Elizabeth Heiter - Stalked

“You’re right.” Jimmy tossed his phone over. “Pull up Aliyah Aman. She’s good. Have her meet us there.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Kyle said as he dialed, but Jimmy must have missed his sarcasm, because he didn’t even glance over, just punched down harder on the gas.

Faster than Kyle had expected, even with Jimmy’s racetrack speeds, they were on campus, winding through the cobblestone roads at just above the posted limit. Students started to cross at random spots instead of crosswalks, and jumped back as their sedan didn’t slow. They passed frat houses that resembled castles and an administration building that boasted the kind of intricate architecture that spoke of old money.

“Here we go,” Jimmy said, sliding into a parking spot in front of a more modern building. “The Neville University Hospital. Let’s find out what we’ve got.”

Kyle grabbed his arm before Jimmy could get out of the car. “The victim specialist is still twenty minutes out.”

“Fine. Let’s at least see if the cop is even right or if we’ve got a totally different situation. If we need to wait to question her, we’ll wait.”

He couldn’t argue with that logic. Dropping Jimmy’s arm, Kyle followed him inside.

The smell hit him first, that antiseptic scent mixed with stale air and sickness. It took him instantly back to a month earlier, when he’d woken up in a hospital in California, pain in his shoulder and numbness in his arm. As the room had come into focus, he’d seen Evelyn first, looking panicked in the chair at his bedside. Then he’d seen his partner on the other side, and the expression on Gabe’s face had told him instantly. He was hurt badly enough to put his whole career in question.

Pushing the memory aside, he glanced around the much smaller hospital he was standing in now. The emergency department was bustling, but most of the people in the waiting room looked bored rather than in distress. Staff behind the counter gossiped as he and Jimmy approached and showed their credentials.

“We’re here to speak with Tonya Klein,” Jimmy said, flashing a big smile at the college-age student behind the desk.

“Is that a real badge?” the girl replied, her eyes widening as she glanced from Jimmy to Kyle.

“It is,” Kyle said. “Can you take us to Tonya? We need to speak with her.”

“Of course, sure,” the girl replied, flustered as she led them down the hall, through a few doorways and toward a room with a police officer sitting on a chair outside.

The officer looked little older than the students he was supposed to protect. He stood slowly as they approached, scowling enough to make the girl back up as she gestured to the room, telling them, “That’s Tonya’s room. The doctor thinks she might need to go to the Inova Fairfax Hospital. She’s real beat up.”

She continued backing away as the officer thrust out a hand, which Jimmy shook.

“I’m with campus police,” the officer said. “I took the call. I tried to take her statement, but all she’d do was demand you guys.” His face flushed an angry red as he continued, “Didn’t matter how much I explained the law to her. She thought she knew better, little bi—”

“She said she was the victim of human trafficking?” Jimmy pulled his hand free, which seemed to take real effort.

The officer huffed an ugly sound through his nose. “Yeah, but it’s pretty obvious what’s really going on.”

“And that would be...” Kyle stepped forward, getting in the guy’s personal space a little, pissed off by his attitude.

The officer’s attention shifted to him, and Kyle could actually see him trying to decide which of them would win in a fight. He figured he’d won when the guy stepped back and muttered, “She’s just a prostitute. Probably got beat up by her pimp.”

“You get much prostitution at Neville?” Jimmy asked.

The officer’s scowl returned. “On campus? No. But there are slums close by. She could have wandered in.”

“I thought she was a student at Neville?” Kyle asked.

“Yeah, well, maybe tuition was a little much for her. I’ll let you guys take it from here,” he said, animosity pouring from him as he strode away.

“Now there’s a guy I’d hire to protect a campus full of college students,” Jimmy said, rolling his eyes as he pushed the door open to the hospital room.

Kyle almost walked into his back as Jimmy stopped short right inside the doorway.

Jimmy’s mocking tone was gone, replaced with a softer, more subdued voice as he said, “Tonya Klein? I’m Special Agent Jimmy Drescott with the FBI’s Civil Rights squad.” He moved over a little and added, “This is my partner, Kyle McKenzie.”

The woman staring back at him could only do so through one pale blue eye, webbed with red from a burst blood vessel. The other was swollen completely shut, and dark purple. Her cheek was swollen, too, and covered with a bandage. Blood still caked her hairline, where her long dark hair had been shaved so a doctor could sew up the kind of cut that might have come from a broken bottle. Her hands, resting on the stark white sheet, were bloody and bruised, a few fingers splinted. Defensive wounds.

Whoever had attacked her, one thing was certain: Tonya Klein had fought back hard.

Good for you, Kyle thought. Regardless of what her story was—whether she was truly a human trafficking victim or if she’d been pulled into prostitution some other way—both pimps and traffickers knew how to make it hard for anyone to get out. Most of them gave up, learned to take the beatings and other abuse, just to survive.

“Thanks for coming,” she croaked in a tone that had Kyle looking at her neck.

As she lifted her head, he saw it. More bruising, this time on her neck, and it explained not only her voice but also the damage to her eye. Strangulation victims often showed hemorrhaging to the eyes. And he could actually see the darker spots in the bruises above her collarbone where fingers had pressed in.

This hadn’t been the kind of beating meant to teach a lesson. Someone had wanted Tonya Klein dead.

He caught Jimmy’s eye and the younger agent nodded, then told Tonya, “We have a specialist on the way. Her job is to make sure you have all the resources you need. We can wait for her to get here before we start—”

“No,” Tonya barked, and Kyle tried not to cringe at the cracks in her voice.

It was painful to listen to her talk. He couldn’t imagine how badly it hurt to do it.

“Do you want us to wait for a family member to come and sit with you?” Jimmy asked.

“No. They’re all back in Alabama. It’s too hard for them to get up here.”

“Do you want to try to write it down?” Kyle asked.

“No. I just want to tell you, before...” She cut herself off, then began again, keeping her attention firmly on the sheet as she spoke, her voice flat and emotionless. “I was trying to get out. They’d warned me about what would happen, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I tried to go to the police. But they came after me and...” Her hands fluttered into the air, revealing more bruises snaking up her arms. “They said there was only one way out. And that was a body bag.”

Her voice was flat as she said it, as though she’d heard similar threats often enough that it hadn’t surprised her. Or—a cynical agent who’d heard it all before might think—as though she couldn’t generate real emotion because she was making that part up.

“Okay.” Kyle eased himself into a seat next to the bed, careful to keep his distance as he took out a notepad. “Is it all right if I sit here?”

She gave a small nod.

This was an intense reentry to regular casework. When he’d worked counterterror, he’d seen some human trafficking—it was a common way to fund terrorist operations—but he’d never been the one sitting in a hospital room, taking victim statements.