Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) (25 page)

Chapter 48

I
t is cold . . . and the moon is angry.

The ancient light shines down on the girls bunched on the street corners. Long colt legs in platform heels. Glassy-eyed with drugs. Lost children, coerced and sold by men who do not even think of them as human.

On the street, the cars slow, drivers eyeing the merchandise. Product. Cattle. Slaves.

But tonight another hunter is cruising.

Tonight there will be a price to pay.

Tonight the moon will have her vengeance.

Chapter 49

T
he agents had been sitting in the dark rig for what felt like a lifetime, gazing through the drifting fog and watching the shadows of four women as they worked the truck stop, responding to the flashing of lights. Stick figures in short skirts, backpacks slung over their shoulders, slumped with the weariness of abuse: drug abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, life abuse.

Roarke felt ill, soul-sick. Whatever the scene said about the essence of humanity, it wasn’t good.

But so far none of the women appeared to be under the obvious coercion of a pimp. So far none of them looked underage. So the agents watched, and they waited, as the swelling moon rose above the drifting fog and the occasional flash of lights.

After a while Epps spoke again.

“Does that girl Becca have something to do with Jade?” he asked, his voice sounding raw. “Is all of this tied in together, somehow? Was Jade abducted, like Sarah Jane?”

Or like Shauna? So many girls . . .

Roarke half-shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“But Lindstrom told Becca to wait for you.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s the cement plant again, isn’t it? She’s bringing us into it, bringing
you
into it, just like before.”

It was what Snyder had said. That Cara had some kind of plan, some form of the bust of the cement plant in the desert, the victims rescued there. Once again, she wanted them, or him, involved. The fact that local law enforcement was obviously not making a dent in the trafficking problem made it even more likely that she would apply her own solution.

Epps was watching Roarke. “You thinking another trafficking ring? That Cara wants us to bust?”

Is that it? Is that the whole plan? Is there a ring she saw while on the road and meant to get around to, before she was distracted by the Reaper and held up for a time in jail?

“Maybe,” he said aloud. “It is our job.”

“And I’m just so happy that Cara Lindstrom is being so helpful,” Epps said bitterly.

But Roarke was thinking on it. The light penalties for trafficking were a major reason the sex trade was burgeoning.

He spoke into the dark. “Every time the Bureau takes on one of these trafficking situations and makes a case for Federal prosecution, it puts the traffickers away for longer.” In the case of the cement plant, instead of six-year sentences in the state system, the men Roarke and Epps had arrested were looking at fifty-year prison terms. And every case that ended in a stiffer sentence made it less appealing for gangs and rogue criminals to get into the business.

Epps was shaking his head in the dark. “You really think her head is any way straight enough to plan like that?”

He had a point. Cara didn’t think like a lawyer. But she always had a purpose. They had been brought here, lured, even, and Roarke was increasingly unsettled about it.

“I don’t know,” he said. He looked out the truck window, out at the rising moon.

Becca’s story. Shauna’s story. Jade’s story.
Sarah Jane’s story.
They all ran together in his head, a vast, polluted river.

He swiveled in the chair to look at the lot outside. He watched through the windshield of the rig as another truck flashed lights and one of the prostitutes teetered through the fog toward the cab.

“Do you know how many active serial killers there are out there in the US at any given time?” he asked.

Epps looked at him, frowned. “No idea.”

“When I was in the BAU, the number we estimated was between thirty-five and a hundred.”

“In the whole US?” Epps said.

“Right.” Roarke looked out at the rows of trucks. “How many of
these
guys do you think there are out there right now? Leon Jonas? DeShawn Butler? Danny Ramirez? Not to mention whole gangs? Selling kids like that?”

A wary look crossed Epps’ face. “I don’t know. Thousands. Tens of thousands. A shitload.”

“Right,” Roarke said.

Epps leaned forward urgently. “But we get them the only way we can get them. With the law.”

“Tens of thousands,” Roarke said flatly. “Hundreds of thousands.”

“And every
one
we get counts,” Epps said.

Roarke didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Epps studied him, and his expression was worried. “Why don’t you take the bed? Get a few z’s. I’ll watch.”

