Devil in Disguise

by Heather Huffman

  “I don’t hate you,” he whispered against her hair. “Quite the opposite. I would do anything for you. I’d do anything to be with you. One day, when this is all over, I will explain everything – if you’re still talking to me, that is. Until then, know that if I’m putting distance between us, it’s only because I love you.”

  “You’re leaving? Now?” She pulled away to look him in the eye.

  “Your family is in enough danger right now; I’ll only add to it at the moment.”

  “Would you stop with this cryptic nonsense?” Her voice inched up in exasperation. “Would somebody tell me what the hell is going on?”

  “Veronica will when she gets here, I promise.”

  “No. You tell me now,” she demanded.

  “Goodbye, Rachel. Go be with your sister. I’ll find you when it’s safe.”

  “No. I refuse to accept your goodbye.” She tugged his hand, determined to drag his stubborn butt up the stairs if necessary. He merely arched his eyebrows and widened his stance, as if daring her to try to budge him. Not one to pass up a challenge, Rachel tugged even harder on his hand, only to be rewarded by her own grip slipping loose. She stumbled backwards and landed on her rump, glaring mutinously up at Conrad.

  “Don’t stay angry with me forever, ma bichette.” With that, he turned to walk away, leaving her sitting in the parking lot, fuming so hard she was certain literal smoke was rolling out her ears.

  He was halfway to his truck when a beat-up old Buick pulled alongside him. The car’s passenger leaned out and sprayed something in Conrad’s face. Rachel shouted, watching in horror as his giant frame crumpled to the ground while the Buick sped away.

  She scrambled to cover the distance between them, wildly looking about for someone, anyone, to come to her aid. She dropped to her knees at his side, checking for a pulse with one hand even as the other tried to rouse him. As soon as she found a pulse, she started looking for other wounds. The back of his head was bleeding from the tumble to the ground, but he didn’t have any other apparent injuries. It was his breathing that scared her; it was shallow, and the air rattled around in his lungs.

  “Come on, baby. Wake up. Please wake up,” she sobbed, fumbling to get her cell phone out of her pocket. She continued to plead with him, God, and anyone else who would listen while she dialed 911. It took a minute for the operator to understand her, and a minute more for him to understand that she was in the hospital parking lot, but soon the paramedics were there, pushing through the small crowd that had begun to gather and moving her out of the way as they checked Conrad and listened to her recount what had happened.

  Rachel had never felt as helpless as she did watching them roll Conrad away. She clutched his shirt to her chest. They’d cut it off in the process of stabilizing him enough to get him the short distance to the emergency room. Rachel inhaled deeply; his scent still clung to the tattered fabric. Not sure what else to do, she followed the procession across the parking lot. She needed to check on Julia, but she wasn’t leaving Conrad until she knew he was okay. Right now, more than anything, she was terrified that she’d seen him smile for the last time.

  The image of that last smile played on repeat in her head as she sat numbly in the trauma waiting room. She had the presence of mind to text her whereabouts to Veronica, but everything else was a blur.

  Rachel didn’t know how long she sat there alone before Veronica appeared in the doorway. “This part’s torture. Pure hell.”

  Rachel looked up with questioning eyes.

  “The hospital waiting room. A really good friend of mine was hurt in the first case I worked on. I still have nightmares about sitting in that waiting room, not sure if he was going to make it and wondering if I could have done something different.”

  “I don’t even know what happened.” Rachel’s voice sounded pathetic even to her own ears.

  “I haven’t talked to the doctors or anything, but it sounds like he was poisoned. It’s a pretty classic move for these cockroaches. They drive by and spray an aerosol poison in someone’s face. It gets rid of them without the mess and media of a drive-by shooting.”

  “It just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?”

  “With these guys, unfortunately, yes. I think they’ve been so hard to stop because our society just can’t wrap their brains around how soulless traffickers are. They aren’t human. I don’t know how they could be, considering the things they do.”

  “Do you think Conrad will die?”

