Forgive Me(72)

But where was the wall? Damn this darkness. Bryce held a breath and gave a listen. A scraping noise sounded not too far away. Bryce guessed fifty feet, but it was hard to gauge distance by sound alone.

Imagine their movements as if they were your own.

Bryce took the advice to heart as he played out a scenario in his mind. For a moment, he became Buggy down in the hole with his back against the wall, both figuratively and literally.

Bryce had only a general idea of Buggy’s location, but he came up with a way to pinpoint it exactly. In one hand, Bryce held his Glock, and his flashlight in the other. He rocked his body and rolled onto his back, then onto his stomach, then onto his back once more. His momentum began to pick up. Rocks bit at his flesh, then released, then bit again. As he rolled, Bryce powered on his flashlight and sent it spinning in the opposite direction.

The rolling flashlight was bait, nothing more. Bryce stopped rolling, but the world kept spinning. In the dark it was hard to regain equilibrium. Hopefully, Buggy’s addled brain would think Bryce was still on the move.

Sure enough a shot rang out, aimed at the rolling flashlight. Bryce did not hesitate. He fired where he saw the flash of gunfire. A groaning sound told Bryce his aim had been true.

“Are you done shooting, Buggy?”

A second groan.

“I’m not taking chances. You toss that gun where I can see it.”

Bryce rolled toward the flashlight. He heard a noise, a thud. A gun, perhaps?

Bryce retrieved the flashlight and directed the beam where he heard that thud. The outline was distinct enough for Bryce to make out the shape of a gun. He trained his beam on Buggy. His back, indeed, was against the wall, clutching his leg, taking in short and shallow breaths. Buggy’s face was smeared with dirt turned muddy from his sweat. Bryce crawled toward Buggy, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other, his finger never leaving the trigger of his Glock. Buggy’s face was filled with panic. The bleeding was brisk.

“I need a doctor,” Buggy said, clutching his wound.

“Better that than a mortician,” Bryce said. In the cramped quarters, Bryce managed to take out a pair of TUFF-TIES, the best nylon restraints on the market. Buggy cried out when Bryce yanked his arms to get the restraints in place. He secured another set of ties around the leg wound to form a tourniquet, and then flashed his light in Buggy’s eyes.

“Ramon Gutierrez, on behalf of the United States Marshals Service, I am pleased to inform that you are under arrest.”





CHAPTER 38



Angie took the elevator to the third floor of the Mercy Medical Center where Nadine Jessup was being kept overnight for observation. Nadine’s parents were en route to Baltimore and Angie wanted a few minutes alone with Nadine before they arrived. She’d also wanted Mike to come up with her. Without him, they might never have found Nadine.

Mike, being Mike, saw right away how his presence could be a negative. Even though he’d played no part in Nadine’s suffering, he was still a male, and might bring back memories of all she had endured. He was headed home, back to his kids, eager to hug them extra tight.

A nurse stopped Angie in the hallway to let her know Nadine was sleeping.

“I won’t wake her,” Angie said, masking her disappointment. “I just want to see her.”

“She’s heavily sedated. I doubt she’ll wake up until morning.”

Angie last spoke with Nadine by phone minutes before she inexplicably interfered with the mission. In the aftermath, Nadine was rushed off to the hospital, taken by ambulance and escorted by a cadre of FBI agents. Angie hadn’t had a moment to connect with her in person, but was told she was doing fine and in relatively good health.

It was important for Angie to see for herself. Peering into the room, she looked at Nadine sleeping peacefully. She wore a hospital gown and had an IV in her arm, probably to provide electrolytes for dehydration. She looked perfect, a perfect person. But beneath her flawless skin were wounds so deep they might never heal. What had happened to her down in that basement, Angie wondered. Why did she turn against the people who had come to her rescue? What twisted mind games did her traffickers play?

A lump formed in Angie’s throat. The intensity of her emotions took her by surprise. She had found hundreds of runaways, but something about Nadine was special.

This was more than a job. It was a calling. The mission was over for Angie, while Nadine’s road to recovery was just beginning. Angie couldn’t walk that path for her.

Angie felt utterly relieved and weirdly empty now that she had nothing more to do. She wasn’t Nadine’s caseworker from social services or a victim-witness coordinator from the FBI. She was a retrieval specialist. Her job was to track down runaway kids and take them home. Mission accomplished. Mission over.

When Nadine’s parents showed up, she would debrief them and then go home. Of course, she would be available for Nadine if she ever wanted to meet in person, if she wanted to shake hands with the woman who’d reunited her with an alcoholic mother and an absentee father. Some parts of Angie’s job were hard to swallow, but that was the gig. She wasn’t in the business of putting broken lives back together again.

Angie’s gaze lingered on the IV in Nadine’s arm. It was the second time she had set foot inside a hospital since her mother’s death and the reminders continued to be painful and sad. Time would lessen her grief, but would it heal Nadine?