Page 76 of Preying Heart
They have Lucy. They have Lucy. They have Lucy.
My heart pounds this fact into my brain like a sledgehammer on a tent post.
I have to keep my composure though. No running off half-cocked and causing more casualties. Lucy’s not the only prisoner being held at the stash house. According to Jodi and Pearl, there are more than seven, including a teenager who miscarried two nights ago. According to them, Lucy wasn’t nabbed until yesterday to take care of the young girl, which gives me hope she hasn’t been violated—yet.
The young ladies are solemn and quiet on the drive back to town. They claim no one saw them dive underneath the rock ledge and emerge into an underwater cave which leads into a branch of the old mine. I’ll have to believe them, but to be totally secure in the future, I’m going to have to put a gate in back of the rubble.
We drive into town and hunt down the sheriff who’s hanging out at Nate Riley’s Bluebird Tavern. Sheriff Grant Easterly is one of those tough old-timers and he keeps an iron grip on the town. No mercy for criminals, vandals, and bums. He’s got a group of men ready to deputize and I’m one of them.
I didn’t call ahead because I didn’t want a “welcome wagon” of town gossipers. The girls just want to go home, and we need their information to form a posse. I’m itching to get going. Every minute Lucy’s with them is a minute too long. My own sister captured while I was out in Wyoming wooing Remi.
No time for regrets. I let Lucy down, and I’m going to go all out to get those guys.
I call the sheriff out to the parking lot and introduce him to the two witnesses.
“Let’s get them,” he says after a brief interview. “I’ll assemble the posse at the church door, and we head out right away.”
ChapterTwenty-Eight
Remi
There is no news that night. No news the next. I quickly realize a lot of what passes for news is sensational entertainment. Meanwhile, what’s going on up there in the mountains with the trafficked women are of no one’s concern. No highbrowed journalist with their Ivy League degree is going to tramp around a reservation or in the backwoods looking for stories about human trafficking. Neither do they visit the strip clubs or troll online forums to write exposés about the men who prey on these forgotten women.
I walk circles around Heath’s house, counting his windows and doors. I note each piece of furniture and the controlled clutter of his things—a metal toolbox where he puts his receipts, a vintage milk jug canister he uses for an umbrella stand, and a cute button dish filled with loose change.
I check his security monitors obsessively and scour the internet for news. I can’t call him—not even on the burner phone. Since I can’t sleep and I have no appetite, I create more lionesses. I make one for Jodi and another one for Pearl. I assemble fashion kits and treasure chests for online gamers to discover, buy, sell, and trade. But no matter how much I try to distract myself, I keep going back to Heath and Lucy. How different they are to each other than me and Slade.
They fight. Yes. They are opposites. True. But they deeply care about one another, and neither one would ever leave the other behind.
Did I leave Slade behind?
Now that I have crypto, shouldn’t I try to find him and help him?
He jumped bail.
True, but he’s still my brother. I should help him. Reach out.
I shouldn’t do this, but what’s the point of a burner phone if I can’t use it? Surely, no one can trace it to me. We already tossed the one I used to initiate my crypto, and this one Heath bought must have been from another town.
Besides, I’ll toss it once I use it and get another one.
I know the signal will be traced to a cell tower—if anyone is monitoring. But one quick call can’t hurt. I dig through my purse and find the number Slade gave me.
I place the call, fingers crossed. It rings. Rings. Rings.
Just when I think it’s going to voicemail, he picks it up.
“Yeah?” His voice is raw.
“Tell me you’re okay.”
We never use names. He knows my voice and I know his.
“I’m not. Don’t believe anything you read on the news. They’re framing me.”
The phone clatters to the ground, and I hear shouting. Slade screams in pain. There’s scuffling and thumps, and the call is cut off.
I bow my head over my desk and pray for the first time in years. Tears swell over my eyelids and spill down my cheeks, wetting the keyboard. I’ve failed my brother, and I’m all alone.
