Trafficked (27 page)

“Colin, close it,” Liz said.

“He can't get up here,” Colin said.

“He'll know where we are.” Liz lifted a finger for everyone to be quiet while she listened to the police on the other end of the line. She relayed, “He's not with the police.”

“Duh,” Jack said.

“Who is this man?” Liz asked Hannah, responding to a question from the police.

“Name is Paavo Shevchenko. He is bad. He have dance club and prostitution.”

Liz repeated what Hannah said into the phone and then told them that the police were on the way. The four of them stood close to one another, waiting, mostly in silence, except for Jack, who kept whispering,
“Holy crap.”

They were on the wrong side of the house. Hannah worried that Paavo would enter Lillian and Sergey's house and shoot at them from upstairs. If he did, they might have time to run out of the bathroom. Liz held the phone to her ear. Hannah looked at Colin. He reached for her swollen eye and touched the edge of it.

“Does it hurt?” he whispered.

She nodded.

The operator spoke on the other end of the phone. Liz relayed the information. “They say they have a police car outside. No one's there.”

“Tell them there was a car,” Colin said. “A large black car. Like a Lincoln.”

The doorbell rang.

“The operator says the police are ringing the bell,” Liz said.

It was so strange that the police would ring the doorbell. Hannah would have thought they'd break down the door.

“I'm scared,” Liz said to the operator. “Can they check the windows and make sure he's not inside?” Hannah wished she hadn't had to involve this nice family in her troubles. She'd never meant to put them in any kind of danger.

“Mom, the guy's gone,” Colin said.

“Yeah, Mom. Relax,” Jack echoed, though his brown eyes were big and wild.

Hannah stepped forward. “I go first,” she said, opening the door slowly. If Paavo was in the house, she'd jump on him and tell them to run.

She led them out of the bathroom, breathing in through her broken nose, searching for any trace of Paavo. But she didn't smell him. She smelled Liz's freshly shampooed hair, the cat's litter box, pine needles on the Christmas tree, fried bacon in the kitchen. She smelled America.

Chapter Fifty-four

T
wo LAPD officers stepped inside Colin's house, a tall, blonde woman and a medium-build white man with dark hair. They both had their hats on. Hannah wrapped her arms around her body and stared at them, standing between the living room and the room with the television. She'd seen the television room briefly when she passed it to go into Colin's backyard, but she hadn't noticed the homey living room on the other side, with its embroidered wall hangings, afghans, green braided rug, and the Christmas tree with lights and what looked like hundreds of little glass angels.

“This is the girl?” the male officer asked, gesturing at her.

“Yes,” Liz said, and began rattling on about how she was their neighbor and they had no idea she was in trouble and she came over one day and sat on the back steps with Colin. She didn't know about all the other times Hannah and Colin had talked between the fence since then.

Hannah's body started shaking. It was warm inside the house, but her teeth began chattering anyway. Her nose ached from the shaking. Her jaw was too tight. She gripped her arms, wondering what had come over her, wishing it would stop.

Colin noticed first. “She needs to sit down,” he said, helping her onto a small brown sofa in the living room, next to the Christmas tree.

Liz dropped a quilted afghan over her shoulders and Colin sat down beside her. He patted her back. “You're okay,” he repeated, as if he wanted to believe it himself. “You're okay.” With him right there, she did feel better. The scent of his baby powder deodorant was comforting.

“She might be going into shock,” the female officer said, calling on her walkie-talkie for an ambulance. She put it back in her belt and patted Hannah's knee, kind wrinkles tightening around her eyes. “Don't worry, honey. You're going to be fine.”

The male officer dropped down into the armchair across from her and smiled. He was a good-looking man, and he knew it, but Hannah looked down at the braided rug by her feet. She didn't want any more men smiling at her.

Liz gave her some tissues for her nose and mouth, and the officers started asking her questions about Lillian and Sergey and Paavo. They asked her how long she'd been living there, if she'd been paid, what her hours were. The female officer said to the male officer that they needed to call Ice. It sounded like a name of a mean officer who was going to torture her to get answers.

The male officer got up, went into the other room to talk on his phone, and then came back. Hannah heard the hum of the officers' questions to Colin and his mother and brother, but she didn't really listen to anyone except Colin. She heard him tell the officers about the times they'd met outside and how he really liked her and thought it was strange that they had to meet outside, but that he figured that she had a strict family.

“I definitely didn't think they were making her work for free,” he said, his voice cracking.

“Like a slave,” the male officer added, his voice bitter. “Makes me sick.”

A slave?

Colin's eyes filled with moisture as he looked at her. He looked sad, but it wasn't pity, thank God.

