IT WAS DARK OUTSIDE, and the auction was set to begin in two hours. The kids had been cleaned and dressed in their new outfits, and pictures had been posted to the auction site. Despite the varying ages and ethnicities, the children had one thing in common. They were beautiful. The cops and their gang had obviously been particular in their search. The hit counter at the bottom of the darknet page rolled slow and steady as viewers logged in to check out the merchandise. So far there’d been nearly fifteen hundred visitors, and over two hundred of them had registered as authorized bidders. The way the counter was speeding up, I expected the numbers to increase ten times over before bidding opened.
“What’s a bitcoin, anyway?” Simon asked. “And why are the amounts so low?” He was referring to the minimum opening bids under each kid’s photo. The Latin kids, including the boy, were listed at nine bitcoins. The Caucasian kids and the young Asian girl were double that. Jazz was listed at thirty-five bitcoins. I guessed the unusual combination of her olive skin and dazzling blue eyes had something to do with that.
“Wikipedia describes a bitcoin as an encrypted digital currency that operates independently of a central bank,” I said. “To make a long story short, transactions using bitcoins can’t be traced by authorities, so it’s what everybody uses on the darknet. And the opening bid amounts aren’t low at all, because as of this morning, one bitcoin is worth seven hundred thirty-three dollars and ninety-one cents.”
“Wait a minute,” Strawberry said. Her lips moved as she performed the silent calculation.
“That’s six thousand, six hundred and five dollars, and nineteen cents each for the Latin group,” I said, saving her the effort. I pointed at the Caucasians and the little Asian girl. “Thirteen thousand, two hundred and ten dollars, and thirty-eight cents for this group, and—”
“Over twenty-five thousand for my sister,” Ellie said, her eyes flat.
I nodded.
“Damn,” Deondre said.
“And from the looks of it,” Simon said, “these guys have done this plenty of times before. And why not?” He pointed at the screen. “The hit counter is rolling faster and faster with creeps lining up to place a bid. Selling kids for money…”
“It’s worse than you can imagine,” I said, recalling what I’d learned from my internet search. It made me want to throw up. Child trafficking was a huge business around the world, generating over thirty-two billion dollars per year. Children were sold like livestock, just like Strawberry had said. Prices varied from as little as forty-five dollars for a baby in India, to as much as two hundred and seventy thousand dollars for a gypsy-trained child bride in Romania. I’d also read that a man in Colombia could pay twenty-six hundred to have a virgin girl for one night, and my stomach shuddered at the thought of what happened to the poor girl after that. One site said those used girls were sold for next to nothing for child labor or to be sex workers, and more and more were simply sold piece by piece for their organs. It was horrifying, but I decided the others had a right to know it all, so I told them. They were sickened at first, but that gave way to anger and hardened their resolve. I gave them the bit of information that provided the basis for my plan.
“A pair of untouched pretty twins is considered an ultimate prize. They sell for ten times greater than for a single child.” I knew that was why the gang across the street had been willing to kill Ellie’s parents to capture her and Jazz, but I didn’t need to voice that.
From everyone’s frowns, it seemed they were coming to the understanding my plan included using Ellie as bait. She stared at me. After a long moment, she shrugged and said, “Look at it this way. If everything goes wrong and I get captured and sold together with Jazz for a couple hundred thousand dollars”—she pulled the four of hearts out of her pocket and cocked her head—“the buyer is going to be really pissed off in a few months.”
Strawberry’s jaw dropped, but then she grinned. “And he’ll want a refund.”
Simon sneered. “He’ll want more than just a refund when you tell him the sellers knew you were dying all along.”
Deondre jumped aboard. “Do you think he’ll need a receipt?”
I was amazed at how quickly they’d turned to dark humor as a coping mechanism. It was probably common practice for the residents of Billy’s Home. All four of them turned to me, as if waiting to see what I might add to the conversation. I shook my head. “You guys are sick.”