Roarke shook his head and stood, felt the numbness in his legs. “What I need is some air.” Before Epps could protest, he added, “Just across the lot to the diner.”

Epps started to say something, then shook his head. “Watch yourself.”

“Want anything?”

“Vodka,” Epps said.

“Yeah,” Roarke said. “I’ll work on that.”

He didn’t go toward the diner. He circled the truck, to the back of it where Epps couldn’t watch him, and walked out into the field where Becca had run to hide after Cara cut the trucker’s throat.

Moonlight spilled over low, leafy rows of some vegetable that looked a lot bigger actually growing out of the ground than it did in a supermarket. Artichoke, maybe. It had a rich, loamy smell. Above him, the moon was icy and very white. He’d Googled the name for the December full moon.

Cold Moon.

And it was.

What are we doing here?

But he knew, had known all along. If this was where Cara was, then that was where he had to be.

Beautiful, deadly Cara.

He looked up at the cold moon and felt the same dread and longing he always felt, imagining her. Without thinking, he spoke to her in his mind.

Just come. Make it now. Let’s end this, one way or another.

“
I’m so tired,” he said aloud into the moonlit dark.

He felt a presence behind him and closed his eyes briefly, then opened them.

He turned . . . and saw a female shadow. His heart stopped.

“Lookin’ for a party?” the shadow asked. Her words were slurred, and Roarke took her in quickly. Halter top, a pale roll of belly fat spilling over too-tight jeans, wedge heels. A commercial lady. Not a minor. But he thought she might do anyway.

“Sure,” he said, through the sudden race of his pulse. “Rig’s right over there.”

She took his arm and leaned against him coyly, wobbling from the heels and the drugs, as he walked her through the leafy ground crop, over uneven dirt toward the truck.

They stopped beside the metal wall of the rig, and he opened the passenger door and climbed up on the runner to help her. She swayed as she mounted the step, and
he reached out to take her arm.

He caught the metallic smell of meth as she stumbled past him into the cab—and then she stopped still, seeing Epps sitting on the bed. “Uh-uh. No way,” she muttered, and started to scramble back out of the truck. Roarke didn’t know if she was objecting to two on one, or to Epps’ race, but he blocked the door, trapping her.

“Take it easy. We’re FBI.” Before she could freak out more, he added quickly, “You’re not under arrest. We just want to talk. You get full price.”

He showed his credentials, which had no apparent effect on her, then he pulled out his wallet and showed her a hundred-dollar bill, far more than full price. Now she nodded warily.

“Have a seat.”

She dropped heavily into the passenger seat, which swiveled under the sudden weight. She had to dig her heels into the floor of the cab to steady herself.

Roarke leaned against the cab wall and studied her in the dim light from outside. She was both twitchy and spacy, stoned on probably a mix of chemicals, and definitely not a kid, a worn woman of probably thirty who looked much closer to fifty.

“Where are you from?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “Here.”

“Salinas?”

“Yeah.
Here
.”

“Been working this stop long?”

She gave him a flat stare. “Long enough.”

“What about last night? Were you here?”

“My kid was sick.”

Roarke and Epps exchanged a quick glance.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Roarke said, not entirely meaning the illness. “Would you say you know the regular girls here?”

“I guess.”

“You seen any new ones recently? Young ones?”

She gave him a narrowed look but said nothing. Roarke tried for a neutral tone. “I’m talking about girls who aren’t working on their own. Brought here by pimps.”

“Yeah . . .”

“‘Yeah’ as in you
have
seen some young new girls?”

She looked out the window beside her. “You see a young one for a few days, then they’re gone and there’s another one. Been happening for a while now.”

Roarke felt the pull of significance. “How many have you seen?”

She shifted in her seat. “I don’t get you.”

“In the last month, how many young ones have you seen?”

She looked momentarily . . .
angry
? Roarke wasn’t sure. Then she shrugged. “Five, six.”

Epps leaned forward and showed her a mug shot of Leon Jonas. “Have you seen this man before?”

She struggled to focus through her drug haze as she looked down at the photo. Then shook her head. “Don’t think so.”

Epps sat back. “So the pimping out of these younger girls: Is it a gang thing?”

