Page 42 of Valley of the Shadow
“Modeling website?”
“Yep.” She paced around the room.
“Sixteen- to eighteen-year-old girls?”
“Three so far. New Jersey, Boston, now New York.”
“Diverse racial targets, but all low-income and high achieving?”
“Yes and yes.” She picked up the notebook and stalked over to him. “This newest one is seventeen. She was accepted to the magnet high school for music and arts. Superhard to get into. Pretty girl.Gorgeousgirl. Dominican-American. She’s acting weird, mom puts it down to being stressed about starting at the new school. Then she disappears last week. No sign of her. Police are convinced she ran away with her boyfriend, but guess what?”
“She and the boyfriend were already broken up.” Baojia stood.
Natalie snapped her fingers. “Exactly. Mom is telling the police that this isn’t like her daughter, and no one is listening.”
“Friends?”
“Friends say the girl and the boyfriend broke up because she was approached by—get this—”
“A modeling scout?”
She pointed at him. “Right in one. Boyfriend didn’t trust the guy. Girl said he was overreacting and being jealous and it was a good way to earn some extra money. Blah blah blah, she breaks up with him. Friends say she was upset, and they thought it was about the boy, but what if—”
“What if they’d already taken pictures?” Baojia let out a long breath. “Filmed her when she was changing and were blackmailing her?”
“Sounds familiar, right?”
The trafficking ring in San Francisco had done exactly that. They’d targeted bright, pretty girls with promising futures but not a lot of family resources and then lured them into “modeling photo shoots” where they were filmed in the dressing room and it was edited to make it look like amateur pornography. Natalie had worked tirelessly on the story and gotten massive credit by both the investigative-journalism community and law enforcement for information that led to multiple arrests and the rescue of more than a dozen girls.
He walked over to her and put his hands on his shoulders. “Natalie, you can’t help with this case.”
“But I know what questions to ask.” Her eyes pleaded with him. “I don’t know New York, but I know the pattern. I know—”
“You are a six-month-old vampire,” he said. “Setting you down in the middle of New York would be like letting a fox loose in a henhouse. And yes, Red, in this situation, you’re definitely the fox and not the chicken.”
“But I don’t even like human blood! It smells like liver and nobody likes liver except cranky old men and I’m not a cranky old man!”
“Natalie, there’s no way. You have to drop this. And tell Tommy to stop sending you stuff, okay? It’s just going to drive you crazy because you can’t do anything about it.” He saw the guilty look on her face. “You told him to dig for more, didn’t you?”
She mumbled, “Just… reaching out to some people he knows at theTimes.”
Baojia sighed. “Youcan’tleave. It’s not even a possibility, so just stop tormenting yourself.”
“But these girls are out there! They don’t kill them. They keep them and they just…” Natalie’s face was stricken. “You know what they’re doing to them right now. You know it. Is there anything you can do?”
“I can’t help like I did back home. It’s not my jurisdiction, and no one would appreciate me barging in. The O’Briens rule New York, and unless this is something encroaching on one of their businesses, they do not get involved in human issues. Plus you and the kids are my priority right now. I can’t just up and leave.”
“But—”
“Out of the question, Natalie. I’m not leaving you, Sarah, and Jake.”
She took a deep breath. “But you know people in New York. Ben—”
“Is still in Mongolia, remember? He’s in the same boat as you.”
“Tenzin?”
Baojia shrugged. “Who knows? And she wouldn’t be able to work a case like this anyway. Not without Ben. She’d fly off the handle and just kill everyone.”
