by Ragan, T. R.
Malice caught up in time to join the other members in their conversation about D-Day.
It was Bug’s turn for revenge.
Twenty-seven, five foot two with dreadlocks and dark eyes, Bug was feisty and highly intelligent. Ten years ago she’d been a cheerleader for the varsity football team when she was tricked into following the quarterback across the playing field and into a wooded area so thick with trees even the moonlight failed to shed any light on what was awaiting her.
Held down by a defensive linebacker, Bug was raped by the quarterback and a wide receiver. She was strong. They were stronger. She couldn’t kick. Her screams were muffled.
Afterward, bruised and bleeding, she told her parents, and together they filed a report with the police. School authorities were alerted. The case went to court, but the rapists were from affluent households. Big money bought big lawyers, and in the end they were allowed to walk free. No slap on the hand. No lectures. Boys will be boys.
LILY: What’s the plan for this weekend? Are we still on?
BUG: Yes. All three of my boys will be attending. Unfortunately the defensive linebacker is bringing his wife along. Not worried. I’ll figure it out.
CLEO: How do you know your boys will be there?
BUG: I’ve been “friends” on Facebook with 90 percent of the football team for years. I use an alias. I know when my boys are on vacation or if they are enjoying adult beverages downtown. I know if they’re married with children or if they’re dating. I know as much about them, if not more, than Mark Zuckerberg.
It was probably true, Malice thought. Bug had talked about her job as a white hat hacker, a computer specialist who broke into protected systems and networks to test their security.
PSYCHO: How do you intend to get these guys away from everyone else?
BUG: I plan to trick them, just like they tricked me ten years ago. I already know their names, addresses, and cell phone numbers. On the night of the reunion, I’m going to send the defensive linebacker and his two rapist friends a text using a cell number belonging to one of their good buddies who can’t attend because he’ll be out of town. The text will ask my boys to meet at a specific area where The Crew will be waiting.
PSYCHO: More details, please. Transportation?
BUG: I have a van I got off Craigslist in Los Angeles over a year ago, weeks after we formed our group. License plates are registered to a sex offender in the area. Once my boys are tied up and ready to go, we drive to the cabin in Auburn.
CLEO: I received an email this morning. Looks like the cabin in Auburn is a no-go.
BUG: You told me the cabin was a sure thing.
CLEO: I’m sorry.
Malice instantly thought of the construction site where her husband had been working when the builder ran out of money and couldn’t complete the project. She’d heard the project would be stalled for another two years at least.
MALICE: There’s an abandoned subdivision in North Sacramento. Before phase one barely got started, the builder went bankrupt. Five houses were framed. Three others have everything except flooring and appliances. I was with my husband when he picked up his equipment, which was stored in the basement of one of the model homes. There was a steel security door, but you would need a padlock.
BUG: Is the subdivision fenced?
MALICE: Not all of it. To the left side of the construction site is chain-link fencing. If you walk or drive along the fence line, you’ll come across an opening that will take you to what would have been the backyard of one of the homes.
BUG: If you have an address, I’ll take a look tomorrow morning before work.
Malice gave her directions.
PSYCHO: Okay. Let’s assume you’ll take your boys to the abandoned house. The reunion is Saturday. How long do you plan to keep them tied up for?
BUG: I don’t know. Two or three days at least.
CLEO: What’s the plan?
BUG: I want to humiliate them. Scare them. Make them feel trapped. I want every one of them to know what it’s like to have no control over what happens. I thought about making them sign a letter of apology, but I’m not sure what good it would do.
CLEO: Too risky. A letter like that would reveal your identity.
LILY: How so?
CLEO: I think he would easily guess who was behind this scheme.
BUG: Not true. When I took QB, WR, and DL to court, other women came forward. Two of the women agreed to get on the stand. Others came to me privately and told me QB had raped them too, but they wanted to remain anonymous.
PSYCHO: I vote no to the letter idea, but yes to everything else. Make them sweat.
CLEO: I think we should only take QB. We have trouble handling one man, let alone three. These guys all have jobs, which means they have bosses and coworkers who will want to know where they are. Not to mention family. All three men attend a reunion and fail to return home by morning. That’s going to bring the FBI right to your door, possibly my door.
LILY: I agree with Cleo. Even without family and friends, cars driving in and out of an abandoned subdivision will call attention to us. Somebody will take notice and call the police.
MALICE: There are no homes surrounding the abandoned subdivision. Nothing but dry grass and oak trees, so that won’t be a problem.
BUG: Just help me get these men to the destination, and I’ll do the rest.
CLEO: I still don’t understand why you can’t just focus on QB.
BUG: It’s not only QB’s face I see in my nightmares. QB and WR may have raped me, but it was DL who held me down. I can still hear his laughter.
Malice’s mind was made up. If Bug had her mind set on holding three men captive for several days, even a week or two, then so be it. Malice had helped form The Crew for a reason. Too many offenders, like her father, got away with this abuse. It was up to them to send a message.
