Jerricho Read online

  “I don’t know, but I suggest we talk to the loser.”

  It didn’t take very long for the two men to settle their dispute and for the winner to take off, carrying something that the other one obviously didn’t want to give up. It looked to be some electronic equipment.

  Killian looked at Jerricho and said, “I’ll be back in a minute.” He made his way down the wharf, where he stopped to talk to the remaining man.

  Jerricho watched from on board, ready to leave at a moment’s notice, should trouble break out. But it seemed like the other man was busy telling Killian all about it in an animated conversation, with his arms flapping in the direction of the last man who disappeared. Interesting but hardly pertinent. At least Jerricho didn’t think so.

  Although, in this instance, who the hell knew what was important and what wasn’t? Jerricho still studied all the maps and wondering how Brenna got onto the ship they had targeted as being potentially the one that had carried her away. And yet here it sat idle and supposedly empty.

  Jerricho really wanted to search that boat, especially if Brenna had been transported on it. But he couldn’t do that yet with the other man nearby. And that made him angrier. Other ships slowly drifted toward them, coming in and docking just offshore. One of the rowboats approached Killian, as he and the local slowly worked their way toward the dock, moving away from the abandoned boat in question.

  Jerricho and his powerboat were hidden, snug along the shoreline. He quickly made sure that he was out of sight of any newcomers, and he sent a message to Killian that he would head into the water to search the target boat. He watched as Killian read the message and took a look to the side to give a half nod, as if to himself, but it was more a message to Jerricho, and then he immediately dove over the edge, nice and clean.

  He slipped around, past the boat traffic, and swam out toward the bigger boat. He climbed up on the far side from the shore, and, once on board, he took a quick look around on deck and then slipped below.

  He did a thorough search of the small kitchen galley and then found another room with a lock on it. He quickly undid the lock, checked out the inside, but didn’t find anything of interest. And that pissed him off too. Surely something had to be here. As he headed off toward the other side to check that area, he caught sight of a small piece of paper. He bent down, picked it up, and his heart damn-near stopped because there was his name and phone number.

  He quickly pocketed that, swearing, because that meant not only was Brenna here—or rather, had been here—but she still remembered him and somehow still had his number. It was an old one, but it would have connected quite likely to his life before the Mavericks. Which also meant someone else could do so too. As much as he loved her ingenuity, that connection was not something he wanted in this case.

  Hearing voices close by, he made his way to the upper deck and quickly rolled over the railing and slipped into the water, where he dove deep around the bow. Surfacing a distance away, he saw that one of the men in the rowboats had come back. He’d only ferried his other partner over. Now he was returning to his rowboat himself. Waiting until he climbed aboard, Jerricho dove as deep as he could and headed back toward shore. By the time he made it up onto his own powerboat, Killian stood onboard.

  “You find anything?” Killian asked Jerricho.

  “Yeah,” he said, “we’re on the right track. She was there.” He pulled out the small wet piece of paper and handed it to Killian.

  He looked at it and whistled. “Jesus,” he said, “that’s not good.”

  “I know. That’ll hurt us more than help us at this point. But it does tell us that she’s been here. And she’s fighting, and she’s thinking,” he said, “so I’ll give her kudos for that.”

  “I know. I was thinking the same thing. It’s just really shitty that we missed her.”

  “We can backtrack their movements.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  And, with that, Jerricho said, “I need to get changed into dry clothes. What did you find out from the argument?”

  “A lot of dissent in the area. A lot of people without work, looking to make some money.”

  “Including people who wouldn’t normally be?”

  “Yes, that’s my take. Some men came through the area, looking for women recently.”

  “Shit,” he said, “that’s not the kind of search we want to hear about.”

  “No, the guy was pretty angry. Anyway he had a receiver that he used, and this guy said it was his. He ended up losing the argument and the equipment because the other guy threatened his life. He said he’s only here, trying to make a living, and he was trying to set up the electronic equipment in his own boat.”

  “Did you ID the winner of the two?”

  “Yes, and he’s got a bad rep around town.”

  “For what?”

  He looked at Jerricho and smiled and said, “For buying and selling things that walk on two feet.”

  “Ah, hell,” he said. “Did you get a location for this guy?”

  “Sure did,” he said. “I was just waiting for you to get back from your nice little sunny swim.”

  “Oh, I’m back,” he said. “I’ll change, while you move us out.”

  As they slowly moved upriver, Killian spoke up. “That she’s leaving your name is not good.”

  “I know. The problem will be if somebody else finds her paper trail and is smart enough to make a connection.”

  “And we won’t know that,” Killian said quietly, “until it’s too late.

  “Agreed. I already notified Diesel. In the interim, he’ll do whatever stop-gap measure our IT people come up with. Regardless I’m looking forward to a visit with this lovely buyer and seller of flesh,” he said, “presuming you know where you’re going.”

  “Absolutely,” Killian said, pulling the boat close to land, and then he pointed up to the shore. “Third house from this side, top row, by the road, windows all shuttered.”