“Exactly!” Simon said, high-fiving me and the others.
Ellie stood. “I need twenty minutes to change clothes and put on some makeup. Then let’s do this.”
***
“I’ve set the loop,” I said, my voice carrying to the others through the combo earbud and jawbone microphones we all wore. I was alone in our room on overwatch duty, and my only weapon was the Spider. I’d used it to create a loop of the traffickers’ camera feed of the alley entrance to the building where the van was parked. To anyone monitoring the feeds, it would appear as though everything was static there. I double-checked the camera views from across the street, my eyes gliding past the room where the kids waited in their new outfits because watching them made my stomach queasy. The guards in the other rooms seemed relaxed, and the woman and the two cops were in the auction room having what appeared to be a casual conversation.
“You’re good to go.” I zoomed my own camera on the alley to monitor what was really happening. The alley was dark except for the illumination provided by a light fixture over the side entrance. Deondre and Simon slipped from the shadows and crouch-ran toward the door. Simon placed his back against the wall beneath the light and laced his fingers for Deondre to use as a stair step.
“You better not budge,” Deondre’s voice whispered to Simon in my earbud. We’d set up a conference call so we could all hear one another.
“Shut up and do your job,” Simon said. “I got this.” There’d been a heated debate about who should boost whom up. Deondre was much stronger, but Simon was a heavy kid and admittedly not very athletic. So he’d insisted on being on the bottom, where all he had to do was stand firm.
Deondre gripped Simon’s shoulders, placed his right foot in Simon’s cupped hands, and hoisted himself up.
Simon wobbled.
“Bro!” Deondre said, slapping his hands against the wall to keep from falling.
Simon grunted and steadied himself. “It’s okay. Go.”
Bracing one hand against the wall, Deondre extended his other toward the light fixture. “Can’t reach,” he said.
“Step onto my shoulders.”
“You sure?”
“I. Got. This!”
Deondre huffed, flattened his palms against the building, and stretched his free foot onto Simon’s shoulder. As he moved to push himself up, Simon heaved his clasped hands upward. A moment later Deondre was in place, and this time Simon stood solid as a statue.
Deondre reached up and unclipped the fixture’s plastic housing. When it swung downward on its hinge, the brightness in the alley doubled from the exposed bulb. Deondre squinted from the sudden glare, but he didn’t flinch. He pulled out the washcloth from his back pocket, wrapped it around the hot bulb, and after a few quick turns the alley was pitched into complete darkness.
I heard a grunt as the camera lens took a second to adjust to low-light mode. When the image cleared, Simon’s silhouette disappeared into a recessed doorway in the hotel across the alley. Deondre was manipulating a stretched-out coat hanger over the van’s driver-side door. It took him only a few seconds to unlock the door, and I could tell he’d done it plenty of times before. He slipped inside the van, closed the door, and ducked out of sight.
“Phase one is almost complete,” I reported on the phone. “Everybody ready?”
“In position,” Strawberry said. She was on the roof of the hotel on the other side of the alley.
“I’m set,” Ellie said, with a quiver in her voice. I knew she was scared. We all were. But she was about to be front and center in the spotlight. Literally.
A flicker of light from Simon’s hiding spot told me he’d just double-checked his lighter was working. “All good here,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “Stand by.”
“I only need a few more seconds,” Deondre whispered.
My heart rate picked up. Were we really doing this? Running headfirst into a den of bloodthirsty child traffickers? I already had a target on my back, but what about the rest of them? If I hadn’t stuck my nose into their lives, they’d be back at Billy’s Home. Safe. The weight of it all pressed down on me. This plan of mine was crazy. A zillion things could go wrong. They’d all placed their lives on the line—
“Thanks for this,” Ellie whispered.
“Yeah,” Simon said.
“Ditto,” Strawberry added, reminding me they hadn’t just volunteered for this—they’d demanded it.
“Beats the hell out of sittin’ around waiting to die,” Deondre said. He let out a grunt. “There. Got it. Am I clear?”
