More Than Words, Volume 6

by Joan Johnston

  He realized he was staring and quickly said, “So what do we do now?”

  “Right now I need Miranda to sit down in front of a computer and view a series of photographs of women we know work with pimps,” she said. “Many of the women involved in helping sex traffickers entice young women to leave home were recruited years ago themselves in the same way.”

  Seth felt himself struggling not to sympathize with Susan No-Last-Name. It was sad to think that the villain who might have kidnapped Jackie had once been an innocent girl herself. But the fact was, that innocence had been corrupted.

  “How can you stand to do this kind of work?” He realized how that sounded and immediately said, “I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”

  “No need to apologize. It’s a difficult job, but it has its rewards. When we find a missing child, when we rescue one from a dangerous situation, it feels good. Actually, it feels great,” she said with a smile.

  The policewoman’s smile—so full of hope—lit up her face, and Seth suddenly realized just how pretty she was. Her eyes had turned a warm chocolate-brown. And her mouth… Her mouth was full and luscious. Very…kissable.

  He was surprised again by the direction of his thoughts. Seth couldn’t remember the last time he’d admired a woman’s looks. He realized he’d been so focused on Karen’s eyes and heart-shaped face and enticing lips that he hadn’t noticed the rest of her. He suddenly became aware of the lushness of her breasts in the red knit top she wore and how her fitted black slacks emphasized her tiny waist and attractive hips.

  He reminded himself that she was a cop. He focused on the small black Glock in a holster at her waist and the ID badge she wore on a chain around her neck.

  “Thanks to your daughter, we have a real chance to save Jackie Kirkland,” she said.

  “That’s good news,” Seth said.

  “Assuming Miranda’s able to identify the woman she met at the mall from our database of known felons, our task force can coordinate with the local FBI sex-trafficking task force and perhaps locate Jackie before she’s moved out of town.”

  He perused the posters that lined the walls of her office, with the photos of smiling children who’d gone missing from their families staring down at her from all sides.

  He saw the sadness that lurked in Karen Toller’s dark brown eyes and suddenly knew, without her saying a word, that the sorrow wasn’t there only because she’d lost a husband. It was there because she hadn’t found all the missing children on her office walls. He admired the courage it must take for her to stay and do the job anyway.

  He felt the urge to take her in his arms and comfort her.

  The impulse was intriguing. When Amy died, his grief had been so deep, the pain so unbearable, that he’d vowed never to let himself care for another woman like that again.

  But it seemed the stone wall he’d built around his heart wasn’t as impregnable as he’d thought. He wanted to protect this woman from harm, despite the fact that she was the cop with the gun. He didn’t understand the urge, but he didn’t fight it, either, because he was convinced there was nothing at all sexual about his interest in Karen Toller. He merely wanted to offer solace to another human being.

  He saw the flush rise on her cheeks and realized he’d been caught staring again. He didn’t apologize, because that would have meant acknowledging what he’d been thinking. Instead, he said, “I imagine at some point you have to stop looking for missing girls who’ve been forced into prostitution. What happens to those girls? Are they stuck in that life forever?”

  “Fortunately, there are organizations that help us find and rescue sex slaves from traffickers.”

  “Organizations?”

  “Polaris Project is one of my favorites. It’s named for the North Star, which the slaves followed to freedom during the Civil War.”

  “Appropriate,” Seth said. “What, exactly, does an organization like Polaris do?”

  “For a start, they have programs to teach local law enforcement agencies about sex trafficking. They also help local P.D.s coordinate their efforts to retrieve victims with local FBI sex-trafficking task forces.

  “And they operate the country’s twenty-four-hour multilingual national hotline that girls—and boys—can call if they’re ever near a phone and want help. Most important, once victims of sex trafficking have been rescued, Polaris works with local social services to help provide counseling and the basic necessities—food and clothing and a safe place to stay—so kids don’t end up getting scooped back up again by the sex traffickers.”

