Page 72 of Maddy's Justice

“Do you have one on her office phone.”

“No, but I’ll get one.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Javier Lopez was standing next to a white Land Rover enjoying the desert heat. Javier was much more comfortable with heat than cold. He would rather deal with one hundred twenty-degree dry desert heat than anything below seventy.

While the empty electric buses drove off, Javier looked at himself in the Land Rover’s window. He was wearing mirrored aviators. With that, his fu Manchu mustache and cartel tattoos, he looked incredibly menacing. He smiled, as much as Javier could smile, knowing he looked menacing even to his only friend, Berto, sitting in the driver’s seat.

The last of the girls brought across on this trip went up the stairs of the Dornier 328. Javier’s second trip this week was another light load. Only twelve girls. They would make a total of twenty-one for the entire week. Beautiful girls, at least those deemed beautiful enough for their buyers, were becoming harder to kidnap. The migrant caravans coming north to the U.S. border had fallen off drastically. To alleviate this problem, the cartel was sending more recruiters to Columbia, Guyana, and the Brazilian state of Roraima. The people fleeing there from the Venezuelan socialist paradise into northern Brazil would provide more girls.

The Dornier luxury jet took off toward Palm Springs and Javier got in the Land Rover. His and Berto’s American documents were excellent. They had American passports, real ones, to show at the Calexico crossing. Not once did a border patrol agent give them a second look.

Three days after Javier and Berto delivered the twelve girls, the owner of Isla Contador was settling in for the auction. He had a special, very private room built just for this purpose. It was completely soundproofed, luxuriously furnished with a ninety-inch UHD television. The TV was connected to a secure satellite that even the National Security Agency could not penetrate. Or so he was told.

The island’s owner normally participated in the auction by himself. Occasionally he would allow a guest to sit in with him. Today was one of those occasions, but then, this guest had joined him for several previous auctions. He had even made a couple of purchases himself using the island owner’s account.

“Any good hunts lately?” his guest asked.

The show was still a half-hour from its start time. The two men were at the private room’s full bar. The island’s owner behind it as acting bartender. His guest was on one of the bar stools.

“I thought you disapproved of that.”

“I never said that,” his guest replied. “It’s not for me, is all. I’ve never cared much for hunting at all.”

“You seem to enjoy target and trap shooting the times I’ve taken you.”

“I have, but that’s not really the same. I tried deer hunting, remember? In Wisconsin.”

“Oh, yes. When was that? Two years ago?”

“Yeah. I sat in a tree and froze my ass off for three hours and didn’t see a thing and I was grateful for it. I got to see a couple of the guys gut the deer they shot. No thanks.”

The island’s owner laughed and said, “Wuss, weenie. Be a man. Gut a deer and eat the liver.”

“Yeah, that’s what I want to do.”

“We don’t gut the game we hunt here on the island. You should just come with us once. Ride along and see what it’s like.”

“Yeah, I hear Stan Tangen is still limping because of the stick that got jammed in his leg.”

“Stan Tangen is a pussy. I should’ve never allowed him to go on a hunt. He’ll whine about his leg for the rest of his life.”

The first girl was brought out and slowly paraded around the auction room. She was tall, slender, and well proportioned. The unseen auctioneer claimed she was sixteen years old.

“Sixteen my ass,” the guest said. “She’s nineteen if she’s a day.”

“Still, a beautiful girl, but I think you’re right. Which means she’s a little old for my purposes.”

The bidding took off and within a few minutes had topped a half a million US dollars.

“She’s very light skinned, almost white,” the guest commented.

“The bidding is coming from Asia. Probably Hong Kong or Macau. I know the people there. It won’t go any higher. The competition knows who it is, and they will back off.”

“Who is it?”

“One of three rival Chinese Triads. Animals. Almost as bad as the cartels. This girl is in for a life of horror. Then, in a few years, she’ll end up in a brothel in New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco. Maybe Hong Kong.

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