PANIC rar-3 Read online

  Ford takes my arm and pushes me over to the van, opens the door, and barks, “Get in. Sit on the floor between Spencer and me, there’s only room for two up front and I don’t even trust you enough to stay out of trouble locked in back with the bike right now.”

  I do what I’m told. They did come get me after all. And my skin might be falling off from the burns instead of screaming at me from the pain if Spence hadn’t pulled me up out of the coal chute. There’s a small space behind the two front seats and a few sleeping bags lying longways on the floor, so I just lie down, stretch out, and let out a long breath. “I might need to go to the hospital. My legs really hurt.”

  Spencer has already started rolling and Ford is just getting settled when this comes out. The van stops short and they both look down at me. “What do you mean?” Spencer asks, so I scoot around so I can prop my leg up on Ford’s thigh.

  “I’m burned from the fire.” They both look down at my jeans, charred and with a few holes in them, and then Ford lifts up my pant leg and winces.

  “Shit, Rook.”

  “Is it bad?” I ask. “It hurts.”

  “Drive, Spencer. I’ll check it out.” Ford lifts up my pant leg and unties my boot and slips it off, then asks for the other leg. “Take off your pants, Rook. Spencer, we need to find a drug store.”

  “Is it bad?” I ask again as I wiggle out of my jeans, trying my best not to cry out as the rough fabric rubs against my red skin. Ford doesn’t even glance down at my goods, just lifts my foot back up. And why should he look? He’s seen me naked so often it hardly matters.

  “No, I don’t think so,” he says, patting the skin on my calf gently, but not gentle enough to keep me from wincing. “It’s like a really bad sunburn, but if we find a drug store I know what will make it feel better.” And then he smiles and I lie back and relax.

  I’m forgiven. His worry about me outweighs his anger.

  I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out the contents of the basement box and my new iPhone and hand it up to him. “Here, Ford. I think this will help us get Ronin out.”

  One eyebrow raises. “Is that why you ran?”

  “I didn’t run, I just… left. To go get this stuff. And I did trust you, Ford. I trusted that you guys were telling the truth when you said you weren’t gonna help Ronin. So I’m sorry. But I know what these people want. Jon was into some really bad shit and he made me help him hide a whole bunch of evidence in case his partners ever turned on him. It implicates a lot of very important people in the buying and selling of girls to rich clients all over the world. That FBI guy in the house with Jon was involved—”

  “What?” they both say together.

  “Jon?” Ford asks.

  “FBI guy?” Spencer adds.

  I gulp some air and swallow, not quite ready to talk about what just happened but knowing I have to anyway. “Some guy named Abelli was the one in charge here and somehow he got Jon out of jail so he could make him give up the evidence. I was hiding in the floor grate, that’s where Jon and I made a safe place a couple years ago and put that stuff.” I nod at the flash drives in Ford’s hand. “Jon’s dead now though. They beat him until he was unconscious because he wouldn’t tell them where it was hidden. And then they shot him and set the house on fire to cover it up.” I leave out the part about Jon apologizing and saving my life. I’m not sure how to process that just yet.

  Ford looks down at the drives I handed him and then grabs a bag on the floor near his feet and fishes out his laptop. He looks at me for a second as he pushes the flash drive in a USB port and waits for the files to appear. He studies it as Spence and I wait in silence. I’m not sure I want to know what’s on that drive and Spencer is navigating his way through a nearby town looking for a drugstore, so we sit quietly.

  “What’s on the iPhone?” Ford asks after Spencer parks and gets out to go buy me some aloe vera sunburn spray.

  “A video of that Abelli guy admitting he was gonna kidnap me and sell me to a guy in Columbia for half a million dollars.”

  Ford’s eyes squint down into killer asshole mode.

  “And Jon getting the life beat out of him and getting shot in the head.”

  His eyes soften at this. “Did you see it?”

  I nod.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “No one should have to see that.” He watches me struggle with the tears and then leans down a little. “It’s OK to feel bad about it, Rook. Even if he was evil. It’s still OK to feel bad.”

