“And you don’t know for sure that she isn’t,” Angela fired back. She’d been worried about Dre going off on the police and here she was ready to go ballistic herself.
“Call the TV stations,” Donna ordered. “We need to get Brianna’s picture on TV.”
The cop’s blue-green eyes rolled skyward. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“If my baby was some blonde-headed white girl, I bet there’d be cameras and news reporters all up and down the street by now,” Donna cried. “But because my baby is black, nobody’s going to do a damn thing to find her. This is racism!”
The cop sighed and turned to Dre. “Do you have a recent picture of your niece?”
Donna started to rise from the couch, but Dre waved her back down. He glanced around the room, then snatched a framed picture from a sofa table.
“This is her most recent school picture. It’s only a few months old.”
The officer wrote down Brianna’s height and weight and a description of the clothes she was wearing.
“We need to make some posters,” Donna mumbled, seemingly to herself. “And call the TV stations.”
“What about Brianna’s father?” the officer asked. “Could he be involved?”
Donna shot up from the couch. “No, he couldn’t! My husband died in Iraq defending this country!”
She crumpled back to the couch and into her mother’s embrace. Both of them were sobbing now. Though eight years had passed since her husband’s death, Donna had never fully recovered from the loss. At times, her severe bouts of depression had left her unable to work or properly care for Brianna. His sister would not survive another tragedy.
“We’ll need to check her email and Facebook accounts,” the officer said, continuing to scribble on his notepad.
“I don’t allow her on Facebook,” Donna sniffed. “We have the same Gmail account and I check her emails every week.”
“Does she have a smartphone?” the officer asked.
“Yeah,” Dre said.
“Then she probably has a Facebook account you know nothing about. Most teenagers do these days.”
Donna was on her feet again. “I know my child! How dare you say—”
“Donna! Stop it!” Dre shouted. “This isn’t helping.”
He looked at the officer. “She has an iPhone which she never lets out of her sight. I’m sure she took it with her, but I’ll check her room anyway.”
Dre disappeared down a hallway.
The front door opened and a man and woman stepped into the living room. The man resembled Dre, but was both taller and younger. He sat down next to Donna and gave her a hug.
“Anthony, my baby’s gone!”
“Don’t worry, sis. We’re gonna find her.”
Anthony looked up at Angela. “Who are you?”
After a beat of silence, Dre’s mother answered his question. “That’s that girl who was mixed up with that judge and got Dre all over the news.”
All eyes were pinned on Angela now. His family obviously didn’t view her reappearance in his life as a good thing.
“I think I remember that case,” the cop said, wagging his pen at her.
Before Angela could say anything, Dre stepped back into the room, his expression noticeably grim.
“I couldn’t find her phone,” Dre said, walking over to Donna. “But I found this underneath her mattress.” He held up a pink spiral notebook. “Maybe she does have a boyfriend because some dude’s name is scribbled on almost every page. So who the hell is Jaden?”
Chapter 8
Day One: 9:45 p.m.
The possibility that Brianna might have a boyfriend her mother knew nothing about sent Donna deeper into hysterics. It took some doing, but Dre had finally convinced her to take a sleeping pill. Now, as he glanced around his sister’s living room, he wondered where all the people had come from.
While his brother and sister-in-law were in the kitchen unpacking food they’d picked up from a nearby barbecue joint, Dre’s mother stood in a circle of her church friends, holding hands and softly praying to Jesus. A host of cousins, neighbors and church folks he’d never seen before stood around the living room acting like they were at a Monday-night wake.
Dre didn’t want any of them there. He needed to think, to plan. He’d already made up his mind that he was going to find Brianna. Screw the police.
He’d hated the I-told-you-so look on the officer’s face when Dre produced Brianna’s notebook with all the I-love-Jaden doodles. Just because Brianna might have a boyfriend they knew nothing about didn’t mean she was a runaway. She was a smart kid. A happy kid. She had no reason to run off.