MALICE: I’m in. After the targets have been secured, I can help during the day while my kids are at school.
PSYCHO: I can do whatever you need me to do.
LILY: I’m in.
CLEO: I’ll be there Saturday night, but I’ll leave the rest to Bug.
BUG: Thank you.
After Bug told everyone where and what time to meet, they signed off.
Harper sat quietly for a moment. She thought about her husband and children, including the child growing inside her womb. She had made a promise to The Crew to do all she could to hold certain sexual predators accountable. These men, every one of them, deserved what they had coming.
And yet all she really wanted was to find a way out before it was too late.
CHAPTER FOUR
Surprised her daughter had almost outgrown her shiny new red Mary Janes, she put a little more muscle into getting the shoe over the arch of Molly’s foot.
“That hurts. Stop! Please! I want to go home.”
“Don’t be silly, Molly. You are home.”
“My name is Riley.”
“No, dear. It’s Molly. And from now on I’d like you to address me as Mom.”
“I will never call you that!”
The shoe finally slid fully onto Molly’s foot. Thank goodness. “There. That’s better.” Leaning close to her daughter, she brushed a loving hand over her pale, soft cheek. Every time she looked at Molly, her heart swelled. It was difficult to pull her gaze away. And yet the longer she stared, the more concerned she became. After all she’d done to make the girl comfortable and at home, Molly seemed unreasonably obstinate. A moment of goodwill washed over her, prompting her to say, “You’re obviously having a difficult time adjusting to your new bedroom after being gone for so long. So I have an idea. My . . . Someone very dear to me used to call me Bubbles.” She leaned over the bed and patted Molly’s leg. “From here on out you may call me Bubbles.”
No response.
Molly’s stubbornness showed in the stiffness of her shoulders and arms. Bubbles sighed. “I have to go to work, but there’s plenty of food and drinks in the cooler.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I’m sorry. I must.”
“Are you going to unlock the chain from around my foot before you go?”
“If you’re a good girl, the chains will come off very soon.”
Molly broke down in a flood of uncontrollable sobs.
“Now, now. We’ve talked about this. Enough is enough. No more crying.”
“What about school? I was supposed to start fifth grade.”
Bubbles snorted. “When you do go back to school, you’ll be starting fourth grade, not fifth.”
Molly wiped her eyes. “Can I start today?”
It made her proud to see how eager her daughter was to soak up knowledge. “Of course we can. As soon as I return home, we’ll get started.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going to be homeschooled.” She pointed toward the stack of books next to the cooler. “I left you everything you need—books, assignment sheets, and pencils—so you’ll be all set! After an early dinner, we’ll get to work.”
Bubbles admired Molly’s adorable yellow dress with the big bow at the waist. It was a little big, but her daughter would grow into it soon enough. She swept the flyaway hair out of Molly’s face. The girl growled, and she yanked her hand back. “Maybe I should give you another dose of medicine before I leave.”
“No,” Molly pleaded. “I’ll be good. I promise.”
She stared at the girl for a long moment, trying to decide.
Her eyes widened. She’d almost forgotten the most important part. Rushing across the bedroom to the nightstand, she opened the top drawer and found the mini instant camera that had arrived yesterday. The batteries and film had been installed, everything ready to go. Her old Polaroid had stopped working a long time ago. The price of film was outrageous, but everything was overpriced these days. Walking back to the foot of the bed, she held the camera up so she could see Molly through the lens. “Say cheese.”
Molly looked away.
She was already running late. Irritation flowed like lava through Bubbles’s body, sparking electrical currents in her brain that flickered and glowed. “I said, ‘Say cheese.’”
Molly didn’t move.
Her body stiff, Bubbles walked forward and set the camera on the bedside table. She then went to the ground on all fours and reached under the bed until she found what she was looking for. Chains rattled.
“What are you doing?” Molly asked, her voice rising.
On her knees, her chest level with the mattress, Bubbles grabbed hold of Molly’s wrist and clamped the metal cuff tight.
“Please don’t,” Molly begged. “I’ll smile. I’ll say ‘cheese.’ I promise.”
“Too late,” Bubbles said as she made her way to the other side of the bed. Again she reached under the bed. Chain in her grasp, she reached for Molly’s left wrist, but Molly pulled away defiantly.
Bubbles pounced, grabbed the girl’s arm again, and yanked it toward the cuff attached to the end of the chain. Click. Her vision clouded as she marched to the nightstand at the other side of the room and opened and closed drawers until she found a long-sleeve cotton shirt. With the cloth grasped in both hands, she ripped the shirt in two as she returned to Molly’s side.
“Please don’t hurt me,” Molly begged.
It was almost as if the child was no longer in the room. With single-mindedness Bubbles wound the cloth through the wooden slats of the headboard and around Molly’s forehead tightly so Molly had no choice but to look straight ahead.
Satisfied, she went in search of a red permanent marker and used it to draw a big red smile on the girl’s face.
Perfect.