“Good on my side,” Simon said, meaning no one was watching from the back end of the alley.
I blew out a long breath to calm myself. Checked the camera view. “The front’s clear. Go.” The van door opened, Deondre slid out, closed the door, and shimmied under the vehicle.
Everyone was in position, waiting for my signal. It was time to shed my doubts and get to work. Our plan was simple in some respects. A frontal assault was out of the question, fire and smoke bombs or not. Trying to stealth into the building under the noses of so many guards was also impossible. So our plan depended on two things: first we had to thin the herd, as Strawberry had put it, and then we had to convince them to change locations.
I used the Spider to speed-scroll through the camera views in the building and identify everyone’s position. The two cops, the woman, and two guards were in the auction room. The spiked-hair tech was in there with them, monitoring the camera feeds and the auction website. A glance at the site revealed there were now over five thousand visitors and six hundred and fifty registered bidders. I skipped past it and confirmed there were two more guards in the kitchen, and another stationed in the hallway outside the room where the kids were held. That made nine in their crew.
Against five kids.
“Okay, Ellie. You’re up.”
“Nuttin’ to lose,” she whispered. She rode into view on one of the hostel’s loaner bikes and stopped under the streetlamp directly in front of the building. With that—to use one of my dad’s pilot terms—we passed the point of no return.
I kept an eye on everyone in the residence, but my primary focus was on the tech monitoring the camera feeds. He had his feet on the desk and a soda can in his hand. His head was turned to one side, and I guessed he was eavesdropping on the conversation going on between the two cops and the woman standing nearby. When he finally turned back to the screens, he dropped his feet to the floor, set aside his soda, and leaned closer to the monitors. His hand danced on the keyboard, and an instant later the exterior front-door camera view expanded on his central screen. When he zoomed in on Ellie’s pretty face, I could almost hear his intake of breath.
“Stand by,” I said.
The tech must have shouted something, because everyone in the auction room turned toward him at once. The woman and the two cops rushed over and looked at the screen. The woman’s face turned into a question mark, and the shorter cop, Sergeant Sánchez, stared at the screen with an open mouth. Lieutenant Garcia sprang into action, barking orders as he dashed toward the front door. Garcia and one of the guards followed, and as they passed the kitchen, the two guards there picked up the chase toward the front, while the woman and the remaining guard rushed up the staircase.
“Go!” I shouted, louder than I intended. Ellie didn’t hesitate. She stood on the pedals and raced down the street as Garcia burst out the front door. She was turning down a side street when he spotted her, and he hesitated only long enough to issue commands to the men pouring out the front door. One of them chased her on foot while the other two ran in the opposite direction.
“Three on foot,” I said. “One following, and two going north around the hostel, trying to cut you off. Use route B.” We’d planned out three different routes for her.
“Understood,” Ellie said. She sounded out of breath from pedaling hard.
Garcia and Sánchez jumped into their car and nearly spun out as the car rounded the corner after Ellie. As soon as they disappeared from view, I swiveled my camera at the roofline between the hotel and the residence. “Now, Strawberry.”
A moment later a trail of sparks arced over the alley. Its flight terminated in a burst of flames that splattered like a firework explosion. Like most of the buildings up and down the street, the residence had a flat roof, and this one supported an untended garden, a ramshackle hut, and a large patio area covered by an old wooden arbor that leaned to one side. Strawberry’s first bulb had scored a direct hit to the roof of the hut, and the blaze was already licking down the walls. A second fire bomb followed, shattering against the latticed ceiling of the arbor, and the flames spread hungrily down several of the support beams. When I switched to the rooftop camera feed on the residence’s closed-circuit system, it looked like the entire roof was ablaze.
“Fuego! Fuego!” Strawberry’s voice shouted in my earbud as she pounded down the hotel staircase.