  “Jon saved me at the end. He saw me hiding down in the grate hole. He pretended like he was talking to those guys, but he was really talking to me. He apologized.”

  Ford stares at me for several silent seconds and then shakes his head and lets out a long breath. “Is it over? Can you let go now?”

  I nod. “Even though he’s not here to witness it, I’ve decided to accept his apology.” I shrug my shoulders and start to cry. “I don’t want to hang on to that stuff anymore, Ford.”

  Ford scoots around to the edge of the seat and pulls my head into his lap. “You’re allowed to do that, you know. It’s OK to forgive him and let it go.”

  Spencer opens the door and jumps in the van, handing Ford the bag of spray. “You OK, Blackbird?”

  “No, not yet,” I say as I sniffle my nose back under control. “But I will be if we can use that stuff to get Ronin out.”

  “Lie back, Rook,” Ford says quietly as Spencer hands him a bag.

  “I got you some shorts, too, Rook. Just cheap drugstore leftovers from summer, but it’ s better than sitting in your panties.” He winks down at me. “Not that we mind, you know, but I’m sure Ronin would not appreciate us driving you all over the Midwest in your panties.”

  Ford hands me the shorts as Spencer takes us back on the road. I wiggle into them, which is not easy considering I’m sitting on the floor of a van behind some seats and my legs are burning like hell, but I manage after several embarrassing seconds of Ford watching.

  “Put your foot up here,” he says, pointing to his lap.

  I do.

  He shakes the can of aloe vera and I wince as the fine mist hits my skin and then the cold spray settles and relief washes over me. “Ohhhhhhh,” I moan. ‘That feels so much better I can’t even tell you.”

  Ford smiles and lifts my leg up to spray the underside. “Give me the other foot, Rook.”

  We repeat the whole procedure and I moan again. “Thank you, Ford. You’re a genius.”

  He shrugs and then he and Spencer exchange a conspiratorial look.

  I’ve seen that look before. Back when they started thinking about taking Jon out.

  “What are you guys doing? You have a plan I need to know about or something?”

  “Rook—” Spencer talks this time. Which means this is a delicate subject. I know them all pretty well by now. And whenever they need to give or get information to or from me, they take turns based on what kind of conversation it needs to be. When bluntness is needed, Ford takes the lead. When the talk involves personal things it’s supposed to be Ronin. And when someone needs to keep things light because I might freak out, that’s Spencer’s cue to do the talking.

  But Ronin’s not here, so I guess Spencer is the personal guy now too.

  “—we really need to know the whole story before we can do anything with this information, OK?”

  I just lie down on the puffy sleeping bags, enjoying the relief from the spray and the coolness of the synthetic fabric. “What exactly do you need to know?”

  “Everything,” he says. “We need for you to start at the beginning. Like Rook’s story, day one. And we especially need to know why your ex-husband had this shit in his possession, what his role was…” He hesitates and lets out a long breath. “What your role was. And how all these people are connected. If we get Ronin out, you have to understand, we’re missing a pretty important part of the team, OK? He’s the cleanup, he’s the whole reason we get away with this stuff. Yeah, I make good plans, and yea
h, Ford’s good at covering his tracks. But this is the FBI, Rook. They do not take kindly to being fucked with and they ask a shitload of fucking questions, no matter how good the plan is. A shitload of questions. And our front man is incarcerated. You understand this?”

  I swallow hard. “I do, Spencer.”

  “So, here’s what we’re gonna do.” He stops to look at Ford and Ford nods at him to continue. I guess Spencer really is the logistics guy. “We’re gonna go to Ogallala, Nebraska, lie low and get your story from beginning to end, and then figure it out. Sound good?”

  “What’s in Nebraska?” I ask.

  “The safe house. And we definitely need it because these guys will pick us up as soon as we go home. We talked to Clare before we left and she said the guy who came to talk to Ronin twice before he was arrested was named Abelli. This Abelli guy is our main problem, because it looks like he was involved in this trafficking stuff and this means he’s desperate to keep his name out of things. Desperate men are very dangerous.”

