Page 119 of He Sees You
Thalia finally looks at Cain. "You killed Morrison."
It's not a question, but Cain answers anyway. "Yes."
"Good. He liked to... sample the merchandise. Especially the young ones. The ones who looked scared." She pulls out a folder, hands it to me. "These are the girls coming in Christmas Eve. The network has been tracking them."
I open the folder.
Twelve photographs, twelve names, twelve lives about to be destroyed.
The youngest is thirteen—Maria Sanchez, taken from a group home in Albany. Reported as a runaway, with no one looking for her.
"How do you know all this?"
"Some of us never really escape," Thalia says. "We just learn to work from the outside. The network keeps tabs on shipments, tries to intercept when we can. But this one... Sterling runs a tight operation. We've never been able to get close."
"Sterling," I repeat, the name like poison on my tongue. "You know about Sterling."
"Everyone in the network knows about Sheriff Sterling. He's been doing this longer than Morrison, longer than any of them. He's the reason the Adirondack route is so popular—safe passage guaranteed, no questions asked."
I think I might vomit. All those nights he came home late, claiming to be protecting the town.
He was protecting the trade route instead.
"The Lockwood estate," Thalia continues. "That's where it started. Richard Lockwood and Sterling built this network thirty years ago. Even after the Lockwoods died, Sterling kept it running."
"How many?" I ask. "How many girls over the years?"
"Hundreds. Maybe thousands. The records were destroyed in a fire at the sheriff's station five years ago. Convenient electrical problem."
Five years ago.
I remember that fire.
Dad said it was lucky no one was hurt, that only old evidence in cold cases was lost.
He'd been so relieved, I thought it was about the building being saved.
But it was about the evidence being destroyed.
Cold cases.
Missing girls who would never be found because my father burned the evidence.
"Some of us remember, though," Thalia continues. "We keep our own records. Names, dates, faces. Sterling sold me when I was fifteen. My parents owed him money—they thought he was helping with a loan. He gave them two options: pay with cash they didn't have, or pay with me."
"Your parents sold you?"
"My parents were told I'd be working as a domestic servant to pay off the debt. They believed it because they needed to. Sterling was good at making people believe comfortable lies."
The silence that follows is heavy with shared trauma.
We're all survivors here, in different ways—Thalia of trafficking, Juliette and Cain of abuse, me of a father's betrayal.
"I should go," Thalia says, breaking the moment. "The less I know about your specific plans, the better. But on Christmas Eve, have the girls ready to move by 2 AM. We'll have three vans waiting at the pullout on the interstate."
She pauses at the door. "Make him suffer. For all of us."
After she leaves, Juliette seems to shake herself back to the present.
