Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) (26 page)

Chapter 51

T
he lights of their iPads glowed on the agents’ faces as they navigated the Backdoor website. The home portal had links for all fifty states, with cities listed under each state. Clicking on
SALINAS brought up a simple list of categories of items for sale, including an ADULT section. One click on ESCORTS, then one click to agree to the Adult Terms of Service got them to a list of links:

*DISCOVER JUICY. Love me all over* - 19

21 in Salinas

Young and sweet, new girl in town - 19

Get ready for love in 10 min! - 23

I am a Married Mans Best Kept Secret - 19

DON’T YOU WANT THIS!!! - 19

Big BOOTY on Duty - 23

Hey boyz, Im Stormy Im waiting to meet you right now - 21

“Amazing how many of these girls are nineteen,” Roarke said. His stomach was roiling. “Nineteen” seemed to be the universal code for “underage.”

“Ain’t it just.” Epps’ face was stony in the dark of the cab.

A click on a link led to the come-on, complete with seminude photos and a phone number:

Hey gents if your looking for something beautiful young and hot look now further Im your newbie dream Im open minded flexible and boy do I get juicy I cant sleep and I wanna have a good time with someone for the right donation Im posted in Salinas with an incall on California Text or call me.

Semiliterate male fantasies, composed by pimps. About girls like Becca. Like Shauna. Like Sarah Jane. Teenagers. Abducted, trunked, raped, drugged . . . and sold online, with one click of a mouse.

“Just like ordering a pizza,” Epps said, his voice tired. It was that easy.

Roarke skimmed the links, looking for keywords.
Young and hot.
Sweet. Bubbly. Newbie. Shy yet freaky.
There were too many to count.

He forced himself to focus and look for the specific address, Ninety-Ninth and California, code for the motel. He stopped on a link . . . and stared down at his iPad screen at the words:

New girl in town 2nite only – 19

99th/California

“New girl in town,” he said aloud. “New, meaning like Becca?”

Abducted, terrified, traumatized . . .

Epps shook his head. “Not sayin’ you’re wrong. Just wondering what we’re doin’ it for.”

Roarke was silent.

“You can’t save everyone. That kind of thinking’ll drive you insane.”

Roarke knew it. They all knew it. There was no way to live that way. The web page he was looking at now was one of hundreds of thousands across the country. How many were minors? How many were minors when they started? How could they even begin to make a dent?

And yet . . .

He looked at Epps without speaking. Epps ran a hand over his head, and his face was tense. “A’ight. If we call or text and make a date, chances are there’s going to be screening. We’ll need a private line, a false ID. We don’t have that kind of time.”

Roarke was about to argue, but his agent continued. “If she’s really a ‘new girl in town,’ she’s not going to be on her own. The mack’s most likely screening johns in the lot. So we go over and watch. We got witness testimony that a minor reported abducted is being held at this motel. We go, see what’s going down. If we need to go in, we claim exigent circumstances. Probably we lose out on convicting the pimp, but we might get the girl out.”

“Yeah,” Roarke said, gratefully. “That’s a plan.”

Epps muttered something he couldn’t hear and climbed into the driver’s seat to start the engine.

Chapter 52

S
he drives a good sixty blocks on each of her first few passes. International Boulevard stretches for forty more. But she has gone far enough, enough times, to see that, aptly, the bulk of the street action is in the teens: Thirteenth Avenue to Nineteenth, with another spate of activity in the forties and fifties. She spends a little time cruising the higher blocks, on the lookout, without seeing anyone who looks remotely like the girl Jade. Then she heads back for the lower-numbered blocks.

There are more girls out now. Men slow their cars by the curb, pale men in shiny cars who have no other possible business in this neighborhood but to buy these children. The girls stroll or stagger up to the windows to negotiate.

She does not slow the car. She tries to control her trembling, and stares out at the sidewalks, searching.

She is cruising that long loop for the fourth time when she sees a flash of white in one of the dark doorways. She turns her head to look out the side window as she passes . . . and feels a spike of shock.

A skull glares out at her from the blackness.

She slows the car and looks back over her shoulder . . . but the face has disappeared.

There is another car behind her and she must keep driving. She breathes in to slow her racing heart . . . and focuses on the street ahead of her.

But all of her skin is prickling. As soon as she can she makes a U-turn to head back toward the block where she saw the skull face, then makes a sharp right at the street corner nearest the storefront.

The side street is dark. She drives slowly, past empty cars parked at the curb in front of run-down clapboard houses . . . cracked sidewalks devoid of people. There is no sign of the figure she saw.

She parks her car halfway down the street, kills the headlights and engine, and sits, thinking.

