by J H Leigh
The Girls They Lost
The Auction Trilogy
J. H Leigh
To the one who always feels like sunshine on my soul no matter how dark the storms of my life rage…
Contents
Copyright
Newsletter sign up
A Note From JH
Back Cover Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
About the Author
Copyright
THEY GIRLS THEY LOST
By J.H Leigh
© 2020 Kimberly Sheetz. All rights reserved.
No part of this NOVEL may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to an actual person is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Richer Designs
The following NOVEL is approximately 51,000 words original fiction.
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A Note From JH
Dear Reader,
The saga continues. There was so much personal growth for the girls in the midst of horrifying situations that I was beside myself with love for these poor girls.
Confession time, I cried while writing this book. There are parts of this story that are so stark, so poignant that I couldn’t help but sob.
I hope you’re ready for the next wild ride because it doesn’t stop or let up for one second.
The third book, THE GIRLS THEY FEAR, is coming soon.
All my love,
J.H. Leigh
Back Cover Blurb
Dead girls don’t run or tell secrets.
Nicole, Dylan and Jilly may have escaped the horrors of the auction house but they aren’t safe.
Madame Moirai has eyes everywhere. There’s nowhere the girls can go that can shelter them for long. On the run, with no one to trust, it’s just a matter of time before they’re found.
Enlisting the help of a disgraced NYPD detective turned private investigator with demons of his own and a sociopathic criminal kingpin, the girls will discover just how far they’re willing to go to take down Madame Moirai.
All they have is each other — and a dogged will to survive.
But will it be enough?
1
I knew I was dreaming but it didn’t stop the dread as I approached the body lying on the stainless steel slab. A white sheet draped over what I knew to be Tana’s form.
I knew it was her because I’d already lived this nightmare.
I was the one who found her down in that cold basement of horrors, the one who set fire to Madame Moirai’s auction house so me, Jilly and Dylan could escape in the dead of night with nothing but the flimsy clothes on our backs.
As much as I wanted to walk out of this room, the dreamscape wouldn’t let me go.
Sheer exhaustion will do that to you.
Don’t do it.
Dream me, much like the real me, ignored the advice. My cold fingers plucked at the sheet, pulling it away from Tana’s face.
Death had muted everything vibrant about Tana. Her wild mane of red hair lay flat and dull against the slab as if it would be disrespectful to shine when she was hollowed out. The subtle wrinkle in her lips gave away the dehydration while the deathly pallor of her skin was appropriately macabre for the situation.
A handful of days ago, Tana had been alive, naively innocent and hopeful for a better future.
Hope…what dangerous fucking lure for kids like us.
They’d known exactly how to push our buttons, how to shut down that little voice of reason cautioning us to run away so we’d fall neatly into their trap.
If low-level anger was constantly percolating in my soul before taking Madame Moirai’s deal, now full-baked rage was my constant companion.
I stared at Tana, tears welling in my eyes. This was some bullshit.
A stranger would never know by looking at her corpse how nice she’d been. How desperately willing she’d been to save her grandmother, even if it meant selling the only thing she had of value: herself.
Fuck them all for being the soulless bastards they were.
What kind of monster took a beautiful butterfly-like Tana and squashed it beneath their feet without thinking twice about what it was taking from the world?
My level of grief might’ve suggested we were besties, that we’d known each other for years but six days ago, I hadn’t known Tana at all.
But trauma binds people in ways that time never could.
Within minutes of meeting the bubbly girl, I could tell she was the kind of person who always tried to find the best in people even if she had nothing to base her opinion on. She just wanted people to be the best version of themselves and how could you not like a person like that?
Again, hope raised its ugly head. Nobody ever talked about the price of caring too much.
Or being helplessly naive and trusting.
I wasn’t one of those people. Neither were Dylan or Jilly. But I’d fallen into the same trap as Tana, which told you just how brilliantly manipulative Madame Moirai’s network was.
We’d all taken the deal but Tana had somehow ended up dead. Who killed her? Her buyer? Madame Moirai? Who?
I should’ve known better than to think the deal was anything more than an elaborate con but the money had muzzled my gut instinct.
The thing was, good con artists knew how to manipulate their marks.
And fuck, were we manipulated.
I stared a moment longer at the Tana in my dream, silent tears welling in my eyes.
I wish I could’ve saved you.
I started to reach for an errant curl and Tana’s eyes popped open. Bloodshot green eyes stared with accusation and all I could do was stare back in horror. Her mouth dropped open in a silent scream that I heard in my head with the violence of shattering glass. I jumped back with a start, awakening in the car with arms flailing.
