Erin
The next few seconds happened so fast I barely saw what happened. In the camera showing the room, Detective Yeltsin walked to the door and opened it. At that moment, two of the police officers opened the door across the hall, charged across and shoved into the room. Seconds later, she was standing back against the wall as Melody Michelson came in from the room next door.
Sam let out a cry, and Cole yelled, “Fuck!”
The girl in the room wasn’t Brenna. Now that we could see her face, it was utterly clear. This was the other girl. Laura Felker.
As the realization came over me, it was like I’d fallen off a cliff, my stomach twisting with nausea, terror sinking over me. Where was Brenna?
Over the radio, we heard Melody’s voice. “Get Erin down here now.”
Wilcox said, “Go. Cole, you and Sam stay here.”
I ran down the hall with one of the police officers, going as fast as I could.
Then we waited for the elevator. One minute. Two. For fuck’s sake! Finally the door opened, and we rode upstairs. The officer escorted me down the hall, where two more were guarding the door.
I walked in the door of the room, struggling not to cry.
The girl who stood against the wall sucked in a breath when she saw me. “You look like Strawberry. You her mom?”
I staggered, and Melody took my arm. Forcing my voice through tears, I said, “Yes. I am. Do you know where she is?”
She looked like a caged animal. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ll help. I need to call though, or Rick will know something’s wrong.”
I looked at Melody, frantic, wondering if this was a trick.
Melody nodded. “You have a safe word or something?”
“No, just I’m supposed to call within five minutes. And it’s almost been that long.”
Melody said to the uniformed officers, “All of you step out except Linley—you can stay by the door.” She stepped back, away from Laura, and waved a hand toward the bed, where a small handbag lay.
Laura took a small phone out of the bag. It looked weird, with only five brightly colored buttons on it. She pressed one and held the phone to her face.
“Hey. I’m clear … yeah, everything’s fine. I got hassled at the front desk, but I’m in the room now. Yeah … yeah … okay.”
She hung up the phone and sat down. Then she closed her eyes and exhaled a long, slow breath.
I sat down on the bed across from her. Hesitantly, I said, “My name’s Erin. Erin Roberts. Brenna’s my daughter.”
“I’m Nialla…” She looked at me and blinked and her eyes watered. “No. My name’s Laura.” Her face worked, and I realized that she had a nasty bruise forming on the left side of her face. She closed her eyes, and a tear started to fall, and then another. She wrapped her arms around herself and tucked her face down, then sucked in snot.
“Sorry,” she said, demonstrating a degree of self-control and repression I didn’t think I’d ever seen before.
“It’s okay,” Melody said. “Listen—I’m with the Human Trafficking Task Force in Portland. We’re here to help.”
“Cops help? Yeah, right.”
I leaned forward, reaching out for her hands. “Please. Please. I just want Brenna back. I want her free.”
Laura closed her eyes. “Okay,” she said. She fished in her bag and brought out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. She inhaled the smoke deeply. “Tell me more.”
“We thought Brenna was coming—but really the plan stays the same,” Melody said. “You give us the address where you were staying. We have a SWAT team standing by. They’ll move in and take down your trafficker and free Brenna.”
“Rick,” Laura said. “His name’s Rick. He’s dangerous. Brenna was coming to this appointment, but some guy called and really wanted her. He said he’d pay double, and all Rick gives a shit about is money.”
My stomach turned. He’d pay double. For my daughter. I knew, of course, I already knew, but the rage was overwhelming.
“She misses you, you know. She told me the other day she found one of your flyers. It really broke her up. But she’s … I don’t know…” Laura shook her head. “She’s given up.”
Given up? “What do you mean?”
“Lately, she just seems … at the end of her rope. At the end of her strength. I’ve been afraid she’s going to kill herself, so I made a plan. An escape plan.” She stared at me then shook her head.
“Your idea won’t work.”
My stomach sank.
Melody said, “Why not?”
“Rick checked us out of the hotel earlier. After we finish our appointments, he’s planning on leaving Portland. He’s got a girl he’s picking up, her name’s Kaylee. She’s thirteen. He was planning on getting her, picking us up, and leaving town.”
Melody asked in an urgent voice, “Where are you going?”
