Page 8 of Played by Him

“Don’t you look at your caller ID before you answer your phone?” I could hear the faint smile in her voice.

“Apparently not.”

There was a moment of silence before she continued, more business-like now, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes, I’m back in Colorado. I’m heading in to work right now, but once I get things settled, I’ll call you and tell you how things went with Jalen.”

“Just with Jalen?” she asked softly, and I could hear the compassion in her voice. “You don’t want to tell me about the trial?”

I chuckled. “You’re telling me that you weren’t following it all week online?”

“I was. Congratulations.”

I didn’t know many people who’d have that as their response to a friend helping put her father back in prison. “I’ll call you back in a little bit.”

“I wasn’t calling about Jalen.”

I scowled as I stepped outside, but it had more to do with the gust of cold wind that nearly ripped the doorknob out of my hand than it did with Jenna staying on the phone. “Something else then?”

“Come by the house. I have something to discuss with you.”

“I’ve been making a list of leads to follow on your case,” I said as I dug for my keys.

“That’s great, but I have a new case for you,” she said, her voice growing grim, a bit strained. “That group of assholes you got arrested a couple weeks ago. Well, it looks like someone’s taken over.”

I stopped. “Taken over?”

“Yeah. Want to come by now?”

I didn’t even need to think about it. “I’m on my way.”

* * *

“Letme see if I understand this correctly,” I said as I put my now-empty cup down on the table. “Less than a month after the Feds made tons of arrests, nothing’s changed.”

Jenna shrugged. “That’s generally how these things go. Cut off one head, another one grows in its place.”

“I thought that was seven more, not one.”

She raised an eyebrow. “It’s not Hydra.”

I would’ve smiled at the comment, but I was too depressed over what she was telling me. “I can’t believe that it didn’t make any difference.”

She leaned forward, her gray eyes intense. “It made a huge difference. You kept six girls from the sort of torture and abuse that you don’t even want to think about.” Shadows flickered across her face. “The time it’s taken for someone else to get established here, you saved all of the kids they would’ve taken.”

I ran my hand over my hair. “Is this how it always goes? Close one group down, but they never actually go away?”

Jenna leaned back in her chair. Her gaze fell on her arm, and she ran her fingers over the scar there. “If you listen to the cops or the FBI, they’ll tell you that it’s about keeping focused on the big picture, staying true to the course, all that sort of shit. But I can’t look at it that way. I can’t look at the big picture, or I’ll go crazy.”

She looked up at me, but her fingers still kept tracing the scar she had once told me came from a suicide attempt when she was only eight-years-old. The haunted look on her face made my stomach twist.

“I have to look at each life saved. Each person who will never have to go through what I went through. Each person who is rescued from that hell and given a chance at a better life. I know there are all these organizations that talk about eradicating slavery, but I don’t know if that will ever be a possibility. I do know that I can save one person, two people, a group. And that’s enough to keep me sane and working.”

The moment hung heavy between us, and then she pushed back from the table and refilled our coffee.

“Anyway, I didn’t bring you here just to tell you all of this,” she said as she set down the mug again. “I wanted to know if you would like to help.”

“Help?” I reached for the mug automatically, but I wasn’t really even paying attention to it outside the warmth it would provide my cold fingers.

“I know you’re working on my case, and you need to take other cases too,” she said. “I’m not going to ask you to risk Adare’s business. I just want to know how you’d feel about me possibly contacting you with some footwork for cases. I used to do all that myself, but with my kids…” She shrugged again.

I met her steady gaze. “I’d love to help out in any way I can. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

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