Breathless, she grabbed hold of the camera, positioned herself at the foot of the bed once again, and peered through the lens at her daughter. “That’s better,” she said before snapping the picture. “You’re a scrappy one, aren’t you?” She waved the picture through the air and waited for it to develop. “Look at that smile,” she said when it was done. “I’m going to cherish this picture forever.”
CHAPTER FIVE
That same day, back in her cubicle at work, Sawyer clicked on the link she’d found earlier and searched for children who had gone missing over the past five to seven years. Many of them had since been found and were now accounted for. The Polly Klaas Foundation website had a master list of missing children in the state of California. She also checked out information on the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Statistics revealed that less than 1 percent of abductions were nonfamily abductions.
In under an hour Sawyer had the names of three young girls missing from the Sacramento metropolitan area.
Cora O’Neal, Alexa Moore, and Carly Butler.
Cora O’Neal had disappeared five years ago near David A. Simpson Park in Elk Grove as she’d walked home from school.
Sawyer opened the bottom drawer of her desk, found a map of the Sacramento metropolitan area, which included seven counties, and made a red X where Cora had disappeared.
It amazed her that tens of thousands of children went missing every year and yet so few got national coverage. When it came to active investigations, sometimes law enforcement was reluctant to get the media involved. In other cases, if there was any hint of the child being taken by a family member, the media often didn’t cover the story. Age, race, and gender bias also played a part as to how much attention a case received. Evidence showed that missing white children received more media attention than black children due to socioeconomic status. Resources of wealthy parents and neighborhoods were shown to improve the chance of recovery. Overall, despite the studies and theories, there was no evidence that law enforcement efforts varied by race or gender. As a whole, children who went missing received more attention than adults because they were vulnerable. Most adults who were reported missing disappeared because they wanted to.
In the case of Cora O’Neal, Sawyer noticed, her disappearance had received national attention because a family member advocate had made all the difference. But sadly, Cora had yet to be found.
Sawyer’s research often took her down several rabbit holes, which could be time-consuming. But more often than not, the information she pulled together from different sources allowed her to collect and organize it in a way no one else had before. And that was one of the things she liked best about investigating. All these different paths, in her opinion, made it possible for her to see what others might miss if their focus was too narrow.
In this case, her exploration eventually brought her to an article about runaways. It had been written five years ago by a reporter who used to work at the Sacramento Independent. The article discussed how missing children were often mislabeled as runaways. And how crime, neglect, and abuse were so prevalent in most communities. The reporter’s story focused on Danielle Woods, an eleven-year-old girl who was last seen getting off a school bus in Arden-Arcade, nine miles away. Because she’d run away once before, her case received no attention at all from authorities. Relatives believed she was one of the forgotten children, also known as “thrown-away children,” because she’d suffered neglect and abuse at the hands of her mother and was told repeatedly to leave home and never return.
Sawyer wondered if Danielle Woods’s parents simply hadn’t reported their daughter missing because of the abuse she’d suffered at their hands. Could they be responsible for her disappearance?
Or maybe Danielle had been lured away by someone she’d met online?
She could have gotten lost or injured or taken by a family member trying to help her.
Bottom line, the missing children problem was far more complex than headlines suggested. Midway through the story, there was a mention of a young girl who’d narrowly escaped being abducted. No name was included. This tidbit intrigued Sawyer, but further research revealed no additional information. The byline read MITCH DEMATTEI, REPORTER. He had left Sacramento to work for a paper in San Francisco, but she didn’t have an address or telephone n
umber. LinkedIn, however, provided her with an email.
She sent DeMattei a message, letting him know she was researching missing children in the area and was interested in talking to him about his article on runaways. Then she resumed her search on Alexa Moore. It took some time, scouring through articles where Alexa’s name popped up, but ultimately led nowhere. It wasn’t until she typed in “Mary Jo Moore,” a relative of Alexa Moore’s, that she learned the ten-year-old was kidnapped by her father, which then led to a one-year court battle between Alexa’s parents. The judge granted full custody to the mother. Alexa was now in high school and doing well.
Sawyer crossed Alexa Moore’s name off her list and then did a search for Carly Butler. On her eleventh birthday, Carly had disappeared on her way home from school.
An email from Mitch DeMattei popped up on Sawyer’s computer screen. She opened it and saw that he’d provided her with a telephone number, telling her to call anytime. She picked up her cell and tapped in his number.
Mitch DeMattei answered on the first ring. He had a lively, friendly voice.
“This is Sawyer Brooks with the Sacramento Independent,” she said before thanking him for taking her call.
“Not a problem. What can I help you with?”
“In your article on runaways you mention a near abduction that occurred almost five years ago in the Sacramento area, but I don’t see a name, and I couldn’t find anything else on the internet about it.”
“The girl’s name is Paige Owens. The reason you can’t find anything is because Paige’s mom, Rene Owens, refuses to talk to the media or anyone else about what happened.”
“Why?”
“Because the ordeal absolutely petrified her. She was convinced that the woman who had tried to abduct her daughter as she walked to the bus stop was still out there, watching and waiting to steal her daughter away at any given moment.”
