Once Craved (a Riley Paige Mystery--Book #3) (10 page)

Her stomach knotted
with dread, Riley headed for the last part of Hank’s Derby that she needed to
investigate. After leaving the bar, she had shown Nanette’s picture around the
truck stop store, but no one there had been helpful. Now she had to see what
might be happening among the parked trucks, and she wasn’t looking forward to
it.

When she walked out
of the main building into the warm night air, she didn’t see any hookers
around. Maybe they’d been tipped off that an FBI agent was around.

Across a wide
stretch of pavement, rows of silent trucks occupied a big parking lot. Most of
the parking lot lights weren’t working and those few that were created giant
shadows. She walked slowly toward the mammoth vehicles.

Everything was very
quiet, and at first she thought maybe no one was out here after all. But as
Riley made her way between two trucks, a door to one of them swung open. A
burly man with enormous tattooed biceps climbed out and stood in her path.

“Well, who have we
got here?” he said, leering at her. “You don’t look like one of our regular
girls. Much too proper. Poor little thing, you must’ve lost your way. Maybe you’d
like me to give you a ride home.”

“I don’t think so,”
Riley said, trying to move past him.

He grabbed her by
the arm, swung her around, and pushed her backward against the truck. He leaned
forward, straddling her with his arms. She couldn’t get away. She could feel
anger rising, feeding on her deep-seated fury that men like this viewed women
as prey.

“Why not, baby?” he
said. “I guess you’re new around here and don’t know how we do things. You just
get in the truck with me. I’ll make sure you get home safe and sound. Honest.”

Without a word,
Riley rapidly lifted her knee, aiming at his groin. But he deftly parried the
blow with his own leg. He was strong, and he weighed at least twice as much as
she did.

“Oh, so you’re gonna
put up a fight, are you?” he snarled. “I like that.”

He grabbed her arms
and held her fast. His breath reeked of beer as his face craned toward her.

Riley’s anger
mutated into rage. The face she saw in front of her was no longer a drunken
trucker. She felt that she was looking into the eyes of a deeply evil man who
had held both Riley and her daughter captive. A man who had killed other women
and tormented a good friend until she killed herself. A man she recognized all
too well …

Peterson.

Riley snarled, giving
him a head-butt and then whipping out her Glock and pointing it directly at his
face.

The man in front of
her staggered backward in shock and fear.

“Hey! Hey!” he cried.
“No need for that!”

The image of
Peterson’s face faded back into that of a frightened bully.

Not a killer,
Riley told herself.
You’ve already
killed Peterson.

Her hand was
shaking. She had come very close to firing her gun—very close to killing a man
in cold blood. Slowly she lowered the gun. Now she knew that it was just the
trucker standing before her, but her anger hadn’t dissipated. She landed a
tardy blow to his crotch, using the sharp toe of her shoe instead of her knee.
He buckled over, groaning and gasping.

Her weapon was still
in her hand, and she smashed the butt of it against the back of his head. He
fell flat on his face. She put her gun back in its holster and knelt down
beside him. She grabbed him by the hair, yanking his head back. His face was
bloody.

Short of breath, she
managed to speak in a mock-kindly tone.

“I’m Agent Riley
Paige, FBI. And you’re right, I am kind of new around here, so maybe you could
help me with a little something.”

Still holding him by
the hair, she pulled out the photo and held it in front of his face.

“Did you ever see
this woman? She’d go by the name of Nanette.”

He grunted, “Huh-uh.”

She jerked on his
hair, pulling some it out by the roots. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“OK. Thanks.”

She let go of him.
He clambered unsteadily to his feet and staggered away toward the truck stop,
cursing under his breath.

Riley heard a voice
from the passenger window of the next parked truck.

“Hey, hard-ass FBI
lady.”

Riley looked up and
saw a young girl’s face peering down at her. She gave Riley a thumbs-up.

“Very dime,” she
said.

It sounded like the
kind of slang Riley might hear her own daughter use.

“I take it that’s a
good thing,” she said.

“Yeah. It means ten
on a scale of one to ten. Maybe you could give me a self-defense lesson.”

Riley rubbed her
forehead, which hurt quite a bit.

“To start with, go
with head-butts only as a last resort,” she said. Then she took a better look
at the girl.

“What’s your name?”
she asked.

“They call me
Trinda.”

The girl looked
shockingly young.

“How old are you?”
Riley asked.

“None of your
business, old lady.”

The girl who called
herself Trinda was wearing thick makeup, like a little girl trying to look like
a grown-up. But she looked like she might be April’s age.

“You’re just about
fifteen, aren’t you?” Riley said.

Trinda said nothing,
but Riley could see by her expression that she’d guessed right. Riley climbed
up onto the foothold and peered into the cab of the truck. There was a mattress
in the back of the cab with a pair of manacles on it.

“Jesus,” Riley said.
“What are you doing here?”

“What do you think I’m
doing? I’m doing what all the other girls here are doing. And you’d better bone
out of here fast. My john’s just having a beer and he’ll be back soon. He’s big
and mean, even for you.”

“Do you have any
idea what he might do to you?”

Trinda shrugged. “He
says he’s gonna pay me a hundred. He can do whatever he wants.”

Riley felt
positively sick to her stomach.

“Come with me,” she
said. “I’ll get you out of here. I’ll get you cleaned up and take you to some
decent place to live.”

Trinda sneered. “There
aren’t any decent places to live. I’ve tried them all. Look, what do you think
I should be doing instead? Flipping burgers for eight dollars an hour? On a
good night here I can pull in three hundred dollars turning tricks. And it’s
easy money—at least most of the time.”