Dre walked into Donna’s bedroom and Angela followed. Dre expected to find his sister sleeping, but she was sitting on the edge of the bed, rocking back and forth like a heroin addict coming down from a high.
“I wanna talk to Sydney,” Dre said, more to himself.
“We already did.” Donna was dried-eyed now. “She would’ve told me if Brianna had a boyfriend.”
Dre shook his head in disagreement. “Sydney’s her best friend. If Brianna has a boyfriend, Sydney knows about him.”
Angela touched Dre’s forearm. “Let’s go talk to her now.”
They walked the short distance to Sydney’s house and repeatedly pressed the doorbell. Dre didn’t care that it was approaching ten o’clock at night. This was important.
Sydney’s father finally opened the door. His hooded eyes squinted at Dre.
“Hey, Winston,” Dre said with forced collegiality.
Winston looked past Dre to Angela.
“This is my girl—uh, my friend, Angela. I know it’s late, but we need to talk to Sydney.”
An exasperated look crossed Winston Burns’ face. “I’m really sorry about Brianna. But Sydney already told the police everything she knows.”
“I need to talk to her for myself.” Dre wanted to push past him and bolt into Sydney’s bedroom. “It’s important, man. Please.”
“It’s kinda late and Sydney’s already asleep. Why don’t you come back in the morning?”
Dre didn’t want to come back in the morning. He needed to talk to Sydney tonight. After a few seconds, a soft voice broke the stalemate.
“Daddy, I’m not sleep.”
Dre peered past Winston and saw Sydney dressed in a knee-length nightshirt.
Winston grudgingly stepped aside and let them in. Sydney’s mother greeted them from a hallway.
Winston showed Dre and Angela into the kitchen, where they all converged around a small wooden table. Sydney sat at the north end of the table, with the adults lined up on all sides. The low-hanging light fixture gave the room the feel of a police interrogation.
“Sydney,” Dre began, trying to conceal his distress, “you told the police that Brianna didn’t have a boyfriend. Is that the truth?”
Sydney’s eyes darted in the direction of her father.
“We know about Jaden,” Dre said gently, not wanting to scare the girl. “We need you to tell us what you know. Brianna could be in danger.”
Sydney hung her head. “Brianna didn’t want nobody to know about Jaden. That’s why I didn’t tell nobody.”
Winston glowered at his daughter. “You sat up here and lied to the police? Do you know that—”
Dre held up a hand, silencing Winston. “That’s okay. Just tell us the truth now.”
“Brianna met him on Facebook,” Sydney said, staring down at the table. “That’s all I know.”
Dre’s right knee bounced with angst. “Brianna had a Facebook page?”
“It was private, so her mother couldn’t see it. She had a Yahoo account and a Gmail address too.”
“Have you ever met Jaden?” Dre asked.
Sydney swung her head in a slow, wide sweep. “Nope. Neither has Brianna as far as I know.”
Dre squinted as if a shock of light had suddenly blinded him. “How could he be her boyfriend if they’d never met?”
“People h
ook up on Facebook all the time.” Sydney quickly added, “but I don’t do that.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“Someplace in L.A. Not too far from USC.”
“Did Brianna tell you they were planning to meet today?”
“Nope.” Sydney raised her palm in the air. “I swear on the Bible. Jaden didn’t like her to tell nobody their business. But she told me some stuff anyway.”
“Like what?”
“Uh, well, he’s an A student just like us. He’s fourteen and he goes to Foshay Middle School and First A.M.E. Church.”
Dre rubbed his chin. Finally they were getting some information they could use.
“Do you know his last name?”
Sydney smiled, glad to be of help. “Yep. Johnson. Jaden Johnson. He has one sister and his mother is a teacher at Crenshaw High.”
“Did Brianna ever show you a picture of Jaden?”
“Yep,” she said, blushing. “He’s cute.”
Her father grumbled and Sydney started twirling the ring on her baby finger.
“Uh…you wanna see his Facebook page?”
“Absolutely,” Dre said.
Sydney ran to her bedroom and came back with her laptop, the screen already lit.
