The Siren (25 page)

A moment later, my phone beeped with a response.
Be there in ten. Are you OK?

Yes. Don’t make a big deal out of it when you get here
, I replied.

When I walked out of the bathroom, my feet froze outside the door. Something unseen was pulling at my attention, but I couldn’t place what it was. A feeling of foreboding was growing inside my chest like a cancer running rampant. Then I heard it. Not exactly an audible voice, but a clear message from somewhere.
Go to the office.
It was as plain as I could hear Abigail on the phone in the kitchen.

Across from the bathroom was a home office. The room was dark, save for a small amount of light coming through the cracks in the blinds over the window. There was a large cherry desk, a desktop PC, and piles of neatly stacked paperwork. There were no pictures on the wall. It was as impersonal as a broom closet. I tiptoed across the carpet toward the desk, and right on top was a lone sheet of paper. Quietly, I turned it around so I could read it.
 

It was an invoice from The Law Offices of T.R. Shultz for the criminal representation of…Larry Mendez.

Oh hell.

My mind scrambled. Why would Abigail have an invoice for Larry Mendez’s attorney? He had been linked with a human trafficking operation, and she had the largest human trafficking rescue mission in Texas. Nausea began to churn through my stomach. I backed out of the office as quietly as possible. Once I was safely in the hallway with my snooping undetected, I leaned against the wall and struggled to slow my rapid breathing.

My phone rang, causing me to jump. It was Warren. “Hey,” I answered.

“Tell her the hotel found my guns and they need you to come and handle it because the room is booked in your name,” he said. “My ETA is six minutes.”

My shoulders relaxed. “You’re brilliant. Hurry.”

The line went dead in my hand.
 

Sucking in a brave, deep breath, I returned to the kitchen. Abigail was talking to someone about airfare when I returned. She held up her index finger indicating she was almost finished. When she ended the call, she let out a frustrated huff.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “It’s so hard to find good help, Sloan.” She gestured toward me. “Perhaps now that we’ve found each other, someday you’ll be interested in coming to work with me. I need someone I can trust to get things done right.”

I laughed uneasily. “I’ve never been very good at keeping up with paperwork.”

“I’ll bet you would be better than the minions I have working for me now,” she said.

I held up my phone before tucking it into my purse. “I just got some bad news. I’m going to have to run to the hotel. Warren insisted on bringing half of his arsenal with us on the trip, and the hotel cleaning staff apparently found it. They need me to come handle it because the room is in my name,” I explained. “Could we maybe continue this over dinner tonight?”

She deflated. “Oh, I hate to hear that. Yes, dinner would be wonderful. There’s a great Italian place not too far from here that would be perfect. Perhaps Warren could join us, and I can get to know him better.”

I forced a smile. “That would be great.” I already knew I wasn’t going to make it to dinner. In that moment, I hoped to never see Abigail—Kasyade—ever again.

My heart fluttered with relief when the doorbell rang. I slung my purse over my shoulder. “That must be Warren,” I said as we walked to the front door together.

She pulled the door open, and he was standing there with his hands stuffed in his pockets. I could have cried at the sight of him.
 

He rolled his eyes. “I’m really sorry I screwed up girls’ day.”

Abigail waved off the apology. “Things happen.” She smiled brightly. “Sloan and I were talking about all of us getting together for dinner this evening.”

He nodded. “Sounds good to me.” His eyes locked on mine. “You ready?”

“Yes.” I turned toward Abigail, and she pulled me in for a tight hug. I felt like I might barf over her shoulder.

“I’ll call you about dinner plans. It was really wonderful spending some time with you today, even if it was cut short,” she said.
 

When she released me, I stepped out of her personal space and into Warren’s. “Me too. I’ll call you later,” I lied.

She watched us from the door as we walked to the car. I turned and waved when Warren opened the passenger side door for me. She waved back and stared at us from the doorway.

When he got in the car and started the engine, I whipped my eyes toward him. “Drive.”

He pulled away from the curb as I buckled my seatbelt. “What happened?”
 

