The Girl and the Unlucky 13 (Emma Griffin™ FBI Mystery) A.J. Rivers (historical books to read TXT) 📖

say. “But she was. The night she went missing, she was here. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. That’s why I’m here. I want to know if there’s any chance you still have the security footage from that night. August thirteenth. I know it was five years ago.”

“Fortunately, our security system automatically uploads to the cloud,” Shane says, turning to a computer on the other side of him. “Everything is supposed to be kept there for five years. So, it looks as if you came in right under the wire. You said August thirteenth?”

“Yes,” I confirm.

“Kind of an appropriate date,” he remarks.

“She was also born on the thirteenth, but of June,” I say. “Superstitious people are having a field day with it.”

“I can imagine,” Sandra says.

“What timeframe do you want to see?” Shane asks.

“I’m not sure exactly. If you could just give me from around six until midnight, that would be great.”

“Give me just a minute.”

I watch as he isolates the portion of the security footage from those hours and cuts them from the rest so he can give me a copy of just the footage from that period. I give him my email address and he sends it through.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “This could make a really big difference in the case.”

“You have a long night of watching footage ahead of you,” Sandra says.

“Maybe. But I know exactly what I’m looking for. Hopefully, it won’t be hard to spot.”

I leave the security office and make my way back through the hospital. It’s getting on toward evening, so I order dinner to pick up at a restaurant close to the hotel. I send a text to Dean to let him know, but he doesn’t respond immediately. After picking up the food, I go straight to my room and change into comfortable clothes to settle in for my cyber stakeout.

Opening the email Shane sent, I realize there is more footage than I expected. He didn’t just send the perspective of the camera inside the waiting room. The same several hours were captured on other cameras positioned outside the entrance and in the parking lot.

I start with the camera at the entrance.

Almost an hour later, I’m deep in my dinner and still scrolling through footage when the electronic lock on my door clicks and Dean, Xavier, and Ava come in. I gesture toward the table near the window.

“There’s food,” I tell them. “I just kind of ordered everything. Did you find out anything?”

Dean goes to the table and starts filling a paper plate with a roast beef sandwich, seasoned fries, and mozzarella sticks. This is the kind of meal that’s going to earn him several hours in the gym. I’ll be right there alongside him, so I know what he’s thinking as he pops one of the deliciously orange coils of potato in his mouth and adds a drizzle of barbecue sauce to the edge of the plate.

Worth it.

“There wasn’t a huge amount to find out,” he sighs, carrying the food over to the couch where I’m sitting. “They did get the results of the DNA test. It is definitely Ashley. The rest of the test results were fairly predictable. Malnutrition. Some lingering effects of abuse and what you would expect to see in a long-term captivity situation.”

“Signs of sexual abuse?” I ask.

Dean nods. “Evidence of repeated rapes. No sign of her ever having been pregnant, though.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Why?” Ava asks.

“Most predators don’t think to use birth control methods with their victims,” I explain. “Unless there is a physiological reason Ashley can’t get pregnant, the chances of her not getting pregnant over the course of five years of abuse are very slim. That means birth control was done intentionally. That sets her apart from other kidnappings that are similar in other ways.”

“Jaycee Dugard. Elizabeth Smart,” Dean says.

I nod. “Exactly. Those girls were taken by men who considered them as extensions of their families. Wives, in a way. They were thought of as a way to expand the family. In situations like that, pregnancies are welcome, if not directly intentional. The children are even brought out into the world and treated well by the men who hold their mothers captive. But that’s not what happened with Ashley.

“She wasn’t brought in as a wife figure or a way to grow a family. That takes away a lot of the religious or cult undertones as well. The evidence of the sexual abuse isn’t surprising, but from what I’ve seen of her, it didn’t look as if she was tortured. Mistreated, yes, but this wasn’t sadism.”

“No,” Dean says. “There isn’t evidence of that kind of treatment. One thing they did note was there aren’t any deep scars on her wrists or ankles. Which means she wasn’t chained up for the majority of the time she was there.”

“Or they used soft restraints that wouldn’t cut into her skin,” I counter. “Which would mean they didn’t want to leave marks. Combined with the use of birth control, that tells me she wasn’t just being kept by this man she calls Wolf. He was using her as a commodity.”

“Trafficking?” Dean asks.

I give an unconvinced shrug. “It’s possible, but it doesn’t seem as if she was taken from place to place much. She would have mentioned that. And she didn’t mention any other girls, so she wasn’t in a brothel. This is a more focused situation. Just about her.”

“Boutique exploitation,” Dean mutters.

“We just need to figure out what kind, and by who,” I say.

“What did you find out at the hospital?” Xavier asks, settling onto the floor with his own plate.

“They had the security footage from five years ago,” I tell him. “I’m still going through it.”

“Let’s see it,” Dean says.

“Movie night!” Xavier says.

He scoots closer to the table and I turn the computer around so everyone can see the screen.

“I haven’t seen anything yet that has anything to do with Ashley. But I still have several hours of footage to go through, so it might be a little