  “I can’t say, sweetie—not without talking to the doctors. I do know he’s a big guy. It would take a hell of a lot of an inhaled poison to take him down. That’s got to work in his favor.”

  “I shouted at them. I don’t think they saw me before that.”

  “Even better. They probably didn’t have time to administer a full dose. He’ll be back to good in no time.”

  Rachel was pretty sure Veronica was lying to make her feel better, but she was choosing to believe her. Anything was better than sitting there with the image of him helpless on a gurney seared into her brain.

  As Rachel sifted through all that had happened, trying to make sense of what was going on, a doctor interrupted her thought process to confirm what Veronica had already supposed: Conrad had been sprayed with a poison meant to be inhaled, but the dose hadn’t been enough to accomplish the intended outcome. There had been some damage to his lungs, but only time would tell how much scarring would remain. He wouldn’t be able talk because of the irritation to his throat, but they expected that to subside over the next 24 hours.

  Rachel took it all in, mentally filing away each piece of information, determined to do whatever she could to help him mend. Like it or not, Conrad Langston was going to have her by his side every step of his recovery.

  “Can I go see him?”

  “He’s resting now, but I don’t see why not. I’ll stop by during rounds in the morning,” the doctor promised on his way out the door.

  “Do you want to go in alone?” Veronica offered.

  “I think I just want to reassure myself he’s still breathing, and then slip over to see Julia while Conrad is still asleep.”

  “Go ahead – I’ll catch up with you as soon as I call this in. With a little luck, we’ll be able to get at least one security guard assigned to Conrad in case anybody gets the bright idea to come back to finish what they started.”

  Rachel blanched. She hadn’t thought of that one yet. She ruthlessly shoved that thought aside and hurried into his room. Seeing him so still and quiet was almost worse than not seeing him at all. She made a beeline for his side, where she tentatively slid her hand into his lifeless one, willing him to give her even the slightest squeeze of acknowledgement. He didn’t, and as much as she wanted to stand and watch him breathe just to reassure herself that he could, Rachel still hadn’t seen her little sister.

  If seeing Conrad had been hard, seeing Julia ripped her heart out. She looked so very young and broken. One eyelid was purple and swollen shut; the other eye was red. Her head had been shaved, and her arms bore the marks of chains that had been kept too tight.

  Before Rachel could even say hello, Julia began to retch. Rosemary was there in an instant, holding a pink bucket with one hand and rubbing Julia’s back in a soothing gesture with the other.

  “Those damn drugs they pumped into her are making her sick. She’s been throwing up so hard she popped a blood vessel in her eye.” Rosemary glanced at Rachel as she spoke. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Conrad was attacked on our way in. I didn’t want to leave him until he was stable.” Rachel didn’t flinch at her mother’s tone; it was a pretty typical Rosemary reaction to crisis.

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  Rachel couldn’t be sure, but her mother seemed almost contrite. “I think so. Veronica thinks I surprised his attackers. The doctor says we have to wait and see how much damage was done. He’s still out of it, but they said he won’t be able to talk even when he wakes up. No
t for another day or so, anyway.”

  “I guess you’ll be sitting by his bed instead of over here helping your sister, then, won’t you?”

  Rachel wanted to throw it in her mother’s face that she should know plenty about choosing a man over family. She dearly wanted to. But her little sister was now dry heaving at her side, and this was neither the time nor the place for another battle with her mother.

  “I’ll be running between the two rooms, but I wouldn’t dream of not being here for Julia.” Rachel went to get a cool washcloth before sitting on the edge of Julia’s bed. Julia gratefully allowed Rachel to clean her face; she sat up a little and looked at Rachel with haunted eyes.

  “You were right. You tried to warn me.” With a sob, Julia crumpled against Rachel, who instinctively wrapped her arms around her.

  “Sweet sister. No one could have seen this coming — not really. It’s not your fault, and you will be okay again.”

  “Nothing will ever be okay again.” Julia’s muffled words brought Rachel to tears.

