Furious (19 page)

T
HIRTY
-F
OUR

It was Saturday, and Faith got a whiff of newly cut grass through the open window. Craig was outside with the kids while Faith took a rare moment to play a song from
Phantom of the Opera
on an old upright piano passed down from generation to generation. Some of the keys were missing ivory, but she’d kept the piano tuned and the sound was decent. She’d taken piano lessons for a few years at a young age, but mostly she was self-taught. Even as she played, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lara straining to open the sliding glass door. At six years old, it took every bit of muscle for her little arms to open the slider, but she didn’t like anyone helping her, so Faith kept right on playing and pretended not to notice.

“Mom!” Lara said the moment she squeezed through the door. She ran toward her, tears in her eyes.

Faith stopped playing. “Is your brother all right?”

“He’s with Dad,” she said, big droplets rolling down both sides of her face.

“What is it then?” Faith looked her over. “Are you hurt?”

“I don’t want you and Dad to die.”

“What?”

“Dad said everyone dies someday. I don’t want you to die.”

Faith was an elementary school teacher. She had an answer for everything, but in that moment she stuttered a bit before she remembered a beautiful book she’d read about life and death and how it was really all about living. “Look at me, Lara.”

Her daughter did as she said, and Faith wiped her tears away. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

Lara nodded and sniffled.

“And your Dad is outside playing with your brother—isn’t that right?”

She nodded again.

“I will never lie to you, Lara. It’s true that everyone will die someday, but the important thing for you to know is that someone will always be here to take care of you. You have Mommy and Daddy, Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Jana and Uncle Colton. You will never be alone. OK?”

That seemed to appease her. Lara nodded, and Faith held her close. She felt a few last shudders leave Lara’s body. Faith breathed her in, wondering where the years had gone. It seemed like yesterday that she and Craig had brought their baby daughter home from the hospital.

“Faith. Earth to Faith.”

She blinked and found her brother, Colton, waving a hand in front of her face. “The truck is ready,” he said. “And I need to explain a few things.”

Rage, Beast, and Colton were standing next to a semitractor in the parking lot of Colton’s trucking business. It was seven thirty at night, and the sky was already pitch-black. If not for the floodlights, they wouldn’t be able to see one another. Tonight the plan was to talk to the teenagers who hung out at rest stops and offered their services to truck drivers.

“OK, here’s how this is going to go down,” Colton told them. “You three will be inside the trailer while I sit in the cab and wait for someone to approach. Depending on whether it rains or not, it could turn into a waiting game. If I’m approached, I’ll do some negotiating and then bring her to the back of the truck where you three will be waiting. You’re going to have five to ten minutes to talk and find out what you can.”

“Why such a short time?”

“Because her pimp will be watching. If she takes too long, he’ll come after her.”

“Why don’t you two drive with Colton?” Beast said. “I’ll take my truck and watch from across the street.”

Rage frowned. “You’re going to follow the pimp home, aren’t you?”

His expression remained the same, grim and unreadable.

Rage crossed her arms and then directed her attention back at Colton. “It sounds like you’ve had a lot of experience with this sort of thing.”

“Unfortunately I have. I was a trucker for ten years.” He put a hand on the cab. “I lived and breathed the trucking business well before I started my own company. Prostituting . . . trafficking . . . it’s always been part of the landscape.”

Faith shook her head with disgust.

“Just so we’re clear, I’ve never approached one of these girls, but I’ve seen it happen plenty of times.”

This dark world she was suddenly inhabiting made her realize how out of touch she’d been her entire life. Talk about living in a bubble. “We should get going,” Faith said.

Colton waved a hand toward the office building. “I’ve got to lock up shop first. I’ll only be a minute.”

Faith kept finding her attention going back to Rage. This was the first time she’d seen her since she’d learned from Beast that she was sick. Her skin was pale, and yet her big eyes looked brighter than usual.

Every time Rage caught Faith looking at her, she looked away. Except for this time. This time she narrowed her eyes at Faith and then turned her head and fixed her gaze on Beast. “You told her, didn’t you?”

“You weren’t at class,” Beast said. “She asked me about you.”

“Furious asked about me?”

Faith raised her hands in question. “I’m right here, guys. And why is that so surprising that I would ask about you?”

Rage pointed a finger at her. “That look on your face right now? Get rid of it.”

“Why?” Faith asked. “What am I doing?”

“I’m serious. Don’t ever give me that look again.”

Faith looked at Beast. “What did I do?”

“It’s the same look the nurses and doctors give me every time I go in for more tests. It’s that look-at-the-poor-sick-girl look—pitiful and woeful—it makes me want to scream.”

Faith moaned.

“What was that?”

“A moan,” Faith said with a laugh, hoping to distract Rage since it was obvious she didn’t want to be pitied and for a brief second that’s exactly what Faith had done. “I can’t moan?”

“What’s so funny?”

“You are.”

“Fuck you, old lady.”

“Up yours.”

Rage’s eyes widened before she burst out laughing. “Nobody says ‘up yours’ anymore.”

“Well, I do.”

“OK,” Beast said with a sigh, leaving them to argue. “I’m going to wait in my truck till we’re ready to go.”

