Resolved to talk her way out of this—after all, unless they arrested her, she didn’t have to go with the feds—she went with the guard to the lobby.
The feds were quite obviously FBI agents—the male was probably close to forty with conservative-cut sandy-blond hair. He wore a light-gray suit and stood like he’d served in the military. Maybe it was just that he had that military look that Siobhan knew all too well. The woman was younger, maybe thirty or so, with her black hair pulled back. Siobhan assessed her features. She’d traveled extensively in the Western Hemisphere, she could generally discern where someone was from. She was Cuban, maybe—at least a quarter, but probably half Cuban.
“Agent Armstrong,” the guard said.
The man approached and thanked the guard. He extended his hand to Siobhan. “I’m Supervisory Special Agent Noah Armstrong. This is Special Agent Lucy Kincaid. You’re free to go, Ms. Walsh, but we’d like to talk to you first.”
“Sean’s Lucy?” Siobhan asked. She smiled broadly and hugged the woman. Lucy didn’t hug her back—a little aloof—and she seemed surprised. Siobhan couldn’t help herself—she’d always been a touchy person. “Wow! I’m so glad to finally meet you. Sean told me he was getting married, but that was after that whole thing with Kane down in Santiago—I didn’t have an opportunity to come up for a visit.”
“Nice to meet you,” Lucy said, a bit on the formal side. She was pretty, a bit standoffish. Reserved, Andie would say. In fact, she was a lot like Andie. No wonder Kane had so much respect for her. “I’ve seen your work—it’s amazing.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that.” They walked out of the police station and to a sedan. Noah opened the rear passenger door for Siobhan. She said, “I’m so sorry about all this. I really didn’t think I would run into a problem. I didn’t mean for Rick to send two agents to get me out.”
“That’s not the only reason,” Noah said and closed the door.
What did that mean?
As they drove away, Siobhan said, “I’m not going to Virginia.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“We need to talk about what you discovered, and how it connects to the abandoned infant.”
“Oh. Well. I don’t know yet, I’m still working that out, but when we get my camera—do you think I could trouble you to take me to my rental car? I parked a few blocks from where I was arrested. I hope they didn’t tow it. I mean, I didn’t rent the best car on the lot, I wanted something to blend in, but I still have to pay for damages.”
“Tell me where,” Noah said.
Siobhan rattled off the intersection, and the fed typed it into his GPS.
“We spoke with Father Sebastian. He told us your theory.”
“Well, such as it is. I’m close. I know it. The locket.” She reached up and touched the locket that had been Tilda’s. “Neither of the girls would have just gotten rid of it. If Elizabeth isn’t the daughter of one of them, her mother knew the sisters.” She looked at her watch, then just spilled everything she knew. This was Sean’s Lucy Kincaid, and Siobhan trusted the Rogans. Siobhan needed help—help, not replacement—and hopefully Lucy would let her stay involved.
“Mari and Ana have been missing for two years,” Siobhan said. “They each had an identical locket—one of which Father Sebastian found on Baby Elizabeth—that I had given them.” She pulled her locket from under her shirt. “This one belonged to their mother, Tilda, who was my friend. She died…” She shook her head to clear it. She still regretted so much … she should have been there, helping before the mudslide. She should have said good-bye to Tilda. And then she was gone.
“Eight months ago,” Siobhan continued, “it was early February, I think, though I can check my notes, one of my reporter friends did an undercover exposé on a brothel in Del Rio. Most of the girls he spoke with were underage, most illegal immigrants, most hadn’t been trafficked but didn’t see any other way to earn a living. However, one of them gave my friend a story about six girls who’d stayed at the brothel for three days. This was a year ago last June. They closed the place—why would they do that? And the regular girls were paid to stay away. What brothels that use underage girls pay them for a vacation? The girl recognized the photo of Marisol, but more than that—she said that Mari spoke French. Mari has a knack for languages—Spanish is her native language, but she speaks and understands multiple dialects, speaks near-perfect English, French, and was learning to read French before the mudslide.” Siobhan shook her head. I know it was her. But after those three days, the six girls disappeared and no one seems to know what happened to them.
