hannah.
Tate withdrew his hand from the briefcase’s lid. “Satisfied,” he replied. Tate took a step back from the table. He smiled and nodded at Hannah before turning his attention to the man he’d made his bargain with the day before. Tate looked into his eyes, his gaze turning almost hypnotic. “And nobody touched her.” It was both a question and a statement that waited to be confirmed.
“Nobody laid a damn finger on her—or anything else for that matter,” the man with the goatee added when it was obvious that the client was waiting for more of a confirmation.
Tate looked at Hannah, who kept her gaze lowered, looking down at the rug. With the crook of his finger beneath her chin, he raised her head until she was looking directly at him.
“Is that true?” he asked her.
Surprised at being addressed directly without any curse words attached, a beat still passed before Hannah nodded her head.
“What are you asking her for?” the goatee demanded to know. “I said nobody touched her. I lived up to my half of the bargain,” he declared impatiently. “Where’s my money?”
“Right here,” Tate said, placing the other half of the torn bill into the man’s outstretched hand.
“What’s that for?” Waterford wanted to know, eyeing the single torn section suspiciously.
“Insurance,” was the unselfconscious reply. “Now I’d like some time alone with the girl.”
“Sure, knock yourself out.” The man with the goatee gestured toward the bedroom. “You paid for her, have at it,” he urged, and then he leered, “Sure you don’t want me to break her in for you?”
It was a crude play on words. Words that quickly faded away in the heat of the glare that had entered Tate’s eyes.
“What I want,” he began deliberately, “is for the two of you to make yourself scarce.” Tate looked from one man to the other. Neither seemed to grasp what he was telling them, or made any attempt to leave the room. “You can stand guard in the hall outside the suite’s door if it makes you happy.”
“We’re not leaving,” the goatee growled.
“I’m not telling you to leave,” Tate countered. “I’m telling you I want some privacy. There’s only one way out of this suite and it’s through that door.” He deliberately pointed to it. “You can both stand guard in front of it, or take turns—I really don’t care which you decide to do. But I don’t want to feel crowded while I look over what a briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills just got me. Understand?” he demanded.
Waterford shook his head. “I don’t know about this,” he said skeptically.
“You’re not leaving the hotel, just the room,” Tate argued. “We’ll still be right where you left us when you walk back in,” he assured them, adding in a voice that brooked no nonsense, “Those are my terms. If you don’t like them—” he made a move to reclaim the briefcase, his implication clear: he either got his way, or he would be on his way.
The choice was theirs.
The man with the goatee cursed roundly, adding a few disparaging words about having to put up with aggravating people.
In the end, he grudgingly said, “Okay, we’ll be out in the hallway in front of the door. Right in front of the door,” he emphasized. “So don’t get any big ideas about making a break for it.”
Tate deliberately looked at Hannah. “I assure you, any ideas I have have nothing remotely to do with the hotel door.”
The men didn’t look completely convinced, but they walked out of the suite. Once on the other side of the door, they made enough noise that just barely stopped short of waking the dead.
It was to let him know that they were right outside the door, as specified. Ready to stop him if he had any plans to escape with the girl.
Tate frowned. He didn’t have time to think about those clowns right now. It was Hannah who commanded all his attention.
When he turned around to face her, he saw the fear in her eyes.
The real work, he knew, was still ahead of him.
Chapter 3
Finding herself alone with the stranger, Hannah did her best not to give in to the fear that had been her constant unwelcome companion since this terrible nightmare had begun.
It wasn’t as if this man she was looking at was like the others she’d encountered in this world of outsiders. He seemed different than the two crude, insulting men who were in charge of keeping watch over her and the other girls who’d been abducted from her village and Ohio. Different even than Solomon Miller, a man who her small community had once turned out and who’d sought to avenge himself by throwing his lot in with the men who’d abducted her and the others.
This man she was with seemed different, Hannah silently reminded herself, but even she knew that appearances could be deceiving and she hadn’t known even a moment’s kindness since she’d been torn away from everything she knew and loved.
So why did she feel that this man somehow was different?
The tips of her fingers felt like ice. Her whole body felt as if it was alternating between hot and cold as she struggled to keep fear from rampaging through her like a runaway wild animal.