  I wait for him to finish it, but the seconds tick off and he keeps silent, so I have to ask. “What do you mean by that?”

  He lets out another long breath. “We could all end up in prison or dead, Rook. Those are the facts we’re dealing with now.”

  I stretch my legs out on the sleeping bags and close my eyes. “I’m not gonna think about that, Spencer. Ronin’s in jail because of me and I told him I’d fight for us. So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m done running, these people are all guilty, there are dozens of women I know of personally who are wrapped up in this trafficking stuff. And I talked myself into leaving without them the first time. I rationalized it. I’m just one single tragic girl, what can I do? And that was probably the right decision back then because I was all alone.”

  I stop for a moment and Ford turns to look at me.

  “But now I’m on the team, so I’m out of excuses.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine - ROOK

  Ford and Spence take turns driving through the night and by mid-morning the next day we’re at Lake McConaughy in Nebraska pulling into a campground.

  “The safe house is in a campground?” I ask Spencer as I strain to see out the window. It’s pretty boring sitting in the makeshift back of a van on the floor, not even able to gaze out at the passing countryside.

  “Not just any campground, Rook. My campground.” He swings the van around a circular driveway that allows him to pull up next to the main office and parks the van. “Wait here.”

  I jump up into Spencer’s seat so I can at least sit in a real chair for a few minutes. “Spencer sure does own a lot of businesses.”

  “Yeah,” Ford replies. “He’s not into holding onto money. He spends it as fast as he makes it.” And then he stops to look up at me. “He likes to own property and businesses. Some grand scheme of his.” Then he absently looks out at the campground. “He tried to get me to come deer-hunting with him out here a few years back.” I try to picture Ford deer-hunting and then we both burst out laughing. “It’s like he had a mental breakdown that day. I dunno.” And then he looks at me again and gets serious. “I do not hunt.”

  “I figured. Me either. I won’t be joining that party.”

  Spencer returns and pushes me out of his seat. “We got the Eagle’s Nest cabin. Sleeps ten, but at least it has a bathroom.”

  We stop off at the campground market to pick up provisions, then head out to our new digs. It’s a pretty place—very Daniel Boone.

  Inside the cabin is just like a three-bedroom house, complete with wi-fi and satellite TV. Spencer starts the grill to make burgers, Ford is still messing around on his computer, and I just sit and watch them from the dining room table, thinking about home. “Maybe we should call Elise or Antoine and see if there’s any news of Ronin.”

  “Negative,” Spencer says. “Those FBI assholes are just waiting for us to show ourselves.”

  When lunch is ready we all grab some food and eat in silence and then when we’re done, Spencer hands everyone a beer and brings a bottle of Jack and three shot glasses out to the living room, beckoning us to take a seat. I take a large overstuffed chair, Ford sits opposite me in a wingback, and Spencer stretches out on the couch. “OK, Rook. Spill it. Start from the beginning and end with climbing up a coal chute yesterday.”

  So I do.

  And it feels good to finally get it all out. I tell them about my mom overdosing when I was just a kid, all my various foster homes, and how I ended up with Wade. Spencer’s heard this part before, but Ford hasn’t. They lean in a little as my story progresses into the time after Wade. “I was in my last foster home and the father”—I stop to snort—“tried to come into my bedroom and touch me a few times. And believe it or not, even after all those foster homes, the crack ones, the single moms with scummy boyfriends, the ones who collected foster kids just so they could make the mortgage every month, this was the first time one of the grownup guys tried anything. And I figured I’d had enough. I was sixteen, I already took my GED, so I never went to school, and I was just done being someone’s problem. So I left and lived on the streets for a while with a girl I knew from a previous foster home. Then she got busted for drugs and I was all alone. And then Jon found me in a diner, scarfing down a sandwich that I bought with my beg money.

