Confer, Lorelei - Deadly Deception (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Deadly Deception (lit)

  “Trust you? Famous last words! I’m not dressed for any company. I don’t have the proper underwear and you can see through my shirt,” she whined, covering her breasts with her hands.

  “I don’t care about that right now. I think I can help you, and we agreed you would follow my rules. This is one of those rules. You can sit at the table and no one will notice. I promise.”

  He half-pulled, half-dragged her down the middle set of stairs of this three story house, around the corner, and toward the kitchen.

  Chapter 14

  As Wyatt followed Isabella into the kitchen, Isabella stopped, hesitating. She examined the room, remembering her hasty journey through it less than eight hours ago. Now with the early morning sunlight streaming in through the large window, the bright and airy room looked like a different place entirely. It felt homey.

  A man sat at the table and raised his coffee cup to her in acknowledgement. His tanned complexion, dark hair, and trimmed mustache reminded her of her father. His loose T-shirt, jeans, and smiling green eyes made her relax.

  Wyatt picked up the coffee pot in one hand, carrying it to the table while ushering Isabella by the elbow with the other hand. “Sit down and have some breakfast.” Wyatt told Isabella, leading her to the table. “When did you eat last, do you remember?”

  She shrugged and shook her head. She had to think. She couldn’t remember eating a meal or much of anything except Pop-Tarts, or protein or granola bars once or twice a day since she had woken up dazed in that wretched room with Joe.

  “That’s okay. I have some scrambled eggs and toast ready, and there’s orange juice on the table. You can help yourself. Go ahead while I get you a plate.”

  Wyatt retrieved a plate and returned to the table to find Isabella standing in the exact same spot. He motioned for her to sit down at the table before making introductions.

  With her arms across her chest, she walked warily around the table to the opposite side from the man and sat down.

  “Isabella, I’d like you to meet my best friend, Dave Miller. He and I grew up together, not far from here actually. He is a genuinely true friend, and he knows how to be discreet. He’s accumulated a wealth of information and experience helping people in similar situations as yours. Dave, I’d like you to meet Isabella Donnelly from outside Denver, Colorado.”

  “Isabella, it’s very nice to meet you,” Dave replied, his voice soft and comforting.

  Isabella, feeling more and more comfortable, nodded at Dave. Wyatt put a plate in front of her heaped with scrambled eggs and toast. When she smelled the eggs, she felt a wave of sickness, and then realized she was famished. She lifted her fork and began to eat. It tasted delicious. She had taken only a few bites before nausea crept through her. She broke out into a cold sweat, tiny beads of moisture appearing on her forehead and upper lip. She put down her fork, wiped her face with a napkin, and tried to take deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth until the queasiness subsided.

  Wyatt looked at her with concern. “Are you okay? You look kind of pale. Do you need a drink?”

  She nodded. “I guess I hadn’t realized how long it’s been since I last ate any real food.”

  She added more cream to her already-diluted coffee with sugar while looking at Dave. She caught Wyatt’s concerned look, out of the corner of her eye, as he sat down beside her. A few minutes later, she felt better and began to eat again.

  Eating a little more before putting her fork down and pushing her plate away, she folded her hands in front of her on the table.

  “Wyatt’s told me a little bit about you and your predicament and I think I can help you,” Dave began. “I’m a detective assigned to the Human Sex Trafficking Task Force.”

  Terror gripped her, reached to the very depths of her inner soul. Her heart began pumping, she began shaking, and she swallowed hard. Her chair scraped the floor as she stood, rushing to leave. Wyatt grasped her arms with his hands, gently pushing her back down into the chair.

  “Will you please listen to what he has to say?” Wyatt asked quietly.

  “Why should I? I’ve heard enough. I asked you to help me get back to my home, my family, and to leave the police out of it. I can’t trust you, I can’t trust anybody,” Isabella, seething, managed to say through clenched teeth.

  “We had a deal. Have you forgotten that already?”

  “No, I haven’t forgotten our agreement. But I don’t know how this has anything to do with it.”

  “Listen to what he has to say and then decide. It won’t hurt to listen. Where else do you have to go?”

  Wyatt looked between Dave and her. When she sat down Dave tried again.

  “As I said, I work on the task force for Human Trafficking,” he paused, watching her reaction, “and based on the information Wyatt relayed to me,” he said as he pointed to a number of printed pages spread out on the table, “we have reason to believe you may have been abducted.”

  Isabella just stared at Dave and Wyatt in puzzlement. Duh! Finally you believe me! She laughed, rolled her eyes in disbelief, and crossed her arms across her chest.

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you. They took me. They abducted me. You act like you just solved the great mystery of the Egyptian pyramids.” She paused, waiting for their reaction. Hearing none, she continued. “I don’t even know for sure what ‘human sex trafficking’ is, so how do I know it might have happened to me?” Isabella took another sip of her coffee.

  “Isabella, without any identification or evidence, we have no idea who you are or from where you came,” Dave explained.

  “Except for what you’ve told Wyatt, of course. It’s pretty clear we have to start at the beginning and reconstruct and verify virtually your entire life. The sooner we do, the sooner we can make plans to get you back where you belong.”

