Stolen Child (Coastal Fury Book 13) Matt Lincoln (chrysanthemum read aloud .txt) 📖

straight up at the fluorescent lights in the ceiling as if he hoped they would sear his eyes away. But they didn’t, and he finally returned his attention to the tabletop, blinking as if he saw dark spots where his vision should be.

Whatever it was, it had to be bad. And he knew it, too.

Finally, he took a deep breath and looked back up at me, though he continued to avoid Nina’s piercing, no doubt intimidating, gaze.

“Well, the thing is, we, uh… work for this… I guess you could call it a gang,” he said, wincing as he said the words.

Dread was filling me from my toes to my forehead again, even worse than before. It sounded like our worst fears were being realized.

“A human trafficking organization,” I said simply, my tone as flat as my stomach. “You work for a human trafficking organization.”

Justin nodded, and I could hear him gulp all the way across the table.

“You have to understand, we never really dealt with kids until recently,” he said quickly. “Not until the boss man realized there was a market for it.”

“Just women then,” Nina said dryly, her eyes filled with fire now. “You just ‘dealt’ with women.”

Justin hung his head, though I couldn’t tell whether it was in shame or because he was mad he’d been caught. I didn’t particularly care. Clearly, he wasn’t ashamed enough to stop him from doing it in the first place.

I practically had to swallow my lunch to keep from losing it.

“When did they start taking kids?” Nina growled when Justin offered up no more explanation.

“About a year ago, I’d say,” he sighed. “I never took one, though, I swear. I didn’t have any part in it until now.”

“You just didn’t say anything and let it go on,” I said flatly, and the man hung his head again.

“Look, you don’t know what it’s like,” he muttered.

“No, you’re right,” I told him, abandoning all pretense of being the good cop in this scenario. “I wouldn’t know what it’s like to make my way in the world exploiting innocent women and children.”

There was a period of silence so tense that you could cut it with a knife before Nina stepped in to try to get some more of the facts straight.

“So this organization in Durham, what are they doing stealing tourist kids from little towns like this?” she asked him.

“We’re not,” Justin said, heaving a long sigh. “Or at least we weren’t supposed to, anyway. Well, we’ve been—or rather, they’ve been. Like I said, I had nothing to do with this part of the business till yesterday—well, we’ve been taking street kids in Durham. Nobody really misses them much, you see.”

My blood boiled. I wanted to beat this guy to a pulp right then and there, and with all the rage that was flowing inside me, I probably could’ve despite his size. Even so, I had to contain my anger. Where would our case be if I did that? So I just clenched my fists beneath the table so hard that it hurt.

Nina’s face was ashen white, and I could tell she was feeling similarly. In all her career, in all the things she’d seen and been through, all the cases she’d worked, even this must be a lot for her to handle. Usually, these cases were a one-off, a lone wolf. Horrible, to be sure, but isolated. This? This was a whole other level of sickness. And that was what it was—sickness.

Justin seemed to notice that his words hadn’t gone over well.

“I mean… it’s just… I mean…” he stammered, trying to find a way to recover from this and failing because there was no way to recover.

“It’s alright,” Nina said coolly, glaring at him. “We appreciate your honesty. Now, why didn’t you take those kids in Durham?”

“Well, we realized the police were starting to get onto us,” Justin said, fidgeting in his handcuffs and avoiding both of our gazes now. “We were taking too many kids too often, and they were starting to notice, even though… Well, I won’t say it again, I guess.”

We knew what he was going to say, anyway. That those kids weren’t worth much, so they never expected the police to notice that they were gone or even care if they did.

But it was our job to protect everyone, no matter who they were or where they came from. Especially kids.

“So, uh, anyway…” Justin continued when we both just continued to glare at him. “On our last grab—that’s, uh, what Charlie calls it.”

Nina let out a low growling sound because this angered her so much, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if I drew blood by how hard I was clenching my fists then under the table. Justin just carried on when we didn’t say anything, not knowing what else to do.

“So, uh, anyway…” he repeated, looking at us each warily in turn. “The police showed up, tried to catch us, and we ran. Just hopped right on the interstate and panicked, Charlie did. He didn’t get off ‘till we got here, and the mall was the first thing we saw. Charlie’s going on and on about how we need a kid, and if we don’t get one, the boss is gonna have our heads. But we can’t take one from Durham ‘cause the police are onto us there. So the next thing I know, he’s running into the mall and grabbing that kid, telling Rudy to wait outside this game store place for us since it didn’t look like anybody was in there and we could go in through the back. Some employee must’ve left it open the night before, so no one noticed, I don’t think. Turned the cameras off while we were in there.”

There was a flicker of realization in Nina’s eyes then, and I realized that this information filled in some gaps that had been eating at her, surrounding the incidents at the mall. This explained how easily the kidnappers had gotten away both times, without