The Lost Girls

by Allison Brennan

  Lucy asked, “Do they have information about Marisol or the other girls?”

  “I don’t know. It was really weird. I would have gone out there last night, but it’s a goodly drive, and Johnny called me an hour later and said everything was fine. He hedged about the tractor, and then said he was going to stay at Ma’s for the night because he and Dad had a couple of beers. That, I would believe—Johnny and George can get to drinking while playing cards after dinner. But Johnny didn’t sound like he’d been drinking. He sounded … I don’t know, different.”

  “Would you mind giving us their contact information?”

  “Go easy on them. My in-laws are good people, salt of the earth. They would never break the law on purpose.” He paused. “I’d like to go out with you, if you don’t mind.”

  “We’d like to talk to Johnny first. You said he’s a teacher?”

  Adam nodded, glanced at the clock. “It’s after four, I don’t know if he’ll still be on campus.”

  “Would you mind calling him and finding out?”

  Adam picked up his personal cell phone and dialed a number. “Hey, Johnny, what’s up?… Are you still at school?… Why you going out to the ranch again?… Is Ma okay?… Fine … Yeah, sure. I’ll tell her.” He hung up. “Okay, he’s going back out to the ranch. Johnny is a good son, sees Ma and Dad at least once a week, but this would be the third time this week and it’s only Wednesday.”

  “Lead the way, Deputy,” Nate said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  On the map, the Honeycutt ranch was eighteen miles as the crow flies from Our Lady of Sorrows Church. Because they were coming from Laredo, it took them much longer to wind through the flat desert roads once they left Highway 59. It was five thirty by the time they arrived. Adam Villines parked next to an older, well-maintained pickup with a high school faculty parking sticker on the rear window. Nate pulled in next to Villines.

  The house was a two-story, old-fashioned farmhouse with a wide wraparound porch that had recently been painted. “Five kids, two parents, one bathroom,” Adam said with a smile. But he looked worried.

  He knocked on the screen. “Ma, it’s Adam.”

  The door opened almost immediately. A young man stood there. John Honeycutt.

  “What’s going on?” John asked his brother-in-law. He eyed Lucy and Nate.

  “Can we come in, John?” Adam said quietly. “It’s important.”

  John was angry, but he swung the door open and let them enter.

  Mr. and Mrs. Honeycutt were at the dining room table with a map of the county in front of them. Both looked startled when Adam walked in with Nate and Lucy behind them. “Adam—what’s wrong?” Mrs. Honeycutt said.

  Adam took off his hat. “I think you know, Ma. These people here, they’re FBI agents. Lucy Kincaid and Nate Dunning. I’ve been working with them on a case for the last few days.” He glanced at John. “And I think you might know something about it.”

  “I don’t know what you think I know,” John began, but then Mr. Honeycutt cleared his throat.

  “Son, we need to tell them. We can’t do this on our own.”

  John ran his hands through his hair and walked to the far side of the room. “Dad.”

  They exchanged a look, and John simply looked down, shielding his eyes.

  George stood and shook their hands. “I’m George Honeycutt. My wife, Nadia. Please, come in, sit at the table. We’ve been talking about calling you all day, Adam.”

  “I wish you had.”

  Everyone sat at the dining room table, except John. He paced between the dining room and the adjoining living room.

  Adam asked, “What happened, George?”

  “Monday night Johnny came out to look at the tractor. We found a young woman in the barn. She was sleeping under the hay. Don’t know how long she’d been there, at least a night, maybe two. She had some food in a backpack, but she was mighty sick. We brought her inside, fed her, Nadia helped her with her shower. She talked to Nadia.”

