Page 2 of Captivated with Them

I gritted my teeth. “Yeah, I do.”

He carried on, regardless. “They’re for girls like Rue to be shipped around the world, to be sold to the highest bidder into a life of slavery. You know they won’t get to keep the passports. They’ll be taken off the girls the moment they land in whatever their intended country is, and then they’ll be trapped.”

I sighed and ran my hand over my face. “What are we supposed to do about that, Ryan?

“We could go to the police and tell them everything.”

“Men like the Capellos have insurance against that kind of thing. We’ll go in to give a statement, and suddenly that statement will disappear, and we’ll find ourselves either dead or badly beaten in some back alley.”

He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “That’s not what happened with Joe Nettie. He was arrested and is going to trial.”

I threw up both hands. “Yeah, and look at everything that’s happened to Rue because of it. Besides, if we go to the cops, what happens to her? What happens to Dillon? We’re literally putting their lives at risk.”

“They won’t hurt Rue. They need her too much.”

I shrugged. “Only for the next six days. After that, they won’t need her at all. And what about Dillon? Are you saying we should consider him to be collateral damage?”

Ryan scowled. “I never said that.”

“If we try, Dillon is dead.”

I imagined Ryan’s helpless expression was much like my own.

“So, we just do what the Capellos want?” Ryan asked.

“I don’t think we’ve got any other choice. They’ve quite literally got us by the balls.”

He let out a growl and swiped at something on the desk. “Fuck!”

I thought for a moment then said, “We could always make sure whoever has those passports never gets to where they’re intended.”

Ryan turned to me. “What are you suggesting?”

“That we put something in the passports that will look obviously fake to an expert.”

“The girls will be detained at border control,” he pointed out.

“Isn’t that better than them being sold on?”

He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “Do you think they’d be likely to talk when questioned? If they were able to give some names and descriptions, it might stir up some trouble for the Capellos, and trouble for us as well, if they realize we did something deliberately.”

“How are they going to know? They won’t—not if we’re careful.”

He exhaled a sigh. “I don’t know, Kodee. That’s a pretty fine balancing act. Creating something that won’t be noticeable to the Capellos, while being enough for us to be sure will get picked up on by border control. Do you think we have those kinds of skills?”

I nodded. “Yes, I do. And I also think it’s worth a shot. Right now, we don’t have any other ideas.”

Ryan started pacing the apartment, his limp practically a lurch as he spoke his thoughts. “We don’t even know when they’re going to be moving the girls. It might be weeks from now, which isn’t going to be any good to us. We need for this to happen before the trial if we’re going to stand any chance of them taking their eye off us, and off Rue and Dillon, enough for us to make a move.”

I watched his movements, his pronounced limp concerning me. “There’s going to be a risk in anything we do, just like there will be a risk in doing nothing. The minute Rue walks out of that courtroom, no matter what the result, she will have served her purpose. The best we can hope for is that she’s returned to a life of being prostituted out by criminals, and the worst is that she’ll be killed.”

Ryan balled his fists. “I hate thinking of her like that. It makes me more fucking furious than I’ve ever been before, and I’ve been angry for a good part of my life.”

“I know how you feel. I hate it, too. It feels like someone is tearing apart my insides with a pair of claws.”

As though all the strength went out of him, Ryan sank into the chair at the desk.

“But before we do anything,” I said, “we need to correct our biggest mistake.”

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