  “You’ll heal, my love. I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but you will heal. For now, though, cry all you need to, baby girl.”

  Rosemary left her daughters long enough to clean the plastic pan Julia had been sick in, placing it within easy reach before joining them on the bed. The three women held on to each other, allowing the tears to wash the pain away.

  Veronica coughed softly from the doorway. “I’m sorry to interrupt. Can I see you for a moment, please, Rachel? We have a few things that can’t wait.”

  “Sure.” Rachel straightened and wiped her eyes. “We can walk over to check on Conrad again. Julia, I’ll be back soon, sweetie.”

  Julia nodded, lying back on her pillow and staring miserably out the window. Rachel had no idea how to help the girl. She wished she could talk to Neena. If anyone would know how to reclaim one’s spirit after having it trampled by evil, it would be Neena. The woman had survived being wrongly imprisoned for killing her rapist. She’d been hunted like an animal and had even lived in the woods before rebuilding her life from ashes.

  As Rachel was deciding to take Julia to visit Neena once they were out of the hospital, Veronica interrupted her thoughts.

  “I couldn’t get security for Conrad. Jeff tried; he really did. The field office here is already spread really thin with the fallout from our raid to get Julia. I threw my best temper tantrum, but it got me nowhere. They must really be out of resources.”

  “I’ll hire someone then. I’ll call the station and ask my assistant to track down a good private security service.”

  “I don’t think we’re there yet. Rick and I will take turns guarding him tonight, and let’s see where we are tomorrow.”

  Rachel merely nodded in agreement, making a mental note to call into work as soon as possible to request a leave of absence.

  Veronica stopped outside of Conrad’s room and turned to face Rachel. “Your sister is going to need some pretty extensive therapy to help her recover from this ordeal. Getting her back so quickly made a big difference, but I still think she’d benefit from getting help from someone trained to work with girls in her situation. I’ve been making a few phone calls, trying to get her into a program out in L.A.”

  “Whatever you think she needs,” Rachel immediately agreed. “Thank you. And money’s no object. I’ll pay for whatever she needs.”

  “Well, then she’s better off than many of the girls we help, but I’m not so sure money will help. Right now, there are only about 50 beds in the United States for rescued trafficking victims.”

  “How many trafficking victims are there?” Rachel tried to recall the facts from the piece her station had run last January.

  “Depends on who you ask. In my opinion, a safe guess would be about a hundred thousand. I don’t think anyone really knows for sure.”

  “What do you do with the girls you rescue, then?”

  “Some go into hiding. Sometimes other women’s shelters help us out. Some girls are put in a juvenile detention center because it’s the only way to keep them safe from their traffickers.”

  “So they’re rescued from slavery and put in jail?” Rachel wanted to borrow Julia’s pan to retch. It all seemed so fundamentally wrong.

  “It doesn’t make any sense, I know. We just desperately need more homes equipped to care for these girls.”

  “I know someone who can help her. Try to get her in the home, but if you can’t, I’ll disappear with her until you tell me it’s all clear.”

  “It might never be clear, Rachel. If Julia goes back to her old life, she’ll always run the risk of being killed out of retribution for leaving. Not just her, but her entire family. Right now, they might not connect you with her. If you get involved beyond this point, there’s no going back to the old way of things.”

  Rachel set her jaw stubbornly. She didn’t like what she was hearing. Everything in her raged against the injustice of it all. With a small shake of her head, she turned and walked into Conrad’s room. She stood with her hands on his bed railing, looking down at him as he slept. Veronica slipped up to the other side of the bed, waiting for Rachel to process.

  “Why don’t you work on Web content anymore? Last time we spoke, you were responsible for updating the FBI’s website. This is definitely a vocation change for you.”

  “I kind of stumbled into it. Once I found out what was happening, how these young women were hurting, I couldn’t go back. Of course, marrying a spy kind of steered the new career path, but that’s another story altogether.” Veronica smiled softly, and Rachel wondered if it was a happy memory drifting through her eyes.