Laura shook her head. “I don’t know. I really don’t, Rick never tells us.”
My mind was racing. If we couldn’t get the SWAT team, and this Rick guy left town with Brenna and another girl—thirteen?—where would they go? We had no idea. She’d be lost again.
“We can’t let them go,” I said.
Melody looked at me then at Laura. In a gentle tone, she said, “Laura, can I bring in the FBI agent who has been searching for you and Brenna? He’s right upstairs, with Brenna’s father and sister. I think we need to get him in on this.”
“Sure. Bring whoever you want.” She looked around for an ashtray. This was a nonsmoking room, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. Instead, I got up and filled a plastic cup with water and brought it to her.
“Thanks,” she said.
Five minutes later, Agent Wilcox entered the room without Cole and Sam. I wondered if they had to arrest Cole to keep him from coming down here.
“Miss Felker, I’m Agent Stan Wilcox. I’m with the Child Abduction Response Unit of the FBI. I’ve been looking for you for a long time. Brenna, too.”
“Hi,” she said. She looked frightened. How old was she? Twenty? I wanted to hug her, for as long as she needed. I thought for a second about the witch of a mother she had, who would say she’ll burn in hell with all the other whores. This poor, poor girl.
Melody said, “Stan, we’ve got a problem. They’ve already checked out of their hotel. She’s getting picked up from here and they’re leaving town.”
Wilcox frowned. “All right … we’ll get them when they come to pick her up.”
“No!” Laura said in horror. “Rick will fight … he’ll shoot. You’ll get Brenna killed! You can’t!”
Jesus Christ. I felt confused and frustrated.
“Laura,” Melody said.
“No. I’ll go back. And I’ll find a way to call you. Brenna’s supposed to be faking sick. She’s been doing a good job of it, all day. Our plan was to make Rick stop at a rest stop. We’ll go in the bathroom and borrow someone’s phone.”
Wilcox shook his head. “Too dangerous. I don’t have any tracking equipment and we don’t have time to get any.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “You can’t shoot it out with Rick. He’s fucking crazy. He’d kill Brenna for the fun of it.”
I squeezed my eyes closed. This girl—this woman—was offering to go back into hell in order to protect Brenna. I had to fight back tears. I opened my eyes and said, “Let her take my phone. We’ll silence it, but leave location tracking on.”
“Erin…” Wilcox said. “I don’t see how—”
“We can track my phone. That’s how Cole found Sam when she got attacked.”
Laura nodded. “I can do that. Just make sure it can’t go off or buzz or anything. If Rick finds it…” She shuddered.
I took out my phone and silenced it. Then to be sure, I went to the settings and turned off vibrate mode too. “Call me,” I said.
Wilcox sighed. “All right…” He dialed.
My phone lit up but didn’t make a sound.
“Can you make the screen all the way dark?” he asked.
“Close,” I said, dialing the brightness down all the way.
I looked up at Wilcox. “Can you call Cole down here? So we can make sure he can track the location?”
Wilcox nodded, but he looked dubious.
Laura took the phone from me. Reaching into her purse, she slid the phone in between the seam and the outside. She shook the bag.
“Can’t see it,” she said. “But it’s hard. If he touches my purse, he’ll know.”
Melody asked, “How often does he do that?”
She shook her head. “Not often. And he’ll be distracted tonight. With this girl Kaylee, I bet he won’t even look at me. He’s always like that with the new ones, and especially the young ones.”
The young ones. I wanted to vomit. I wondered how many women’s lives this man had destroyed. I could hear Stan saying, Both girls were shot in the back of the head with a large caliber pistol. They were executed.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked, trying not to start crying. “You’re putting yourself in danger.”
She shrugged. “I’m always in danger. But I want you to get Strawberry out. She’s…” Laura closed her eyes. “I love her. And I’m afraid of what will happen.”
I don’t know why, but impulsively I said, “Can I give you a hug?”
She sniffed hard and nodded. I carefully moved over to the other bed beside her and put an arm around her. She took a deep shuddering breath, and then sniffed again, while tears began to roll down her face. “I’ll try to help her. I will. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him back then, back when he picked her up.” Her voice was a light almost extinguished. Sad and quiet and understated. But she shook as she said the words.
