Page 185 of One Minute Out

Talyssa Corbu pulled the woman she recognized from the LinkedIn page of Dr. Claudia Riesling out of the car, and soon both women walked down the hill along Jovenita Canyon Drive.

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I clear the downstairs of the pool house and find a young girl hiding on the ground floor in the back. She’s terrified, crying, and dressed in a wetsuit, which seems like a very strange thing for a young sex trafficking victim to be wearing.

I say nothing to her at first, only help her up to her feet and walk her back down the hall towards the living room and the staircase there, because I know now Cage and the others are on the second floor.

I motion to the front door with my head, my gun still pointed at the staircase.

When she doesn’t move, I say, “Do you speak English?”

She nods, her voice is meek. Staring at the dagger hilt jutting from my blood-drenched left shoulder, she says, “Yes, sir.”

She’s clearly American, probably fifteen or sixteen, and this confuses me. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here.” Then she says, “Are you going to kill my dad?”

Cage’s child? She’s so like the girls I saw along the pipeline that I can’t even process it. How could these people, Cage and the others in the Consortium, be so unspeakably evil when they themselves have children?

I don’t ponder this for long. Instead I answer the girl as truthfully as I can. “I’m just here to make things better.”

That’s true, isn’t it?

“Please,” she implores. “Don’t hurt him.”

I smile a little, but I guess it must look sinister to her, seeing who I am and what I’m smack-dab in the middle of. My smile fades as this occurs to me, and then I say, “I need you to run out that front door. There is no one out there who will hurt you, I promise.”

Into my earpiece I say, “I got one, green, coming out the front.”

A green is a noncombatant. Not a friendly, a blue, or an enemy, a red.

I wait for the reply from Rodney. “Understood, one green out the front door of the pool house. Do we detain?”

“Negative. Just make sure she gets clear.”

“Roger that.”

Rodney will probably think this little girl is another sex slave, like the hundreds he’s rescued in his life. This realization only serves to make me want to kill her daddy so much more.

But I can’t. Can I?

“Go ahead,” I say to her. “Out the door.”

Fresh tears fill her eyes, and I know she’ll never be the same. It’s a shame, but her tears aren’t going to stop me from doing what I came here to do to her father.

“Why?” she asks, now watching blood drip from my left fingertips, onto the floor.

She thinks I’m a monster. I see that in her eyes. She doesn’t know that her own father is the monster. Maybe she will soon, or maybe this will all be swept under the rug somehow. But I don’t have time to walk her through Kenneth Cage’s crimes, so I don’t answer.

I swing my gun towards her now, shifting it towards the front door, and soon she leaves, sobbing all the way.

When the door closes behind her, I turn my attention to the staircase.

Cage is up there, I can feel it; he’s with Roxana, and it all ends here.

With my Walther aimed up the stairs, I begin ascending. There is a mirror on the landing that gives me a narrow view to the second floor, and my eyes are on it, but I can’t see anyone above.

I only make it halfway to the landing when I hear a man up there speak. “Gentry?”

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