  Rachel tried to smile at Veronica, but the end result was rather shaky. “I’d like to hear that story sometime.”

  “We’ll need a bottle of wine if I’m going to get into that saga.” Veronica’s laugh was soft and brief. “How did the two of you meet?”

  “Conrad was convinced I was going to get his sister killed in my attempt to break a story, so he kidnapped me.” Tears welled in Rachel’s eyes at the memory. At the time, she’d been furious at his audacity. Once she learned the truth, she’d been in awe of his dedication to his family. Conrad had a singular loyalty that was both rare and refreshing.

  “Interesting first meeting,” Veronica acknowledged. “Maybe your story deserves a bottle of wine, too.”

  “In fairness to Conrad, we had actually met before that. We’d had at least five or six interactions before he resorted to a federal crime,” Rachel amended.

  “Wait a minute – I think I remember that story. It was the Kali Langston prison break, right?”

  “That’s the one,” Rachel nodded. “We wound up working around the clock together to clear Kali’s name. She kept the alias she’d been living under – Neena Russell. In her mind, Kali Langston was gone. If she went back to that name, her little family would never have any peace. But working on that story, trying to help Neena, that’s when we fell in love. After the story, he took the job at the casino and moved to Atlantic City to be closer to me.” Rachel never took her eyes off Conrad. “He wanted to marry me. I wanted to marry him too. I didn’t because of my job. I lost the man I love for my job, and now I’m going to have to walk away from it anyway. I won’t have either.”

  “The future isn’t written yet,” Veronica told her.

  Rachel reached out to run a finger along Conrad’s arm. “I don’t understand why.” She studied his features and waited for his eyes to flutter open.

  “Not to be blunt, but Julia was worth a lot of money to them. For every three girls we take off the streets, we cost traffickers one million dollars.”

  “I knew that. Not the numbers, that’s appalling, but I figured it was about the money. I just mean – why him? Why did they do this to him? Why not you or me or Rick?”

  Veronica bit her bottom lip and looked from Rachel to Conrad and back to Rachel again before answering in a soft voice. “They were punishing a traitor. Up until last night, he wo
rked for them.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  RACHEL CLASPED THE BED RAILING, the plastic the only thing keeping her from hitting the floor, and she wasn’t holding out high hopes for its ability to do the job.

  “Maybe you should sit down,” Veronica suggested gently. “He wasn’t one of them or he’d be in jail right now. I think he was just in over his head, if it helps.”

  “I’ve never known Conrad Langston to be in over his head with anything.” Rachel shook her head, not sure what to do with the words they were saying.

  Veronica looked uncomfortable. “I think this is a conversation you should probably have with him.”

  “Really? You tell me this when the man can’t even speak, and then you tell me to talk to him about it?”

  Having quietly entered the room, Rick made his presence known by joining their conversation. “Aw, I don’t know, I imagine Ronnie here would say our best conversations are the ones where I can’t respond.”

  “It does have merit,” Veronica agreed.

  Rachel ignored their banter, pensively chewing on her thumbnail and staring at Conrad’s sleeping form. She couldn’t be certain her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her, but it seemed his expression had changed

  “I think he’s waking up,” she announced, catching their attention immediately.

  Veronica peered closer to him. “I think you’re right.”

  “We’ll leave you two alone – go get a doctor or something,” Rick offered. “I agree with Ron; you two need to talk when you can. But from the conversations I’ve had with the man, he didn’t know anything concrete. He had his suspicions, but he was keeping his mouth shut to protect someone.”

  “His sister? Is Neena in danger? Should we call her?”

  “Neena’s fine,” Veronica reassured Rachel. “I’ve never even heard of her. The traffickers certainly haven’t seemed to find her. Honey, it was you he was protecting. Somehow they knew he was involved with you.”

  “Are you saying what happened to Julia was because of me?” Rachel was certain that if she’d eaten anything at all that day, it would have come up right then and there. Her stomach couldn’t take much more of this.