Then with a shrug,
she added, “And when it’s not so easy—well, I’m tough. I can take it.”

Riley was almost
trembling with rage and frustration.

“You shouldn’t be
flipping burgers, and you shouldn’t be working for eight dollars an hour or three
hundred dollars a night, and you shouldn’t be here. You should be in school.”

“And going home
after school to a nice house with a loving mom and dad, right? Believe me, it’s
not an option. Look, if you’re going to get all moral like this, leave me the
fuck alone, OK? Go do your job, whatever it is. I’m sure you’ve got more
important stuff to do than hassle working girls.”

Riley pulled the
truck door open.

“I want you to come
with me,” she said.

The girl yanked the
door shut again.

“Not a chance. Do
that again and I’ll yell for help. You’ll have truck drivers all over your ass.
They’ll fucking kill you—after they do everything else they like.”

Riley had no idea of
what to do. With her Glock and her considerable fighting skills, she figured
she could handle a bunch of drunken truckers. But what good would it do to make
that kind of scene? Trinda would undoubtedly slip away in the mayhem.

Still, she realized
that there was something she could do. She walked away alongside the truck.

“Good riddance,
lady!” Trinda called out.

While Riley jotted
down the number of the license plate, Trinda yelled out again.

“Hey, if you really
want to help a kid in trouble, check over there.”

Riley looked and saw
that Trinda was pointing along the line of trucks.

“Check out the truck
at the end of the row,” she said. “You’ll find a girl named Jilly. She
really
needs help. She’s never done nothing like this before. She’s got no business
being around here.”

Trinda rolled up the
window and disappeared from view. Riley walked across the blacktop toward the
last truck.

“Jilly?” she called
out.

A small, frightened
voice called out, “What do you want?”

Riley climbed onto
the foothold and looked through the open window into the cab. Crouched on the
mattress in back was a skinny, dark-skinned girl who didn’t look older than
thirteen. She wasn’t dressed like a hooker. She was wearing sneakers, shorts,
and a T-shirt just like any girl her age. Riley was stunned.

“Are you Jilly?”
Riley asked.

The girl nodded.

“What are you doing
here?” Riley said.

“Waiting for Rex,”
the girl said in little more than a whisper.

“Who’s Rex?”

The girl said
nothing. She looked absolutely terrified.

“Who’s Rex?” Riley
said again.

“I don’t know,”
Jilly said. “But the guy at the cash register said he’d be looking for a good
time. He told me to just come out here and wait for him.”

Riley opened the
door and climbed inside the cab. “I’m getting you out of here,” she said,
offering her hand to Jilly.

“Who are you?” Jilly
said.

Riley showed her
badge. “My name is Riley. I’m an FBI agent. You’ll be safe with me. I promise.”

The girl looked straight
into Riley’s eyes. She came forward and Riley put an arm around her shoulders.
The girl was trembling.

Before they could
climb out of the truck, Riley heard a voice from below.

“Hey! Who the hell’s
in my truck!”

Riley looked down
and saw a beefy middle-aged man.

“Are you Rex?” she
said.

“Yeah, what’s it to
you?”

Riley knew she
should reach for her badge, but she couldn’t bring herself to let go of the
girl. The man saw Jilly.

“Hey, what are you
doing with this poor little thing?” he said to Riley.

“What are
you
doing with her?”

Rex’s mouth dropped
open with disbelief.

“Good God, I ain’t
doing nothing with her! She’s just a kid. Who the hell
are
you? What
kind of perverted shit are you up to?”

At that, Riley
turned partly away from the child and pulled out her badge.

“Agent Riley Paige,
FBI,” she said.

Rex smiled, looking
genuinely relieved. “Glad to hear it. We’ve got to get this girl home.”

“I’m not going home,”
Jilly said. “My dad will beat me up if I go back.”

Rex looked at Riley.
“Maybe you could drive her to Child Protective Services.”

Riley took Jilly’s
hand. They climbed down from the cab. She still didn’t know what to make of
Rex.

“I’ll do that,”
Riley said. “But Jilly said some guy told her to come here. He said that you’d
be looking for a ‘good time.’”

Rex shrugged. “Sure,
I like a little whorin’ around as much of the next man. But only with grown
women, for Chrissake, not with little girls. You get this runaway out of here.”

Riley led Jilly
toward her car, feeling more puzzled than ever. Rex seemed like a good-hearted
guy. Still, he liked his “whorin’ around.” Didn’t he understand that every
working girl around here had once been a little girl just like Jilly? The whole
thing didn’t make sense to her.

Riley got Jilly into
her car, then sat down in the driver’s seat and called the local police. She
gave them the license number she’d written down and described the truck.

“I’m at Hank’s Derby
truck stop,” she said. “The driver’s got a teenage girl. She goes by the name
of Trinda. Get here fast before he can take her anywhere. And bust him but good
for child trafficking. Throw the goddamn book at him.”

When the policewoman
on the phone agreed to send someone out, Riley said, “There’s something else I
need to know. I’ve got a juvenile with me, a fourteen-year-old who says she can’t
go home. I need the address for Child Protective Services. Or someone who will
be open right now.”

The policewoman gave
Riley the address of an emergency shelter in downtown Phoenix. “I’ll call and
tell them you’re coming,” she said.

Riley turned to
Jilly, who was looking up at her with a worried expression.

“Fasten your seat
belt,” Riley said. “I’m going to take you to someone who can help you out.”