I turned to face him in the seat. “I have a really, really bad feeling about this. First, her name isn’t Rachel or Sarah or Abigail. It’s Kasyade. And guess what!”

He turned out of her neighborhood onto the main street. “What?”
 

“My real name is Praea.”

He raised an eyebrow and shook his head. “Your real name is Sloan.”

I had no desire to get philosophic about my name. “From the moment I walked into the house, I had a weird feeling. The conversation was all right until I asked about my biological father. She refused to tell me who he is.”

He cut his eyes over at me. “Are you serious?”

I leaned toward him. “Oh yeah. She said I’m not
ready
to know, whatever that’s supposed to mean. She said she ‘chose’ him for the purpose of getting pregnant, and he probably wouldn’t even remember it. She talked about it like she was just visiting a sperm bank.”

“Is that why you wanted to leave?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I wish. That’s just the beginning of when things started to go downhill!”

He blew out a deep sigh.

“She asked some questions about me and you, and then she grabbed me and said how serious it is that we’re together. It was the way she said it, like the world was going to end or something. I don’t know. That’s when I started to feel sick.”

“Well, what do you want to do?” he asked.

I held my hands up and shook them furiously near his head. “Wait, I’m not done!”

“There’s more?” he asked in disbelief.

“At that point in the conversation, I was ready to go. I snuck off to the bathroom and sent you the message to come and get me. Then, when I left the bathroom, I heard this voice in my head telling me to go into her office, so I did.”

“You heard a voice?” he asked. “Whose voice?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea, but I know I did. Guess what I found in her office.”

He looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

“An invoice from a criminal attorney for Larry Mendez,” I said.
 

The car swerved, kicking up gravel from the shoulder of the highway. He brought the car to a screeching halt on the side of the road. “What?” he shouted.

“I saw it with my own eyes, Warren. She’s the reason Mendez was released. She paid for his defense,” I said. “That makes no sense!”

He stared out the window, lost in thought. “It only makes sense if he’s working for her.”

“What?” I asked.

He turned toward me. “Think about it. If Nate and I hadn’t been there that day, Rex and the other guy would have gotten away. They were prepared to get out of that building and disappear. They had to have known the cops were coming to be able to slip out of there the way they did.”

I squeezed my forehead. “Why hire criminals to sell girls to sex rings just to rescue them?” I asked. “If it’s about money and getting donations, I don’t think she has to create a human trafficking problem. There’s already plenty of it.”

His eyes widened. “What if she’s not rescuing them at all? What if she’s only shutting down her competition and selling them herself?”

My nausea returned. “You think she’s monopolizing the industry?”

He nodded. “You’re talking about a lot of girls with no families and no one who would miss them. Most of them don’t even speak English, I would guess.”

I covered my mouth as I began to connect the dots. “And she’s not funded by the government, so she wouldn’t be subject to their watchful eye. No one is checking up on her. She can send those girls right back out and claim they were released from the program because no one would follow up.”
 

He gripped the steering wheel so tight his knuckles went white. “She releases some success stories, pulls in donations, and then sends these girls only God knows where.” He looked over at me. “My guess is she bailed Rex Parker and his buddy out of jail too.”

I gasped. “She’s a monster.”

The blood drained from Warren’s face. “Do you remember what that old priest told us?”

Father John floated to my memory. I quoted his haunting words verbatim. “
If you are on a quest seeking angels, take great care. Even Satan himself masquerades as an angel of the light
.”

19.

My fingers dialed Nathan’s phone so furiously the screen cracked even more, and a piece came off in my hand. The touchscreen was useless after that. I held out my hand toward Warren. “I need your phone to call Nathan. Mine is officially broken.” I dropped the phone into the cubby between the front seats.

He adjusted in his seat and pulled his phone from his pocket. I found Nathan’s number in his contact list and hit dial.
 

Nathan answered on the third ring. “Aww, it’s my favorite Prince of Darkness. What’s up?”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s Sloan.”
 

“Oh, hey,” he said.

“I need your help.”

“Sure. What’s going on?”
 