Liz said to them, “I can't believe it. Right next door. They weren't very friendly, but I never thought . . .”

The brother, Jack, stared at Hannah from the entrance of the living room like she was a creature from another planet. She didn't blame him. Her shirt was so bloody, she looked like she'd been bitten by one of the vampires in Maggie's book, and she didn't even want to think about what her face looked like. Her eye was so swollen she couldn't open it. Moving hurt and talking made her lip bleed.

She felt bad for ruining their Christmas. The tree was so beautiful, all lit up, with small glass angels dangling from the branches. Only one wrapped present remained under the tree. They must have opened the other ones already. She'd heard American kids got tons of presents.

When the ambulance came, two paramedics in white uniforms entered the house. The female attendant asked if she wanted to go in a stretcher. “I can walk,” she said. If Paavo was outside, she didn't want to be strapped to a long board, unable to move. They held her arms and helped her across the living room. With every step, her chest stabbed at her.

Outside, the birds were chirping. Someone was still mowing the lawn. It seemed perfectly fine, but as soon as she walked out of the house, she felt too exposed. Paavo could be hiding. He could shoot her. She froze.

“Hannah, are you okay?” Colin asked from behind her.

“Where do they take me?” Hannah asked, looking back at him.

“The hospital.” The female officer came up beside her. “You'll be safe. We won't let anyone hurt you. Do you understand?”

Hannah looked back at Colin. She needed him to tell her it was okay. He wouldn't lie to her. “Colin?” she asked.

“It's okay.” He swatted at a tear rolling down the side of his round face.

Hannah gazed into his eyes and realized he blamed himself. She rested her hand on his pale arm, even though the movement made her wince. “You save me,” she said.

He nodded, but his bottom lip quivered like he was going to break down sobbing. She tried to think of something, anything, that would make him feel better. Something he'd once said popped into her head and she repeated it now: “Don't be a stranger,” she said.

He seemed surprised for a moment and then he let out a bark of laughter, and nodded really fast. “You're cool, Hannah,” he said.

Hannah remembered when Maggie had said that to her, and hoped that the children would be okay. She wondered if she'd ever see them again.

“Come on,” one of the paramedics said. “She needs to lie down.”

Hannah stepped out into the sun. Nobody shot at her. The neighborhood was still. Next door, in the house where she'd lived for almost six months, the driveway was empty. Did Lillian and Sergey know she'd escaped? What if they came home right now and convinced the police she was lying?

The paramedics guided her down the steps and along the walkway. She stepped up into the ambulance, her ribs stabbing at her. Once she was inside, she felt safer, but she'd feel better when she was far away from here. The female paramedic helped her down onto the semi-prone gurney in the back and stretched a sheet over her.

“Wait!” Colin shouted.

He ran up, holding the single present that had remained under the tree. It was tube-shaped, wrapped clumsily in Santa Claus paper with a lot of tape. He quickly scribbled a phone number on the wrapping paper and handed it to her.

“Call me when you can,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, taking the present and cradling it to her chest.

She laid back on the gurney and the ambulance took off down the street. At least five times while they drove, she asked them to make sure they weren't being followed. Every time, the female attendant looked out the small back window and said no. Finally, the attendant tried to reassure her, “The police are escorting us. Don't worry. Nothing's going to happen.”

But they didn't know what Paavo could do. Or Sergey. He sold guns and bombs to terrorist organizations. It would be easy for him or Paavo to point an Uzi at the ambulance and blow them all up. Hannah couldn't stop shivering. She felt like a huge moving target.

When they drove up to the hospital's emergency room, the police officers were waiting. The paramedics brought her in on the stretcher and the female officer followed while the male officer stayed outside. If she heard gunfire, she thought, maybe she'd have time to hide.

They brought her into a large room with doctors and nurses and hospital beds and children crying. It wasn't so different from a Moldovan hospital, except that they had a lot more machines and it was bigger.

A Hispanic nurse guided her to a bed and pulled a blue curtain around her. She asked her what parts of her body hurt the most.

“It is hurt more in here,” she said, gesturing at her throbbing chest. “I can no lay down.” Sitting up was the only way she could cope with the pain, but she didn't know how to explain this.

The nurse adjusted the bed forward. “Is that better?” she asked. “Are you comfortable?”

Nobody had asked her that question for months. She nodded.

The nurse spoke to the police officer. “How old is she?”

“Seventeen,” the officer said, looking at Hannah for confirmation.

Hannah nodded.

“Do we have parental consent for treatment?”

“Um, no,” the officer said. “She's an illegal. No guardians.”

