Diana Fernandez, Deke’s longtime office administrator, picked up yet another call. For almost twenty years, she’d been Deke’s “gatekeeper.” Organizing Deke, as she often told him, was a full-time job in itself.
The phone had been ringing nonstop for the last hour. Many people had caught clips of Deke’s interview on CNN, and wanted to talk to him about it.
“Office of Nick Deketomis,” she said. “This is Diana.”
There was breathing on the line, but no one said anything. Anyone else probably would have hung up, but Diana had experience with reluctant callers.
Diana spoke into the silence. “May I help you?” she said.
“Mr. Deke, please,” said a heavily accented and very nervous voice.
“Who is calling?” asked Diana.
“I see him on the TV,” the woman said. “I need bad help.”
The voice was muffled, like the woman was speaking from within an enclosed space. She could hear the woman’s desperation in her strained voice. The caller sounded young, probably close to the age of her own teenage daughter. Diana tried to put her at ease.
“I’m glad you called. We’ll certainly help you if we can. Unfortunately, Mr. Deketomis won’t be in today, but you can sure talk to me. My name is Diana.”
Shallow breathing could be heard from the other end of the line. Diana sensed the frightened caller was ready to hang up.
“Let me help you, dear. And I will be glad to pass on any message you might have for Mr. Deketomis.”
“No, no,” the woman said, clearly frustrated, clearly afraid.
“What’s your name, sweetie?”
After a moment’s hesitation: “Karina.”
Was her accent Russian? “That’s a beautiful name.”
Karina said something in her native tongue. Diana reached for a legal pad and wrote down, Jock—o—u? She assumed Karina was thanking her. The fact that the woman was still on the line, despite her fears, demonstrated her pressing need for someone to hear what she had to say.
“And what’s your last name, Karina?”
The woman spoke quickly. Diana wrote down Boyko? She decided to not ask her to repeat it. The young woman was already too nervous. Instead, Diana said, “Over fifty years ago, my family came from Cuba. I wasn’t even born yet. My grandparents arrived in this country with nothing. I know how difficult it was for them. It’s not easy to try and make your way in a country you don’t know.”
The intake of Karina’s breath told Diana that she had spoken to her own experience. The immediacy of her response also suggested the girl was able to comprehend English much better than she could speak it.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Bad hard.”
Karina’s sigh said more than her words could. “Mister Deke talk about slaves on the TV.”
The CNN segment, Diana thought. She had caught a replay of Deke’s comments, and knew Judge Irwin would not be happy with what he’d said. But despite the potential legal tempest of Deke’s violating the gag order, Diana was proud of her boss. If he hadn’t spoken his conscience to the world, this frightened young woman would never have called.
“Mr. Deketomis is very passionate in his beliefs, and he says exactly what he means.”
“I am slave,” Karina said.
Diana’s intake of breath was involuntary. The mom in her wanted to hug this scared girl, and try and make everything better.
“I’m so sorry. What can I do to help you?”
Karina spoke in a whisper, almost as if she herself was afraid to hear her own fears and confession. “Not me only. My friend Nataliya Na-hurny go missing.”
Diana added the name to the legal pad.
“I think something bad, something bad,” said Karina, her voice still hushed.
“Something bad happened to Nataliya?” asked Diana.
Karina made a sound much like a pirate’s—“Yarrr”—and then added, “Nataliya like me.”
Diana tried to understand what Karina was telling her. Was she saying that Nataliya liked her? No, that wasn’t it. Then Diana figured it out, or thought she did. Karina was telling her that Nataliya was in her same situation.
“Nataliya is also a slave?” asked Diana.
Just saying that word felt wrong. It made her feel unclean.
“Dalk!”
Karina’s response was immediate and emphatic, and Diana made another entry on the pad. Unsure of the spelling, she wrote down what she had heard.
“Nataliya work at club I work. Vicky call her to office. She never come back.”
“When did this happen, Karina?”
“Three month, maybe?”
“Do you want us to look into this? Are you asking to see if Mr. Deketomis might be able to help you? And help Nataliya as well?”
“I want him to lawyer for me. And for Nataliya.”
Diana tried to soothe the frightened woman. “Can you meet with Mr. Deketomis for a consultation, dear?”
Panicked breathing was all Diana could hear. She quickly added, “If you can’t meet in person, Nataliya, I could schedule a phone interview.”
“Phone hard, but I try again. Must go on strip trip.”
“Strip trip?” Diana asked.
“Booze cruise. We soon to go on boat.”
“Do you have a number where Mr. Deketomis could call you tomorrow?”
“That’s fine. I hope we can talk again soon.”
Karina spoke hurriedly, clearly pressed for time. “Amerikanski also need help.”
“I don’t understand,” Diana said.
“Amerikanski who look like Nataliya prisoner where we live.”
Diana didn’t get a chance to ask any more questions.
“Can’t talk,” Karina said. “Must go.”
There was a click, and the line went dead. Diana found herself shaking the phone in frustration before reluctantly returning it to its cradle. Then she looked down at her pad. There was one other thing she needed to write down.
Emerald Hideaway.
That was the name displayed on Diana’s phone. Curious, she typed the name into a search engine. The first entry that came up showed a beautiful resort hotel located on the Emerald Coast on the outskirts of Destin, about an hour’s drive away.
Karina must have been calling from the hotel, thought Diana. But if the woman was a slave, as she said, what was she doing there? The property looked posh, but maybe that was just a veneer.
Diana consulted the pad where she’d made all of her entries. Then she used a search engine to try variations of the foreign words she’d written down. Making sense of most of her phonetic translations didn’t take long. Karina hadn’t said jock-o-u and dalk and knee. What she had said were dyakuyu and tak and ni. Thank you and yes and no. Although she couldn’t translate everything Karina had said, Diana was sure of one thing.
Karina was Ukrainian.