Complete Mia Kazmaroff Romantic Suspense Series, 1-4

by Kiernan-Lewis, Susan

  He knelt next to the body, careful not to touch it. If this was a dead Hispanic worker, he thought, then they might have just left us the evidence we need.

  “Can you get the light on his face?”

  As soon as she did, he looked into the man’s destroyed face and his hope of finding a slain hostage to lead them to the labor ring crumbled.

  The dead man had an unusually thick set of bloodied and matted eyebrows.

  13

  Jack sat on the tailgate of Maxwell’s truck. Maxwell had arrived with Jess minutes behind the four cop cruisers and the medical examiner. Jess had dropped Maxwell off and gone to get coffees. Jack sat now, a tall tumbler of steaming coffee in his hand, and watched the police work.

  It hadn’t been all that long ago when this had been his life, his world. How many years had he spent, coffee cup in hand and bleary-eyed from the late night call, watching the CS techs tape off a patch of countryside that had been scarred and bloodied by violence?

  The police techs had ringed the lot with outdoor lighting towers and tented the body site. Jack sat hip to hip on the tailgate with Mia, who had said very little since they’d discovered the body of her attacker. He knew she was thinking along the same lines he was—they’d lost their opportunity. How were they ever going to find José’s killer now?

  Jess sat in the cab of the truck with the radio and the heater on. Without a word, Mia handed Jack her empty coffee cup, and went to join her mother. Maxwell walked over to the truck from where he’d been talking with a pair of detectives near the ME’s minivan.

  “She okay?” he asked, jerking his head in the direction of the truck cab.

  “She will be,” Jack answered. “Soon as you get off her case.”

  “What were you thinking, Jack? The two of you tramping around out here? The crime scene is a muddy mess and right now I’m only seeing your and Mia’s footprints. You think that’s helping?”

  “She ID’d him as the guy who attacked her.”

  Jack watched Maxwell attempt to shake off his anger. “No identification on him,” he said. “Shot in the back of the head, execution-style. Nine millimeter.”

  “Bowers said his name was Julio Hernandez. Probably a lie but you could check.”

  “We will.”

  Maxwell sat on the tailgate, his girth bringing down the car hard onto its shocks.

  “This was where I saw the forced prostitution,” Jack said. “There were two long metal poultry processing huts there and over there about thirty men lined up in front of a prefab storage structure.”

  Maxwell scratched his head and turned to watch his men at work. “Dinsmore says the land’s been clear for six months. They moved operations up past Tiger.”

  Jack wasn’t sure he heard clearly. “Dinsmore said there’s been nothing here for six months? I was just here last week!”

  “I’m just telling you what Dinsmore told me on the phone not ten minutes ago. Oh, and who, by the way, is threatening to bring charges against you and Mia for trespassing.”

  “Was he at all surprised to hear a man had been murdered on his property?” Jack shook his head in disgust.

  “What do you think?”

  “Well, at least it’s clearly murder. You’ll investigate.”

  “Of course.”

  “That didn’t sound very emphatic.”

  “What do you want from me, Jack? We got a dead illegal alien in a field and a compromised crime scene. The CS tech informed me that Mia gave her a flattened shell casing she found in her boot tread!” He looked away in disgust. “It’s a major cock up.”

  Jack looked at the ME as the stretcher with Julio’s body was shoved into the back of the transport. It was still hours yet before dawn. And every lead he and Mia had—every single lead down to the guy who might have killed José—was gone.

  “Well, I guess this puts the cherry on whether or not Bowers was really on the level,” Jack said.

  “It doesn’t look good,” Maxwell agreed, pulling a stick of chewing tobacco out of his front pocket.

  *****

  Mia watched through the windshield as the police stretched their yellow tape across the field. She knew it wasn’t fair to blame Jack. He’d done what he thought was right at the time. He’d made a judgment call.

  And the judgment had been disastrous.

  “You okay, darling?” Jess said, smoothing an errant lock of hair from Mia’s forehead. “Are you cold? I can crank up the heat.”

  “I’m fine, Mom,” Mia said. “Just sick to my stomach.”

  “I know.”

  “I have no idea what to do now. This was our last lead.”

  Her phone rang and she dug it out of her coat pocket and looked at the screen. Jess leaned over to look, too.

  Ben Bryant.

  “Are you sure about that?” Jess said.

  Mia looked at her, a puzzled look on her face.

  “If you think Ben is involved, then there is still a lead left to be followed.”

  The phone trilled a short two-notes to herald a voice message had been recorded. Mia pushed the button to listen on speaker phone.

  “Mia, please talk to me and tell me what I did wrong. I’m really freaking out here because we were doing so great I thought and then you…if you could just call me? Or pick up next time I call? Please?”

  “Are you sure, Mia? He sounds sincere.”

  “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?” But Mia wasn’t sure. He did sound sincere. Could she have been mistaken? Could she have transferred her anxiety about the investigation to her nervousness on the date and then things got set off by something totally unrelated?