“Bombs away,” Simon said, indicating he’d tossed a smoke bomb into the alley. The smoke was thicker than I’d imagined, and it engulfed the alley and the van in seconds. The flickering light from the flaming rooftop painted the expanding smoke cloud like lightning in a thunderstorm. I switched the camera to infrared mode and spotted the yellow and orange glow of Simon’s silhouette in the doorway across the alley.
I tabbed to a window I’d opened earlier that monitored the local fire departments. I counted only three seconds before seeing the alarm on the screen. “Fire department’s been notified,” I reported. “ETA three minutes.” This was an old neighborhood, and the buildings were built so close together that a fire could spread fast. Local stations were known for their quick response time. We’d counted on that.
I glanced at the house feeds and saw the tech stand up so fast his chair toppled over. He’d seen the fire on the rooftop feeds. He raced to the bottom of the main staircase, cupped his palms to his mouth, and shouted toward the upper floors. The woman and the two guards with her were conferring in an upstairs hallway, but they reacted immediately. One of the guards sprinted to the end of the hall and yanked the curtain back on the window overlooking the alley. The rising smoke and flicker of flames reflecting off the hotel across the way filled his view. He yelled something back toward the woman, and she and the other guard burst into the kids’ room. The bedroom feed revealed Jazz and the others springing to their feet and huddling close as the woman barked orders. They followed the guard and the woman down the hall toward the staircase. The remaining guard followed with his pistol drawn.
“They’re on the ground floor, moving your way,” I reported.
Simon’s silhouette slipped from his hiding place. “Second bomb away,” he said before hurrying back to his spot. The smoke thickened even more around the building’s side exit.
“The cops are gaining on me!” Ellie’s voice shouted. “Do it, Alex!”
Between the GPS in her phone and in the one Deondre had taped underneath the front seat of the cop car, I’d been tracking them all along. But that wasn’t all the hidden phone allowed me to do. These days, the newer the car, the easier it was to hack into. With Garcia’s Mercedes, I used the phone’s Wi-Fi to send to the car’s emergency communication system a brute force attack—a series of tones that flooded the system with data. While the car’s computer tried to sort it all out, I reprogrammed the car’s software to gain remote control of all its electronically driven devices. In a late model vehicle, that meant I had control of almost everything. I could’ve disabled the brakes, floored the accelerator, and yanked the steering to crash them into the nearest building. And I’d have been tempted to do that if I had a view out their windshield to avoid hitting innocent bystanders. So I just slammed on the brakes, locked the doors, and cut the engine.
“It worked,” Ellie said, with obvious relief. “The car skidded to a stop in the middle of an intersection.”
“Good. Now follow the evade route and circle back from the north.”
Glowing images of people were bounding down the front steps of the hotel across the alley, and I suspected Strawberry was leading the pack. But I couldn’t be sure through the infrared camera view, so I stood up and threw open the curtains to get a direct view. The breeze from the open window cooled my face and I could hear the shouts and cries of people outside. Sure enough, Strawberry’s red scarf was in the crowd spilling from the hotel. She was the only one staring at the smoky alley instead of the growing flames on the rooftop. Figures were streaming out of other buildings as well. I grabbed the tablet and remained at the window, with one eye on the scene and the other on the multiple camera views on the tablet. My brain went on autopilot as I enlarged, zoomed, and switched from one camera to the other, taking in everything at once. It occurred to me how similar this was to managing a battle against fifteen other players in a free-for-all, first-person-shooter video game. I was good at that. Okay, I was very good at that, and the Spider had made me unbeatable.
I shook my head. This was anything but a game. Real lives were at stake.
Inside the residence, the tech was back at his station, yanking USB connectors and stuffing hard drives into a backpack. The woman and the parade of kids reached the ground floor, and the two guards prodded the group toward the side exit where the van was parked. “Ten seconds, guys,” I said.
