22

Gabe was fun to dance with, but Sabrina couldn’t enjoy the experience. She waited until he’d pulled her close to his chest to continue grilling him. “But what if someone decides they want some task force to try to take down the big people at the top? We can’t leave the ones we know are in slavery to suffer. I can’t do that.”

“I know.”

“I talked to them, Gabe. I looked into their eyes. And in every one of them I saw Rosita. I wish someone had helped her. What if someone knew and did nothing because they wanted a bigger fish?”

“Judge Yates won’t want a bigger fish.” He seemed confident.

“How do you know?”

“Because sometimes the bigger fish isn’t the most satisfying catch. And Judge Yates has one fish he’s been after for a long time.”

“And we’re giving him that fish?”

“On a shiny, silver, too-many-years-of-jail-time-to-count platter.”

That did seem like good motivation. “We’re doing our part right now,” he said. “This is as important as getting the warrants and running the raids. We’ve been planning this for two days, which isn’t a long time, but it’s long enough. Ryan knows what he’s doing and I’m not going to lie—I’d love to be with him right now. But the longer we dance, the longer we keep the guilty parties partying, the better the odds of success. We don’t want to lose lives because we wanted to be part of the action.”

He was right. Annoyingly right.

“Look,” he said. “Adam and Anissa are chatting it up with the man of the hour.”

Sure enough, Adam and Anissa were deep in conversation with Barclay Campbell. She studied them as they talked. The way Anissa smiled. The way Adam nodded. Even knowing what she knew, she couldn’t see any sign that they were faking it. They seemed to be enjoying the conversation.

“How do they do that?”

“Lots of practice.” Gabe had been undercover for years.

“How did you do it?”

Gabe frowned.

“I’m sorry. That was an inappropriate question, wasn’t it? I should’ve known.” Dumb. Would she ever learn?

“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s hard to explain. Usually it involves becoming another person. Like being a character actor. It wasn’t me anymore. It was someone else.”

He nodded toward Adam and Anissa. “In their case, it’s about remembering the long-term goal. You remember you don’t want the short-term satisfaction that would come from slugging him more than the long-term satisfaction of seeing him go to jail for what he’s done.”

“Is that enough?”

“Not for long, but it will get you by until you can get away from the creep.”

That made her laugh.

She felt the vibration of a phone in Gabe’s tux pocket. He winked at her and reached for the phone without missing a step.

“Chavez.”

There was a pause. A smile flitted across his face. “Okay.”

He put the phone back into his pocket. “Get ready, señorita. Things are about to get very interesting.”

He danced them toward Adam and Anissa, who were back on the floor. They met in the middle, and in one fluid motion she found herself back in Adam’s arms.

“Gabe says soon. Someone called him.”

“Yes,” he said. “Have you noticed the servers aren’t coming back from the kitchen?”

She hadn’t, but now that he mentioned it . . . where there had been ten or fifteen black-clad servers milling around at all times with platters of champagne and trays of finger foods, she didn’t see one anywhere.

Oh, Father, please let them be safe. Let them all be safe.

Adam’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, then pulled her close so she could read it.

Rescues made from:

The kitchens and the shacks behind The Porterhouse - the staff there is helping us make sure everyone is accounted for.

Senator Carson’s house

Gus Johnson’s yacht

The Back Door was empty, but the staff is at The Porterhouse and all are accounted for.

The cleaning crews were at three different offices downtown. We have them all.

The h/t investigators have support staff coming from Raleigh.

The captain should be there any moment.

If everything went as planned, the Carrington County Sheriff’s Office would be called in to seal the exterior doors. No one would be able to leave the gala tonight until they’d been cleared. And the big fish would be arrested on the spot.

Sabrina leaned against Adam. His arms tightened around her. “It’s okay, Bri. They’re free and they have advocates who will fight for them to be sure they’re treated fairly. Why are you crying?”

Was she?

He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed her face. She had to get control of her emotions. This was ridiculous.

But when the captain appeared at the edge of the dance floor, flanked by a handful of deputies on each side, and marched through the crowd straight to Senator Carson and Barclay Campbell, she couldn’t stop a few more rogue tears from escaping.

There was no sleep for any of them that night.

Anissa couldn’t do anything in an official capacity, but she stayed with Sabrina. Adam went to the sheriff’s office with the others. Of course everyone who had been arrested lawyered up immediately, but the evidence was overwhelming. There were real, live people who’d been informed of their rights and who were more than happy to testify against their captors.

Some of the victims were so traumatized they wouldn’t speak to anyone, but some of them had been ready for this for a while. They’d known it was wrong. They’d known there should be a way out, but they hadn’t been able to figure out how to get out without endangering the others.

So they’d stayed.

Sabrina would never get over the level of sacrificial love on display in the face of depravity and inhumanity.

Art and Abby opened their own hotels—currently in the low season so not at capacity—to house the victims. Families were reunited. Husbands with wives. Mothers with sons. Fathers with daughters.

There were tears and laughter and rage and anger.

Because not everyone was enjoying the reunions. Ten women—three of whom didn’t appear to be over sixteen years old—had been taken to the hospital for treatment. They’d been found in a basement room at the Van Storbers’ spa, and the officers who’d found them would probably need therapy after what they’d seen. The women would need counseling and treatment for a long time.

Sabrina walked among the newly freed in one of the huge Campbell hotel ballrooms. She smiled and answered questions and held a couple of babies and listened to the stories. Each one different. Each one the same.

They’d saved and borrowed to come to America. But when they’d arrived, they’d been told they would have to work off their debt first. Families were divided and shuffled from one place to the other. No one stayed in any location for more than a few months before their captors moved them to a different one. No one knew where their families were—until someone messed up and put some cousins together at The Back Door.

That had been the first mistake, but it hadn’t been the fatal blow.

Lisa Palmer had been.

She’d found the group at The Porterhouse. Gotten names and descriptions of loved ones and found them at The Back Door and at the Van Storbers’ spa. She’d told them what was going on. She’d given them hope. They’d made a plan.

Then she’d died and they’d been sure it was all over. That someone would come and kill them all. Now, they wanted to let their families back home know they were alive.

Sabrina made a few phone calls, and a deputy arrived thirty minutes later with her laptop and another for Anissa. Abby provided them with the hotel’s Wi-Fi password and they went to work.

Sabrina and Anissa asked each family for their names and if there was someone they wanted to contact. They looked up phone numbers and emails and even managed to get a few people on the phone in the dead of night.

The work of restoring these families would take months. Years. But it had begun.