Page 54 of Deliverance

Mercer’s gaze shifted to me, assessing me even as he tried not to be obvious about it. Liam had pulled a deep file on Mercer for me last night. This was an experienced agent, despite his young age. He was sharp and by the book but seemed to have a soft spot for Dominic, and I wasn’t above exploiting that if it helped us catch Kingfisher.

“Evelyn,” Mercer repeated, raising his eyebrows. “Just Evelyn?”

“For now,” I said pleasantly, smiling when his eyes widened slightly.

He looked at Dominic, who met his gaze steadily. They seemed to have a whole conversation with their eyes before Ethan turned on his heel and headed towards the townhouse.

“You’re running out of favors,” Mercer said as we fell into step beside him.

“You still owe me for San Francisco,” Dominic said. “And Idaho.”

“Idaho was a joint effort.”

“You’re welcome for Idaho,” Dominic shot back.

Mercer made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh and led us through the front door.

A female plain-clothes agent sat in the living room. She nodded at Mercer but made no move to stop us as we continued down a hallway. Mercer knocked twice on a door at the end before opening it. The room was plain. There was a beige couch in the middle of the space on top of a blue rug, a white recliner next to it, and a TV mounted on the left wall. A table was pressed against the back wall with two chairs. Two women, a brunette and a blonde, sat on the couch, and another woman, a redhead, sat at the table against the wall. I recognized the two on the couch as Maria and Suzanna. The one at the table was Ginny.

They were in various states of recovery. They wore clean clothes, but their eyes were careful and haunted, and they stilledat our entry, the kind of stillness that came from learning how to make yourself small to avoid attention. I recognized the stillness and smiled gently, hoping to break the ice.

Maria and Suzanna on the couch returned the smile tentatively, but Ginny just stared back at us, her spine straightening. I recognized her from that night. She had been the woman who had tried to escape, the one Director Keller tackled to the ground. She was young, maybe twenty, with sharp green eyes that tracked every movement we made. She was beautiful, and I could see how she had become a target for trafficking.

She looked at Dominic, and recognition sparked in her gaze. “I remember you,” she said.

“I remember you too,” Dominic said, softening his body language.

I stepped forward. “My name is Evelyn. I’m not law enforcement, but I’m helping track the man who did this to you. I was hoping you may be able to help me catch him.”

Maria leaned forward, her arms wrapped around her stomach. “I thought they caught the man who did this.” Her eyes flicked to Ethan.

“One of them,” I said, “but we’re still hunting the others. And I need your help, if you’re willing.”

I looked at each of them until they nodded. I wasn’t going to force them to relive this. “Do you remember anything about where you were kept, a warehouse perhaps?”

Suzanna shook her head. “We were drugged for most of it. That whole time was a blur.”

Ginny shifted in her chair as Suzanna spoke, and I crossed the room to the table. I gestured at the empty chair across from her, and she nodded. There was something fragile about her but also something unyielding at the same time. I recognized the steel in her eyes. She knew something.

“What’s your name?” I asked softly. I knew it already, but I was trying to break the ice.

“Virginia. But everyone calls me Ginny,” she said.

I nodded. “Pretty name. You were drugged too, right?” She nodded. “But the drugs don’t work as well on you, do they?” She nodded again, and I ignored Dominic’s confused look.

I didn’t know the science behind it, but redheads burned through drugs faster than most people and required higher dosages. I had learned this a few years ago on a case of ours. The woman had been kidnapped by her stalker, and he had drugged her. She was a redhead. She came out of the drugs early and managed to get out of the house. She ran into an Archers patrol, who got her to safety, and we dealt with her stalker.

I pulled out my phone and brought up the photo of the number carved into the wall at the warehouse. I turned it toward her. “Do you recognize this?”

Her breath caught, and her hand tightened into a fist on the table before it relaxed. She stared at the phone screen for a long moment, then nodded.

“Can you tell me about it?” I asked, probing gently.

“It’s my—was my number,” she said.

The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, but her soft words seemed to echo. I sucked in a breath. This was confirmation of the ledger we found at the office. He numbered the women. Like fucking cattle.

“Your number?” I asked carefully. I didn’t want to lead her in my questioning, but I needed to be sure.