I looked over at Melody. Her eyes were glassy.
When Cole and Sam came in the room, Melody walked over to them and began speaking in a low tone. Explaining what was happening, I guess. I couldn’t really hear over Laura’s sob’s. I slowly stroked my fingers through her hair and whispered, “It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”
Brenna
It was still early for me when I left the hotel, but the exhaustion and stress of pretending to be sick was wearing on me. I was pretty sure this was my last appointment though. Rick was in a hurry to get out of town.
I felt sick. The client I’d just come from had hurt me, twisting my nipples so hard I cried out in pain. I barely cared what happened to me anymore, but at least Nialla’s plan was worth a try. Maybe we could run for a while before he found us and killed us.
A drop of rain hit my face, then another, as I walked across the parking lot and back to the sidewalk. I dialed Rick. He answered right away.
“I’m coming out now.”
“Go down to the gas station and wait for me. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Fine. Fucking walking in the mud with no sidewalk in heels. Why didn’t they put sidewalks in neighborhoods like this? The gas station looked like it was a hundred yards away. I walked that way, finally giving up and taking my shoes off.
I finally got to the gas station and waited near the ice machine. A couple minutes later Rick drove up in the Mercedes.
The eighth grader, Kaylee, was in the front seat next to Rick. Jesus. She had no idea the hell she was in for. None. I walked over and climbed into the back seat, behind Kaylee. I didn’t want to be close to Rick.
Before he could even tell me to, I got the money out of my purse and passed it to him. Three hundred and fifty dollars.
“Oh nice. He was feeling generous, huh?”
“He was a fucker,” I said.
“Shut up,” he said. I turned and looked out the window. “We’re gonna pick up Nialla and blow this town. Fucking hate it here. Maybe we’ll go to San Francisco again, pick up some high rollers.”
I didn’t give a fuck what we did, so I didn’t answer. It was really starting to rain now.
Rick’s phone rang. He answered it. “Yeah. All right. Meet me where I dropped you, then.” He gunned the engine to race through a yellow light then turned onto another road, this one with fewer lights. I could see a Holiday Inn ahead.
A couple of minutes later, Rick turned into the parking lot of a chain restaurant next to the hotel and drove the car around back. Nialla stepped out of the shelter of an awning.
“Get in the back, Kaylee.”
“What?”
“Nialla rides up front. At least while she’s still my bottom girl. Though she’s a fucking burnout—might not last much longer.”
Kaylee looked put out but got in the back with me. Rain was coming down harder now, and Nialla was dripping wet when she got in the car.
But I could see her face well enough … she’d been crying. Her mascara had run and been wiped away.
“You look like shit,” Rick said. “Why don’t you clean your face.”
Nialla shook her head and opened up her purse, handing over money. It looked like a couple hundred dollars. Then she set the purse down on the floor, next to her right foot.
That was weird. In a strained voice, Nialla said, “Strawberry, you doing any better?”
I shook my head. “Stomach hurts like hell,” I said. Something was wrong. She spoke in a wooden tone, like she was freaking out about something.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Rick asked.
Nialla swallowed, glanced back at me, then at Rick. “Asshole was rough. My throat’s scratched.”
Rick chuckled. Because he thought shit like that was funny. He turned right, headed down a busy divided highway with businesses on both sides. “Seriously, though. What the fuck is wrong, Nialla?”
“Nothing,” she replied.
“Are you fucking holding out on me?”
“No, Rick. I just don’t feel well. Maybe I’m coming down with what Strawberry has. I don’t know.”
He pulled to a stop at a red light. Then he said, “You’re holding out on me, aren’t you. How much? You gonna fucking betray me? Run away?”
“Rick, I’m not. Really, I’m not.”
His eyes fell on me in the rearview mirror. “Are you in on this bullshit, Strawberry? I didn’t fucking smell anything when you came out of the bathroom.”
“Gross, Rick!” Nialla shouted.
He stepped on the gas when the light turned green and drove with his left hand. He held his right out. “Give me your purse.”
“There’s nothing in there!” Nialla said. Now she sounded genuinely afraid. What the hell was going on?
To my left, behind Rick, Kaylee had shrunk down into her seat, eyes wide, as if she was just now realizing what kind of trouble she might have gotten herself into.