  “I hate this stupid gift of ours,” she said, tucking her phone back in her pocket. “It’s supposed to be this great way to tell who’s lying or what’s been done to whom but really it’s just this big confusing mess that you have to decipher before you get to the truth.”

  “Like life itself.”

  “And I told you he kissed me?”

  “I did remember you saying that, yes.”

  “And actually it was the second time.”

  “Did you pick up any…negative feelings during the first kiss?”

  Mia thought for a moment. “Well, no, but I spilled my drink all over my lap when he did it the first time so if there had been anything to detect, I probably wouldn’t have.”

  “But the second time…?”

  “The second time I got a live-action clip of Auschwitz playing in my head. It was horrible.”

  “But now you’re not sure it meant what you thought it meant.”

  “I’m not sure of anything anymore.” Mia turned and heard the steady but indecipherable hum of Jack and Maxwell’s voices from the tailgate of the truck. “But I think you’re right. If I did jump the gun on Ben—but especially if I didn’t—I at least need to talk with him.”

  “Please be careful, dear. If he is a part of something illegal, he could be dangerous.”

  Mia caught the waver of worry in her mother’s voice. They were sitting on the perimeter of an active murder scene, after all. She picked up her mother’s hand and tried to will confidence and strength to flow through her fingers.

  “Think of Lorna and Maria,” Mia said. “If Ben is even a long shot chance of bringing them home, I need to take it.”

  *****

  “Where are they taking us?” Maria whispered to the girl ahead of her in line. She had seen the others leave the house many times. Always they returned exhausted and shattered. Now she would see for herself. It had been days since Senor had even looked at her and when he did, he didn’t seem to recognize her. Even little Imelda no longer commanded his interest. She slept in the garage with the rest of them.

  The girl in front of her was black. She was much younger than Maria, but her eyes were old.

  “You’ll see,” she said, turning away.

  There were special punishments for being caught talking amongst themselves.

  Maria had been outdoors many times of co
urse. Sometimes she and the other girls were even allowed to swim in the pool and often, if the sun was out, they would take their meals out on the patio. But Maria had not been out through the front door since the day she was brought here.

  The men who watched them were severe. If they looked at them at all, it was with lust and evil in their eyes. Now, they pushed the girls—ten in all—to hurry and board the back of the van. It was hard for many of them to move quickly, Maria saw. Everyone she knew took the pills that Senor offered them.

  When they had the wit to speak—late at night when they were alone in the garage—they said it helped them not feel too much.

  That was precisely what Maria was afraid of.

  Now as she sat quietly next to one of the girls, her back against the side of the van, Maria couldn’t help but feel hope welling inside her. She was free of that place! Perhaps they would see a kind face out on the street. A woman walking her dog might look up and see their despair, see that they were prisoners and go and get help.

  The van door clanged shut with a tremendous noise and Maria shivered. The girl next to her, reached out and took her hand, lacing her fingers tightly with hers like a child might. When Maria looked at her, the girl—no more than fourteen years old—had her eyes squeezed shut as if she were wishing hard for something.

  “They take us into the country,” she whispered to Maria.

  Her voice was so low that, over the groans and restless movements of the other women in the van, Maria almost didn’t hear her. She squeezed the girl’s hand to let her know she had.

  “Why?” she said softly.

  “To fuck the field workers,” the girl said with a sigh.

  The air began to leave the inside of the van immediately. Maria dropped the girl’s hand and ran to the door. Her fingers began scratching for the inside latch but it wouldn’t work. She could hear the women behind her talking but she couldn’t help it. She hammered on the door with her fists.

  “Let me out! Let me go!” she screamed. The fear that came upon her was possessing her from within and giving her the strength of ten as she battered at the door.

  Someone would hear! Someone in any of the cars that drove by must hear a woman trapped in here and screaming for her life!

  Maria turned and looked wildly at the other women who were now staring at her. Many looked hostile, some just afraid. She felt the van lurch to a stop and she was flung forward into the lap of one woman who threw her off with disgust.

  “You’ll get us all killed!” the woman spat at her.

  “Pull yourself together!” another one whispered hoarsely. She watched that woman’s eyes go wide with terror as they all heard the latch lift on the outside of the van door.

  Maria turned to watch the door open and without hesitation she bolted through it. It was not yet dark out and the sky was full of clouds and birds as she burst into the open, her need for freedom from the van and the women’s stares as powerful as the urge to breathe. The arms that caught her were hard and unyielding.

  She struggled against him but it was useless. She hadn’t seen his face, yet she knew this man, knew the feel of his hands on her. He had raped her twice. He spoke no Spanish and now she could hear his cursing in English as he dragged her back into the back of the van and slammed her against the side of the van.

  Yes, kill me, Maria thought as her body tensed against his. Kill me now I beg you…

  He grabbed her jaw with a powerful, clawing hand and smashed her head against the van wall. His fingers pried open her mouth and she felt his filthy fingers push into her mouth.

  “Swallow it, bitch,” he said, breathing heavily.

  She started to gag and he withdrew his fingers and held a bottle of water to her mouth. When the fluid poured down her throat, she choked and sputtered but most of it went down. She stopped struggling and he released her and sat back on his heels.