“We’re pretty sure Abigail is a fraud.”
 

“She’s not an angel?” He sounded confused.

“Oh, no. She is an angel. Actually, I’m starting to think she’s a demon, if those are real too. You need to convince the FBI to investigate her. Larry Mendez is not in jail, and I found an invoice in her home office from his attorney.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” I gripped the phone tighter. “Nathan, we think she’s using her ministry to sell those girls herself.”

“Shit, seriously?” he asked.

“Seriously,” I said.

His tongue was clicking on the other end of the line. “I’m going to need some kind of evidence to pursue this. Did you get a copy of that invoice?

“No, of course not.”

“Sloan, I can’t go to the FBI with a hunch from
my friends the angels
.”

I looked at Warren. “He needs evidence.”

“I’ll bring Rex to him,” he said.

I spoke into the phone. “Rex Parker was bonded out of jail, probably by Abigail. Warren is going to bring him to you.”

He was quiet for a moment. “If Rex is out on bond, he can’t leave the state. I’ll come to you,” he said. “Let me see if I can get on a flight today. I’ll call you when I’ve got something.”

“Thanks, Nathan.”

“I’ll be in touch,” he said and disconnected the line.

I looked at Warren. “What do we do now?”
 

He pointed to the road ahead. “I need you to find Rex Parker.”

We caught up with Rex an hour later at a liquor store not far from the home of Larry Mendez. He took off running again when he saw Warren angling out of the rental car, but this time Warren didn’t allow him to get away. Several people stopped and stared as Warren dragged him, again by the hair of his head, to our car. Rex wasn’t a tiny guy, but you would have thought he was, judging by the ease with which Warren slung him around. Thankfully, we weren’t in the type of neighborhood that would call the cops for a thug.
 

Warren opened the back door and tossed Rex in. “Babe, I’m going to need you to drive,” he said.

I got out and ran around to the driver’s side. Warren climbed in the back with Rex and pulled his Glock out of his side holster.
 

Rex Parker looked like he had been run over by life a few times. His face was badly scarred from acne, and his nose looked like it had been broken more than once. A couple of cuts, one across his cheekbone and the other across his forehead, were still healing from the beating Warren had given him the week before.

“What the hell ‘you want with me?” Rex shouted. He was hopelessly trying to open the child-locked back door. “This ain’t cool.”

I looked over my shoulder at Warren. “Where are we going?”
 

“Let’s go to the hotel,” he said.
 

I nodded and pulled out of the parking lot onto the highway.
 

“Who are you working for?” Warren demanded.

“Man, I’m not tellin’ you shit. Why don’t you tell me who
you’re
workin’ for? Why you keep poppin’ up and beatin’ the hell outta me?” Rex asked.

“Because you’re still a no good piece of shit,” Warren said. “Who are you working for?”

“I don’t work for nobody.” Rex spat at him.

Warren lowered his voice to a menacing octave. “Do you remember what happened to Travis? Do you really think it’s wise to lie to me?”

“What the hell are you, man?” Rex asked, no longer able to hide his panic.

“Who are you working for?” Warren roared, making even me jump.
 

I swerved the car a little.

Like a frightened puppy being backed into a corner, Rex scrambled as far away from Warren as he could in the close confines of the back seat. “Shit man, calm down,” Rex said, his voice trembling. “I work for that chick Abigail Smith.”
 

“What do you do for her?” Warren asked.

“I’m a delivery guy,” he said. “I’m her freakin’ errand boy.”

“Delivering little girls?” Warren asked.

Rex held his hands in front of his face. “And some older ones, man. Calm down!”

“She bonded you out of jail?” Warren asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, I’m supposed to be drivin’ the van to Chicago tonight. She’s gonna have me killed if I ain’t there.”

“Trust me. You shouldn’t be worried about
her
killing you,” Warren hissed. “Who are you taking to Chicago?”

“A few of the girls she’s got ready to go,” he answered. “All I do is pick ‘em up and drop ‘em off.”

“So, she picks these girls up here in San Antonio and sends them to Chicago?” Warren asked.