  “And he had everything, you guys. And he was handsome. He was just like Ronin. He had a college degree, he had an apartment in Lincoln Park. It was small, and not all that nice, but it was still an apartment in Lincoln Park. He had a job and a car and food.” I shrug my shoulders and look between Ford and Spencer to see what they think of this but they just nod, like they get it.

  “So I stayed with him. He never touched me at first. Not for a long time actually. I was only sixteen and he waited months before even kissing me. It lulled me into a false sense of security. Like he was a gentleman or something.

  “But he wasn’t. He was a predator who knew exactly what he was doing because I wasn’t the first girl he took in and I definitely wasn’t the last one either. He liked the kinky sex, that Fifty Shades shit. Except… not sweet.” I stop and look directly at Ford. “He liked it rough and mean.”

  Ford’s jaw clenches and he downs his shot and pours himself another one. We all stop to drink. Me because I know what comes next, them because they can take a good guess.

  “So one day, before we even slept together, he came to me with this piece of paper. It was a sex slave contract. And even though I realize now that it wasn’t legal, I really thought it was back then. I feel so stupid, but I just didn’t know any better. And he said this was what he needed from me in order to allow me to stay with him, so I signed it.”

  “You couldn’t have known, Rook,” Ford says. “It’s not something a child should ever know about. It’s not your fault.”

  “I know, Ford. But I just accepted it. I was so dumb. So after that he started having sex with me and it started out bad right away. I was a virgin and the things he was doing to me… they were just weird. I was so confused, and it was just too much for me. I—God, I’m so fucking embarrassed to tell you guys this.”

  “Rook,” Spencer says, “we’re not judging, OK? We just need to understand how we got to this day, you know? We need to know so we can make the right decisions going forward.”

  I get that part, but it’s still so embarrassing. I take a deep breath and continue. “Well, to cut to the chase, even though he tried his hardest to make me… come”—I look away and blush as I say the word—“I just, it just… it never felt good. You know?” I look up and they’re both nodding at me, somber frowns on their faces. “And this made Jon very angry. And one night he took me to his BDSM club to do a scene and I didn’t… get off. And his friends there realized he wasn’t able to get me ready, and they all talked about their girls and how they should trade us off, see if that might improve our… responsiveness.”

  “Oh, fuck, Rook,” Spencer says.

  “No, Jon didn’t agree. He was possessive of me. But
he did agree to help those guys with their girls. By this time we had already moved out to the country in the serial killer house, that’s what I called it. So these girls would come stay with us and he… trained them in the basement. He liked them a lot better than me, to be honest. He stopped fucking me so much after that. I sorta just became the house slave. Which I could definitely live with, but he got more and more violent.

  “And then, I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow he became involved in like, matchmaking. Selling, I guess, since there was money exchanged. They had auctions in our barn, I kid you not. Girls showed up, willing, money was exchanged, and at first I’m pretty sure the girls were the ones getting the money wired to offshore bank accounts. Their contracts had expiration dates. Six months, a year, that sort of stuff. But later, those girls were not there because they wanted to be. They were kidnapped.”

  I look over at Ford and he’s slumped over, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. Spencer’s got his hand over his eyes, like he’s picturing the scene and wants it to go away.

  “Jon came to me one night soon after this started. I’d just found out I was pregnant.”

  “Pregnant?” Spencer and Ford say at the same time.

  “Yeah, I had just found out I was pregnant and things sorta got better. Jon seemed happy about it, and by this time we were already married, so in a rare moment of trust, he came to me and asked me to help him hide some stuff. In case these partners of his ever decided they wanted to get rid of him or turn him in for what he was doing. He told me it was in my best interest since I was his accomplice. So we went down to the basement where his uncle had already made the hidey-hole underneath the laundry room drain grate. Jon knew about it but he was too big to do anything with it, he needed me to squeeze down there, dig it out and make a safe spot where he could keep me and the important things he had in case anyone ever came to mess with him. I would be his ace in the hole, he said.”