  For a moment, they just looked at each other and then he nodded, screwed the cap on the water bottle and jumped out of the van, shutting the door with another loud clang.

  Maria put her hand to her throat. It still stung where the pill had gone down dry. When she moved her hand back to her lap, she realized that her hand was now very heavy. She sat where the man had put her and stared into the darkness of the once again quiet interior.

  *****

  The morning after they discovered the body at the poultry plant, Mia slept late. The drive home with Jack the night before had been a somber one. She knew he thought she blamed him for everything going down the way it did and she didn’t have enough energy to lie to him.

  So she said nothing.

  They didn’t need to say the obvious, that they were at a dead end in the investigation, what there was of it. As far as Mia could figure, her only lead—and it was a damn slim one—was Ben. And the more she thought of it, the more it felt like a straw she was grasping at.

  What were the odds that he would be involved with human trafficking? Was she just so obsessed she was starting to see sex kidnappers everywhere? Maybe she should go to work for Liz. They could both go slowly crazy doubting everyone and never recognizing any wins when they happened.

  Sounds like it’s right up my alley.

  When she walked into the living room she saw that Jack was gone. He’d left an apologetic note saying he had a very big cheffing job that he couldn’t blow off. He expected to be gone all evening and much of the night. Don’t wait up.

  It was well past two in the afternoon. Mia wadded up the note and tossed it in the kitchen garbage. He might as well make some money, she thought. They certainly didn’t have anything better to do. She saw he’d made her a breakfast sandwich and even though the cheese was cold and gluey now and the eggs rubbery, she made a cup of coffee and ate it to fill her stomach.

  She couldn’t help but wonder what Lorna was eating this morning. Or Maria. She pushed what was left of her sandwich away and went to take a shower and dress. She figured that would kill thirty minutes at least. After she was dressed, she sat in the living room with her cellphone in her lap.

  Am I hesitating to call him because I know I screwed up? she wondered, staring at the voice mail message from Ben on her phone. Does some part of me know the truth? Is he really a good guy—when good guys are so hard to find—and did I really just accuse him of buying and selling women?

  She covered her face with a hand.

  Yeah, that’s the problem, she thought. If he is a good guy, what I did just isn’t forgivable.

  And if he really is a rapist and a thug, he’s not going to be a very reliable source of information. She tossed the phone onto the coffee table in front of her. Either way, it sounded like calling him was a mistake.

  Coward.

  She walked to the window to take in the view of a corner of the Georgia Tech campus. She often thought of Dave living here and wondered if he used to stand here, too, looking out over the city. The phone vibrated against the coffee table, making her jump and when she snatched it up, she saw that it was Liz Magnuson calling.

  Maybe Taneka changed her mind?

  “Hey, Liz,” she said. “What’s up?”

  Please let it be about Taneka, she thought.

  “I’m calling, Mia because I got a very strange message from our friend, Taneka, and she has asked me to pass it on to you.”

  “A message?”

  “If you can call it that. Frankly, the girl sounded high when she called so I wouldn’t get your hopes up. She said I’m to ‘tell Ms. Mia…and I quote, it may be a memorial to some but to me and her friend it’s the drive to hell.’ End quote.”

  “That makes no sense,” Mia said, but she felt her heart start to speed up.

  “I told you. The girl’s a heroin addict. That’s one of the first things the pimps do is get the girls hooked on drugs. Makes them easier to handle.”

  “What was it again? ‘A memorial to some…’”

  “Give me your email address and I’ll send it to you,” Liz said briskly. “I have so
meone waiting and I don’t have time to help you memorize it.”

  Mia gave Liz her address and after they hung up, she pulled her laptop off the shelf of the coffee table. After refreshing her browser a few times with no new mail in her inbox, it seemed clear that Liz had taken her waiting visitor before sending the email.

  Frustrated but grateful to have something to focus on besides calling Ben, Mia cleaned the kitchen and dusted the living room while intermittently checking the computer. Finally, at just before six o’clock, the email came and Mia opened it.

  “It may be a memorial to some but to me and her friend it’s the drive to hell.”

  She means Maria, Mia thought with excitement, because I told her I was looking for her. She read the line several more times then stood up to pace the living room. She had to admit Liz was likely right. Taneka was probably stoned when she called. Why waste everyone’s time with a stupid riddle?

  The drive to hell….memorial. Mia stopped pacing when the sudden impact of the realization hit her. She ran back to the laptop to re-read the email. The last thing I asked her was where she was first picked up by her pimp.

  She’s telling me it’s Memorial Drive.

  14

  The moment Mia went to her bedroom and stripped off her khakis and preppy tee shirt and pulled on a pair of too-tight bootleg jeans and one of Jack’s button down shirts, she realized that on some level she’d always known it would come down to this.

  She looked in the mirror. She was too old and her hair was too nicely styled her to be believable but she’d read enough on the Internet to know it wasn’t always young girls and hopeful would-be immigrants the predators targeted. She knew what they wanted. She knew what they were looking for.

  And she would give it to them.