  He took a small fingerprint kit out of his briefcase and began to take her fingerprints while explaining they would be entered into a database looking for a match.

  “Since schools typically fingerprint anyone and everyone who works within the school system they will be searched within the same database. We’ll probably have a match quickly, and that would be a good thing.”

  After putting the fingerprint kit away, he retrieved a small black notebook, directing his attention to Isabella. “You need to tell me everything about yourself in detail, things I can verify.”

  “Okay, what do you want to know?”

  “Let’s start with personal information like your full name, address, age, date of birth, social security number, parents’ names, home and work addresses, occupation, where and when you graduated from school and college, where you work and how long, your friends, and especially your ‘friend’ Amanda,” Dave answered.

  Surprised to hear he knew about Amanda, she assumed Wyatt must have told him. She took a couple of deep breaths, hesitating, knowing she would have to relive the past year, which included moving out of her mom’s house, moving in with Michael, breaking up with Michael, getting her own apartment, and somehow getting abducted to Virginia. None of it seemed real or appealing to her.

  Chapter 15

  Isabella answered their questions while Wyatt retrieved a yellow legal pad and made notes on it.

  “Are you married?” Wyatt interjected among Dave’s questions.

  “No.”

  “Ever been married?”

  “No. Is this relevant?” she asked Dave.

  Dave and Wyatt ignored her question and continued asking her about what kind of car she drove, the tag number.

  “Okay, how did you come to know Amanda?” Dave asked her.

  “I met her at the gym where we’re both members. It’s near the school where I work.”

  “How did you become friends with her? Did you approach her or did she approach you?” Wyatt asked.

  “Amanda introduced herself to me one day at the gym. Then she invited me for coffee after our workout, so I guess you could say she approached me.”

  “W
hen did she first meet you?” Wyatt asked.

  “About six months ago. I had recently broken up with my fiancé and needed a friend. I guess I was vulnerable and she won me over.”

  “Where did you go for coffee?” Dave asked.

  “It’s a local coffee shop with a real trendy name on

  Ridge Street

  near the school. I don’t remember the name exactly, but it’s something like Groovy Grounds or something similar.” “Interesting name. Maybe we can get a video surveillance with a description of Amanda,” Wyatt interjected.

  “What’s Amanda’s last name? Maybe she has priors,” Dave asked.

  Isabella shrugged her shoulders and shook her head from side to side. “She never actually told me her last name. I just always knew her as Amanda, and I never asked her that I remember.”

  “Can you tell us Joe’s full name, if he works and where?”

  “Amanda introduced Joe as Joe Sneed but neither of them ever mentioned their jobs. Amanda lives in a beautiful, affluent condo building so she had to work somewhere. She always dressed real nice too.”

  “Can you describe them? Did they have any accents or tattoos? Did any of them wear watches? What kind of clothes did they wear?” Wyatt asked her.

  “Well, Joe is tall with a handsome face, crooked nose though. He dressed nicely enough in jeans, T-shirt, sports coat, dress shoes. He sometimes pulled his shoulder-length dark brown hair back in a ponytail.

  “I didn’t see any tattoos on either Amanda or Joe or any jewelry either. Oh, and Amanda always wore stiletto shoes, always.”

  “Where did Amanda live? Do you know her address?” Wyatt asked.

  She shrugged and shook her head. After a few more exasperating questions from both Wyatt and Dave with the same response from Isabella, she turned to Wyatt with pleading eyes shaking her head. “Is all this really necessary?”

  “In order for us to help you, we have to know anything and everything.” Wyatt responded softly, giving her an I-warned-you glare. “Some of it may seem unimportant right now, but it might lead to some little tidbit we can use later.”

  She nodded and addressed Dave. “Okay, but I went through all this with Wyatt last night. It seems like a waste of time, and frankly, I can think of numerous other things we could be doing to get me out of this fix.”

  “Like what?” Wyatt asked.

  “Like tracking down Joe and Amanda, getting to the park and backtracking to where they held me. The longer we wait, the colder their trail gets.”

  “And what do you plan to do when or if you find them?” Wyatt asked.

  “Well, I hadn’t gotten that far yet, but at least I would be doing something.”

  “They sound like they’re experienced traffickers to me, Isabella.” Dave explained. “They’ve been doing it for a while, too. It happens every single day to young women and children. They start abducting kids as young as ten years old, infiltrating middle schools, befriending a kid, making all kinds of promises of money and easy work. Then they’re abducted and delivered.

  “The abductors get paid and start all over again. The abductees are left to serve a lifetime of slavery without their families ever being aware of where they are or if they are dead or alive. And it happens all over the world, more in the United States than most people can imagine.”

  “We know you’re anxious to find them and, believe me, we are too.” Wyatt interjected again. “We’ll be doing all you want us to do and much more, only we’ll have more information and a plan ready to implement and apprehend them when we find them. And we will find them. Okay? Just try to be a little more patient a bit longer.”

  Dave changed the line of questioning. “Tell us about your fiancé, his name, date of birth, where he works, his home and work addresses?”

  “Ex-fiancé, please,” she said as she gave him all the pertinent details she could while hanging her head, embarrassed to have been so gullible.