Not the girl. The Other.

Her pulse is racing.

Get out. Leave now.

She reaches for the key to start the engine again, but hesitates. She was directed here. She needs to know.

She strips off the hoodie and sweatpants she is wearing.

She exits the car in a completely different street garb: a tube skirt and skintight mesh shirt, fishnet stockings. She shuts the car door and locks it, then strides on high-heeled vinyl boots past the dark houses.

The night outside is cold on her exposed skin, but the chill she feels is more anticipation than temperature. She breathes in the dark and follows the moon.

There is the opening of an alley ahead, access to the backs of the shops on Inty. She slows as she approaches, her skin prickling again. She keeps close to the filthy stucco wall and glances down the dark passageway.

An SUV is stopped in the alley, with lights off . . . and the driver’s door open.

She takes a step into the alley. The moon is straight up in the black dome of sky, and her shadow is long and stark in the spill of moonlight.

She approaches warily, staying well away from the side of the car as she moves forward to get a look inside. She can smell it first, blood and shit, the unmistakable stink of death.

She stops before the open door to look in.

The man in the driver’s seat is deader than dead. A gunshot has exploded half his head; blood and brains drip from the windshield.

She is very still as she notes the clothes: the turned-to-the-side ball cap, the baggy pants and oversize T-shirt. Pimp garb.

She is not the only one hunting tonight.

She pulls back from the carnage and backs away from the driver’s door, her heart beating fast as she scans the dark around her . . . but there is no sign of anyone living.

As she turns from the car, her gaze falls on a pale arrangement of objects beside the wall of the building. She walks a few steps toward it, staring down. A candle, with white flowers laid in front of it. A fifth of some liquor. Cigarettes in a small, neat pile.

The night is cold on her skin, and her thoughts are racing.

Offerings. Someone is invoking the Bony One. Playing with fire.

She wants no part of it. And yet . . . there is opportunity here.

Above her, a shadow passes across the moon.

A sign.

She stoops quickly to the pile of offerings, then stands again. Now she does not linger but walks toward the street at the other end of the alley.

She steps out of the alley and turns right to move toward the corner of the boulevard. She slows her walk to a languid stride on the four-inch heels. She lets her hips roll and feels the taut muscles of her legs in perfect balance on the boots, and her breath catches in anticipation . . .

Then she steps out onto the street and looks toward the cars, a blatant laser come-on.

The first one who approaches will do. The act of choosing her is enough.

A lesson to anyone who chooses her.

Chapter 53

R
oarke phoned in to Detective Escobar as Epps drove the rig across the freeway to the motel. A small blessing: the detective was out, and Roarke could simply leave a message through the office manager.
“We’ve got a sex worker at the truck stop telling us a minor reported as abducted is being held at the Stop Inn on 99. Going over there to eyeball it.”

There was a back section of the parking lot for the bigger trucks. Epps parked alongside two other huge rigs. On this side of the freeway there was a high wind up, blowing debris across the lot and shaking the cab of the truck. The moon was nearly blinding in the clear sky, and its light plus the height of the cab gave them a good outlook on the lot surrounding the motel. It didn’t take long to spot the pimp. He hovered in the dark beside the building’s short outside corridor that housed an elevator, ice and vending machines, and a stairwell.

The agents stared out the cab windows at the shadow figure: a Latino man in his thirties who moved with a prison swagger, tattoos visible on his chest and neck above the wife-beater tank he wore under a satin athletic jacket. He watched the lot like a hawk as he spoke on his phone.

A battered Bronco pulled into the lot. Both agents leaned forward as the truck cruised past the empty spaces in front of the motel office. “Here we go,” Epps said under his breath.

The Bronco drove all the way past the cars parked in front of the downstairs rooms and stopped at the end of the building, near the elevator. The headlights blinked off.

A man squeezed himself out of the truck. He was overweight and sloppy. Roarke caught the gleam of thick glasses on his doughy face. Nobody’s idea of Prince Charming.

He waddled on the sidewalk in front of the lower row of rooms toward the outside corridor, then stood in front of the vending machine without buying anything.

“Wait for it . . .” Epps muttered, watching.

After a pause, the pimp moved out of the shadows and up to the fat man. They spoke briefly, then the pimp handed the man something. The fat man turned and crossed to the elevator. The pimp disappeared back into the corridor.

“He’s got the room key now,” Roarke said under his breath.

“Mack’s got another one on him, I bet,” Epps answered. And the agents looked at each other.

An impromptu sting like this was a majorly bad idea; they both knew it. They had no idea how many accomplices the pimp might have. Whoever they were, they might be selling drugs or arms. The level of weaponry thugs had with them these days was sometimes like a small arsenal.

