Livia Lone (Livia Lone #1)(39)

He tore a paper towel from the dispenser and handed it to her. While she wiped her face and sniffled, he reached for her shoulder. She jerked back.

Instantly he raised his hands, palms up. “I’m sorry, honey.”

She shook her head. She hadn’t sensed he was going to touch her in a bad way. But . . . she didn’t like being touched anymore. By men, especially.

She wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, because what he had done for Nason was so nice, so good. But there was no way to explain. She shook her head and said, “No, no, I’m sorry.”

The way he was looking at her . . . she had the strangest sense that maybe he knew. Or knew enough. Even without her telling.

“It’s okay,” he said. “And you don’t have one thing to be sorry for, do you understand? Not one.”

She nodded and wiped her eyes. “Did the special police you know . . . did anyone . . .”

He shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, there’s not a lot to go on, and no one has been able to find anything. But I’m not going to give up. And I won’t let anyone else, either.”

“What about the men who took us? The Thai men? I described them all to the people from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.” She pronounced the unfamiliar words carefully.

“As I understand it, that’s a dead end. No one knows who the men are or how to find them. I know the police have your description, and if they catch anyone who looks like that, they’ll be questioned very closely.”

“Will you tell me if that happens?”

“Of course.”

She pursed her lips, frustrated. To be right here, able to ask a Portland police officer, and still not find anything useful . . . it was maddening.

“What about the men on the boat? The boat from Portland. How did the police even know there were smuggled people on it?”

“That’s funny, I had the same question. I asked around. Word is, it was an anonymous call to Chief Emmanuel of Llewellyn PD. Seems like a rival gang dropped a dime.”

“Dropped a dime?”

“An expression. It refers to the days when public phones only cost a dime. Someone wanting to turn someone in would use a public phone so the call couldn’t be traced. So ‘drop a dime’ came to mean an anonymous tip to the police.”

“Why would someone do that?”

“Could be a lot of reasons. A business rival, disrupting someone else’s shipment. Payback for something. Maybe something else personal. Hard to say. The caller had specific information about the barge and the timing. Llewellyn PD doesn’t have much experience with people smuggling, so they called INS. There must have been a lot of cops and agents on the dock the day they rescued you.”

She nodded. “I heard the police killed two of the smugglers. But that they caught one. Maybe he knows something?”

Rick smiled. “You have good cop instincts, you know that? And yes, you heard right, two of them died in a gunfight when the police rescued you. But no, the third guy’s not talking. Says his dead brother handled all the logistics—the communications, the contacts with people who hired them. He says he didn’t know anything, didn’t even know you were all kidnapped.”

“He’s a liar.”

“I know. And I wish there were a way to prove it. The AUSA—that’s the Assistant United States Attorney, the federal prosecutor, the person responsible for putting people in prison when they commit federal crimes like kidnapping and people smuggling—the AUSA threatened him with a lot of prison time if he wouldn’t talk. But the guy still claimed to know nothing.”

“So they’ll put him in prison for a long time?”

“Twenty years. Maybe less, with time off for good behavior.”

She thought of Nason. “That doesn’t sound like so long.”

“No, you’re right. In a just world, it would be longer.”

“And . . . does anyone know who the other people on the boat were? Where they came from? The boat from Thailand had thirteen children. But when I woke up, it was a new boat, and the Thai children were gone and all the other people were new. They spoke languages I didn’t know.”

“This guy they caught, Timothy Tyler—goes by ‘Weed,’ by the way—he says he doesn’t know where you all came from, or who provided you. And he’s stuck to that story. The others were from a lot of different places—China, Guatemala, Sri Lanka—a mix.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it’s hard to say. It could mean a lot of things. But in general, it means Weed’s gang or whoever hired them thought they had a willing buyer, or buyers, somewhere as far east of Portland as Llewellyn. And maybe farther east. Modern-day slavery is all over the place. Not just Portland, not just Llewellyn. Everywhere.”

“Who was going to buy us?”

“No way to know at this point. Could have been a nail salon, agricultural interests . . . or some sick homeowner, who wanted a maid he didn’t have to pay or account for.”

“But the children on the boat. Me, and the two who died. They were going to sell us, too?”

“Yeah. People buy children, too, I’m sorry to say. I think you can imagine why.”

She didn’t have to imagine. She knew. And Rick probably knew she knew, but was too respectful to say so.