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22
Annie
"Sit down. You're shaking."
The girl who rescued me from the door where I'd continued to stand was short and softly round and African American. She gently drew me into the group and sat me on one of the unused beds. Instantly the other four surrounded us, like birds all lighting on the same wire.
I stared at them, trying to comprehend what had happened. I'd come looking for human traffickers with preconceived notions that girls were sold to brothels or to individuals and so far, so – not good, but on target. That was what had happened.
But I'd expected some more logical chain of events, time spent in a brothel no matter what the final destination, and I hadn't somehow expected anything as crazy as Bevington and his harem.
Lettie was the girl who had led me away from the door. Big beautiful brown eyes, equally beautiful brown skin, everything about her including her curves seemed somehow unworldly. Like she was a deputation from faerie.
"Taken from the parking garage at my college," she said. Her abduction was a couple, husband and wife, hadn't bothered with scenarios or trying to attract her in any way. They were dressed in hoods and full body scrubs. They just opened the door of a van and snatched her.
"There wasn't anyone else in the parking garage?" I asked. The cop in me was going to ger a few questions out before I made her stop.
Lettie nodded. "There were other people though not really close. There were cameras. There was regular security and they were making rounds like they were supposed to. It happens."
Nikki, a redhead who had the opposite of Lettie's curves, had been leaving a dive bar after a fight with her husband. They'd been in Chicago. "One minute I was stalking down the street in a huff, too fucking mad to admit it was stupid to be on the street alone so late at night. The next second?" She spread long fingered hands.
"Van?" I asked.
"Nah. Sympathetic ear in the next bar. I figured Richie would know where I was going. Just needed some time to cool down. Met this woman who was all about having been there, done that, so understanding at first it seemed like a gag, y'know?"
I didn't but I shrugged comprehension.
"Then it became flattering and a good thing because Richie texted me not to come home for another two hours, he was packing up as much of his stuff as he could for the night. Just hang out till two and he'd be out of my hair." She paused, clearly still angry. "I don't know where he thought I'd go for two hours."
Mia, ethereally blonde, had stepped out the backdoor of her gym when it was closing behind her. No one heard her scream or no one admitted to it. She was the youngest, only just over eighteen, and she had a daughter at home with her mother.
"She'll think I ran out on her. I would never do that, but my mom ran out on me when I was three and she's so sure."
I sat cross legged on one of the spare beds. From what I could tell, none of the girls had been delivered to Bevington by the group that delivered me. Which was depressing to think there were that many rings of traffickers or even sole practitioners. It didn't change anything that the girls all came from different sources. I'd known 3837 was new to Raven. It was unlikely any of these girls would know anything about Raven even if it had been ultimately her group. On the other hand, Chad seemed unimpressed by where he was, which was only because he was a thug and a lummox, or because he'd been there before.
There was another answer to the mystery of my deliverymen seeming to know their way around Bevington's estate when none of the other girls had been delivered by them. It could mean that other girls had been delivered from Raven, who might find him a new client only in the fact that he hadn't been around for a long time, no matter how high his demand of "product" was.
Best case scenario, those girls had been used up in Bevington's opinion and passed on up the line.
Worst case scenario I wasn't ready to contemplate yet.
But not all the abductions seemed to be by Raven's group. It didn't make sense she'd have so many different ways of doing snatch and grab when the underpaid and overworked boys in blue who had ethics that were gray worked so well for her.
But maybe she did use what she had on time at the moment? All the abductions, including mine, seemed to be about opportunity, not deep planning. Maybe Raven really did use what she had at the moment.
I'd like a chance to do that. And what I had at the moment? It would be really nice if it were a gun.
A really big fucking gun.
