Chasing Thunder (10 page)

“We are not the enemy, M.J.”

She scoffed and Snake finally stepped in. “There. You wanted to ask her a question and you did. Is there anything else we can do for you this fine morning, Officer?”

Officer Landers glanced between the two of them. He knew his long shot had officially become a dead end. He offered his card. “If you see her, tell her to call me.”

M.J. didn’t lift a finger. “I know the number.”

His lips thinned into a tight line as he pocketed his card. With a salute, he trotted off the porch and toward his unmarked car. They watched him drive away, and Snake glanced down at her. “Maybe you should fill me in on what’s going on.”

She shook her head and headed back into the house. “I already told you. The less you know, the better. You’re a respectable citizen now.”

“M.J.,” he started, but she had already disappeared down the hall to wake Baby.

When Baby emerged a half hour later, she wore some cast-off clothes from Kid, including a T-shirt and athletic shorts with an elastic waistband. Her outfit still swallowed her whole, but she looked more like a suburban skater girl than a homeless runaway. Though Kid topped her ensemble off with a knit cap, M.J.’s first stop with her new young friend was the hair salon. When Baby suggested that she change her hair color from its striking platinum to a gothic black, M.J. immediately understood that this girl knew full well how much danger she was in. That was why she had offered neither information nor resistance when M.J. rode to her rescue. Nowhere she could go would be any safer.

The hairstylist put sapphire-blue highlights in her new shorter and darker ’do. Baby offered M.J. a shy smile. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

“No worries,” M.J. dismissed the notion. She paid the stylist and led Baby back out to the truck that Snake had let her borrow for the day.

“Seriously,” Baby insisted as she climbed in the cab. “Maybe I could do small jobs around the house or something. I want to earn my keep.”

M.J. smirked. “You mean you’ll do anything not to be sent home.”

Baby didn’t even blink. “That too.”

M.J. met her gaze. “No worries,” she reiterated. She didn’t say anything else the twenty minutes or so it took them to pull into the Galleria parking lot. Baby followed her into the three-story building without question. From her new name to her new hairdo, Baby was ready to turn into a new person. She felt she would owe M.J. forever for the kindnesses bestowed, especially after they hit the third store and walked out with three more bags. All she had to do was try something on and M.J. would whip out a credit card to pay for it.

When they stopped for lunch at the food court, Baby could hide her curiosity no longer. “How can you afford all this?”

M.J. finished off a wonton. “I won the lottery.”

Her eyes widened. “Seriously?”

M.J. chuckled. “No, not seriously.” Then, more reluctantly, “I own a bike shop.”

Baby lit up. “That’s perfect! I can work for you. To pay you back for everything.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Baby.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “Nothing comes for free in this world. I want to pay my own way.”

M.J. considered her for a moment. It was far too dangerous to put her out in the open anywhere, much less at Wyndryder. But she did look like a brand-new girl, far removed from the blonde stray she’d rescued only the night before. “We’ll figure something out,” she promised as she gathered her trash. “There’s still shopping to be done and we’re burning daylight.”

True to her word, they scoured every inch of that mall. Their first priority was purchasing the essentials, but M.J. didn’t stop there. If Baby showed interest in anything, from knickknacks to books, M.J. would sneak it into the mix. This included a brand-new sketchbook and a set of pencils.

“You draw?”

Baby shrugged. “Doodle, mostly. It’s not like I could make any money doing it.”

M.J. mirrored her shrug. “Maybe, maybe not. But you could do something important with it, and that means a lot more than something as incidental as money.”

The sun had set by the time they returned to Snake’s house, carrying enough bags to set Baby up with a whole new wardrobe and accessories thrown in for good measure. In an effort to bury Haley Roberts for good, Baby had opted for more alternative clothes and makeup, the complete opposite of the more conservative persona she’d been groomed from birth to adopt. Her look was still modest, since Baby still didn’t want to attract any kind of sexual attention, but it shaded her as a bolder, tougher goth chick that fit in with her new biker friends.

M.J. didn’t try to influence any of her choices, allowing her to pick what items she liked, not what M.J. thought she should wear. Though in the end, it was M.J. herself that Baby modeled herself after. She wanted to be feminine but tough, so she modeled her punk look after the biker chick at her side.

Snake was taken aback when she entered the kitchen to model one of her new outfits. His eyebrow rose as he glanced at M.J.. “Looks like a whole new girl.”

“Or,” M.J. corrected as she put her hands on Baby’s shoulders, “maybe this is just who she really is.”

“I picked out all my clothes. I’ve actually wanted to dress like this for years,” Baby began, but then she trailed off, as if she had said too much.

Neither Snake nor M.J. pursued the conversation. Instead, Snake lifted a big plate of raw meat. “Well, whoever you are, I hope you brought your appetite. The grill is fired up and you are an hour away from the best barbecue this side of Memphis.”

Baby brightened. “Can I help?”

“Absolutely.” He grinned as he led her toward the back door. “But if you want to sacrifice a goat, you’re on your own time.”

She giggled and followed him outside. M.J. glanced at her watch. Time was not on her side. She took the steps to the upstairs loft two at a time.

Kid opened the door to his room. Its dark walls were covered with posters and guitars. He pulled his earphones down to his neck. “I didn’t know you were back.”

“I’m actually on my way back out again. Just tell Snake I’ll be back late.”

“Why can’t you tell him?”

“Because he’ll try to talk me out of it,” she answered simply.

Kid eyed her suspiciously. She obviously wanted something. After a moment, she slid the missing piece into place. “I need you to do me a favor. Just between us.”