“Okay, I'll speak to the doctor and see what she wants to do,” the nurse said, and left her alone in the room with the police officer, who told her they were bringing someone to translate. She asked if Hannah understood.

Hannah nodded. She'd lost her words. She clung to the present from Colin. The curtained room scared her. There were no walls. It would be easy to shoot through the fabric.

She thought of Katya. Maybe Lillian had already made a call to Moldova. “I can use telephone?” she asked the officer.

“It might not be safe for you to use a telephone right now,” the officer said. “Relax.”

All Hannah heard was that it might not be safe. She started to shiver again.

The officer gazed at her with concern. “Are you okay, honey?” “Honey” sounded so strange coming from a police officer.

Hannah didn't have the words to explain why she needed to use the phone right now. She couldn't think of anything in English. Katya would be sleeping. They wouldn't be able to get to her yet—at least she hoped not. She closed her eyes and hoped the translator would come soon.

It could have been an hour or just five minutes, Hannah couldn't say, but she heard a voice above her, saying “
Privyet
,” hello in Russian. A female voice. Her eyes popped open. She feared she'd see Lillian, but it was a small woman with gray hair and sparkling brown eyes. The woman continued in Russian, “My name is Stephanie. I'm from Uzbekistan and I'm a caseworker here in Los Angeles. I help girls like you.” She smiled gently with a closed mouth in the Russian way.

Hannah didn't understand what she meant by “girls like you.” Girls who spoke Russian? Whatever she meant, it was a relief to her. For the first time in America, all she wanted to do was speak Russian. The police officer asked her something about Ice and then stepped out of the room.

“Who is Ice?” Hannah asked.

“ICE means Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They're in charge of enforcing immigration laws. They sent me to help you.”

She didn't know how a caseworker could help her. But she knew that the immigration police would put her in jail, and she couldn't face being trapped again. Maybe she could escape. She looked at the blue curtain and wondered if she could get out before they grabbed her. The police were already guarding her. They had guns. Lillian had told her that illegal immigrants had no rights. They would take her and rape her, maybe kill her. And then she'd never be able to warn Katya.

“What's wrong?” Stephanie asked.

“Will I go to jail?” Hannah asked.

Stephanie's small dark eyes filled with compassion. “You're not going to jail. You did nothing wrong. I'm taking you to a safe house.”

“A safe house?” Hannah was confused. “Not to jail?”

“We have a safe house in Santa Monica,” she explained. “It's a place for women and girls like you who've been trafficked into America. It has a guard, but only for your protection—not to keep you in, but to keep out anyone who might want to hurt you.”

Trafficked. She'd been trafficked? After everything she'd gone through, she'd never thought of herself as the girl in that poster in Moldova, struggling in the palm of a giant man's hand, with the words underneath: “You are not a product.”

From Olga to Ina to Volva to Sergey to Paavo. She had been bought and passed along like cargo. It wasn't her fault. She wasn't going to jail. Instead she was going to a safe house.

She'd be safe, but not Katya. “I must use the phone right away,” she said. “They said they're going to hurt my friend Katya. I have to warn her.”

“I don't think you have anything to worry about,” Stephanie said softly. “They make these threats, but they don't follow through. It's to keep you from running off.”

“I must talk to her!” Hannah jerked up, and then cried out from the pain in her ribs.

“Shh,” Stephanie soothed. “It's okay. You can call.” She pulled a cell phone out of her pocket. “We will get you your own cell phone, but for now, you can use mine.” She dialed the numbers Hannah gave her and then handed her the phone.

It was just after two in the afternoon in Los Angeles, so it would be about midnight in Moldova. Hannah gripped the phone, hoping Katya was at home and not out somewhere with friends, where she could easily be snatched. The phone rang that same double ring she'd heard before her uncle told her that Babulya had died.
Please answer. Let it not be more bad news.

“
Allo
,” Katya answered in her sleepy voice. Hannah cried out in relief. They hadn't gotten to her yet! She was safe, in her bed. There was still time for Katya, still time for her to escape.

“Katya, it's Hannah,” she said, then burst into tears.

“Hannah!” Katya shouted. “Are you okay? Where are you? I was so worried—for months and months, we heard nothing from you. Your uncle Petru called me when your babushka died to see if I knew anything. Neither of us had received your letters yet. What's happened to you?”

“I'm okay,” Hannah said, even though she was still sobbing with relief at her friend being okay. “I am in the hospital.”

“The hospital?” Katya cried out with surprise. “Why are you in the hospital?”

Between sniffles, Hannah explained that the job wasn't what she thought, and the mother beat her up, but she got away. She couldn't tell her about the bad agent. Or Sergey. Or his connection to her parents. Not yet.