“R-ready,” Simon said. His voice was muffled, and I knew he’d donned one of the surgical masks we’d bought to keep from choking on the smoke. They weren’t perfect but they were all we could find. At this point all he had to do was remain hidden and toss another smoke bomb if necessary. The second bomb was still spewing smoke but a breeze must have picked up. I could now see the van’s dim outline on the camera feed over the side exit, where before the van had been completely obscured by a billowing cloud.
“Ready,” Deondre said, his voice muffled as well. He was still in his hiding spot under the vehicle, and thinking about it made me feel like I wanted to pee. He had the most dangerous task of all, and everything depended on him timing it just right.
I heard sirens in the distance.
“They’re coming out,” Deondre whispered. Silhouettes were bunched up at the doorway. An adult form, which looked like one of the guards, split from the group, leading with his hands outstretched until he found the van. Then he maneuvered to the side door, slid it open, and waved.
“Vamonos!” The man’s voice was faint coming through Deondre’s microphone. The line of smaller silhouettes edged forward, hands clasped with one another as the woman steered them. When they neared the van I heard coughing and whimpers, and one by one Jazz and the other kids vanished inside.
As that was happening, two men were running toward the front of the residence. They were the two guards who’d run up the block to cut off Ellie’s escape. As I split my focus between the alley and them, the two men charged through the front door and nearly bowled over the tech who was reaching for the handle. There was a quick exchange of words. The tech pointed toward the alley exit. The two men nodded, ran to the kitchen, and started shoving the weapons into a duffel.
Back in the alley, the second guard seemed to be having a coughing fit as he made his way around the front of the van. He got in the driver’s seat and slammed the door closed. I heard a click through Deondre’s microphone, and then two more clicks—the man trying to start the engine. But Deondre had done his job well, and there was no way that engine was going to start, at least not without Deondre’s help.
At the same time, the tech hurried down the front steps of the residence just as the third guard who’d chased Ellie returned, and the two of them jumped in a car parked at the curb. I didn’t have to hear the clicks to know the engine wouldn’t start on that one, either. The tech pounded a fist on the steering wheel and swung open the door, and when he and the guard abandoned the vehicle, the tech had a phone pressed to his ear. He nodded several times and the two men hid themselves in the growing crowd of onlookers.
The fire engine sirens were getting closer.
In the alley, the angry driver kicked the van’s door open. “No se iniciará,” he complained. The engine wouldn’t start. There was a dull thunk and I guessed he’d popped the hood. His infrared form walked to the front and raised it. A breeze stirred the air, and the smoke swirled enough that I caught a glimpse of the front of the van through the camera over the doorway.
“More smoke,” I ordered. Simon’s silhouette shifted in his hiding spot, and I heard several faint clicks.
“Lighter. Won’t. Work,” he grunted.
The last of the kids was stepping into the van, and the first guard was about to close the door. The two guards in the house had started moving toward the alley exit. The first of the fire trucks rounded the far corner, headed our way.
“You’ve gotta go now, Deondre!” I ordered. His prone image rolled quickly out from under the van. Crouching low, he tucked his head and torso into the open driver’s door, and the top half of his image disappeared as he leaned into the footwell to reconnect the wires he’d stripped.
The woman’s form spun around. “¿Qué es eso?” she said, waving her hands to clear the smoke as she moved toward the glow on the ground that was the final sputter from the second smoke bomb.
The breeze picked up through the open window.
“Now or never!” I yelled into my phone.
Everything happened at once:
A gust of wind, the smoke thinned even more, and the woman kicked the spent smoke bomb.
“¡Es un truco!” she shouted, as she realized it was a trick.
The guards startled, Deondre’s head popped up in the van, and Simon stepped into the middle of the alley. “Nuttin’ to lose!” he shouted. I heard his thumb snapping frantically over the lighter striker, and I saw the bomb held in his other hand.
The two guards from inside the residence pushed through the exit, the guards at the van pulled their guns, and the woman pointed at Simon. “¡Mátalo!” Kill him.