“Anyway, I’ve been looking for them for two years, but couldn’t do much until I got that lead. The number on the locket is my cell phone—I don’t give it out to many people, and the village didn’t even have electricity, but I wanted to make sure if there was an emergency that they could reach me.” It felt like a lifetime ago. “I’d sent out flyers, I’d called, I made sure I was always accessible. I know Mari and Ana as if they were my own sisters … they would escape if they could. They’d find a church. They don’t trust the authorities—their village is in the middle of nowhere, but the few run-ins they had weren’t pleasant.”
“What happened to them? Were they kidnapped?” Lucy asked.
“I don’t know. Six years ago, there was a mudslide. Nearly half the people in their village were killed, including their parents. Tilda was one of my friends, and I didn’t even know about the disaster for weeks because I was on assignment in Chile. By the time I got there…” It had been awful.
They were still recovering bodies. The Sisters of Mercy had come to help with the cleanup and burial, but there was so much work to do, and so much sorrow. And there were no young sisters, not anymore. Siobhan shook her head, clearing her thoughts. “We started rebuilding, but donations are difficult these days. One of the sisters heard about a business hiring bilingual employees, and she helped Mari get the job in Monterrey. Ana went with her, safety in numbers, and she worked for the same company. They were vetted, I talked to the owner—he was upset when they went missing. Distraught—I don’t think he was faking.” She knew he wasn’t faking, because she’d called in Kane—Kane had talked to him. Kane said their employer had nothing to do with their disappearance. How he was so certain, she didn’t know … but she trusted him.
“I’m certain their roommates know something, but I couldn’t get anything out of them.” Neither could Kane, and he was far more intimidating than Siobhan. But Kane tracked them until they disappeared—dead or in hiding, he couldn’t say, but he’d spent a lot of time helping her. “Now they’re gone, too.”
“Did you run it through RCK?” Noah asked.
“You know of … of course you do. You know Rick and Kane and Sean. No one filed a missing persons report on the roommates, but things are handled a little less … formally, you could say, down south.”
“Do you think someone misled the girls? Maybe enticed them with more money, and then tricked them?”
“Not Mari,” Siobhan said. “She was too smart to fall for anything like that. And she wanted to go home. The job was supposed to be for two years. She was translating for the company to help them gain more business in the US. They manufactured children’s toys. Wooden puzzles, mostly. Ana … maybe. She was sweet. Mari wanted to go home, Ana might have been a bit more excited about Monterrey.” Siobhan hesitated. “I’m the one who took them from their village, traveled with them, got them to Monterrey. The job. And left them there. I should have checked up on them more often, made sure they were okay.”
“They could call you, right?”
She nodded. “They knew that.”
“Then stop blaming yourself,” Lucy said.
Siobhan sighed. “I’m not.” But she was.
She leaned forward as they rounded the corner and she saw the rental car. “Thank God,” she said and crossed herself out of habit. “It’s still here.”
Noah parked behind it and Si
obhan got out. So did Noah and Lucy. “I want to show you the house. I know, you can’t go in, but you should still see—” She opened the trunk and frowned. Her camera case was on the right side of the trunk and she was positive she’d put it on the the left side, like she always did.
She opened up the case and checked her camera. It was gone. “Well, dammit.”
“What happened?” Noah asked.
“Someone took my SD card.”
“Are you certain?”
“Of course. I locked my camera in the trunk; the camera is here, the memory card is gone.”
Lucy raised an eyebrow. “You don’t sound all that upset that you lost all your pictures.”
“I didn’t lose anything. They save automatically to the cloud through a phone app that your brilliant fiancé set up for me ages ago. But that SD card was the best I had, costs two hundred bucks a pop.”