What was this man going to do to her?
And how could she stop him? He looked so much more powerful than she was.
Her brain was still foggy from whatever it was that the man with the facial hair had tried to force her to swallow earlier. Foggy, but not completely useless because she’d managed to keep the drug hidden in the corner of her mouth, between the inside of her lip and her gum. Still, some of it had leached into her system. But she’d heard enough to piece things together.
Even so, she couldn’t really believe it. Didn’t want to believe what she’d heard through the door that separated this new, fancy prison from the outer room where her jailers had sat, talking to the man who was now towering over her.
Had she actually been sold to him?
It didn’t seem possible.
People weren’t sold to other people. Things like that had taken place during a far more barbaric time, a shameful passage in the country’s history that was mercifully a century and a half behind them.
People didn’t buy people anymore. They didn’t.
And yet …
And yet, she’d seen the briefcase before the lid had come down on it. There’d been money in that case. A great deal of money. Was that being exchanged for her?
Had this man really bought her?
What did that mean?
Hannah could feel her soul seizing up within her as the fear she’d been trying so desperately to contain suddenly broke out of its confines and all but paralyzed her.
Maybe this was all just a horrible, horrible dream. A nightmare. And maybe, dear Lord, if she just closed her eyes, when she opened them again, she’d be back in her safe little house with her family around her. What she wouldn’t give to hear the voices of her nieces, Katie, Ruthie and Grace—her brother Caleb’s daughters—raised in some silly little inconsequential squabble.
Tears rose in Hannah’s eyes and she fought to keep them back. She couldn’t cry in front of this man, couldn’t risk it. She’d seen the effect that tears had on these cruel beasts who’d ripped her world apart. Mary Yoder had cried and they’d beaten her for it, seeing tears as a sign of weakness.
She had no idea where Mary was now, or even if she was still alive.
These men who had become an unwanted daily part of her life had no respect for weakness, no compassion or even pity. They had nothing but contempt for its display, and if anything, when they encountered weakness, it just made them crueler.
She had to be strong, Hannah told herself. Only the strong survived and she needed to survive, needed to find a way to get back to her family again, back to Caleb, who needed her to help him take care of his motherless daughters.
Be strong, Hannah, be strong, she silently urged herself. He knows Caleb. That has to mean something.
Somehow, digging deep, Hannah found the strength she was looking for. Found it and clung to it for all she was worth.
Raising her head, she forced herself to look into the tall, imposing stranger’s eyes. They didn’t look like the eyes of a cruel man. Perhaps she could talk him out of this shameful thing he was about to do.
“Please,” she implored him. “You don’t want to do this.” Hannah took a deep breath, willing her nerves to remain steady. She congratulated herself on speaking without allowing a telltale tremor to emerge in her voice and betray her.
Her eyes remained fixed on the stranger’s. Taking another breath, she repeated the sentence, her voice sounding a little stronger this time. “You don’t want to do this.”
The trouble was, God help him, he did, Tate thought. It wasn’t that the undercover role he was playing had gotten to him. He found everything about this persona loathsome. Anyone who preyed on helpless girls, using money and connections to satisfy his unnatural lusts, was nothing short of despicable.
But the truth of it was, since the very first time he’d seen her face on that DVD recording that had contained a virtual catalog of innocence for would-be bidders to view, he’d found himself almost hopelessly attracted to the abducted young woman.
It didn’t matter. He knew he couldn’t do anything about it. Knew that to act in any way on these feelings under the pretext of playing his part was more than reprehensible. His sense of honor, or decency, wouldn’t allow it.
But he couldn’t be anything less than honest with himself and, the thing of it was, under different circumstances, he would have attempted to find a way to at least strike up a conversation with Hannah. Hopefully, that would lead to spending time with her and then perhaps …
Perhaps what? She was just twenty—and he wasn’t. And hadn’t been for a long time.
Besides, he reminded himself pointedly, under any other circumstances, your paths wouldn’t have even crossed.
And it was true. When would a career detective have any occasion to meet a sheltered young woman who spent her whole life entrenched in the bosom of her close-knit Amish community? The answer to that was simple: never.