  Nadia nodded, a deep frown on her face. “Poor girl, bless her heart. She didn’t really talk to me so much as cry. I don’t think she’s cried for a long time. She said her sister is in trouble, that she had to find her, get her out of a bad situation. As George said, I had helped her with her shower. Her clothes were bloody, I thought she’d been—I don’t know, shot or stabbed.” She shook her head. “She’d given birth recently. I could see by her stomach, the way it sagged because she was so very thin. She had a fever, we gave her some antibiotics—I know, we’re not supposed to share medicine, but the girl needed it. She was terrified of the police, didn’t want us to call anyone, even a doctor. She slept all night, and George, Johnny, and I talked. I told them what she’d said to me—that she and her sister had been kept as prisoners. Well, we all know what that means.”

  “You should have called me, Ma,” Adam said.

  “Where is she now?” Lucy asked. Could it be this easy?

  “She called someone from her hometown. Someone who she said would have been looking for her.”

  “She’s from a village deep in south-central Mexico. No electricity, no phones.”

  “It was a man named Angelo,” George said. “She called him Tuesday morning and he said he would fly here immediately. After she talked to him, she seemed relieved, like the weight of the world was lifted from her shoulders. We wanted to meet him, but she was adamant. She was very worried that if the people who had her sister found out we helped her, they would hurt us.”

  “George, these are bad people,” Adam said. “You should have called me, you shouldn’t have let her stay here. We don’t know who she really is.”

  “Of course she should stay!” Nadia reminded Lucy of her own mother. A petite Latina mother whose word was law. Lucy’s mother would give a starving man her last slice of bread and admonish anyone who said she shouldn’t. “Johnny came back Tuesday, after she’d already gone, and said there was a baby left at a church, and we’re pretty certain that was her baby. She kept talking about having to leave her baby—and then it all made sense.”

  “She walked nearly twenty miles to this ranch,” Lucy said. After giving birth, to save herself and her sister, she’d walked twenty miles in what … three days? Four? How long had she been in the barn, sick? “Did she say where she was heading?”

  “I think she wanted to get to a town so she could call this Angelo fellow, but didn’t want anyone to see her, so she kept to the back roads and ranches,” George said.

  “When did she leave?” Lucy asked.

  “Yesterday at four thirty in the afternoon. She said she was meeting Angelo at seven at an exit on fifty-nine. I wanted to drive her, but she was very jumpy. I gave her my cell phone and told her to call me if she needed anything. I would move heaven and earth for that poor girl.”

  “She has your cell phone?” Lucy said. “Have you tried calling her?”

  John came back into the dining room from where he was listening in the living room. His face was firm and angry. “Yes. She hasn’t answered. It’s an old flip-phone, no find-your-phone feature.”

  “John, I couldn’t force her to stay,” George said.

  “You shouldn’t have let her leave!”

  “Don’t yell at your father,” Adam said. “This is a difficult situation for everyone.”

  “We looked for her all night,” John said. “We knew where she was meeting him, got there not much after seven, and she wasn’t there. We waited, no one showed up. Not Marisol, not this Angelo person.”

  “But she has your cell phone,” Lucy said. “We can trace it.”

  “But it’s an old phone.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If it’s on, it will have pinged a cell tower. We might not be able to get it at its exact location, but we’ll get close. If you contact your service provider, it will make everything go faster.”

  “What’s her story?” John said. “We wanted to help—she needed it—but she didn’t want to take it. She was so scared. And
young.”

  “Marisol and her sister, Ana, disappeared two years ago from Monterrey, Mexico, where they had gone to get jobs,” Lucy said. “Marisol speaks three languages and was earning money to help rebuild their village after a flood and mudslide killed their parents and destroyed the village. A photojournalist with ties to the girls has been looking for them, and when the baby showed up at the church with a personalized locket, the priest contacted her. She brought us in.” Lucy leaned forward. “This cannot go any further than this, but we believe that Marisol’s sister is pregnant and in danger. Marisol most likely left here to rescue her sister.”

  “She kept talking about Ana, how she was sick and in trouble.”

  “We believe that the same people who have Ana killed another woman.” Lucy didn’t mention that Eloise’s baby was stolen. There was no reason to give these people more nightmares.

  “Tell me what to do,” George said. “Tell me how to help.”

