by Sharon Sala
The plane would be landing in Lexington within a couple of hours, and after meeting up with agents from the Kentucky division, they would be taken to the team’s location and could decide how to proceed from there.
After a fairly smooth flight, the plane landed just before 8:00 a.m. They exited the plane into the airport, quickly making their way to luggage claim.
As soon as they entered the area, they saw a man holding a sign with their names on it.
“There’s our ride,” Chavez said, pointing to the thirtysomething man with blond hair.
“Welcome to Lexington,” the man said. “I’m Sol Duran, an agent with the Kentucky division. My partner, Billy Richards, is waiting for us outside. I’ll help you get your luggage.”
After they’d collected their bags, they followed Duran out into the Kentucky heat and headed for a large, dark SUV waiting at the curb.
Billy Richards got out and introduced himself, then helped load their luggage into the vehicle. Raines and Chavez got in the back seat, and Duran and Richards took the front.
“How was your trip?” Richards asked.
“Hurried,” Raines said. “Fill us in on any updates.”
So Richards began talking as he drove away from the airport, with Duran filling in from time to time.
“We’ve had people keeping tabs on Fourth Dimension for some time,” Richards said. “Everything there is secretive. Their security is satellite fed, which means there’s no way for us to interrupt their feed to approach the compound without being seen, which also begs the question...how do they fund that? We have satellite images of the property inside the compound, and a few more images we got from mounting a camera on a drone.”
“What did you see?” Raines asked.
“A lot of men but no industry at all. No gardening, no pretense at being self-sufficient. We’ve caught a glimpse of some young teens carrying babies around, but we’ve yet to see any adult women, although they’re bound to be there because there are some babies.”
“What would you say the age range of the kids might be?” Raines asked.
“My partner probably has a better grasp of that,” Richards said, and Duran began to speak.
“I’ve studied the drone footage and the satellite images, and even have some video of people moving around the grounds. We estimate the children, who are all female, by the way, range in age from ten or eleven, up to early teens.”
Chavez frowned. That smacked of child trafficking to him.
“All girls? Really?”
Duran nodded.
Chavez frowned. “Okay...so you know girls are onsite, but have you seen any go out? Have you seen anything that would lead you to think this is linked to child trafficking?”
Duran shook his head. “Believe me, if we did, we would have already been in there. We don’t have any indication that there’s any buying and selling. What we do know is that they’re all school age, but none of them go to school down in Shawnee Gap. However, with so much online schooling these days, we can’t assume they’re not being educated, and we don’t have any legal reason to demand to inspect the place.”
“What about supplies? Are there any delivery trucks coming and going? Any way kids might be smuggled in and out that way?” Raines asked.
“No. Their food is picked up by members of Fourth Dimension from the small store in Shawnee Gap. They order in bulk through the local grocer, drive down in three or four vehicles to pick it up and drive back up the mountain with it. They do this about twice a month,” Duran said.
“What about recent arrivals?” Raines asked. “We want to verify if a new girl arrived within the past week. She would have come in with her father, a man named Jud Bien.”
Duran nodded. “Our recon team got the tag number of a car that came in recently. It did check out as belonging to a man named Judson Bien, and it was reported he had a young female with him. That same evening, our team reported hearing glass breaking inside the compound and a lot of screaming.”
“They heard it?” Chavez asked.
Richards nodded. “Yes. They have a parabolic mic, and were a couple of hundred yards from the perimeter when they picked it up.”
Special Agent Raines frowned. “How do they get that close without setting off security alarms?”
“We don’t know that it doesn’t alert them inside in some way, but no alarms go off that can be heard from outside the compound,” Duran said.
“Do you have anything solid that would get us a search warrant?” Raines asked.
“We keep trying to get a clear picture of the young girls’ faces,” Richards added. “Even one clear image would be good. If we could run it through facial recognition and match it up to any of the missing children in the national database, we’d be solid on a search warrant.”
Raines sighed. “We’re not here to step on your case. We are trying to do a follow-up on a parent abduction for a colleague. The mother of the missing girl was married to Jud Bien, and they shared custody after the divorce. Two years ago, he up and disappeared. They’d had no contact with him whatsoever, and then just a few days ago he showed up at their house, took their daughter when she was there alone, and without contacting the mother in any way, disappeared again. She did a little research on her own and found out her husband might have had a connection to Fourth Dimension, which is why we’re here. She’s frantic. She’s scared for her daughter’s safety. She knows Fourth Dimension is like a cult for psychics, and she claims her husband is one, and that her daughter has some abilities in that field. But she doesn’t know what any of that means with regards to her daughter’s abduction.”
Duran frowned. “And that shared custody is still active?”
“Yes,” Raines said.
“Ah...then the law has no legal grounds to go in and rescue her,” Duran said.
“Exactly,” Raines said.