“The gangs do it.” She nodded to the mug shot of Leon Jonas in his hand. “Guys like that do it. Who doesn’t do it? What’s your point?”

Roarke looked at her and had no answer. “Have you ever seen this girl?” He showed her the MISSING flyer, shone his camera phone flashlight on it so she could see the photo of Sarah Jane. The woman looked down at the photo, glanced back up at Roarke, then looked back down at the photo, nodding slowly.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I seen her.”

Roarke’s pulse spiked. “Where?”

“The Stop Inn. Motel ’crost the freeway. I stay there sometimes. When I got enough together.”

Epps reached over and took the flyer, held it up in front of her again. “
This
girl. This is the one you saw.”

“I don’t know. I think.” She glanced at Roarke again. “A young one looked like that.”

Roarke looked at Epps. “How do we hook up?” he asked the woman.

“Backdoor,” she said. It was the name of an “adult classifieds” website. The woman caught the glance between the two agents. “You guys never hooked up before?” she asked cynically. “Go to the Salinas page. Any action at the motel gets listed under Ninety-Ninth and California.”

Roarke handed over the hundred. She looked down at the bill, then at him. “Right,” she said, and he had no idea what she meant. She stood abruptly and brushed past him as she exited the truck, dropping from the runner. Her feet hit the ground heavily, and she staggered off.

When she was gone, the agents looked at each other in the dark cab. Epps was already shaking his head. “You know she just made the ID to get the money.”

Part of Roarke knew it was true. Probably.

“Straight up—what do we think’s going to happen?” Epps asked. “We show up to the no-tell and we’re just going to find the girl on the flyer? Does any of this have a snowball’s chance of being Cara’s doing? And what about Jade?”

Roarke didn’t answer, just looked down at the MISSING flyer on the console, at Sarah Jane Jennings’ smiling face . . .

Epps sighed. “Right.” He reached for the iPad and typed in Backdoor.com.

Chapter 50

S
he cruises the long blocks of International Boulevard in the stolen Toyota, past liquor stores and run-down motels, auto repair shops, Latin grocery stores and Mexican food dives, and of course the taco trucks, the gleaming aluminum trailers parked in almost every street-corner parking lot, and every one with a group of men congregated in front, starkly lit by the sodium lights. Bleak scenes in the black-and-white of night.

The towering shadows of palm fronds loom above the street. There are large crepe-paper flowers tied to the tree trunks and streetlamps, possibly left over from a
Dia de los Muertos
celebration, a forlorn attempt at festivity in the stark surroundings. Clumps of young men in baggy pants with baseball caps turned backward hang on every other corner.

And the girls walk the streets. Some in jeans and backpacks, as camouflage, looking marginally like students—though what kind of student would be walking this strip at night is another story. Other girls are unmistakable: long and leggy in fetish shoes and micro skirts, with fake eyelashes thick enough that she can see them from the car. The ones on the corners stare straight into her windshield, a practiced laser come-on.

They are young. There has been not one she has seen who looks over twenty. Many are much younger. They stagger on their four-inch platforms; their developing bodies have nothing like the strength required to make that walk look effortless.

The presence of
It
is overpowering in this cesspool. She can barely breathe from the rankness. It slithers between the cars, lurks around every corner, crouches in the Escalades and SUVs where the pimps
watch the girls on the corners from their tinted windows. Her body stiffens in revulsion as she passes them. The moon is high and the urge is strong to stop, to put an end to their business on the spot.

So many. It should be torched. Razed. Destroyed for all time.

Every girl she has seen so far is Latina or African American or some mix of the two. The flaming girl will be easy to spot. It is a good reason for the girl not to be here at all, and she knows the girl is not stupid.

For the same reason it is dangerous for Cara to be here herself. She has done her best: dressed in layers, with the top layer an anonymous hoodie and loose sweatpants; darkened her skin tone with makeup; lined her eyes; concealed her blond hair under a brown wig tucked into a hat. Even so, she stands out on this street, and while Roarke is for the moment safely out of the way, if any of his people are on stakeout, she will be easily recognized, out in the night.

But this is where she must be. It was clear in the cards. So she drives on.