  “Call your service provider,” Adam said, “then I’ll talk to them.”

  Lucy felt physically ill. She stepped outside and sat on a bench and put her head between her knees.

  Nate followed her and closed the door behind him. “Lucy—what’s going on? Are you okay?”

  She was so tired of being coddled. Of being asked if she was okay. She was fine. She had just browbeat a dying woman into telling her what she needed to know, then dumped sorrow into what had been a happy house. George and Nadia shouldn’t have to know these things. But evil … it seemed to find Lucy. She drew it to her, like a spider’s web.

  Worse, she saw the evil. Dissected it. Understood it.

  “Angelo,” she said through clenched teeth. “He’s one of them.”

  “What do you mean? One of who? The traffickers?”

  Lucy hardened her heart, cleared her expression. Reminded herself that this was her job. Even if it wasn’t, she would be forever drawn to the evil that people did to one another.

  She looked up and faced Nate. “Angelo’s father told Siobhan that he was at work on Thursday, but left before work on Friday,” Lucy said in a calm, even voice. She didn’t recognize it was hers. “Angelo told his mother he was leaving town for a few days because a friend needed his help. Marisol called him on Tuesday. Four days later. He told her he would come immediately, but he was already here. She thought she could trust him … she thought he was the only one she could trust. But I’ll bet my badge that he’s the one who sold those two girls to the traffickers in the first place.”

  * * *

  Marisol could barely walk. He’d hit her so hard she lost consciousness … And when she woke up, she didn’t know where she was.

  Angelo …

  She’d loved him. They were going to have a baby. And then …

  It was him. All along, it was him …

  It was so dark. So cold. So quiet.

  The closet door opened. The mean one, the one she called Doberman because he was mean like the big, hungry dogs that had guarded her and Ana and the others at one of the warehouses they’d been locked in, grabbed her. He yanked her up and scowled. Growled. He growled like a mean dog.

  “Get up, you stupid bitch. You cost us a small fortune. You’re already a dead woman, but first you’re going to fix all of the problems you caused, then you’ll die. And you’ll die knowing that I will personally make your sister suffer as soon as she delivers those babies. And she’ll know it’s because of you that she will scream for us to put her out of her misery.”

  He pulled her out of the filthy house and into an attached garage. The trunk popped open and he pushed her inside and shut the trunk. It hit her in the head and she winced. She was left in darkness. And silence.

  Then the ignition turned on and the car burst out of the garage. He slammed on the brakes and her body slammed against the back of the trunk. Metal scraped her, cut her arms, and she felt blood. Then he shifted into drive and pushed the accelerator so her body rolled the other way.

  And then they were driving, fast. Away from the girls. Away from Ana.

  I’m so sorry, Ana. I thought Angelo was the only one I could trust. I was wrong, and now we’re going to die.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It was dusk when Kane drove off in the jeep. Sean hated this plan, because it meant trusting Gabriella Romero, whom he didn’t know and had no reason to trust. Hell, even Kane said he didn’t trust her … yet their entire plan hinged on her.

  Minutes after Kane left, Sean heard gunfire coming from down the road.

  No no no!

  Sean jumped on the motorcycle he’d stolen earlier, one gun strapped on his back and a handgun within reach. He kept his body low as he sped over the rocky dirt path that led to the main road. He was winding around, he couldn’t see far ahead in the twilight, but he heard several trucks and more gunfire. He was forced to slow down when the narrow road made a sharp curve to the right, then another to the left.

  As soon as the dirt road widened, he saw Kane’s jeep. Several trucks were leaving, but Kane was nowhere to be seen.

  Sean couldn’t risk shooting at the trucks, not knowing if Kane was inside.

  “Dammit!”

  How did they know where they were? Someone … Gabriella. She betrayed Kane. Which put not only Kane in danger, but Jesse.

  Suddenly two men burst out of the bushes, guns on Sean.

  “Two for one,” one of the guys said in Spanish.