Rick shouted. “Give me the goddamned purse!”
Lightning outside illuminated everything. Traffic was lightening up, but rain was starting to really come down.
The next words out of Rick’s mouth were quieter, but deadlier in tone. “Don’t make me say it again, you fucking bitch.”
Then I realized Rick was pointing the gun at Nialla.
She shook harder than I’d ever seen her before. I didn’t know what was wrong. But it was serious, whatever it was. She picked the purse up and turned it upside down, dumping everything out.
“There, do you see?” she shouted. Condoms and her phone and cigarettes and other stuff fell out all over her lap.
“Pass it to me,” he said, his voice cold.
She closed her eyes. I didn’t know what was happening here, but it wasn’t good. She passed the bag over.
Rick took a right turn onto a highway ramp. As he did so, he said in a low, dangerous voice, “What the fuck is this?”
He held up an iPhone.
“Rick…” she said. “I—”
“Whose is this?” he shouted. “Did you fucking steal it?”
“It’s … I—”
He pressed the power button. The face of the phone lit up.
Impossibly, the picture on the phone lock screen—it was a picture of me and Sam. No. No. No. This couldn’t be. What the hell was happening? I sank my head into my hands. Was I going crazy?
Rick opened his window. I glanced up to see him throwing the phone, hard, away from the car. He was silent now, brooding, as he drove, fast, way too fast, down the highway, weaving in and out of traffic, around the other cars. Horns honked at us, but then he braked suddenly and got off the highway.
At the bottom of the ramp he jerked the car to the left, drove under the bridge, then got back on the highway going in the opposite direction.
He kept a few miles over the speed limit and said in a low, dangerous voice, “Everybody shut up.”
None of us had spoken in minutes. And I wasn’t going to start now.
Where did the phone come from? How could it have that picture? I didn’t understand it, and the implications were scaring the crap out of me.
Had Nialla somehow encountered my parents?
Not possible.
Cole
“Okay,” Wilcox said, standing near the conference table. He sipped a cup of coffee. “We got a charger for Cole’s phone, right? We don’t need it running out of battery now.” He took a deep breath. The entire team was gathering in the conference room.
I put my arms around Erin. “I’m proud of you. That was tough.”
“She was so lost,” Erin whispered. “But she still went back for Brenna.”
Sam stayed close. She hadn’t moved from my side in a long time now.
I turned toward Wilcox and kept an arm around each of them.
“All right. James, did you get the make and model of the car?”
“White car … I think it was a Mercedes. Not sure what year. They were mostly blocked by the building next door.”
Melody said, “We’ve got two unmarked cars headed that way. Linley’s giving them directions. Right now they’re headed down Sandy Boulevard, I think they’re going to get on I-84.”
Wilcox nodded. “Soon as we can, we need to get trail cars in sight of them, in case the battery on that phone fails. Melody?”
“Working on it.”
“All right.” Wilcox took out his own cell phone and dialed a number and began to speak with someone.
I said to Sam, “You hanging in there?”
Sam nodded. “I’m just … I-I wish it had been Brenna.”
“Me too,” Erin said. “But that girl … she cares about Brenna a lot. She’s going to look out for her.”
“I hate waiting,” Sam said. Then she leaned back in her chair and took out her phone.
“Well,” Erin said to me. “That was a lot of words all at once for a teenager.”
“Yeah. Yeah it was.”
“I meant to ask you, have you talked with Jeremiah?”
“Not since last night. I’ll text him— oh, I can’t, can I?” My phone was sitting with the three computers, as Officer Linley watched the map as it updated and relayed instructions over the radio.
I watched, puzzled. Linley was looking at the phone, consternation on his face. “Detective Michelson?”
“What is it?” she asked.
“The position hasn’t moved in like three or four minutes. It’s just sitting on the on-ramp to 84.”
Everybody in the room froze except Wilcox, who strode across the room. “What did you say?” he asked.
“The position hasn’t updated at all. They’re not moving.”
“Shit! Get all the units you can and move in on that spot. Tell them there are potentially three captives in the car! Melody, get that SWAT team moving! And get the highway patrol. They were headed onto 84 West, maybe they ditched the phone.”
Around us, the police and FBI agents boiled into action.