“We’ll do all we can to help,” Duran said. “Not sure what yet, but maybe we’ll get lucky and get some pics of the girls we can use. In the meantime, it’s a long drive to get to Shawnee Gap, then up the mountain to our recon team. There’s drinks and some snacks in the cooler in the back.”
Hank Raines turned around, pulled the small hand-held cooler from the hatch behind the back seat, set it in the floor between his feet, and began handing out bottled water and cold-cut hoagies. They ate and talked as the trip continued, with the plan to get to their location by midafternoon.
* * *
Wyrick drove without stopping for almost five hours, then pulled in for a pit stop to refuel.
Charlie woke up as she was beginning to slow down to take the exit. He sat up and looked around. It was still dark, but as he glanced at the time, he realized he’d slept five solid hours.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Sort of southeast of Lexington, Kentucky, in a place called Noland. We still have a ways to go to get to Shawnee Gap, and I’m not sure about availability of places to refuel, so I stopped here.”
“Works for me,” Charlie said. “I need to stretch my legs.”
Wyrick drove through Noland until she saw a well-lit gas station that was open for business, and pulled up to the pumps.
“I’ll fill up and drive the rest of the way. You go on inside. I’ll join you shortly,” Charlie said.
Wyrick patted her pocket to see if her credit card was still there and then tossed the keys to Charlie before she got out. But Charlie wasn’t the only one with long legs. She stretched a couple of times to ease stiff muscles before heading toward the station, and was thinking about hot coffee and something sweet when she walked inside.
Within seconds, she was hearing a fight. Things were falling and breaking, and a woman was crying and screaming, “Stop, Troy, stop. Please don’t hit me again.”
Wyrick bolted past the front counter, following the sounds into the hallway le
ading to the bathrooms. There was a short, heavyset man straddling a woman’s legs, hammering her with his fists and with some dishes on the floor near the woman’s head.
Wyrick grabbed a broom leaning against the wall and swung it at the back of the man’s head like a baseball bat. The broom handle snapped off about a foot above the bristles as the man dropped like a rock.
It took every bit of Wyrick’s strength to pull him up and off the woman, and then she dropped to her knees beside her and made a quick call to Charlie.
He glanced down at his cell when it rang, but when he saw the call was from Wyrick, he moved out from behind the pumps, looking toward the station as he answered.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I need you in here. Bring your cuffs.”
His gut knotted. “On my way,” he said, then took the nozzle out of the gas tank and quickly hung it back up.
He didn’t know what was wrong, but she never asked for help. He grabbed some cuffs from the console and ran into the store, then had a brief moment of panic when he didn’t see her.
“Where are you?” he yelled.
“Back here by the bathrooms. Hurry, he’s starting to come to.”
Charlie was moving at a lope as he reached the hallway, then came to a stop as he saw Wyrick on her knees beside a woman who’d obviously been beaten, and a man unconscious on the floor near a broken broom.
“I walked in on this,” Wyrick said. “He was sitting on her legs so she couldn’t move and beating the hell out of her.”
Charlie saw the man’s bloody knuckles and cursed beneath his breath as he cuffed him, then dragged him out of the hall.
“Stay with her,” he said. “I’m going to use their phone to call 911 so it will go straight to the local police station.”
Wyrick jumped up and ran into the women’s bathroom, got a handful of wet paper towels, and then dropped back down beside her. The woman’s eyes were swollen shut, so it was hard to tell if she was conscious enough to know what was going on.
“Honey, can you hear me?” Wyrick asked.
“Yes, hear you. Run. He’ll hurt you, too.”
“He’s in cuffs, and my boss is calling the police. I have some wet compresses I’m going to put on your eyes. It will feel cold, but don’t be scared, okay? Help is coming.”
“Can’t help. He’ll do it again,” she whispered and then started to shake.
“What’s your name?” Wyrick asked as she laid the wet towels over her eyes.
“Evie. Troy is my ex-husband. I didn’t know he was out of jail.”
“Well, he’s not going to be out long,” Wyrick said, and then looked up as Charlie walked back into the hall.
“The police are on the way, and so is an ambulance. What happened?” he asked.
“Ex-husband. She didn’t know he was out of jail,” Wyrick said, then patted Evie’s leg. “Evie, this is my boss, Charlie Dodge.”
“Evie, I’m sorry this happened. Why did he do this to you?” Charlie asked.
“I testified against him in trial. I didn’t know he was out.”
“He won’t be long,” Charlie said, echoing Wyrick’s earlier words. “I hear sirens. Just hang in there, Evie.” Then he glanced at Wyrick and shook his head. “I turn my back and you get yourself into trouble. What the hell am I going to do with you?”
Wyrick could think of at least a half dozen things, none of which she would ever divulge.
“While you’re deciding my fate, stay with Evie a second. I need to pee.”
She jumped up and ducked into the women’s bathroom.
Charlie heard a moan behind him and turned around. The man was trying to get up. Charlie shoved him back down on his ass.
“Don’t fucking move,” Charlie said.
“You’re hurting me!” the man yelled.