  Sean didn’t hesitate: He took his bike from idle to as fast as it would go toward Kane’s jeep, using the vehicle to shield him. They were firing indiscriminately, didn’t come close to hitting him. As soon as he was protected by the metal, Sean jumped off the bike and fired at the two men. They returned fire, hitting the jeep. If they hit Sean it would be from luck, because they didn’t know what they were doing. Sean focused, aimed, took one then the other down.

  He looked down the road. He’d seen the last truck turn right. He assumed going to the Flores compound, but he didn’t know. Damn, damn, damn!

  “Dammit Kane, what went wrong?” Sean was not going to lose his brother. It wasn’t an option. He grabbed his satchel, slung it over his shoulders, and left the marginal safety of the jeep to search the two men he’d taken out. A radio, maybe—anything.

  The first guy was dead, and Sean retrieved a handgun and grabbed his AK-47 and slung it over his shoulder. He didn’t have a radio, but Sean found a cell phone in his pocket. He avoided looking at the man’s face. He was young. Too young to be in the middle of this war.

  Maybe it wasn’t Gabriella. Kane shouldn’t be here at all. Sean should have taken this job on his own. Jesse was his son, his responsibility. There was a bounty on Kane’s head; anyone could have spotted him. At the football game last night. When he went to town to meet with Gabriella. Or Dante Romero turned on him.

  The bastard. Sean would kill him if anything happened to Kane.

  Sean turned to the second guy and stared at a gun in his face.

  Blood poured from the guy’s leg and arm, but he was close enough to kill Sean. He spoke rapidly in Spanish and Sean didn’t know what he was saying.

  Suddenly the guy’s head caved in from the side and he fell over, dead.

  Sean whirled around, gun in hand, heart racing. Then he heard a whistle. Kane’s whistle. He lowered his gun just slightly, and Jack Kincaid jumped out of a tree, landing on both feet. Another man came from the opposite direction. JT Caruso. Jack and JT, the other principals of RCK. Sean almost thought he was injured himself and this was all an illusion.

  Jack, Lucy’s brother, was a lot like Kane in the way he moved and operated. JT, though he, too, had been in the military years ago, rarely worked in the field anymore. He was the face of RCK, looked more like Rick Stockton or a wealthy businessman. Except now, when he was dressed all in black with a Kevlar vest.

  “What the fuck?” Sean demanded.

  “We don’t have time.” Jack pulled a radio off the second guy. “You’re good, Sean, but you’re not a soldier. Never
turn your back on the fallen.”

  Sean didn’t need to be lectured, not now. “They have Kane.”

  “We know.”

  Then it was clear. “That was the plan?” Sean said. “I told Kane it was a flawed plan from the beginning, and he said he had another way in! They will kill him. Dammit, Jack!”

  “Pull it together, Rogan. I get it—Kane is your brother. Now focus, or I’ll tie you up in the fucking plane and get your brother and your son back without you.”

  Sean forced his heart rate to slow. “You know.”

  “I needed to know.” Jack put his hand on Sean’s shoulder. “I would have done the same thing. So would Kane or anyone else. But you have to bury those emotions right now. We have a plan, and I need you. I really need you—but we don’t have time to argue. Flores is going to weigh turning Kane over for the highest bounty or killing him. The first option gives us time, but once he disappears it will be next to impossible to find him. We have hours, not days.”

  “They’re going to see this is a trap. They’ll beef up security.”

  “That’s where you come in,” JT said. He walked over and dropped a duffel bag at Sean’s feet. “Open it.”

  Sean did. Inside was cash and bearer bonds. He flipped through the top stack. “That’s millions in bearer bonds alone.”

  “A million in cash and six million in bearer bonds, give or take.”

  “Where the hell did you get this?”

  “An operation years ago. The less you know, the better. But you’re going to go in and buy Kane’s freedom.”

  “They’ll never agree.”

  “Seven million is more than three times the highest bounty. It’ll at least buy your way into the compound.”