Siobhan was even angrier that someone had gone through her things. She glanced through her satchel and backpack—nothing else appeared to be missing. She’d left her laptop in the hotel safe. It was a bold move to grab her SD card—could they have also taken her hotel card key and gotten into her room? Maybe … though they wouldn’t know what room she was in.
“Are you certain you didn’t misplace the card or drop it?” Noah asked.
“Of course I’m certain,” she snapped. She rubbed her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get snippy with you. I know, you can’t prove that deputy came here and stole my SD card. I just know that he did. Or he gave my key to someone else. No one broke in, and the car and trunk were locked.”
“Wasn’t the evidence bag sealed with your belongings?” Lucy asked.
“Yes, but they didn’t have me sign it or anything. They could have put everything back in a new envelope. I just verified nothing was missing.” She glanced at Noah. “I need to go back to the house.”
“Since they let you go so quickly, I suspect they already cleaned out the place.”
“There’ll be something! You can do forensics and stuff, right? Get fingerprints?”
“We’d need a warrant.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not going to be that easy to get,” Noah said.
“But I saw a pregnant woman in that house with her ankle chained to the bed! Locks on the outside of the doors!” Were all cops like this? So rigid about rules? Someone was in trouble. A pregnant woman was in danger. Why didn’t that trump everything else?
“And you illegally entered the house.”
“I saw her in the window and she looked to be under duress.” That was all truth. She’d swear to it on a Bible.
“It might fly, but it’s not going to be a slam dunk.”
Lucy said, “Would it hurt to stop by and see if we can talk our way inside?”
Siobhan looked at Noah. “Please?”
Noah nodded, but he didn’t look happy about it. They all got back into Noah’s car, and Siobhan directed him the three blocks to the house.
“I’d like to see the pictures you took as soon as possible,” Noah said. “We can run the images through the federal database and possibly ID one or more of the individuals involved. If there’s an arrest warrant, that’ll help me get a search warrant.”
“I can download them to my phone or on my laptop. I just need to see if that young woman is okay. She was upset, angry with me, angry—” Siobhan paused.
“Did she say something?” Lucy prompted.
“Her Spanish was street-level, very lowbrow, I guess you’d say. Slang. I didn’t really understand her, and that’s unusual because I know Spanish better than most gringos. I mentioned Marisol and Ana, hoping to forge a connection with her, and that’s when she started shouting. She called me Satan. I thought she said more trouble, but I could be mistaken.”
“She didn’t want your help,” Noah said flatly as he parked directly in front of the house.
“Girls like her are brainwashed. Her family could have been threatened. She was scared—yes, angry, but also very scared. I’ve met girls like her. She needs our help, even if she thinks that being bought and sold like cattle is normal.”
Who was this guy and why had Rick sent him? Siobhan didn’t think she should have to explain this to a federal agent.
Lucy put a hand on Noah’s forearm, and Siobhan could practically see them speaking telepathically. They must have been partners for years to be able to just know each other that well.
Lucy turned to face Siobhan in the backseat. “Stay here.”
“But—”
Lucy repeated, “Stay. We’re going to check it out, but we don’t know what we’re facing, and you don’t want to get out of this car. Understood?”
“Fine.”
Siobhan watched from the rear window. The truck that had been parked in the back was gone. Noah knocked on the door. There was no answer. He and Lucy walked around the house, then returned several minutes later and got back into the car.
“No one’s home.”
“Maybe they’re just not answering.”
“We have no cause to enter. All the doors are locked. There is no vehicle in the driveway.”
“Mrs. Hernandez will know. She’s home. I saw her looking through her blinds. She’s not going to talk to you, you’re cops. She’ll tell me.”
Noah glanced at Lucy. Again, the unspoken communication.
Lucy said, “I’ll go with you. It’s not up for discussion.”
“You sound like Kane,” Siobhan snapped and got out of the car.
Lucy followed her to the house kitty-corner from their location. “Was that an insult or a compliment?” Lucy asked her.
