Wrath (Faith McMann Trilogy Book 3)

by T. R. Ragan

When she looked up, Kirsten was looking at her. “Her husband is also doing well,” Faith told her before she could ask. “I’m sure he’ll be returning to work any day now.”

  “What about your brother?”

  Faith gritted her teeth. Would she be asking about her nieces, nephews, and second cousins, too? “Colton canceled his plans to fly to Florida to see his wife and daughters so he could be close by in case we get any news about Lara. And you just saw Hudson,” Faith snapped, finished with what she considered an interrogation instead of a conversation. “So maybe you can tell me how that went.”

  “It’s going to take some time,” Kirsten said. She removed her dark-rimmed glasses and used a tissue from the table next to her to wipe a smudge from the lens. “But under the circumstances, I’d say he’s doing well.”

  Faith waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, Faith blew out some hot air.

  “Perhaps you should tell me what’s on your mind,” Kirsten said.

  “Oh no,” Faith said. “Some thoughts are better left unspoken.”

  “I insist.”

  Faith had been in a foul mood all day. Her meeting with the FBI had not helped. “All right,” she said, sitting taller. “I’m thinking eighty bucks an hour to tell me my son is doing well under the circumstances? Seriously? My nine-year-old son has been through a horrendous ordeal, held captive for nearly two months, only to return home to discover his dad will never be coming back. He’s hardly shed a tear or shown any emotion at all. Clearly he’s keeping his emotions bottled up inside, but that’s all you’ve got?” Faith dropped her hands onto her lap. Once again she busied herself with twirling her ring.

  The seconds ticked by, the silence gnawing away at her like some sort of horrible flesh-eating bacteria until she lifted her head and met Kirsten’s gaze straight on.

  “He’s doing better than you,” she told Faith. “I can tell you that.”

  Faith stared at the woman for a moment and came very close to smiling. For some reason she liked Kirsten Reich. The therapist wasn’t afraid to say it as she saw it.

  “Why don’t you tell me how the search for your daughter is going?” Kirsten continued.

  Faith leaned toward the table, grabbed the glass of water Kirsten had put there, and took giant gulps. When she was finished, she said, “The last few days have been crazier than usual. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Detective Yuhasz, so I can’t—”

  “I’m talking about your own personal investigation.”

  Faith took another sip, the water crisp and cold on her tongue. Kirsten Reich couldn’t possibly know what she’d been up to last night. “Hudson is home now,” Faith said as she returned the glass to the table. “I can’t run off looking for Lara when my son needs me. I can only hope Detective Yuhasz is up and running again soon so he and his men can stay on top of things.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What does that mean . . . ‘hmm’? You don’t believe me?”

  “I didn’t say that. But I do watch the news, and before you arrived I saw a story about a drug dealer found dead in his home late last night. I’m wondering if a certain schoolteacher and her friends went to pay someone a visit and something went horribly wrong.”

  Caught completely off guard by the accusation, Faith stood and reached for her coat. Although she didn’t like to think they’d been reckless, Mark Silos and men like him, in her opinion, were not human. Little Vinnie was supposed to be keeping watch last night. Silos never should have been able to sneak up on them like he had. But he did. And in the end, Rage had had no choice but to shoot the man. But that didn’t mean Faith could go around telling people like Kirsten Reich the truth about what happened. As far as Faith was concerned, nothing had changed. Lara was out there somewhere, and Faith needed to find her.

  “You need help,” Kirsten said, breaking into Faith’s scattered thoughts. “You have what? Two or three friends available to help you?”

  Faith had no reason to be angry at the woman, but she couldn’t help herself. This was the second time Kirsten had caused her to wonder why she’d bothered to come see her. As she snapped the front buttons of her coat and tied the sash around her waist, she looked around for her purse.

  “Listen,” Kirsten said in her irritatingly calm voice. “My friends and I are meeting tonight. Bring your friends, too, and let’s have a serious discussion about what we can all do together as a team to make a difference.”