  “Who pays for all that?”

  “Polaris does. They get funding from the government and from private foundations and donors. You can get involved if you’d like.” She searched around on her paper-strewn desk and came up with a card, which she handed to him.

  Seth saw it had a Web site, polarisproject.org. He considered for a moment, then met Karen’s inquiring gaze and said, “I’d like to get involved, to help somehow. I’m just not sure I have the fortitude to deal with someone who’s been through what you say these women—I guess they’re really just girls—have to endure.”

  “Unfortunately,” Karen said, “a lot of kids never make it back to their former lives. Sometimes they become lost souls, and there’s just no bringing them back. But organizations like Polaris at least give the ones who can be saved a fighting chance.”

  “Dad? I’ve got your soda.”

  Seth turned and saw his still-innocent daughter standing in the doorway. He felt his gut twist at the thought of the terrible fate that might have been hers. He stood and crossed to his daughter, slid a hand around her nape beneath her red curls and pulled her close.

  He took the can of soda from her and, fighting the sudden lump in his throat, said, “Thanks, honey. Would you mind looking at some pictures on the computer, to see if you recognize any of them as Susan?”

  “Sure, Daddy.”

  Seth turned back to Karen, cleared his throat and said, “We’re ready when you are.”

  Seth kept a hand on his daughter’s shoulder as Karen ushered them down the hall to another room containing several computers. Karen sat in a chair beside Miranda and explained how to scroll through the pictures she brought up on the screen. He leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, and watched. His daughter was very computer literate, and she quickly caught on to the instructions.

  When the sergeant appeared momentarily in the doorway, Seth saw from the look on his face that Karen had taken over a job that probably should have been his. He was glad Karen hadn’t handed his daughter off to the older cop. Seth liked the way Karen talked to Miranda. She was friendly without being ingratiating.

  “Ready?” Karen asked when she’d finished explaining.

  “Ready,” Miranda said.

  “Then let’s get started.”

  Seth was astounded by the number of female mug shots on file. He’d caught a glimpse of Susan himself, so he stepped forward and began perusing the photos over his daughter’s shoulder. After a while the faces all began to blend together.

  “There she is!” Miranda said suddenly, pointing at the screen.

  Seth looked at the photo Miranda had identified. How had she recognized Susan from that photo? The woman he’d briefly seen had been attractive, despite her bleached blond hair and bright red lipstick. The woman in the mug shot had dark brown hair and a black eye that left half her face swollen and disfigured.

  “Are you sure?” Karen asked.

  Miranda nodded. “That’s Susan.”

  “I saw Susan once myself from a distance,” he interjected. “I wouldn’t have recognized her from that picture if Miranda hadn’t picked her out. But the nose, and especially the mouth, with that bright red lipstick, are the same.”

  “It’s her, Daddy,” his daughter assured him.

  Karen called in Sergeant Peters and gave him the information from the computer on the woman Miranda had identified, whose real name turned out to be Jane Turner. Such
a simple name, Seth thought, for someone who represented so much danger.

  “Do you think they’ll be able to find Jackie?” Miranda asked.

  “I have the school photo you gave me of Jackie, so the task force will be able to recognize her when they search the places where Jane hangs out, the places where she’s been picked up before and the places where they’ve found girls who’ve been picked up by sex traffickers who—”

  Seth realized she’d stopped because she hadn’t meant to use the words sex traffickers in front of his daughter.

  Instead, she finished, “By other people like Jane. Hopefully, your friend Jackie will be in one of those places.”

  “It just dawned on me that you could track Jackie’s location using her cell phone,” Seth said. “I mean, I’ve seen that on TV.”

  “Unfortunately, the bad guys watch TV, too,” Karen said with a wry smile. “I guarantee you one of the first things Susan/Jane did was confiscate Jackie’s phone and remove the battery, so it couldn’t be traced.”

  “So that’s why she never texted me!” Miranda exclaimed.