All Roarke could think of was Becca. Fifteen years old. Shauna. Thirteen years old. Sarah Jane Jennings. Fifteen years old. And whatever girl of whatever age was up there in that room right now.

But it was Epps who said, “Hell, let’s do it.”

Roarke left the cab of the truck and walked through the wind, across the parking lot, up onto the sidewalk, into the open corridor that housed the elevator as if he were a motel guest, while Epps waited a few moments before he exited the cab himself and circled around toward the back of the motel.

When Roarke moved past the elevator and out the end of the corridor to the back side of the motel, the pimp was still on his phone . . . and a beat too late understanding he was surrounded.

Just as he was turning to deal with Roarke, Epps had his Glock to the guy’s head, ordering, “FBI, don’t move.”

The pimp froze . . . then sprinted. Epps sprang, did a full-on tackle, and both men hit the ground, Epps on top. There was a satisfying crunch of bone as Epps ground the guy into the asphalt, and Roarke was over him in the next second, grabbing his arms, locking them behind his back, securing the plastic cuffs. The man spat a curse in Spanish, but ceased struggling.

Epps held his head to the concrete as Roarke searched him, pulling a Ruger from his waistband, a cellophane bag of powder from a pocket, and a plastic key card from another. The key was still in its cardboard sheath, with the room number in blue ballpoint: 212.

Epps reached for his service belt, handed his own set of cuffs to Roarke. “Be my guest,” Epps said. “I’ll keep our friend company.”

Roarke climbed the stairs, his adrenaline climbing even higher. The last time he’d been on a takedown like this, just over a month ago now, he’d shot a man point-blank in a filthy brothel, a virtual prison of enslaved women and girls.

At the top of the stairs he looked out the doorway into a stuffy, filthy hallway. A twenty-year-old carpet. Smears of substances he didn’t even want to know about on the walls.

He moved silently to room 212, used the key card, and pushed open the door, leading with his Glock.

“FBI, don’t move!”

The fat man sat on the bed with his pants around his ankles, oversized gut mercifully shielding his nakedness. The girl stood above him in a tank top and panties. The john froze in place on the bed, looking dully alarmed. The girl backed up toward the wall, slid down it to sit heavily on the floor, arms crossed protectively over her head as if to ward off blows.

There was another woman in the room, sitting frozen in an armchair in the corner, a bleary-eyed, mixed-race, fleshy woman in her late twenties or early thirties, dressed in a robe. The “bottom girl,” there to keep the new one in line, keep her from running.

“You,” Roarke ordered her. “Get down on the floor. Facedown, hands behind your head.”

He watched her lower herself to the floor while he kept the john at gunpoint.

When the woman was stretched out flat, he motioned to the john. “Now you. On the floor. Hands behind your back.”

The fat man dropped awkwardly to his knees, then onto the stained carpet. Roarke kept the Glock trained on the woman while securing the cuffs on the man.

Then he shut the door behind him and stood in front of it, barring it. The room was small and rank. Rubber curtains, a garish bedspread, toiletries and clothes strewn on the floor. The surface of the dresser was cluttered with liquor bottles and fast-food wrappers. There were pill bottles and scattered powder on the desk. The smell of spunk and stale alcohol was heavy in the air.

With both adults now immobile, Roarke turned toward the girl and tried to speak gently.

“What’s your name?”

She glanced up, and he got his first good look at her. She had caramel-colored skin, with brown hair and brown freckles, and her face was plump with baby fat. He felt a crush of disappointment.

Not Sarah Jane.

He fought that initial feeling down and willed himself to be there for the girl in front of him. He kept the Glock trained on the john as he asked her, “How old are you?”

The girl mumbled, “N-nineteen.”

“How old are you really?” Roarke said without missing a beat.

“Fifteen,” the girl answered automatically, and then looked frightened. She shot a glance at the woman on the floor.

Roarke turned his eyes to the john. His face behind the glasses was shiny with sweat. “Fifteen. That would make you engaged in a felony.”

“I didn’t know,” the john muttered.

Roarke strode forward. The fat man flinched, anticipating a kick. Instead Roarke stood above him and demanded, “Look at her.”

“Then she shouldn’t be on the website,” the john said petulantly.

“We just here partying,” the older woman complained from the floor.

“You ask for two?” Roarke asked the john.

“Bitch was here when I got here.”

“Making sure no one runs?” Roarke said to the woman. “Kidnapping. False imprisonment.”

He stared down at his captives, bile rising in his throat. He wanted to say something, anything, to name the extent of their depravity, to reach anything that was still human in them.

Instead he reached for his phone and called Escobar.