  “Why would you and your friends want to help me?”

  “Because you’re not the only one who needs help. Hundreds of young children are forced into child labor and sex trafficking. My friends and I have been meeting for years, doing what we can to grow awareness in our communities. Although we don’t usually reach out to individuals, in your case, we thought it was vital to join you in your mission. You’ve done a brilliant job so far keeping the media involved in your plight to find your children. But we’ve also noticed that you alone can only do so much. Your parents are getting up there in age. As you said a moment ago, your mom is still in the hospital. Jana is pregnant, and one of your newfound friends is ill.”

  Faith didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t the first time Kirsten had hinted at wanting to help her, but Faith hadn’t taken her seriously before. Her gaze connected with the thick leather straps of her purse dangling from the couch’s edge. Instead of retrieving her purse and making a quick exit, she remained where she was, taking a moment to process what Kirsten had told her. No matter how many times she went over the list in her possession, it always came down to one thing—she needed more hours in the day. Every minute that ticked by was another minute Lara could have been harmed or moved farther out of reach. Faith was running out of options. There was no denying it. The clock was ticking.

  And Kirsten was right. She needed help. “What are you suggesting?” Faith asked.

  “We want to help you find your daughter.”

  Faith crossed her arms. “How do you propose to do that?”

  “My friends and I have been tracking some of the worst offenders for years now. We hit the streets whenever possible, talk to people, and take down names. It’s time-consuming, and progress is slow, but we’ve managed to get a few of them off the streets.”

  “Traffickers?” Faith asked.

  “Yes. Mostly recruiters, a few pimps, people involved in some form of human trafficking.”

  She had Faith’s attention now.

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have to look far to find these people and yet it isn’t easy to take them down. The problem has always been what to do with them once we have them on our radar.” She shrugged. “Without proof of any wrongdoing, the police can’t keep these guys behind bars for long, if at all.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “That’s what tonight’s meeting is about,” Kirsten told her. “We need to put our heads together and find a way to shut these guys down.”

  “I have a list, too,” Faith told her.

  “I thought you might.”

  “But you should know, my goal, my endgame, is to find Lara.”

  “I understand.” Kirsten wrote the address on her notepad, tore the paper loose, and handed it to Faith. “The gym at Mesa Verde High School. Ten o’clock. You won’t be sorry.”

  SIX

  Patrick held the phone to his ear as he paced the floor of the shitty little house he was renting in the town of Elverta. The landlord had assured him before moving in that the house had been freshly painted before the new carpet was installed.

  Bullshit on both accounts.

  The carpets were old as fuck. He hated this place. He hated this city. But none of that mattered. Because in the end he would have everything he’d ever wanted: money, power, control. That’s all he thought about anymore. Sure, he might need to suffer for a while longer, but if he could keep his eye on the prize and practice patience, he would soon be the leader of one of the largest trafficking rings in the country.

  Someone finally picked up his ca
ll and greeted him with “Yeah?”

  “Patrick here,” he said. “Put me through to Winston Wolf. Tell him it’s urgent.”

  “Patrick who?”

  He gritted his teeth. “Tell him it’s Patrick. He’ll know who I am. Winston and I go way back.”

  “And what might I tell him you’re calling about?”

  The guy was chewing gum. An irritating smacking came right through the line and drilled away at his brain. “Listen, you little twat. Tell him I’m waiting for an answer. If I don’t hear back by tomorrow, I’ll find another buyer.” He disconnected the call, his hand fisting at his side as he clenched his teeth.

  He was about to make another call when he heard a knock. He sat up and listened closer. The sound was coming from the door in the hallway—the door that led up from what the landlord called a wine cellar but was actually a basement. He proceeded down the hallway and opened the door.