The tension in the room was so thick, he could almost see it. Somehow, he had to put Hannah at ease, make her relax a little by convincing her that he was not the enemy.
Tate took a step toward her and saw Hannah instinctively shrink back. The very action made him feel terrible for her.
I’m your friend, Hannah. Your friend.
But how did he get her to believe that? Especially since this room was undoubtedly bugged and probably under the ring’s surveillance?
“Have they hurt you?” Tate asked her gently.
The young woman slowly moved her head from side to side, never taking her eyes off him, as if she was afraid that if she looked away, he would take the opportunity to jump her. It was painfully clear that she didn’t trust him to maintain the small distance between them.
If she didn’t trust him when it came to something so basic, how was he going to get her to trust him enough to tell him what he needed to know?
And then he recalled the nickname Caleb had told him to use. It was worth a try.
“You can tell me,” he coaxed. “Did they hurt you, Blue Bird?” His voice deliberately dropped as he called her by the nickname.
Her gray-blue eyes widened and he heard Hannah’s sharp intake of breath. She continued watching him as if she didn’t know what to expect.
“Not since the last time you came,” she finally replied, speaking so quietly that, had he not been looking at her lips, he wouldn’t have even known that she’d answered.
So, the torn bill had worked, he thought. He didn’t kid himself that the guard he’d given it to had any sense of honor, only greed, but that was all right. He wasn’t above using whatever worked.
“But before then?” he pressed.
The small, perfect shoulders rose slightly and then lowered in an almost imperceptible shrug. The clinging green gown rustled a little.
“Before then,” she murmured.
“Who?” he asked, moving closer to her.
Tate saw the young woman automatically shrink into herself again, but this time, she didn’t step back the way she had before. This time, she remained where she was.
“The one with the scraggly hairs on his chin,” she told him.
The man with the goatee, Tate thought. Of the two henchmen, he looked like the more dangerous one, the more unpredictable one.
“Did he hurt you … badly?” Tate pressed, unable to make himself ask Hannah if the scum had actually raped her.
Somehow, phrasing it that directly seemed to just intensify the horror of the attack. He didn’t want to resurrect painful memories for her, he just needed information.
To his relief, Hannah shook her head. “No, not badly.” She knew what he was asking her. Uncomfortable, she pressed her lips together, testing each word cautiously as she uttered it. Her eyes were once again riveted on his face as she watched his reaction. “He tried, but the other man—” What was it that she’d heard the dark-skinned man called? “Nathan,” she suddenly remembered. “Nathan pulled him off me and hit him. Nathan said that no one would pay for me if I was ruined.” She raised her head, a glimmer of defiance in her eyes, as if these were odds she’d managed somehow to beat. “You paid for me.”
Tate paused. He had no doubt that there was probably a camera in the suite somewhere—possibly several—watching his every move, recording his every word. Anything he wanted to convey to her would have to be almost inaudible if he wanted to have a prayer of getting out of here alive—and ever coming back to rescue the girls.
“Yes,” he answered. “I paid for you. Or at least made a partial payment,” he qualified. The rest he was to bring to the “party” that was being given. A party where he and other so-called pillars of society were to be coupled with their bought-and-paid-for virgins.
A party that, rumor had it, the mastermind behind this ring was also to attend.
She didn’t quite follow him. A partial payment? “So do you own me?” she asked, still unable to grasp the concept, even as she heard herself ask the question.
“I will as soon as I make the second payment,” he corrected her, playing to whatever audience would eventually be sitting on the other side of the camera and observing this.
Hannah paused, her head spinning. The conversation didn’t seem real to her, like something in one of the books that were forbidden for her and young people like her in the village to read.
“And when you make that second payment,” she finally said, “then what?”
“Then you’re mine,” he said as matter-of-factly as he could. He saw another glimmer of defiance in her eyes before it faded away again.
Good for you, Tate thought, pleased. They hadn’t broken her spirit. This meant he had something to work with. And that, hopefully, would help her get back to normal once he brought her back to her village.
Watching him intently, Hannah was frantically searching for something to cling to, something to give her hope that there would be an end to this nightmare and that the end she was seeking wasn’t tied to her demise.