  “Of course. Then nobody can see what’s on the inside.” Jerricho hopped off the boat, headed down the wharf, up to the land, where he quickly slipped in between the trees and headed for the house in question. He approached from the downward side, trying to see just how much activity was here. He obviously had seen that one guy, who won the receiver, but how long ago was that? And was he still here and was he alone?

  Jerricho slipped around to the far side of the house, but it was absolutely impossible to check inside any of the windows. The house was completely shuttered. As in blinds or black curtains everywhere.

  Quietly he put his ear against the lower portion of one of the windows, but no sound came from inside, so he moved to the next window and the next. As he came to the corner, he stopped because he heard voices out in the front yard. He pulled out his phone and quickly put it on Translate and Record. It wouldn’t do him any good if he translated it while his phone was muted because he wouldn’t hear it.

  As soon as there was a lull in the conversation, he quickly hit Translate and watched as his recording came up in text form. The men were discussing a deal involving electronics. Only toward the end of the written translation did he read about needing women.

  He frowned at that.

  One of the men said something about they needed a new delivery because the boss was looking to up the numbers. The other man had responded, “We need to get into that. Good money there.” Almost immediately the men split up, and one took off.

  Jerricho waited to hear the door’s slam for the one going inside. Slam. As he counted to three before entering the home, he watched as the other man joined more men and took off in an old rattletrap of a vehicle. That was just fine. They could take off all they wanted because the guy inside the house was the one Jerricho wanted, and alone was even better.

  Giving the guy inside another minute, Jerricho noted that most of the windows were now open and had nothing but bamboo curtains waving in and out. He needed to make his move before somebody else came. He pushed aside one
of the bamboo curtains and discovered the room itself was empty, pretty well just an open space and a couple room dividers. But he was up and inside in a heartbeat and up against one of the dividers, so that he could keep an eye on the place and not be seen. He heard footsteps and a phone conversation.

  As soon as the guy walked past him in the adjoining hallway, yelling into the phone, Jerricho came up behind him and, with a hard blow, knocked him to the ground. Jerricho quickly snatched the guy’s phone, checked to make sure the guy was out, pulled him up onto a chair, and strapped him down. He checked the phone to see contacts and recent texts, even as he struggled to read the words on it. Sometimes the language barrier was almost impossible to deal with. At the same time, he didn’t have time for this. He quickly sent off a text message. I need a translator or an interpreter now.

  At that, his phone rang. “Not sure what’s going on,” Diesel said, “but I have somebody here.”

  “Good,” he said, “because I’ve got somebody I need to interrogate. He was talking about getting into the women’s trade because the boss is looking for more bodies.”

  “Warm and willing?”

  “Warm,” he said. “I don’t think willing even entered into it.”

  “Of course not,” he said. “Is he awake and conscious?”

  “He will be soon,” he said. “Hang on.”

  He put both phones on the counter and smacked the guy lightly a couple times. When he groaned and started to open his eyes, Jerricho grabbed him by the ears, glared down at him, and said, “Now talk to me.”

  The guy’s confusion cleared and was followed immediately by pissed rage.

  Jerricho picked up his phone, put it on Speaker, and said, “I need to know who he was talking to and who his boss is and if they know anything about two women.”

  Immediately a voicemail message in a stream of some foreign language spit out of the phone. The guy looked at him and just glared. Only Jerricho didn’t have time for this shit. He unleashed a hard right hook on him but deliberately didn’t knock him out. The guy groaned and started swearing again. Jerricho didn’t need a translator for that.

  Almost immediately Jerricho grabbed his prisoner by the neck and shook him really hard, his fingers gripped tight on his neck. The guy swore, as he started to choke. Jerricho released him enough for the guy to swear again, so Jerricho choked him again, until he stopped swearing. Jerricho did it one more time for emphasis, and the guy just sat here, glaring at him.

  Jerricho smiled. “You can try to kill me later,” he said, “but I’m looking for two women, and I want to know where they are now.”

  At that, only confusion clouded the man’s eyes.

  Jerricho spoke into his phone. “Ask him what boss it is who’s looking for the women. And who else would be supplying women.”

  Realizing it wasn’t him specifically that they were after, his prisoner immediately spilled out information.

  Apparently some small boss was around the area, who delivered white women just across the border into Libya. At the word Libya, Jerricho’s throat choked. By the time they were done back and forth, the prisoner revealed a holding pen was a couple hundred miles away. And the women were being taken from all over the world. A live auction was slated already, and the women would be sold. The pure ones went for a higher price, and the pretty ones obviously commanded more. Others were going as domestic workers. Some of them would go into the sex business whether they liked it or not.

  Jerricho shook his head. “Looking for two. We need as much information as he can give us,” he barked into his phone to the Mavericks translator. But his prisoner could not produce a hell of a lot on that because of all the agents in the middle.

  Jerricho asked whether it would matter if these women were journalists or American citizens.

  His prisoner’s eyes lit up at that. “If they’re more intelligent and if they’re from another country, particularly America,” he said, “they are worth more.”

  Confused, he studied the translation, Jerricho asked, “Why?”

  “Because it’s a power play. If they own them, then they have prestige.”