  “I’m afraid so, sweetie.” Karen put a gentle hand on Miranda’s head and smoothed the curls away from his daughter’s face, then turned to Seth and said, “You can take Miranda home now.”

  Seth glanced at his watch and saw it was almost nine o’clock. “I had no idea it was so late.”

  Karen put a hand on his daughter’s shoulder and said, “Thanks for all your help, Miranda.”

  Miranda turned to him and said, “Can we get some pizza on the way home, Daddy? I’m starving.”

  Seth realized neither of them had eaten supper. Pizza wasn’t the healthiest meal, but the way he was feeling right now, he was willing to fulfill Miranda’s every wish, grateful he still had a daughter to spoil.

  He turned to Karen and said, “I don’t imagine you’ve had supper, either. Would you like to join us?”

  She shook her head before he’d finished speaking. “My shift isn’t over for a few more hours. I have work to do here.”

  “Will you let us know what you find out?” he asked.

  Karen glanced at Miranda, all big ears and wide eyes, and said, “The moment we find Jackie, I’ll be in touch.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Seth ordered a half mushroom, half pepperoni pizza from a take-out place that promised to deliver about the time he and Miranda expected to be home to pay for it.

  The moment they got home, Miranda ran upstairs to her room to change out of her school uniform. When the pizza arrived a few minutes later, Seth stood at the bottom of the stairs and called up to his daughter, “Time to eat!”

  Miranda appeared at the top of the stairs, still wearing her uniform, and said, “I’m not really hungry, Daddy.”

  “You have to eat something, honey.”

  She came down a few more steps and said, “Can’t I just take a piece to my room?”

  “I’d appreciate the company,” he replied, worried both by her lack of appetite and the fact she hadn’t changed for bed. What had she been doing upstairs? Her eyes looked desperate, her shoulders were tensed as though waiting for a blow and her hands were knotted into fists at her sides.

  Seth was alarmed by the changes in her demeanor since they’d arrived home. What had happened over the past fifteen minutes to lay the weight of the world on his daughter’s narrow shoulders? If he could just get her to join him at the dinner table, maybe he could find out what was troubling her.

  “Come on and join me,” he coaxed. “Pretty please?”

  Instead of smiling, her mouth tightened into a thin line. He held his breath until she said, “All right.”

  He waited for her to pass by him, then headed after her to the kitchen, where he grabbed some paper plates, napkins and a couple of cans of soda and brought them to the glass-topped dining-room table where he’d left the pizza. He sat down at the head of the table while Miranda sat to his left, across from the empty seat that used to belong to his wife.

  “Good pizza,” he said after he’d served them both and taken a bite.

  “Yeah.”

  That was it. The extent of their conversation.

  Seth missed his wife most in moments like this. Amy had always introduced topics that kept the conversation flowing at the supper table. Without Amy there to help, he struggled with what to say next to his daughter. He came up with, “I thought you were going to change into your pajamas.”

  She shrugged.

  No explanation. No offer to continue the conversation. Seth took a deep breath and let it out. “What were you doing upstairs?” Instead of changing into your pajamas.

  She took a bite of pizza and pointed to her mouth, to show it was full and she couldn’t speak.

  Seth took a bite of his own pizza and chewed it slowly. He could wait her out. She had to swallow sometime. The moment she did, he said, “Well?”

  She put up a finger, reached for her soda and took a swig.

  He waited. The instant she swallowed again, he said, “Miranda, I asked you a question.” He heard the irritation in his voice and moderated it before he added, “I can see something’s bothering you. Would you like to talk about it?”

  She refused to look at him, just stared at her hands, which had dropped to her lap.

  His wife would have known how to reach Miranda. But she wasn’t here. He was going to have to do this by himself. “I want to help, Miranda. But you have to tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I wish Mom were here.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I miss her.”

  “Me, too.”

