Page 109 of Save Me

“Yeah, I guess.”

Ignoring him, I focus on her. “Let’s go over this again. You said that employees of Blackmon’s drop the teens here off at that motel every night?”

She nods. “And they pick up the next group of teens to work whatever night shifts they’ve been hired at.”

“That includes McGruder’s restaurants?” I ask.

She nods. “But not all of them. The McGruder’s I used to work at now is open twenty-four hours. So teens get dropped off to clean overnight. But it’s not just restaurants.” She glances over at Michael. “Tell her.”

He eyes me up and down, then shrugs. “Yeah, some office buildings and shit like that.”

I mentally record all of this information. Not everything makes sense, but I can sort through it once I get back to the office.

“Tell her more. What you told me,” Nicole encourages.

He huffs out a breath. “They have a deal with the motel to keep the little shits overnight.”

“The what?” I demand, staring at him.

He dismisses me with a look. “The kids. Whatever. You won’t be able to see shit from this parking lot though.”

He gestures toward the motel.

“They do it in the back. Did you think they were stupid enough to do the switch out here in the open?” He scoffs, shaking his head. As if I were the dumb one.

This guy is testing my patience.

“Nicole told me she was a teen when she was forced into this labor … exchange,” I call it for lack of a better term. “How did you come to be a part of it?”

He shrugs and looks away. “I wasn’t.”

I look toward Nicole, and she frowns. “He was never forced to do the work like us. But he worked for McGruder’s …” She trails off. “Go ahead. Tell her,” she urges, tapping his elbow with her own.

He pushes out an irritated breath. “I saw what was happening, and at the time, I needed money, so I asked if I could help. They wanted a driver. So for the three years, I did a lot of the night or early morning pickups.”

“So you’ve facilitated forced child labor?”

He blinks a couple of times. “No. What?” He shakes his head. “I was just the driver.”

“Driving kids, some as young as twelve, to work overnight, twelve-hour shifts. Which is illegal, by the way.”

He shakes his head and then looks over at Nicole. He gets in her face. “Who the fuck is this chick?”

He points at me while still in her face. “What the fuck is she doing talking to me like that?”

His anger is with me, but he directs it toward her.

I get in between them, forcing him to look at me. “If you have a question for me, ask me.

“I’m asking questions to get a better picture of exactly what is going on here. I asked what your role in all of this was. If you didn’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”

He steps back, his top lip curling. I get the feeling he isn’t used to having a woman stand up to him. I glance back at Nicole. Her eyes are wide, and I don’t miss the fear in them.

Biting her bottom lip, she shifts from one foot to the other. I make a mental note of this as well.

“Here they come,” Michael says after a few tense moments of silence.

I look over to see a van pulling into the far end of the parking lot.

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