Forgive Me(66)

If lip biting were an Olympic sport, Angie would have medaled. She forced herself to end the call on friendly terms. She didn’t think the scant police response was proof of a Thin Blue Discount, but it sure it made easy to speculate.

She radioed Mike to vent. Her conversation got cut short when her phone rang.

The call came up with a Maryland area code, but it wasn’t a number Angie recognized, and that included the burner phone number she had committed to memory. She answered the call with a little flitter in her heart.

“This is Angie.”

A whispered voice answered back. “My name is Nadine Jessup. I think you’re looking for me.”





CHAPTER 34



In light traffic, the FBI headquarters on Lord Baltimore Drive was twenty-five minutes from the apartment building where Nadine Jessup was being held. It was a square brick structure indistinct as any office park building. Angie and Mike were given special passes and taken to a conference room on the third floor, where a special planning session was already in progress.

Nadine had told Angie some of the girls were foreigners. “You have to come soon. Tasha might be dead down there for all I know,” she had said, confirming what Angie already suspected. Tasha, the girl down in the hole (Nadine’s label for it) was the same girl who’d taken the phone from Mike.

“You have to help her,” Nadine had pleaded.

Human trafficking was a federal crime. The FBI would act, and Angie couldn’t be confident that the local PD would. Things were moving forward with haste, as they should have been all along.

Normally, the FBI would have thanked Angie for her service and sent her on her way. But Nadine was scared, understandably so, and would only talk to Angie. In turn, Angie requested Mike’s presence and so there they were.

A lot had happened in the four hours since Nadine’s initial phone call. A tactical team had been assembled, various warrants were being expedited, and plans were hatching with urgency. Everything moved quickly—a girl’s life was in danger. Angie had infrequent contact with Nadine since the initial phone call that set all this in motion. Nadine spoke in a whispered voice and often went silent abruptly when it was no longer safe to talk. For this reason, Angie kept her phone in her hand at all times, unsure when Nadine would have the chance to call again. Everyone here was waiting for the phone to ring again.

Every seat around the massive conference table was taken, leaving standing room only for more than twenty people from various agencies who had crammed into the room, including a team from the U.S. Marshals Service who’d arrived about a half hour ago.

Another late arrival was Terrance Hill. An assistant state’s attorney in Baltimore County and the current head of the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force, he had a kind face for managing such an unkind job and appeared to have the ear of Barbara Curtis, a seasoned FBI agent who headed the FBI’s arm of the task force. In her fifties, Curtis had short hair, a thin build, and could have easily been a friend of Angie’s mother. Instead, she was organizing the entire tactical response.

Introductions were made and various roles explained. Angie and Mike’s stakeout had proved useful, providing images of all four suspects.

“We ran photographs of the suspects through the NCIC, our National Crime Information Computer,” Agent Curtis said. “Ramon Gutierrez, who goes by the alias Buggy, came up wanted on a federal drug offense. We’ve brought the marshals in on our operation as a courtesy.”

Bryce Taggart made an awkward wave to the agents seated around the table. The Bureau was interested in sex trafficking, not drug offenders. The marshals had a fugitive interest in this operation and he said as much. “We have one dog to put back in the pound, you guys got at least three.” Bryce understood the concern that the marshals might get in the way. Nadine couldn’t care less about roles and responsibilities. She just wanted out.

Angie’s phone rang. She answered immediately. “Nadine?”

“It’s me.”

“You’re on speakerphone,” Angie said. “I can take you off speaker if you want. There are a lot of people here who want to help you.”

“No, no. Don’t leave me. Just get here soon.”

“Can we get a room layout from you, Nadine?” Agent Curtis asked. She enunciatied her words as though suggesting each one mattered.

“Who . . . who was that?” Nadine asked.

Barbara Curtis rose from her seat, giving Angie a good look at the black suit and grey shirt she wore. She strode to the front of the room, put her hands on the table, and leaned her body over Angie’s phone as if it was an intercom. “Nadine, my name is Special Agent Barbara Curtis and I’m with the FBI’s—”

Inwardly, Angie cringed. Nadine might not even understand what she was involved in, or what human trafficking meant.

“I’m with the FBI,” Agent Curtis repeated. “I’m organizing the group that’s going to help get you out of there. We need some information if you can provide it.”

“I can try. What do you need?”

For the next several minutes Nadine did her best to describe the layout of various floors. Angie got a good visual of a maze of makeshift rooms in the basement constructed out of cheap particleboard. Her heart broke for Nadine. Getting her out safely was only half the battle. The road to recovery from her ordeal would be a long one, and might last a lifetime.