Allison Brennan - Silenced

Some of them illegal.

Genie said, “There are two missing girls that were seen with Jocelyn Taylor yesterday. Can you identify them?”

Genie showed the senator the photos of the brunette, then the dark blonde. Lucy watched his expression for any reaction.

There was none.

And that’s when Lucy knew that he knew who they were.

The Jonathon Paxton she knew would have shown compassion and tenderness toward the girls, suspecting what they had suffered that led them to this point in their lives.

Then he would have been enraged toward those who had made them suffer.

“I’m sorry, I don’t,” he said. “Are you going to go wide with this in the press? I can help, whatever you need.”

“Thank you, I’ll get back to you on that. We’ll see ourselves out.”

Jonathon followed them to the door anyway. “You have no suspects? You don’t know who did this? Or why?”

Lucy turned and looked into his eyes. “Do you?”

She couldn’t read his expression. “I wish I did,” he said evenly. “I would make sure justice was served.”

Senator Jonathon Paxton sat at his desk and considered his options.

Chris is dead.

Jonathon put his head in his hands and breathed deeply, sorrow flooding his heart. Chris was a good man, loyal, trustworthy. Jonathon had recommended him for the chief of staff slot when Dale won the special election in their home state of New York. Chris was smart, but not jaded like so many young staffers.

Maybe if he had been more jaded and less trusting, he would still be alive.

Jonathon needed more information about the murders, about what the FBI knew. He wasn’t going to volunteer information that they didn’t know, but he didn’t want to withhold information they might need.

He recognized with profound regret that he had some culpability in Chris’s death.

After all, he had set this chain of events in motion.

Jonathon glanced at his closet door. “You can come out,” he said.

His security consultant stepped into the room. “You should put a chair in there.”

“Find Ivy and her sister.”

“She’s spooked and not answering her phone. But I’ll do everything I can to find them.”

“Spare no expense, but be discreet. They have a photograph of Sara, it’s only a matter of time-”

“I understand.”

Jonathon always had a contigency plan. Now that Ivy wouldn’t be able to record the blackmailers, he had to find another way to get back what they stole.

“I’m going to bring in Sean Rogan.” He didn’t want to, because Rogan was a wild card. Jonathon wasn’t certain where his loyalties were. It all rested on how much he loved Lucy-and what he was willing to do to protect her future.

“Are you sure you can trust him?”

“I need the locket back,” Jonathon said, his voice rising. “It’s all I have of Monique.”

“He’s not going to buy that.”

He might not. But Jonathon didn’t trust Sean Rogan enough to tell him that what was inside the locket was more valuable than the locket itself.

“I have an idea. But make sure Ivy and Sara are safe. I made a promise; I’m going to honor it.”

“I’ll take them to the safe house.”

Jonathon breathed easier. “Thank you, Sergio. As soon as the police make the connection to Wendy James’s murder, I’ll confess my part. But if I say anything now, I won’t be in a position to help them.”

Jocelyn Taylor had worked for Missing and At-Risk Children, a nonprofit social welfare organization that focused on finding and reuniting runaways with their families, or finding homes for abused children. Many runaways left because of abuse or neglect, and MARC worked to place these difficult cases with homes outside of the foster care system.

MARC’s small suite of offices were on the third floor of a squat office building wedged between two skyscrapers on K Street. Genie and Lucy were ushered immediately into the director’s office.

Cathy Hummel was a tiny Asian woman, barely five feet tall, with an impossibly narrow waist. She wore fashionable red-framed glasses and a pale gray suit, crisp even in this sweltering heat. Hummel’s office was small but extremely tidy-no paper could be seen anywhere. Two locked oak file cabinets filled one short wall; the desk and two guest chairs crowded the remaining space.

After getting over the initial shock of the triple homicide, she asked, “Who did such a thing?”

“We’re pursuing all leads,” Genie said. “What did Jocelyn do for you?”

“She’s a social worker.” As if that explained everything.

“Can you be more specific?” Lucy asked. She held up the brochure she’d taken from the small lobby. “It says here that you also work with law enforcement to rehabilitate underaged prostitutes. Senator Paxton said that was Jocelyn’s specialty.”

“You spoke with Jonathon Paxton?”

“Chris used to work for him.”

“I know, but-why is that important?”

“We’re trying to retrace the Taylors’ steps,” Genie said. “How long has Jocelyn worked here?”

Cathy took a deep breath. “Fifteen years, started right out of college. Jocelyn had been raised in foster care, she knew how bad the system could be, and she also knew how good the system could be when it worked. She wanted to help teenage girls make better choices, and the only way they could make good choices was if they had options. So many of these girls feel hopeless. They think no one cares what happens to them.” She stared at a picture on her desk. From her angle, Lucy couldn’t see who was in the photograph.

Cathy shook her head, then continued. “Jocelyn worked mostly with teenage runaways and prostitutes. She cared.”

Unspoken was “She cared too much.”

“And recently? This past week?”

“Jocelyn hasn’t been in the office much this week, but that’s not unusual,” Cathy quickly added. It almost sounded as if she was protecting her, and while that wasn’t strange, here she sounded defensive.

Genie said, “So you don’t know what she was doing?”

“No, of course not, it’s just that-” She stopped. “You said there was a third victim?”

Genie said, “Unidentified. The photograph is disturbing, but it’s important we identify her.”

Hummel took a deep breath, braced herself, then nodded.

Genie had a Polaroid picture of the Jane Doe in the bathtub, face only, but there was no mistaking that she was dead.

Her face fell. “Maddie.”

“Maddie who?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Just … Maddie. She, oh my God, excuse me.” She ran from the room, her hands to her mouth.

Lucy wanted to go after her, but Genie put a hand on her arm. “She’s okay. Just give her a minute.”

“She knows what Jocelyn was doing and she’s not sharing. It’s dangerous.”

“She will. It’s natural to want to protect those you care about, but Cathy will do what’s right. We crossed paths before, she’s a class act.”

Lucy hoped so. She had far too much experience with people who, thinking they were doing the right thing, ended up hurting far more people than they helped.

Cathy was extremely protective of Jocelyn-not just MARC, her organization, but Jocelyn, her employee. Her friend.

The day before Lucy was supposed to graduate from high school, she’d never thought much about privacy. She wanted to do something special with her life, have fun doing it, and share it with the world if she had the chance. She was friendly, talkative, almost carefree-at least as carefree as possible with her military and law enforcement family. She’d wanted to study languages, which came naturally to her, to swim competitively and maybe earn a place on the Olympic team. She wanted to someday raise a family and travel around the world. She thought the world was her oyster, the cliche so appropriate to growing up as the youngest in a large family of seven who doted on her.