  His daughter looked up, and for a brief instant he saw his wife’s lovely green eyes. But Miranda’s eyes were fringed with pale lashes rather than Amy’s dark ones, and her nose was straight like his, instead of being upturned like Amy’s. He felt his heart wrench with grief at the loss of his wife.

  That pain was replaced an instant later by the concern he felt for his daughter, who’d had as much—maybe even more—trouble dealing with Amy’s death as he had. Miranda had suffered terrible guilt over her mother’s death. She’d believed that the argument between him and Amy the morning she’d died, over whether Miranda should go on a class trip to Washington, D.C., was at least partly the cause of her mother’s accident.

  It had taken a lot of talking, and a lot of counseling, to convince her otherwise.

  “Whatever’s wrong,” he said, “you can tell me.”

  “Do you think the police have found Jackie by now?”

  “I think Lieutenant Toller would have called us if they had.”

  “It’s so late, Daddy. Where is Jackie going to sleep? She must be scared. I’d be scared.”

  Seth didn’t know how to comfort his daughter. Amy would have known. She’d had an unerring ability to do and say the right thing. He struggled to think of what he could tell his daughter that wouldn’t be a lie.

  She’ll be fine wouldn’t work. That was something they couldn’t know until Jackie was found.

  At least you’re safe wasn’t what his daughter wanted to hear, even if it made him feel better.

  “I wish I knew what to say,” he admitted. “We just have to hope the police find her soon.”

  “I looked up ‘sex trafficking’ on my computer,” Miranda blurted.

  Seth let out a soughing breath at that shocking revelation. He should have known. Miranda was smart and capable and curious. From the desolate look in her eyes, it was plain she’d learned far more than she’d wanted to know about what might be happening right now to Jackie.

  “Is there anything you’d like to talk about?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid for Jackie. Is it possible Susan just took her to meet some boy?” she said. “That she’ll bring Jackie home later?”

  Miranda was asking him to reassure her that fate couldn’t—wouldn’t dare—steal away someone else she loved.

  “We don’t know anything for sure yet,” he said.

  “When will we know
?”

  “I don’t know. Soon, I hope.” He had never felt so helpless. He couldn’t promise his daughter that Jackie would be saved. He offered the only comfort he could. “Thanks to you, Jackie has a chance of being rescued. You were a good friend to her today, Miranda.”

  He watched with a knot in his throat as tears filled his daughter’s eyes. He shoved his chair back and stood up enough to catch her by the arm and tug her over into his lap.

  She gripped him tightly around the neck and pressed her nose against his throat. “I’m scared,” she whispered. “Hold me tighter, Daddy. Tighter.”

  Seth could feel his daughter trembling like a wounded bird in his arms. He’d always considered himself a peaceful man, but he thought that might change if he ever got his hands on the scoundrels responsible for frightening his child.

  “I’ve got you, sweetheart,” he crooned. “No one can hurt you, Miranda. I’ve got you safe.”

  Seth felt his heart lurch when his daughter sobbed.

  “Shh,” he murmured. “It’s all right, honey. You’re all right.”

  “But Jackie’s not!” she cried.

  “We don’t know that,” he said. “You know Jackie. She’s a fighter. There’s a whole task force of cops and FBI agents out there right now hunting for her. Thanks to you, they have an idea where to look. With some luck, they’re going to find Jackie tonight, and tomorrow morning you’ll be together again.”

  If it was a lie, Seth thought, it was in a good cause. He couldn’t bear his daughter’s pain. He hoped the police and FBI were able to use the information Miranda had provided to find Jackie—before it was too late.

  “I think you should skip school tomorrow,” he said.

  At that, her head came up off his shoulder and she stared at him with eyes that glistened with tears. “Really?”

  “Really. We’ll spend the day together.”

  “Doing what?”

  He had no idea. He hadn’t spent a lot of time alone with Miranda before Amy’s death. They’d always done things as a family. Since Amy’s death, he’d used work as an excuse not to spend time alone with his daughter.