Faith and Rage sat in the back of the trailer where goods were usually stored. The trailer was huge—thirteen feet high, eight and a half feet wide, and forty-eight feet long. It was also damp, dark, and dusty. They had been at this for hours, already talked to one sixteen-year-old boy and three girls between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, if they were to be believed. The boy actually gave them a name, but when Beast ran it through his database, the person didn’t exist. The girls, on the other hand, were closed-mouthed and refused to talk. This was their second rest stop of the night. It had been forty-five minutes since the last girl left the back of the truck with a hundred dollars in her pocket.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Rage said out of the blue. “Sometimes I just wish Beast would keep things to himself.”

“I’m sorry if I was staring at you. I wasn’t feeling pity,” Faith lied. “I was just wishing there was something I could do.”

“Nothing anyone can do,” Rage said. “Just the luck of the draw. And if you don’t mind, I prefer not to ever talk about this again.”

The back door to the truck rolled open. Faith straightened. They both did.

Colton jumped up into the trailer and then helped the girl inside. He rolled the door down and turned his flashlight toward the back where Rage and Faith were sitting. “This is Angel.”

Dark-skinned with hair that hung to her shoulders in perfect curls, she couldn’t be much older than sixteen. She visibly tensed when she saw the two of them waiting at the back of the truck and then turned to leave. “I don’t want no part of this,” she said.

Colton stopped her. “We just want to ask you a few questions.”

“Look, mister! If I’m not out of here in the next five minutes with a hundred-dollar bill in my hand, things are going to get ugly. And my ass ain’t the only one that’s going to get kicked, if you catch my drift.”

Faith quickly pulled a hundred-dollar bill from her pocket and handed it to the girl. “Here you go.”

Angel took the cash, then flipped her curls to the side and said, “What kind of questions you want to ask anyhow?”

“We need your boss’s name,” Faith said.

“You trippin’? No fucking way. You people are crazy.” She looked at her cell phone, appeared to be reading messages, the glow of light hitting her face just so. One thing was clear—she was scared.

“Please,” Faith said as she handed the girl a flyer and asked Colton to shine the flashlight on it. “Those are my kids, nine and ten.” She thought of Hudson turning nine without her at his side. “We think they may have been taken by traffickers, and I need your help.”

“I’m sorry, lady, but you have no idea who you’re dealing with. They don’t take shit from nobody. If they knew what you were doing in here, asking me questions, they would shoot you and leave you in some dark alleyway to die.”

Rage pushed herself to her feet and stepped closer to the girl so that they were face-to-face. “I’m not going to go away, Angel. I really don’t want to make problems for you, but we need to find these kids sooner rather than later. We’re running out of options. And just so we’re straight with each other, those dudes you work for aren’t the only ones who carry a gun. I need a name. And I need it now.”

Angel’s mouth tightened in a straight line before she said, “Shit. Those kids could be anywhere, but hand me another hundred and I’ll give you two names.” She pointed a finger at Rage. “But you have to promise me you’ll never come back here again.”

Rage looked at Faith, who nodded and handed the girl another hundred.

“OK, then. There’s a guy named Fin,” she said in a low voice. “He works at a tattoo shop. I don’t know which one, but I overheard him bragging once about branding a ten-year-old girl with blonde hair.”

“Branding?”

“Yeah, some of these people get a little crazy. They like to tattoo their name or a symbol onto the young ones, make sure everyone knows which family they belong to.”

“What’s Fin’s real name?”

“Hell if I know.”

“We’re running out of time,” Colton reminded them.

“Gracie’s Salon on Stockton Boulevard,” Angel spit out before heading for the end of the truck, where Colton stood by the roll-up door ready to let her out. “They keep the younger girls in the back rooms where they can keep a close watch on them.”

“Do you ever talk to the girls?”

“What planet are you from, lady?” Angel snorted and then crossed her skinny arms. “I don’t talk to no one, and I sure as hell shouldn’t be talkin’ to you. You didn’t hear none of this from me,” she said. “Now open this door!”

Long after Colton’s semitrailer left the parking lot, Beast stayed low in his truck, keeping an eye on things. There were three girls working the parking lot. It was well past midnight when one of them left the back of a semitrailer and signaled with a quick sweep of her hand in the air above her head.

A silver Nissan pulled up next to her, and she climbed inside.

Beast followed the Nissan, taking note of the plate number and the direction they were headed. Before merging onto the freeway, the Nissan slowed and pulled over to the side of the road.

Beast did the same. He left the engine running and the headlights on. A light drizzle hit his windshield.

Minutes passed before the driver’s door of the Nissan opened and the driver climbed out. Broad-shouldered, he wore a dark leather jacket. He had a swagger to his step—slow and steady, his upper body swaying left to right, his chest puffed.

Window down, Beast waited patiently for his arrival.

The man in the leather jacket came right up to Beast’s window and put a gun to his head. “Motherfucker, you following me?”

The guy reeked of tequila. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am.” Beast grabbed hold of his gun and twisted it out of his hand, then jabbed his right elbow into the guy’s throat. The man stumbled backward, both hands around his neck as he struggled for a breath. Beast climbed out of his truck, kneed him in the groin, and held the muzzle of the gun against his skull. “You have two seconds to tell me who you work for.”