Карен Кингсбери - A Distant Shore [calibre]

Two days later Oliver worked out the details so she could, indeed, go undercover at one of the toughest high schools in San Antonio. The bureau had decided Eliza’s lack of high school experience wasn’t a problem. The kids she’d be hanging with didn’t have much classroom experience, either.

Eliza couldn’t have been happier.

If she needed training, she would do it. Whatever it took to get out in the field and help catch parasites like her father. The man who had stolen her childhood and nearly sold her into marriage. Her father had taken her childhood and her heart. Emotionally, she was damaged goods, and she always would be. Because her father had taken something else.

He had stolen her ability to ever be attractive to a guy like Jack Ryder.

THE TRAINING WAS more intense than Eliza had expected. She had never attended a high school, let alone one in the roughest part of a city like San Antonio. Terri and a team of agents worked with her, teaching her how to talk and dress and walk like someone from the east side of the city. This wasn’t a typical high school undercover job, something local police would operate. This was connected to national trafficking rings that preyed on high school girls in certain areas in conjunction with sporting events.

Especially pro sporting events.

“It’ll be hard enough, getting them to believe a messed-up white girl just happened to wind up at their school.” Camille was black, one of the most intelligent and street-savvy agents in the bureau. “You gotta rat your hair and walk with an attitude. Don’t smile. Wear heavy makeup. You’ll talk different and sit different, cocky bad to the core. So they don’t only believe you. They respect you.”

On the inside, Eliza was already that girl. For years she’d seen that behavior modeled by the older girls at the Palace. But she didn’t say that to Camille.

Instead Eliza worked at being even more what the bureau wanted. All day, every day she worked. And on the weekends in her bedroom at the group home she read about high school behavior and successful informants—books Camille had given her. She trained and studied morning to night, stopping to eat and sleep only when she absolutely had no choice.

One Sunday afternoon, Rosa found her in the living room looking over her class schedule, memorizing it. “This work you’re doing… is it dangerous?” The girl looked worried.

Eliza smiled at her. “Not really.”

“Good.” Rosa sighed. “You’re my best friend, Eliza. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Eliza looked at her for a long moment. “You get why I’m doing this, right?”

“Why?” Rosa was younger, but not that much.

“For you. For all the girls.” She smiled at her young friend. “I’d give my life tomorrow if it meant putting men like my father behind bars.”

Fear shone in Rosa’s eyes. “But… you said—”

“Yes.” She kept her tone light. “I’ll be fine. I’m just saying, even if my new work becomes dangerous, I won’t stop.” Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. She didn’t want Stan and Melinda to worry about her. “I’d give my life to save girls like you.”

“Okay.” And in that moment a different look filled Rosa’s face. The look of pride. “Maybe one day, I’ll do that, too.”

“Yeah, well.” Eliza patted Rosa’s shoulder. “For now worry about algebra. I want you girls to be the smartest in your classes.”

Later Eliza thought about that. She wanted to be the smartest in her classroom, too. And in the coming weeks, that meant pretending to be a complete failure. She knew her part well by now. Transferred from a Dallas school. Living with her cousin’s family. A record of drug convictions and petty theft and truancy.

Getting good grades wouldn’t impress anyone at her new school. The exact opposite.

ELIZA’S TRAINING CONTINUED with basic martial arts. A street-smart girl would know what to do if some high school punk made a pass at her. “The guy needs to be on the ground before he can say his name,” Camille told her.

Then Camille showed her.

After three days of practice, Eliza had no doubt she could take care of herself in a rough high school setting. She would get in with the worst of the tough kids and join them on their trips to the abandoned shopping mall across the street. Apparently the principal looked the other way, even when the bad students left halfway through the day.

“Too much crime and drug use going on to make a difference,” Camille said. “Most educators would work around the clock to help kids. Not this one. For him, it’s too much work to care.”

In this case, that was a plus for Eliza. She didn’t want to be busted by the principal. She wanted the feds to bust up the trafficking and drug sales happening at the mall across the street. Because it was there in that abandoned mall, Camille told her, that predators often preyed on girls from Northeast San Antonio High. The FBI suspected one or two of the senior girls were acting as go-betweens, convincing other girls to hang out across the street, and getting a financial reward if those girls fell into being trafficked.

“I’m impressed.” Camille crossed her arms and smiled when Eliza demonstrated her best takedown of one of the male agents. “You’re going to be great out there, Lawrence.”

Eliza liked Camille’s spunk. She wasn’t sure of the agent’s story, but she had a feeling the woman had overcome big obstacles in her past. Something that had driven her to one of the toughest jobs on earth.

Camille taught her in the classroom, too. The typical system of sex slavery was different from the one at the Palace. Eliza learned new information every hour. Of the twenty-five million people being trafficked around the world, twenty percent were trapped in a sex-slave ring. But not all of those lived in a mansion like Eliza had.

Many of the victims worked for traffickers during the day. The men would lure young girls—sometimes boys—into the circle by promising them jewelry or cash. At first the victims felt like they were on top of the world. Many of them had been neglected or overlooked by their parents, so the new attention from a predator was a rush.

But as soon as the girls turned a single trick, as soon as they realized they weren’t going to keep any of the money, the abusers would flip things on them. Camille had talked with one of the girls who had turned herself in and made the bureau aware of the ring happening at East San Antonio.

“You know what she told me?” Camille’s eyes were clear and sharp.

Eliza shook her head. She had no idea.

“She told me her mom was a single parent. Worked three jobs to keep food on the table and pay rent. A good mom, true to the core.” Camille paused. “But as soon as that girl worked one time for the jerk, her trafficker swore if she didn’t keep working he’d kill the girl’s mother. So even though the girl went home to her mom every night, the woman never knew what was happening to her daughter during the daytime. Because the girl believed her abuser. She was scared to death. If she didn’t work, she’d lose her mom.”

Eliza knew what that felt like. She stared out the window of the bureau office. So much pain in the world. The darkness would’ve been too much if she hadn’t already lived through it, herself. Watching her friends be forced into slavery night after night after night. She could hardly wait to mix in with the kids at East San Antonio High and identify the parasites preying on them.

Finally it was her last day of training. For the whole two weeks, Eliza hadn’t seen Jack. He was working with the Dallas office, preparing for the raid in the Bahamas. Now that Eliza and Jack weren’t working together, he was going to take part in the raid about to go down in Nassau. Pretending to be a customer this time. One of the most harrowing jobs an agent could have, according to Camille.