Карен Кингсбери - A Distant Shore [calibre]

Eliza would also use the server to talk to her superiors, let them know if anything unusual was happening or if she needed a quick rescue. The brass watched everything that came and went through the server, but Jack didn’t care.

He had talked to Oliver about his friendship with Eliza, and how it was definitely not anything more. “She needs someone who cares about her,” Jack had explained before he left.

Oliver had hesitated. After all, he was the first to notice Jack’s feeling for the Belizean girl. But in the end his boss agreed. “Everything you write to her will be read by a dozen people. Just so you know.”

Jack had nodded. “I have nothing to hide, sir.”

So it was that now Jack opened a blank email and began to write.

Dear Eliza,

I’m alive. The mission was successful, but I won’t lie. It got a little dicey at the end. I don’t want to think about what could’ve happened, but at the last moment a Bahamian police officer saved my life. He looked a lot like Beck.

Remember him? The guy I told you about.

Jack wasn’t about to talk angels here, where everyone could read about it. The brass would think he’d lost his mind. And maybe he had. Maybe the whole story with Beck had only been his imagination. God’s way of getting his attention. It didn’t matter. Eliza would know what he meant. He started typing again.

Anyway, I’m fine and the operation is behind us. The girls were rescued—all of them. Camille was with us, and she saw to that. Be safe out there.

Until next time,

Jack

There was so much more he wanted to say. But that would do for now. He sent the email and then saw another one land in his inbox. From the agent on the ground in Belize. The subject line read only “Answers.”

Jack opened it and read through the letter as quickly as he could.

Jack, I want to let you know I made a careful sweep through the Mennonite communities in Belize. The bureau agreed with you that your informant Ike Armstrong in Lower Barton Creek might’ve been onto something. We had hoped to find Eliza Lawrence’s mother and brother, because they would make great witnesses in our growing case against Betsy Norman.

Unfortunately, the woman and her son are not living in Belize. Not in one of the Mennonite communities, anyway. We’re going to wrap up this part of our investigation. Just wanted you to know.

CJ

No! Jack’s heart sank as he closed the laptop. He hadn’t told Eliza that he’d asked for a search of the small Mennonite communities. The places where Ike Armstrong believed his granddaughter and her children might be living—if they were alive. Deep in Jack’s soul, he’d had a hunch about Eliza’s mother and brother. A hunch that Ike Armstrong had somehow been right.

After years working the job, Jack’s hunches were usually spot-on. Or at least close. But not this time, not if they were closing that part of the investigation. If Eliza’s family members weren’t in one of the Mennonite villages in Belize then only one conclusion remained.

They had drowned on the Belizean beach the day before Eliza was taken captive by her father and Betsy Norman.

Hunch or not, this time Jack had been wrong.

SIX MONTHS HAD passed and still Eliza couldn’t stop thinking about Jack. All they had was email, and even that didn’t happen often. Sometimes at night she would remember the Bahamas and the River Walk and the rooftop. The things he had said to her.

So she wouldn’t forget his voice.

Eliza had gone to East San Antonio High School for three months before the traffickers made their move on her. She had stood up to them, and in the most terrifying moment of her life, they had grabbed her and dragged her toward a waiting car.

Let me live, God, she had prayed silently. They were words she never thought she’d say. And suddenly, like something from a movie, agents converged on them, guns drawn.

“I knew you was undercover,” the bad guy said as agents whisked her to a waiting bureau car. A sports sex-trafficking ring that had been in business for two years was now broken up and its leaders jailed because of her work.

Next Eliza was moved to Dallas. There she worked a high school for just three weeks before leading agents to a national drug and trafficking ring operating out of a seedy restaurant.

These past two months, she’d been in Fort Worth, not far from Dallas, but far enough. Spring break was next week, so this was her chance to bring down a slavery ring. The trafficking was centered at a gas station–convenience store.

It had taken Eliza one day to know that the cigarettes and lottery cards were only a cover. In the warehouse behind the gas station, five men and a woman ran an escort service. Only in this setup, the escorting happened in a series of makeshift bedrooms at the back of the windowless building.

The traffickers wanted Eliza. If anyone knew the signs, she did. But they had taken their time. She’d walk across the street with a group of girls and she’d linger near the back door of the convenience store. The one that led to the warehouse.

Every time, the guys would see her and flirt with her. But their crude remarks never led to a proposition. Until this afternoon.

Eliza had ditched last period and walked to the gas station with Veronica, a girl who was definitely working for the ring. The girl had even come home with her last weekend. “You never talk about your parents,” Veronica had challenged her. “They must be awful.”

“Just my mom. And she is… she’s drunk all the time.” Eliza had shrugged. “Come on over. My mom keeps vodka under the sink.”

And so Veronica had come. The whole time Eliza had figured the girl was only checking out her story. Eliza was living in a squalid apartment with a retired agent, a woman pretending to be Eliza’s drunk mother. When they had walked through the door that day, the older woman was sprawled out on the sofa, looking drunk—just like Eliza had said. But when they checked under the sink all that was there was an empty liquor bottle. Also part of the plan. Informants didn’t drink. And Eliza had never touched the stuff.

Now Veronica seemed distant as they entered the gas station. She nodded to the refrigerator case. “I’m getting a beer.”

“Get me one,” Eliza said. She had the strangest feeling, like the girl was no longer her friend. “Make it two.”

Something was wrong. Eliza moved down the dusty snack aisle toward the back of the room, closer to the door the traffickers used. Why hadn’t anyone propositioned her? Maybe they had enough girls, or maybe they were onto her. Veronica made her nervous. Especially today.

She pulled out her cell phone and hit the emergency code. Three digits that would alert nearby agents to the possibility she was in trouble. She had barely sent the signal when a door opened and a thin guy with a beard stepped out. “What’s it like?”

Eliza looked over her shoulder, then she sneered at him. “You can’t be talking to me.”

“Actually, I am.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her inside, behind the closed door. She hadn’t even had time to scream.

On the other side was a dark storeroom. She and the guy seemed to be the only two people there. “I said”—he jerked her arm—“What’s it like?”

Don’t let him see you’re afraid, she told herself. “I don’t even know you.”

“No.” He sneered at her. “But you will.” He shook her again. “What’s it like… working undercover?”

“Look. I don’t work under covers,” she hissed at him. Then she raised one suggestive eyebrow. “Not without getting paid.”

“We’ll see about that.” He jerked her toward the back of the space and out a thin doorway. There was maybe ten feet of asphalt between that building and the warehouse where the trafficking happened. If he got her that far, she had no idea what would happen.