Dylan yelped as she cast an annoyed look my way. “Jesus, you okay?”
I wiped at the sweat on my upper lip. Just a dream but everything about our reality was just as fucked up. Tana was dead and we were on the run from Madame Moirai and some shadowy network called The Avalon.
We didn’t know what the fuck we were going to do or how we were going to survive but we weren’t going to just lie down and die for their convenience.
If need be, we’d go down scratching and clawing, and at the very least making them wish they’d never approached us for the deal.
The odds weren’t in our favor. We were likely going to die no matter what we did because no one was going to protect us from the ultra-rich assholes who wanted us dead.
To Dylan, I muttered, “Not even a little bit.” She didn’t press. She knew; None of us were okay. Not after everything we’d been through. We would never be okay. I glanced in the backseat. Jilly was curled up, sweatshirt bunched beneath her head, fast asleep.
I slumped further in the seat and exhaled a long breath. I used to think nothing c
ould be worse than the life I had before signing my contract with Madame Moirai but I was wrong. By comparison, my life with my booze-soaked mother, Carla, seemed a fucking cake-walk right about now.
“So where are you taking us?” I asked. Dylan supposedly had a place where we could hole up until we figured out our next move but details were pretty sketchy and I wasn’t sure if I trusted the bitch. “How do you know it’s safe?”
“Isn’t anything safer than out in the open?” Dylan countered.
“Cut the crap, Dylan. Just tell me where we’re going,” I said, irritated.
“It’s an underground network for runaways run by a guy I used to know. We should be safe there.”
“An underground network? What do you mean?”
“Fuck, enough with the questions, detective,” Dylan snapped. “If you’ve got a better idea for hiding out, I’m all ears. If not, just shut the fuck up and enjoy the ride.”
Dylan wasn’t going to win any personality awards but I didn’t have a solution that trumped hers so I had no choice but to zip my trap and let her take the wheel. We were forced together by circumstance, not because we liked each other but there was safety in numbers.
Supposedly.
“We’re going to have to ditch the car when we get to the city,” I said, sighing. “For all we know the car’s already been reported stolen.”
“I know someone who can take care of that,” Dylan said. “We can even get a little cash for it, too.”
“Illegal chop shop?” I surmised. Dylan nodded. I shrugged. “Fine.”
I would miss the car. I’d grown up in the city, was used to public transportation but having a car to ourselves felt like safety, even if it was only an illusion.
At this point, beggars couldn’t be choosers, you know?
I needed to cling to whatever boosted my mental stability because I felt as if I were teetering on the edge of a total break down.
Becoming some kind of hero had never been in my career trajectory.
“So what were you dreaming about?” Dylan asked.
“Tana.”
“That sucks.”
I glanced out the window. “Yeah. I can’t seem to shake the last image of her from my head.”
“I’m glad I didn’t find her,” Dylan said but in a rare show of empathy, added, “I’m sorry, that’s gotta be really shitty.”
It was but it was my fault. I had to find Tana before bailing. I could’ve saved myself and took off into the night but something held me back. I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if I’d left the girls behind. I never realized how burdened I was with an overabundance of conscience but I sure found out in a trial-by-fire sort of way.
“So you’ve got no one who will start asking questions when you show up missing?” I asked.
“No, but isn’t that the point? I can’t imagine Madame Moirai would single out girls people actually care about. Seems messy.”
I agreed. “Except my best friend Lora would care. She might start asking questions. I should call her.”
“Don’t do that,” Dylan said, her tone sharp. “It’ll just put your friend in danger.”
“You think they’re watching the people in our lives?”
“Hell yeah. Especially now that we’re dangerous loose ends. If you’ve got people they can get to, the best thing you can do is lay low for now.” She cast a quick look my way. “Who did you put down on your form as your contacts?”
“No one. I didn’t want them contacting my mother for anything. I left that line blank.”
Dylan nodded. “Me too.”
But there was an odd cadence to Dylan’s tone. Everything about Dylan always felt a little left to center but I didn’t have the mental energy to keep digging. Dylan could keep her secrets. We all had skeletons.
“How do you think Madame Moirai finds her marks?” I asked, curious. “My buyer knew things about me that weren’t public. Confidential information, you know?”
“Yeah. I know. They must have access to records, maybe through social services or the cops. You ever been arrested?”