“Then sit the hell still,” Charlie said.
Wyrick came out of the bathroom just as a trio of patrol cars skidded into the station with lights flashing and sirens screaming.
The officers ran inside with their guns drawn, and then the gas station was full of people, and an ambulance had arrived on scene.
Evie was transported to the local hospital, while a second set of EMTs treated Troy’s head wound on the scene before he was taken into custody. While Charlie and Wyrick were giving their statements, the owner of the station arrived.
Horrified by what had happened to his employee, he began cleaning up the blood in the hallway and then stayed to finish out her shift.
As soon as Charlie and Wyrick were released, they went back to the Jeep. Charlie finished fueling it up, and then they drove away, heading toward a little café the owner had recommended.
“Want to eat inside or get it to go?” Charlie asked.
“Inside, please. This might be our last chance to eat real food for a while.”
Charlie grinned. “MREs are real food, too.”
Wyrick rolled her eyes.
“I want biscuits and gravy on a plate, not stirred up in a pouch.”
Charlie laughed, and after the tension of what had just happened, laughing felt good.
* * *
Jordan was awake and sitting on the side of her bed when the other girls woke up. As always, they began getting ready to go to breakfast.
One girl was crying as she got dressed. She’d dreamed of home and awakened to her reality.
Barbie was trying to get her long blond hair pulled up into a ponytail, and Randi was bemoaning the loss of her makeup back home.
Katie, the girl Jud had chosen as his bride, was in a state of panic, and Jordan knew why.
Sympathetic to Katie’s fears, she got up and went to where Katie was dressing and tapped her on the shoulder.
Katie turned around, eyeing Jordan’s swollen mouth and the purple bruises spreading across her face.
“Thought you might like to know that Jud was banished from the group last night,” Jordan said.
Katie gasped. “What do you mean?”
By now, all of the girls were listening.
“The Master kicked him out for defending me. He’s gone,” Jordan said.
“Then why did he leave you behind?” Randi asked.
Jordan felt the weight of that answer like an ever-tightening noose around her neck. Just saying it made her voice shake, but her mother had taught her that once a trouble was shared, the fear of it lessened.
“I am their insurance. If Jud tells what he knows about this place, the boss man will have me killed.”
The girls all crowded around her, wanting details.
“How do you know this?” Randi asked.
Jordan shrugged. “I know stuff, that’s all.”
Katie’s eyes widened. “You mean, you’re like them...the men? You’re psychic, too?”
Jordan didn’t answer. “What I am doesn’t matter. I told you so you wouldn’t be thinking you were going to have to marry him.”
Katie’s shoulders slumped. “They’ll just give me to someone else.”
Jordan shook her head. “They don’t know it yet, but when the Master hit me, he disrupted the order of things. He showed a violence they’d never seen before. And when I show up at breakfast looking like this, it’s going to cause more uncertainty among them. You’ll see.”
Barbie sidled up closer. “What if they lock you up again? What if they won’t let you go?” she whispered.
There were tears in Jordan’s eyes, but they heard the conviction of her truth.
“I will die where I stand before I’ll ever be alone with those men again.”
Katie looked at Jordan, and then put her hand on Jordan’s arm.
“I’ll stand with you. I’ll stay behind with you,” she said.
Not wanting to be outdone, Randi added her hand to the pledge.
�
�I’ll stand with you, too,” she said.
Then one by one, all of the girls pledged not to leave her behind, and by then Jordan was crying. It was the first time she’d let them see her fear. But she’d become the symbol of strength they had all needed, and they’d given her their allegiance. A new world order had just been established in Fourth Dimension. The men just didn’t know it yet, but they soon would, because Archangel Thomas and his helpers were on the way to the girls’ dormitory.
* * *
Thomas knew the moment he unlocked the door and walked in to bring the girls to breakfast that something had changed. They were already lined up and silent, rather than sitting about chattering and laughing as usual.
Then he saw the new Sprite lined up with them and a wave of shock rolled through him. He’d heard rumors about the Master losing his temper with her, but the violence with which it had happened was frightening.
“I’m sorry, Jordan, but Master hasn’t changed his orders. You’re supposed to stay here,” he said.
She didn’t argue with him, which was a relief, but when she stepped out of line, all of the girls went with her.
“Girls, get back in line now,” he said.
“We’re not hungry,” Randi said.
Thomas didn’t know how to proceed, but it was apparent the girls had ignored their orders to shun Jordan, and the symbolism of what just happened was impossible to miss. She wasn’t just one of them now. They were protecting her.
He glanced at the men with him, saw the shock in their eyes, as well, and then sternly announced, “We aren’t going to start mass insubordination. Line up, all of you, and we will proceed to breakfast.”
“Jordan, too?” Katie asked.
“Yes, Jordan, too,” he said.
The girls lined back up again with Jordan right in the middle, and then Thomas led the way out with the girls in single file behind him, and the two guards bringing up the rear.
* * *
