Карен Кингсбери - A Distant Shore [calibre]

She was right. Jack laced his fingers together behind his head and stared at her. “The FBI wants to help you. We’ll get you your citizenship and identification, some cash. Something to start a new life.”

“What if I don’t want to be a U.S. citizen?” She sounded less harsh. More matter of fact. “My home is in Belize. Doesn’t that mean anything to you people?”

“Eliza, your father has men all over Belize. Your life would be in danger every minute, every day.”

“I’m used to that.” Her words were quick and sharp. “I don’t care if I die. Death would be a reward.”

He felt the same way, but he couldn’t tell her that. She was just twenty. Intelligent, beautiful, and despite her horrific past she had her whole life ahead of her. “You don’t want to die. Your life is just beginning.”

“You’re wrong.” For the first time since he’d known her, she didn’t sound furious or jaded. She tilted her head to the sky again. “I thought I would arrive here and become a police officer. Work to save girls like the ones at the Palace.” She paused. “But who was I kidding? I have no family. Nowhere to go, no way to make a living. No friends.” She hesitated. “Yes. Death would be a gift.”

The poor girl. He looked down at a spot on the table. “What happened to your mother?”

“I don’t feel like talking about it.” She sighed. “Do you understand, Jack? Why I’d rather die?”

“Yes.” He clenched his jaw. “I feel the same way sometimes.”

“You?” Her comeback was quick. “Hotshot secret agent. Gorgeous face and body.” She laughed, but it didn’t touch her eyes. “You have life by the tail, Jack. Why in the world would you feel that way?”

No chance he was telling her his life story now. He remained quiet.

Eventually she looked off. “I almost died. Did you know that?” She didn’t wait for him to speak. “I was nine years old and there was a hurricane in the Caribbean. The undertow was the worst I could remember.”

Jack winced. So young. “You went to the beach every day even then, when you were little?”

“Yes.” Her expression grew stone-cold. “My father insisted. I’d been at the Palace for a year by then. I was only nine years old.” She opened her last taco and set it on her napkin. After a few seconds she wrapped it up and tossed it in the paper bag. Her eyes found his again. “That day something grabbed me… like a monster. I actually looked down expecting to see an octopus or a sea creature. But it was the current.” Her eyes never softened. “My aunt was on the shore, like always back then.”

Jack tried to picture the scene.

“I could barely keep my head above water, but for some reason I screamed. And my scream got the attention of my aunt. And a couple of teenage boys on the beach.”

A couple of… Jack felt the color drain from his face. “That was… eleven years ago?”

“Yes.” She looked off again. “Two white boys—tourists probably. I had never seen them before, not on my father’s beach. I never saw them again. How could they know I didn’t want to live, didn’t want them to save me? I told myself to let go, fall beneath the surface and sink. But my legs kept kicking, kept fighting.”

What? Jack reminded himself to breathe. It wasn’t possible. She was rescued as a nine-year-old? On the beach in front of the Palace? Was she the same…? Jack’s heart pounded so loud he was sure she could hear it. Was she… was Eliza the child he had rescued from the beach that day? He could see her still, the little girl, panicked, mouth open.

Matted blond hair and… and blue eyes.

Jack needed a minute to process this, but he didn’t have it. He had to stay with the story, let her talk. He couldn’t let on about what he was feeling. All that mattered here and now was gaining her trust.

Clearly, her story wasn’t finished. Eliza looked off. “Something happened to one of the boys, because people were working on him… there on the sand.” She shook her head. “By then I was with my aunt again. She took me back to the Palace. And she beat me for half an hour for straying so far out to sea.”

“What?” Anger rose in his heart. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“My aunt worked for my father. If she let something happen to me he would’ve killed her.” She turned her eyes to him again. “The beating was a warning.”

Jack felt dizzy. Of course the woman on the shore that day had been Betsy Norman. That explained why she had seemed angry instead of afraid. Why she never looked at Jack. Never thanked him.

She had only been worried about losing her job.

A sick feeling wrapped itself around Jack’s gut. Of all the girls in all the world, how could the one he rescued have been Eliza? He tried to steady his heart, stuff his reaction.

Lost in the story, Eliza didn’t notice. She lifted her face to the sky again. “If I had died that day, I would have woken up in heaven. With the rest of my family.” She met his eyes again. “Instead I woke up in hell.” She turned to him, hate dripping from every word. “With my father and his men.”

Jack had no idea what to say. He had lost his own brother in that rescue. And here the girl hadn’t even wanted to be saved. If only they’d known she was a victim back then. Held against her will in a house of torture. If they had known, Jack and his family would’ve called the authorities and had the place shut down that very day.

Even with Shane lying dead at the hospital.

He drew a slow breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes, well…” Eliza crumpled up her paper bag. “Here I am. Rescued again.” She looked back at him. “But I still wish I had drowned that day.”

Jack was just barely able to concentrate. She was the same girl! She really was. He pushed the truth from his mind. He couldn’t tell her now, couldn’t break the fragile trust between them. “Maybe you won’t wish that. Once I tell you the news.”

And then Jack explained about the housekeeping job at the home where the other girls lived. “You would make ten dollars an hour and help with homework. But you would have your own room. You’d be free to come and go.” Something Eliza had never known.

She didn’t say anything, but his words had hit their mark. She was thankful, he could tell. Because he watched her eyes fill with tears. The same blue eyes as the little girl he had rescued not once, but twice. From a place Jack would remember as long as he lived, the last place he had ever seen his brother, Shane.

A distant shore in the heart of Belize.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.

—Proverbs 19:21

To Eliza, Jack Ryder served just one purpose. He was her way out.

Already he had secured her a place to live and work. In her new home, she could finally treat the Palace girls the way they deserved to be treated. With kindness and respect. With honesty. And now that she had a place to live, with every passing hour, Eliza became more convinced that she didn’t want to work at the group home.

She really did want to work with the FBI. Eliminate traffickers from the streets and get them behind bars, as many as possible. And rescue girls like herself and the sixteen from the Palace.

Until now, Eliza hadn’t had access to the Internet. But the group home had a computer for schoolwork. She had asked Stan and Melinda for an hour of Internet time, and they had agreed.

“The system is protected from inappropriate content,” Melinda told her. The woman was kind, but she didn’t quite trust Eliza. Not yet, anyway. “We’ll have a record of whatever you search.”

“That’s fine.” Eliza wanted to learn just one thing: how the FBI informant program worked. She told Melinda as much, and over the next few days, Eliza found all she needed to know.