  Blonde-haired, blue-eyed Lara McMann, the missing golden child who’d been on the news for months now, looked up at him with a curious, examining expression. There was something about the kid, especially the eyes, that made him uncomfortable every time he looked at her. He didn’t have a guilty bone in his body. He’d never felt an ounce of shame or regret when it came to what he did for a living, so whatever he was feeling at the moment had nothing to do with his own inner demons.

  Maybe, he thought, the uneasiness had to do with the fact that he’d never liked kids. He was an only child—after his sister had died, that was. He spent most of his time growing up reading Newsweek and Money magazines. Money was all he ever thought about. He used to spend his allowance on candy, mark it up 300 percent, and sell it to the kids who didn’t care about rotted teeth and craved sugar highs. He also enjoyed ironing his stack of dollar bills. As soon as he was old enough to deliver papers, that’s what he did. When he entered high school, an older kid offered to pay him one hundred dollars to deliver a package across town. He wasn’t stupid. It didn’t take him long to realize he was transporting drugs. He started lifting weights in case he needed to protect himself. He paid close attention to who the players were. By the age of fourteen, he was making ten times that amount, and by the age of sixteen, he had thousands of dollars stashed away. The big money, the real money, though, was made in trafficking, the fastest-growing business in the world.

  He shook his head at the thought of Aster Williams.

  Patrick had just turned twenty-eight when Aster came along and fucked up all his plans. Aster had killed his boss, an old man who had treated Patrick like a son. His few bad investments had not helped. Patrick suddenly found himself cash poor and working for the biggest asshole he’d ever met.

  But this lovely child, he thought as he stared at Lara McMann, would change everything. “She’s alive,” he muttered.

  Twice a day he took the time to make sure she had food and water. Other than that, he left her alone. As far as he was concerned, he needed to keep her alive until he could collect a cool million and send her off to Timbuktu. A million dollars wasn’t much these days, but it would buy him power and loyalty. He’d find a way to kill Aster and take over from there. He knew the business inside and out, making him a natural to take control of the organization. Any man or woman who remained loyal to Aster would be eliminated.

  “I’m hungry,” she said.

  “I fed you an hour ago.”

  “I’m tired of frozen dinners. I want something else.”

  “Oh, is that right? What does the little diva want?”

  Her eyes narrowed. If looks could kill, he would have fallen over dead. Who did she think she was? Before he could answer his own question, she trudged past him, headed for the kitchen.

  For the sake of protecting his assets, he went to the front door and latched the top lock, one too high for her to reach in case she got it in her mind to try to run off. If she decided to enter the garage through the kitchen door, he wasn’t worried. The outer garage door worked only if you knew the code. He moved quickly around the rest of the house as he checked windows before making his way to the kitchen, where he found the kid going through his refrigerator and making herself right at home. She had nerve.

  Lara pulled out a half-used stick of butter, a loaf of bread, a block of cheddar, and some mustard. She then began a tedious search through cabinets and drawers until she found a frying pan.

  He crossed his arms, leaned his hip against the counter, and watched her work. As the butter melted in the pan, she pulled a knife from a drawer, the biggest knife he owned, and used it to cut a slice of cheese. He watched her closely, wondering if she was going to come after him. She made her sandwich with the same focus a surgeon might when cutting into someone’s brain tissue. Had the kid forgotten he was standing there? Or maybe she didn’t care one way or another.

  By the time she finished cooking, her grilled-cheese sandwich looked like a thing of perfection—silky cheese oozing from between two golden-brown slices of sourdough bread. He considered ordering her to make him a sandwich just to see what she would do. But he wasn’t hungry, so he let it go.

  She used a spatula to transfer the sandwich to a plate and then poured herself a glass of cold milk. With the plate in one hand and glass in the other, she walked past him and made her way into the living room.

  He followed her. When he saw Channel 10 news reporting on the McMann kidnapping, he grabbed the remote and clicked off the TV.

  “That was my grandparents’ house on the news,” she told him. “I thought you said they’d stopped looking for me.”