  “When did you first meet him?” Wyatt asked.

  “We went to the same high school, and even though he was a number of years ahead of me, we hung out with the same kids. He asked me out on dates but my dad wouldn’t allow it. He said Michael was too old for me. Michael would get really mad but then come back the next day asking again.”

  “Did he have any prior arrests?” Wyatt asked.

  “I’m not aware of any arrests,” she answered, “but even though I knew him from high school, I didn’t keep track of him all the time.”

  “What does he do for a living?” Wyatt asked.

  “Well, I don't really know. When we first started dating, he had just gotten back from Central America. He had been there a number of years, not sure how many.”

  “What did he do while he was there?” Dave asked.

  “I don’t know. He never wanted to talk about it, and I didn’t press him for answers,” Isabella explained.

  “What happened then?” Dave asked her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happened between you and Michael?” Dave asked.

  “I really don’t understand how this could possibly be of any relevance,” she retorted snootily.

  “Maybe you and Michael had a falling out and he wants revenge. How would you know?” Wyatt asked.

  She acquiesced and said, “When I first started dating Michael, he wowed me with kindness, and devotion. He quit his job after I moved in with him, leaving me to figure out how to pay all the bills. He also became very demanding and controlling of who I saw, when I saw them and even what I said to them. And then one day I came home…I left and never looked back.”

  “Did he threaten you?” Wyatt asked.

  “Oh yes. Telling me I owed him, I’d pay, that sort of thing.”

  “Did he say how you’d pay?” Wyatt asked.

  “Of course not. He doesn’t have a clue. He was too angry with himself for getting caught and losing his meal ticket,” Isabella replied, once again crossing her arms over her chest in a huff.

  “After you left, did Michael try to contact you?” Wyatt tapped his pencil on the table.

  “Yes, a couple of times. He called and threatened to get me fired from work and thrown out of my apartment. I had to get a restraining order. Then I moved into an apartment building with a security guard. Oh, I also change my phone number to an unlisted number.”

  “When did you hear from him last?” Dave asked.

  “I haven’t heard from him in months.”

  “What about your parents and siblings? Are they still living? If so we’ll need their personal info as well.”

  “I only have my mother. My father’s gone, and I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

  “What your mother’s full name and address? We’ll need to check with her and make sure she’s safe,” Wyatt said.

  After relaying all the pertinent information to them regarding her mother Isabella asked Dave, “Will you let her know I’m okay? I’m sure she’s frantic with worry about me.”

  He looked at her with raised eyebrows, tilting his head to the side. After a minute or so of unspoken words, his implication dawned on her.

  “You can’t possibly think my mother had anything to do with this, can you? She loves me. She tries to look out for me. She never liked Michael. We argued about him many times, especially when I moved out of her house and in with him. She told me many times he was trouble. But she’d never do anything to hurt me, ever.”

  “Did your mother need any money, or did she recently take out a loan? Maybe receive a large sum of money?”

  “No, no, to everything. You’re wrong, way wrong to even think it! It’s absurd! When my father died about ten years ago, he left us both with enough money to live on comfortably for quite some time. I told you my mother has nothing to do with this. I think we’re wasting valuable time here.” She stood and walked over to the sink.

  “You’re probably right, Isabella, but we need to check out every angle, and of course, we need to make sure your mother isn’t a vic
tim or in any kind of trouble, remember?” Dave asked.

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  “So, how did you get to Amanda’s house, if you didn’t know her address?” Dave asked.

  She explained how she followed her handwritten directions.

  “Where did you park your car at Amanda’s? Was it in a residential area? Did you notice any neighbors or anyone outside maybe walking the dog? Do you remember seeing a fire hydrant, a church, or a traffic light, any street signs?” Wyatt asked.

  Bombarded with questions by both Wyatt and Dave, she expected them to turn on the bright lights or hook her up to a lie detector machine at any moment.

  “What happened next?” Dave asked.

  She retold her story in its entirety as she stood with her back leaning against the sink. “I only remember bits and pieces of people, persons, and things after I left Amanda’s.”

  Dave and Wyatt looked at each other.

  “Do you remember what the date was when you went to Amanda’s house?” Wyatt asked.

  “I know it was a Thursday, because I didn’t want to go to Amanda’s house on a weeknight, but it was the only night I didn’t have a department meeting after class. I wanted to get home and get my run in and not have to get up early the next morning. I think it was May fourteenth, because it had been six months to the day since I split from Michael.”

  Wyatt took her hand in one of his and turned her face with his other hand, putting his finger on the side of her cheek. When she looked at him, he asked, “Do you know what the date is today?”

  She shook her head.

  “Today is May twenty-fourth. You’ve been gone over a week.”

  She looked at him, aghast, and leaned away from him, her lips trembling and her eyes wide in disbelief. Covering her mouth with her hand and gnawing on her index finger, she tried to blink back the tears forming in her eyes. It didn’t work. Rivulets of tears made their way down her cheeks.

  Wyatt rubbed his thumb across the top of her hand, while rubbing her back with his other hand. Her trembling lessened in the silence as minutes ticked away.