“Both,” Siobhan said. She knocked on Mrs. Hernandez’s door. No one answered. She knocked again. “Dolores, I know you’re in there, I saw you. Please, I need your help. I need to know what happened to the woman across the street.”
It took a long minute, but the door opened. Dolores Hernandez didn’t unlock the screen. “They’re gone.”
“When?”
“Last night. They left.” She eyed Lucy suspiciously.
“What time?”
“Late. Midnight. Maybe a little earlier.”
“Did someone come back for the woman?” Siobhan said. “What about the pregnant woman? Was she okay? Did you see her?”
“That’s all I know. Leave.”
Siobhan was growing increasingly frustrated with this entire situation. How could she be so close to Mari and Ana and still not find them? It wasn’t fair!
Lucy cleared her throat and said in clear, perfect Spanish, including a slight accent she didn’t have when she spoke English, “Mrs. Hernandez, por favor. The young woman Ms. Walsh saw yesterday was pregnant and appeared in poor health. Father Sebastian is very concerned about the health and welfare of both her and her unborn child. We don’t care about her immigration status, we don’t care about any crimes she may have committed. We just want her to be safe. Did she leave with someone?”
Mrs. Hernandez nodded.
“A man or a woman?”
“A man. A young man, I see him many times. He drove the truck, the pregnant girl was with him. She walked out on her own. She wasn’t hurt.”
“Did they pack anything up? Suitcases?”
She nodded again. “She had a small bag. He had a suitcase. No one has come back since. I’m glad, but Enrique is worried they’ll come back and know we let her in.” She glared at Siobhan. “I don’t want trouble.”
“No trouble from us, I promise you,” Lucy said. “Do you know who the boy was?”
“Pedro. That’s his name. He talks about his parents, but I never see them. He’s always there. He’s seventeen, I know this, because I asked him once why he’s not in school. He said he doesn’t need school, he’s seventeen.” She shook her head. “My boy went to school. Went to community college, too. Now has his own restaurant. Education is important.”
“How long was he living there?”
“Since the week after Easter.�
� She crossed herself. “Please, that’s all I know. I told Father Sebastian everything I knew, that they all left Thursday night. I didn’t know there was anyone else there, other than Pedro, until you came.” She glared at Siobhan. “I don’t want trouble.”
“Thank you for your time. God bless,” Lucy said.
Siobhan wanted to ask her more questions but Lucy led her away.
“That’s all you’re going to get from her,” Lucy said. “They’re gone.”
“No!”
“But we have information we didn’t have before. You said you know how many girls were there?”
“There were eight beds, and they all appeared to have been used.”
They got back into the car and Noah drove back to Siobhan’s rental car.
“And Mrs. Hernandez saw three or four pregnant women. There may have been more. It all changed after the baby was left at the church. They took everyone away on Thursday, except for that one girl. She may have been too sick to travel, or about to give birth, or there was another reason.”
“But Mrs. Hernandez was wrong—there was another baby. I have no idea how old, but I saw a girl—she couldn’t have been more than twenty—carrying a baby out of that house. Surrounded by several goons. And a well-dressed woman who didn’t fit into the neighborhood.” Siobhan straightened her spine. “I have the pictures. I can prove everything I said.”
“Proving their existence doesn’t mean anything illegal was going on,” Noah said.
“But you know there was something going on. Why else would someone steal my SD card and not the four-thousand-dollar camera it was in?”
“Let’s see what you have,” Lucy said, “and maybe we can find out exactly what’s been going on.”
CHAPTER FIVE
An hour later, Lucy and Noah arrived at Siobhan’s hotel room with takeout from a nearby fast-food restaurant. It wasn’t a five-star resort, but it was a nice, clean residence-style hotel with in-suite kitchenettes, laundries in every wing, and a work area. Siobhan unlocked the safe in her room and pulled out a small, thin laptop. She sat at the desk while Noah and Lucy sat at the two-person table.
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