Her father grimaced. “Why is that on? I told you to turn that thing off an hour ago.”
“Winston, stop fussing at the child,” her mother said. “We need to concentrate on Brianna right now.”
Sydney hit several keys on the computer, then turned it around for all of them to see.
Jaden Johnson was a clean-cut kid whose Facebook profile described him as a Christian who was saving himself for marriage. He had 345 Facebook friends, was a Pisces, loved science fiction movies, and planned to be a lawyer. Dre scanned the postings on Jaden’s page and found absolutely nothing that caused him any concern.
A knot of apprehension settled deep in Dre’s stomach. “Do you know the passwords to Brianna’s Facebook and Yahoo accounts?” Dre wanted to study Brianna’s accounts for clues about Jaden.
Sydney hesitated, then gave up the information, which Dre noted in his smartphone.
“The boy sounds like a good kid,” Sydney’s father said. “At least she didn’t run off with some thug.”
Dre wanted to tell Winston to shut the fuck up. Brianna had not run off.
When his eyes finally met Angela’s, he knew they were on the same page. It took a skilled criminal attorney or a street-smart hustler to recognize that this upstanding young man was not what he seemed.
Chapter 9
Day One: 10:15 p.m.
Brianna had lost all sense of time. She could not tell whether it was late night or early morning, the same day or the next. Her throat was so dry it hurt to swallow.
“Wake up,” Brianna said, shaking Kaylee by the shoulder. “We have to figure out how to get out of here.”
Brianna wished she was still drugged. That way, she wouldn’t feel so cold and hungry and scared.
Kaylee sat up and hugged herself. “They ain’t lettin’ us out, so you might as well forget that. We have to do what they say.”
“No, we don’t,” Brianna insisted. “We have to escape. Have you seen the rest of the house?”
“Yeah.”
“Who else is here?”
“At least six other girls right now. But it changes every day. Some of ’em like it here. They’re gonna try to get you to like it too. They rather be here than in a group home.”
“I don’t have to be in no group home!” Brianna started to cry. “Me and my mama have a house and I’m going home!”
They heard a rattling sound and the door opened. Two girls stepped inside the room. They were probably sixteen or seventeen, but their scant clothes and heavy makeup made them look much older. The shorter one had a pretty face and was wearing a short, red wig. The taller one was toothpick-skinny and had tattoos up and down her arms.
“If y’all ready to act right, we’ll let you out of here so you can eat.” The tattooed girl threw Kaylee an oversized T-shirt. “Put that on.”
Brianna decided to play it smart. She would pretend to go along with everything they said and when she got her chance, she was going to escape.
“I’m thirsty,” Brianna mumbled. “Can I have some water?”
“Yeah, but then we gotta have a meeting. My name is Shantel,” the tattooed one said.
“And this is Tameka. We in charge of the new girls. We gonna teach you what to do.”
Shantel led them down a hallway into a messy kitchen that was half the size of the room where they’d been imprisoned. Half-eaten plates, balled-up paper bags, and other debris competed for space on the countertops. A roach hovered on the edge of the sink, surrounded by a cloud of gnats. The sour smell in the kitchen was as bad as the stench in the bedroom.
Brianna and Kaylee sat down at a scratched up glass table. Brianna began surveying the room for windows and doors that might serve as her escape. There was a kitchen window, a back door and a window in what looked like a family room adjacent to the kitchen. Every window was covered with iron bars.
“I see you lookin’ around,” Shantel said, fingering her long electric blue braids. “You try to escape and all you gonna get is an ass whippin’.”
Shantel went to the sink, filled a paper cup with water and gave it to Brianna. She saw something floating on top and wanted to ask for a clean cup. Instead, she picked it out, then hungrily guzzled down the water.
“Okay, this house is all about the money,” Shantel began. “The more money you make, the better treatment you get. Your first time with a john is gonna be a little scary. But after that, it ain’t that bad. You probably been molested by somebody in your family anyway. So at least this way, you get paid for givin’ it up.”