  He could tell by the tone of her voice and the fact that she’d already taken a seat and bit into her sandwich that she’d never believed a word he’d said in the first place. So why was the brat questioning him?

  Because she wanted him to know she knew her family was looking for her, and that she never doubted it for one minute. She knew there were people out there who loved her and wanted her home. He lifted an eyebrow. The kid was wise beyond her years. For a second, he wondered if he should be worried. That made him laugh.

  His thoughts turned to Hansel and his men. Although he hadn’t been thrilled by the idea of Aster hiring strangers to do what should have been done weeks ago, he was curious how long it might be before they obliterated every member of the McMann woman’s family.

  The thought cheered him. He never wanted to hear her name uttered again. Faith McMann had been a thorn in his side for too long. He would take great pleasure in knowing she was dead. Although he didn’t hate women the way Aster did, he abhorred people like McMann, people who thought they could take a stand and wreak havoc on a thriving billion-dollar business.

  Faith McMann and her family had had their fifteen minutes of fame. It was time for every one of them to be silenced so he could move on to more important matters, like getting rid of Aster.

  SEVEN

  The next day, Faith was at home when she heard Dad’s truck pull up outside. She left Hudson in the family room and headed to the front, where she found Dad assisting Mom from the car. Figuring he could use some help, she headed their way.

  One of the media van doors squeaked open. Damn. Every time she walked out the front door, someone popped out of a news van. The reporters had become permanent fixtures in their lives. It was getting old, but her entire family had decided to be as cordial as possible since they needed the media to keep Lara in the forefront of people’s minds. The nonstop media coverage kept Faith’s story alive.

  She had a love-hate relationship with every reporter and cameraperson. Although everyone knew they weren’t supposed to come onto the property without permission, they did it anyhow.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a reporter hurrying up the driveway. A tall boy with curly hair and sticks for arms held his microphone an inch from Faith’s nose. “How does it feel to have your son back?”

  “It’s nice,” she said, forcing a smile as she walked past him and headed for Mom and Dad.

  “How is he doing? Is he slee
ping well?”

  He’d only been home a short time. It was a ridiculous question, so she ignored the reporter. Faith said hi to Dad and gave Mom a kiss on the cheek. “You look good.”

  Mom rolled her eyes. “I’m a mess. Everything hurts, but I’m home and I want to see my grandson.”

  “You two get inside,” Faith said. “I’ll get the rest of Mom’s things.” She opened the door to the backseat, where she could see Mom’s purse and a small carry-on.

  “Has there been any word about your daughter?” the reporter asked from behind her, hovering so close she kept waiting for him to step on her toes.

  Once again, she gritted her teeth and held in her frustration, reminding herself she needed the media more than they needed her. Whether they realized it or not, their presence was more than likely helping keep the trafficking ringleaders at bay.

  “No,” Faith answered him before leaning into the backseat of the car and reaching for Mom’s things. “We’ve had no word from anyone concerning my daughter. But we haven’t lost hope.”

  “First, you and your friends raided the farmhouse,” the reporter persisted. “Next was the bowling alley incident in Rocklin, where dozens of arrests were made after you and acquaintances took it upon yourselves to do some investigating. Are the rumors true? Are you and your friends playing vigilantes?”

  Arms filled, Faith straightened and used her foot to shut the car door. Her parents hadn’t made much progress. Dad held on to Mom’s elbow as they worked their way slowly toward the house. Mom had a bruised hip and fractured tibia, which made for a tedious pace.

  In the blink of an eye, two more reporters and a cameraperson appeared. Faith pretended not to hear the last question. She just kept moving.

  “Mark Silos was found dead at his house,” a female reporter stated, pushing ahead of everyone else as Faith headed across the driveway. “Silos was believed to have been an integral part of the trafficking ring in Sacramento.”

  “We’re busy here,” Dad said over his shoulder. “A little privacy would—”