“Okay,” he said. She was the only person he knew who treated him like an adult, so he usually accommodated her. Generally it involved computer hacking, but this time she had a different request.

“I need you to get some information out of Baby.”

“What kind of information?”

“I need to know who she was with when she got to L.A., and why she isn’t with them now.”

He seemed surprised by the unusual request. “Is that all?”

“For now,” she answered over her shoulder as she headed back down the stairs.

5. THE SEEKER

D
etective Harry Landers refilled his mug of thick black coffee. The thicker the better, as far as he was concerned. He knew he was about to pull another all-nighter. There had been so many lately, he was unable to remember the last time he’d slept in his own bed. But that was the job. And it was one he genuinely loved most of the time, the last four months notwithstanding.

February 21. The date was embedded in his brain. He had been a homicide cop for almost twenty years. In that time he had seen things that would have brought a normal man to his knees. But before February 21, he could walk right from a crime scene to a restaurant and wolf down a three-course meal. He could sleep at night with nary a nightmare. He could look himself in the mirror with nary a regret.

That was before he’d seen the first victim of these newest, and thus far unsolved, murder cases. At thirteen, she had been barely old enough to begin to sexually mature. But that didn’t stop this faceless, unknown monster from taking her apart, piece by piece, starting with her genitals.

He still fought the gag reflex when he thought about it. He saw the scene whenever he closed his eyes. She’d been strewn like garbage in the Angeles National Forest. It was a gruesome scene that had been stumbled upon by a couple of hikers who had gone off-trail. Unfortunately for all of them, it looked like it had been lifted right from a horror movie: the flies, the smell, the dried blood and rotting skin of scattered, nearly unidentifiable body parts. It had taken days to recover all the evidence.

That evidence painted a disturbing picture. She had been no more than a child, but no one came forward to claim her. They did all the composites and ran a computer-generated image showing their Jane Doe alive and well, with her bright blonde hair and smiling, wide blue eyes, which ran nearly twenty-four seven on news stations across the country. Yet no one claimed her. They scoured all the databases, but she remained unidentified for months, well after a second victim was discovered, this time on a rocky stretch of deserted beach in Malibu. They didn’t get their first breakthrough until the third victim, whose identifiable birthmark traced her back to an abduction in Norway, where the twelve-year-old had gone missing on her way to school.

The case had received a lot of attention at the time, because her wealthy parents had significant political influence. Local law enforcement peeled back each layer of evidence. According to emails and chat records found on her computer and in her discarded phone, she had been approached and wooed by a stranger who sympathized with her struggle against her oppressive parents. He had promised to rescue her and give her the life of her dreams. Yet as they pursued the lead, it became clear that nothing he’d told the girl had been true, and the photo he had used was a stock photo from the United States. The name had been an alias, one that had already hit Interpol’s radar as belonging to a potential sex trafficker who serviced his clientele with teenaged blondes with blue eyes.

The targets appeared fresh faced, wholesome, and innocent. What he had in mind for them was anything but. It was a striking juxtaposition.

That was when they had finally pinpointed that the killer was targeting sex workers, teen sex workers in particular. After that, they were able to identify their first Jane Doe, who had been sold into slavery by her parents. And not in some faraway country, either, but right here at home in Tennessee.

Whether the killer was the same trafficker or not remained unclear. What
was
clear was that he was on a mission to punish those wholesome girls working the sex trade. These victims were sex slaves, teen girls plucked from all around the world and sold against their will on the black market. It had opened their investigation up to the disturbing reality of sex trafficking, which didn’t make it any easier for Landers to sleep at night, two doors down from his own twin teenage daughters.

He had enough baggage under his eyes to set off on a trek around the world, and many nights he wished he could do exactly that.

He walked to his office, coffee in hand, prepared for another long night. Detective Kelly Harris met him at the door. “He’s here,” the younger officer said, and Landers nodded.

“Show him in.”

Landers rounded his desk, which was overrun with paperwork, and which Detective Harris had tried to make sense of exactly once before he’d thrown his hands up in frustration. They worked off of each other, a bit like the Odd Couple. Harris was his partner and a hell of a good kid, but they were exact opposites. While Landers enjoyed his bacon and his donuts, Harris spent two hours a day at the gym, always training to be at the top of his form.

Even at twenty-seven, he had already received commendations for his work, because he lived and breathed the job. He was a firecracker who channeled all his energy into what he considered a higher calling. Landers was able to leave the job at work, mostly, by the time he clocked out at the end of the day. He had a wife and kids, a mortgage, and a timeshare in Florida. But not Harris. He was there early and left late, especially after the first teen slaying in February.

So it was Harris who took the call when the feds decided to get involved. It was an election year, and lawmakers across the country wanted to use this unsolved, disturbing case as an example of a broken system that failed to keep citizens safe. It didn’t hurt that the victims were all white, young, and Caucasian, mirroring daughters all across Middle America. Intentionally or not, the killer was definitely making a statement about the consequences that arise from the perversion of innocence, which fit neatly in bumper-sticker slogans. This made their local case a story that had captured the nation, which meant all of them were now under the microscope, with powerful people around the globe breathing down their necks to get this monster off the streets.

Just one mistake, one overlooked clue that led to one more senseless murder, and their failure would be broadcast around the world.

And now M.J. Bennett was involved, he thought, rolling his eyes. That was all he needed, but he supposed it was inevitable. M.J. had been helping street kids for years, fighting the sex trade on the front lines from the inside out by literally freeing these slaves from their masters and sending them somewhere else. Somewhere safe.