  “Are the women safe?”

  At that, the man turned and looked confused again. It took another few minutes of translating before he understood, and then he shrugged and said, “No, of course not. They are just women.”

  Hearing those words, Jerricho stepped back and repeated, “Just women,” and he clocked his prisoner one more time, this time knocking him out fully.

  “Are you okay?” Diesel asked on the other end of the line.

  “Yeah, what a sucky world this is.”

  “Which is also why you’re there.”

  “I get it,” he said, “but you realize that, when I get to the auction site, if I find that I’ve got pastures full of women about to be sold off, there’ll be hell to raise.”

  “Good,” he said. “Tell me how many men you need in support.”

  “I will,” he said. “I’ve got to get there first.”

  “And you’re on her trail. We don’t know for sure that this is the way, but it’s promising.”

  “If that’s not promising,” he bit off, “I don’t know what is.”

  “Just relax,” he said. “This is progress.”

  And, with that, he hung up the phone, slipped out down toward the dock, and headed back to where Killian was. As soon as Jerricho hopped on the boat, they cut ties to the wharf and headed out to the water. When they were safely away from land, he quickly filled in Killian on what he had heard.

  Killian stared at him in shock. “Auction?”

  His face grim, Jerricho nodded. “American women get a higher price,” he said, “and, if they’re intelligent, apparently more so.”

  He shrugged. “I mean, personally I prefer intelligent women, but jeez,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Yeah, but what we don’t know is,” he said, “how many women will need to be rescued.”

  At that, Killian winced. “It would be better if a lot of them are gathered into one group, as we save them,” he said calmly. “Because we’ll help them all, and we want to rescue as many as we can, yet to have a lot of them will be more difficult to get away with. If only a few are left, as in we’re too late, the bulk of the women will be in the system, and we’ll never know where they are.”

  “I know,” he said. “And how many of them would ever get rescued out here?”

  “Not many,” he said quietly. “And that’s why we do what we do. Just hold tight and keep focused.”

  “I know. I’m working on it,” Jerricho said. “It’s just hard to think of anybody we know caught up in this.”

  “I know, and we’ll get them.”

  Jerricho nodded, and the two headed out, covering the two hundred miles as fast as the powerboat could travel—but still not fast enough—to the closest landing spot near the designated holding pen, before they had to go on foot.

  Chapter 3

  When Brenna and Jessie arrived at their destination, they were slowly led off the boat. Brenna’s knees were shaky; she needed water, and the heat was killing her. And she didn’t think anybody here would give a shit. As they were moved up onto land, she saw many other armed people around, and that just added to her confusion. She looked at Jessie. “I have no clue what this is,” she whispered.

  Jessie stared, her eyes round. “I wish I had my camera.”

  “Me too,” she said. “But it would probably get us killed at this point.”

  No arguing there. They were quickly shoved into what looked like a corral or a paddock. And while Brenna stood here, several other women joined them. The women were crying; several had been beaten, and Brenna didn’t even know who they all were. But they huddled in one corner, and she stared at them. She looked at Jessie and asked, “Do you recognize any of these women?”

  “No,” she replied.

  None of them spoke English. One spoke a little bit of French, another one Spanish. Jessie spoke Spanish, and,
with lots of interruptions and lots of hand motions, she turned to Brenna and said, “Looks like they were all kidnapped, the same as us.”

  Brenna stared at Jessie in shock and looked at the women. “What? All eight of us here?”

  Jessie did her own head count and nodded. “Yes, eight.”

  One of the women leaned forward and whispered, and Jessie quickly translated. “And more are coming. She heard the gunmen talk about another thirty plus.”

  Brenna looked at them in horror. “So what is going on here?” she asked.

  They looked at each other and looked at Jessie and whispered, “We’re being sold.”

  “Jesus,” Brenna said out loud. She looked at Jessie. “If we’re being sold, we’ll never get free at that point. We have to get out of here now, before the exchange,” she said. She looked around in a panic.

  Jessie grabbed Brenna by her arms. “Calm down,” Jessie said. “We don’t know what’s going on just yet. You have to give your friend time to get here.”

  She snorted at that. “What if he doesn’t even know?” she asked. “What if nobody knows?” She felt the panic starting to rise within. She knew she needed to stay calm but … She reached up, scrubbed her face. “Can they tell us anything?”

  “Like?”

  “Where they came from? How far widespread this is? What were they doing?”

  It took a bit, and finally Jesse said, “A lot of their stories are just mixed. Some were at home. Some were shopping. Some were walking. They’re from all over. We’ve got two from Romania, one from Turkey, one from Mexico.”

  “Mexico?” She turned and looked at her camera operator.

  “Yes, but she was visiting in Italy.”

  “Good Lord, so anywhere that they could separate off a female, the kidnappers did.”

  “Yes,” Jessie said. “This is just a little too gross to even contemplate.”

  “But we don’t have a choice now,” Brenna said. “We must face this to confront it.”

  “I get that. It’s just …” And she stopped. She took a slow deep breath. “What are our options? Do you see any?”