“I haven’t been molested!” Brianna shouted. “Nobody in my family would ever do that.”
“Yeah, sure,” Shantel said, rolling her eyes. “Then you must’ve been giving it up for free, which is stupid. Now you ’bout to make some money.”
“I’m a virgin and I’m staying a virgin until I get married!” Brianna declared.
Tameka looked as if she felt sorry for her. Kaylee pressed her hands to her face, and started to cry again.
“I can tell right now that this little heffa is gonna be a big problem.” Shantel pointed a gold fingernail at Brianna. “That mouth of yours is gonna get you in big trouble. Clint and Freda don’t put up with no back talkin’.”
“I don’t care what you do to me. I’m not going to be a prostitute and you can’t make me!”
Shantel laughed, held up her hand and gave Tameka a high-five.
“That’s what they all say.”
Chapter 10
Day One: 10:30 p.m.
Angela race-walked alongside Dre as he strode back toward his sister’s house. Instead of turning into Donna’s driveway, Dre headed for his car.
“We aren’t going back inside?” Angela asked, as she opened the passenger door.
“Too many people in there. I gotta think.” Dre slid behind the wheel, but didn’t start the car.
Angela let him do that. They sat there in silence, Dre’s head pressed back against the headrest, his hands gripping the steering wheel.
“You know what went down, right?” he finally asked.
“Yep. Jaden’s no fourteen-year-old Christian.” Angela had already surmised that Brianna could very likely be the victim of sex traffickers.
“I can’t tell my sister what we suspect. She’ll completely lose it if she thinks Brianna is in the hands of some pervert. I just have to fix this.”
“How?”
Dre didn’t answer for a long time. “I have no idea.”
“I have lots of law enforcement contacts I can reach out to,” Angela volunteered. “One of my FBI agent friends is doing some work with the LAPD’s Human Trafficking Task Force. I can call him and—”
“Human trafficking? What’re you talking about?”
An
gela swallowed. “Dre, it’s possible that Brianna’s been kidnapped as part of a sex trafficking ring.”
“She ain’t no illegal alien. I’m figuring she was scammed by some pedophile.”
Angela decided not to push the issue with Dre right now, uncertain just how much of her world she should share with him. Organized gangs were now deep into the sex trafficking business, snatching girls off city streets, not from other countries. She had no facts that Brianna was indeed a victim, but it was a real possibility. She’d call her agent friend anyway.
“I’ll call Foshay in the morning to find out if there’s a Jaden Johnson enrolled there. I’ll also check to see if his mother works at Crenshaw High.”
“That’s fine,” Dre said. “But playing it by the book ain’t gonna get Bree back.”
It had taken Angela a while to admit to herself that she still wanted Dre in her life despite his criminal past. She truly believed that they could both start fresh. But Dre’s statement only confirmed that the street would always be a part of him.
“So what are you saying?”
Dre glanced over at her.
“I’m saying that I ain’t relyin’ on the cops, the courts, the school or nobody else to get Brianna back. You see how that cop acted. He didn’t even wanna take a missing person’s report. I have to get Bree back. This is all my fault. So I have to fix it.”
“That’s crazy. How can you possibly think that this is your fault?”
“My sister kept super-tight reins on Brianna. I was the one always urging Donna to back up off her.” His voice trailed off. “I was also the one who gave her that iPhone. She never would’ve been able to have a Facebook page if I hadn’t done that.”
“You can’t think like that, Dre. If she hadn’t had the iPhone, she would’ve found another way to get on Facebook. This is not your fault.”
Dre stared straight ahead, as if focused on something down the block.
“I always teased Donna for being paranoid about child predators. But I guess she was right to be worried.”
Angela could feel Dre’s desperation and it terrified her. She knew he’d do whatever it took to find his niece—legal or illegal. While that concerned her, Dre had been there for her at a time when she’d needed him most and now it was her turn to stand by him.
Anybody's Daughter (Angela Evans Series No. 2) Page 4