The nightmare unfolded in slow motion, and there was nothing I could do to stop it: the guards raising their weapons, a flicker from Simon’s lighter, the sparks from the fuse of his smoke bomb, a plume of smoke, his cry of defiance as he lobbed it, his outline vanishing behind the cloud, two gunshots…
“Simon!” I shouted. No answer. My limbs grew cold.
And then Strawberry whispered, “Time to fry, bitches.” A firebomb exploded on the sidewalk next to the van, engulfing the closest guard and splattering globules of flame toward the others. They scattered deeper into the now smoke-thick alley, none of them attempting to rescue the burning guard whose screams echoed across the street as he rolled back and forth on the pavement.
Strawberry slipped unnoticed into the van, slid the door closed, and shouted, “Go!”
“Simon, are you clear?” Deondre’s voice pleaded as the engine started. There was no reply. Even so, instead of driving straight ahead, where he might’ve hit his friend, Deondre reversed the van into the street. Tires squealed as he narrowly avoided crashing into a fire truck. One of guards popped out of the smoke cloud to follow, but he stopped abruptly when people in the crowd turned to look his way. He slipped back into the smoke.
Deondre swerved around the fire truck, only to be blocked in the other direction by two more emergency vehicles. He slammed on the brakes, and hundreds of onlookers crowded forward to get a closer look. I leaned out my window and did the same, my insides still quaking over Simon.
Firemen pulled out hoses and axes. One of the trucks backed up and extended a ladder toward the roof. A trio of police cars rolled onto the scene, and officers stepped out and moved to control the growing mass of people, which now stretched up and down both ends of the street. Flickers from the remnants of Strawberry’s fire bomb illuminated the smoky alley, and a fireman attacked it with his hose.
“Bail out and mix with the crowd,” I said into my microphone, my voice choked. “It’s your best chance.” My focus split between the van and the alley, searching desperately for any sign of Simon. My stomach jumped when the body of the scorched guard was revealed in the thinning smoke. But the deeper recesses of the space between buildings had not yet cleared, and I caught no sign of my friend.
Through my earpiece I heard some of the kids in the van screaming, and Strawberry’s voice trying to calm them down. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’re here to rescue you.” Screams turned into whimpers, but still edged with fear.
Deondre turned his head toward his passengers. “Somos amigos. We’re friends.”
Strawberry said, “Hi, Jazz. Ellie sent us.”
A loud gasp, and then a voice that had to be Ellie’s sister’s. “Oh my gosh, Ellie? She’s here?”
“She sure is.”
Then Jazz’s voice. “Todo está bien. Son amigos. They are really friends.”
The kids quieted, and a moment later they spilled out of the van and ran toward the crowd. My breath caught as a pair of uniformed policemen stopped them. Deondre and Strawberry hung back, but Jazz stepped up and spoke to the officers, pointing at the building and then the children, and something about the men’s reactions told me these weren’t crooked cops. One of them went immediately to his radio, and the other reached down and picked up the young Asian girl. He held her the way my dad used to hold me. His smile was genuine, and I knew the kids were going to be all right. The other children must have felt it too, because they crushed into the two officers like groupies at a rock concert. Relief washed over me. Until I thought about Simon.
“Ellie,” I said into my microphone, doing my best to hide my anguish. “We did it. The children are all safe. Jazz, too.”
When she didn’t respond, Strawberry touched her hand to her earpiece and said, “Ellie. Talk to me.”
I held my breath, and guessed the others were doing the same. Everything we’d done had been for Ellie. And now she—
“I’m here,” Ellie’s breathless voice chimed in my earbud. “I’m two blocks away pedaling as fast as I can. Tell Jazz I love her!”
I tried to smile, but then I spotted the woman kidnapper and one of her guards at the far side of the crowd. In the chaos, they’d slipped from the alley. The woman was speaking to Momma Magda, who’d checked us into the hostel and cooked us dinner. When the kindly old woman turned around and pointed straight up at me, every bit of oxygen seemed to vanish from the air.