“No, but social services had a file on me when I was younger. My mom was pretty shitty in the care department. When I was six years old, she took off for a few days and there was no food in the apartment. The next thing I know, people are showing up to collect me and I went into a foster home for a few weeks. After that, my mom was more careful to at least try to make an effort, not that she was any good at it.” I glanced at Dylan. “How about you?”
“Cops. I’ve been arrested a few times. Petty theft, mostly shoplifting. I have a record of misdemeanors, nothing felony, though. I worked hard at keeping my theft small so that all charges would drop off when I turned eighteen.”
Shoplifting was nothing. If it weren’t for Lora’s parents feeding me plenty of times, I would’ve had to steal to eat. Food shouldn’t be a privilege. A kid should never face the threat of starving to death. So yeah, shoplifting, whatever.
But that did raise a troubling question: did Madame Moirai have crooked cops working for her?
All signs pointed to yes.
“We’re so fucked,” I murmured.
To which Dylan didn’t disagree. “Makes you wonder what happens to a human being that they are willing to do what they do to kids without losing a night’s sleep.”
“I don’t know but I fucking hate them.”
“Same.”
“I want to make them pay. Somehow, someway.”
“We have to survive first.”
Dylan was right. Dreams of vengeance would have to wait until we were in a safe place. We needed allies, people willing to help us, people unable to be bought.
But did those people even exist anymore?
It seemed everybody had a private price tag on their integrity these days.
Even us.
Except without knowing it, we’d sold ourselves out for clearance aisle prices and those fuckers had laughed at our stupidity.
I closed my eyes, swallowing the bile.
Their time would come.
Somehow.
I’d make sure of it.
2
Dylan surprised us when she announced, “We need to hole up for a day or two. I need to do some recon.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused. “What happened to your contact who could help us?”
“It’s fucking complicated, okay? I need to check it out first and see if the conditions are good. The environment changes a lot in The Runaway Club. I’m not about to walk into a fucking trap.”
“What is this, the Hunger Games for runaways?” I asked with a dark glower, not for the first time questioning Dylan’s ability to come through. When Dylan glowered in response, I huffed a short, aggrieved breath and shrugged. “Whatever. And just where exactly are we supposed to hole up while you do this recon?”
“We have cash, we can pay for a motel room,” Jilly piped in. “It would be nice to have a shower and a bed.”
“We shouldn’t spend the money. We have no idea when we’ll be able to get more,” I said.
Jilly released a pouty sigh. “Fine. I think I might know of a place we can stay for the night. It’s not great but no one will think to look for us there.”
“Where?” I asked, curious.
“It’s an old church. Supposed to be torn down at some point but I don’t know, I guess the money dried up or something because now it’s just empty and every thinks its haunted or something.”
“Is it?” I asked.
“Not that I can tell but I don’t really believe in that stuff anyway.”
“Me neither,” I said, but the idea of staying in a creepy abandoned church didn’t fill me with excited butteries. “Where is it?”
Jilly leaned forward between us, answering, “It’s on Wheeler and Tenth. You can’t miss it. Big gothic structure. I mean, if you’re into that thing, it’s really kinda beautiful. Fun to draw.”
“You draw?” I asked, surprised.
She shrugged. “From time to time. Hard to get my hands on materials but when I can, I like to play around. I’m not very good but who cares, right? I’m not looking to open a gallery.”
Dylan followed Jilly’s directions and we pulled around the back of the church, off the main street so the car wasn’t immediately visible. Trash clogged the gutters and the area wore depression like a cloak. The church itself was creepy as fuck. “Easy to see why people think this place is haunted,” I murmured, gazing up at the blackened and aged spires. If I had a choice I wouldn’t want to walk inside either.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Jilly asked with a dreamy expression.
“This looks like where the devil holds mass,” I retorted, glancing at Dylan for her opinion but Dylan had other things on her mind, obviously bigger than the scary old church.
Shouldering her pack with a clipped, “Let’s go” Dylan trudged toward the warped back door, using her shoulder to force it open.
Jilly, almost giddy, followed and I, having little choice, filed in behind, hoping that ghosts weren’t real and we weren’t about to be murdered by a cantankerous ghoul with issues against the living.
The cold, dank air in the church smelled of decay and rot — and possibly dead things — and I almost double-backed to take my chances in the backseat of the car during the night. “We’ll freeze in this decrepit old church,” I said, shivering. “It’s not like we can build a fire or something.”
“There’s a room off the pulpit for the deacon. It’s got carpet and some old blankets. We’ll be fine,” Jilly chirped.
