Page 79 of Tony

Club Edge. Oh my God.The name of the club where Sherrie and her sister used to work. Locked up now, it was in one of the seedier areas of town. “Keep hiding, honey. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

Jumping in her car, she called Tony. Quickly telling him what was happening, she knew what he was going to say and she was ready.

“No, Tony I can’t let you go in. She won’t trust anyone but me. It sounds like she was assaulted and I’m not having her more traumatized. Can you meet me there?”

Coordinating, she drove as fast as she could to the familiar location. As she rounded the corner where her old workplace was, she looked across the street seeing the alley that Betina had called from. Scanning the area, she bit her lip wondering how long it would take Tony to get there. Just then a dark SUV came from the other direction and she could see Jobe as the driver.

Heaving a sigh of relief, she jumped from her car and ran, pointing to the alley. “Betina?” she cried out. “Oh, thank God,” she muttered as she saw the girl hiding behind a dumpster. Running to the frightened teen, she threw herself at her, wrapping her arms around Betina as protectively as Tony held her. Betina’s tears flowed freely before she started gasping, jerking from Sherrie’s arms.

Twisting her neck to see what was wrong, she saw Jobe cautiously coming behind her. “It’s okay, honey. He’s with me. He’s here to help us.”

Jobe came up quietly and said, “Sherrie, we need to get her to the hospital. Why don’t you let me drive?”

Betina was shaking her head violently from side to side, so Sherrie looked up at Jobe and pleaded, “I’ve got to be the one to take her.” Sherrie stood, pulling the girl up with her. They started out of the alley when Betina tripped over her feet. Jobe stepped up and carefully scooped the injured girl into his arms. Making soft, comforting noises, he carried her to Sherrie’s car and placed her in the passenger side.

“I’m following right behind,” he informed Sherrie as she quickly hopped into the driver’s seat.

“I’m taking her to Richmond General and will call her social worker so she can meet us there.”

Making the trip as quickly as possible, Sherrie was pleased to see not only the social worker, but also Tony as well as Matt with a female detective. Jobe carried Betina in and she was whisked back into the ER bays. The social worker and detectives went back with her, leaving the others in the waiting room.

“I wasn’t scared until I saw her and then, it hit me…this was real,” she said, looking up into his face. “Does that make sense?”

Nodding, he said, “Absolutely. Sometimes a mission doesn’t seem real until you are right into the thick of things.”

They did not have to wait long before Matt and the female detective came out. Matt gave a quick report to an anxious Sherrie. “She gave us a lot. Told about Hernando, how he got her to recruit for cheap labor for his store and the laundries. Then she admitted that he had coerced her into recruiting for the club. The underage girls he wanted her to get would be held in the upper rooms as essentially sex slaves. When he caught her talking to you, she defied him and he threatened her mom again and got her to the club. He had a customer that wanted a virgin and that was when she finally fought back and escaped.”

Tony took her weight as she leaned heavily against him. “Oh my God,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I, of all people, know the depravity of some, but…this just seems like a bad dream.”

The female detective spoke up and said, “It doesn’t appear that she was sexually assaulted, but only because she managed to get away.”

“What now?” Jobe asked.

“For Betina,” the detective said, “the social worker will stay and then they will put her in a protective, therapeutic foster home. Ms. Mullins, she said she’ll call you tomorrow.”

Matt spoke up, looking at Tony, “For us? We’ve got a raid to plan. We shouldn’t need you for the raid, but we’d love your intel in the planning.”

“Anything you need, you got,” Tony said.

“I’ll head home then?” Sherrie asked.

“Yeah, baby, that’d be good. Lock yourself in, take a bubble bath, have a glass of wine and relax. You deserve it,” he said with a kiss.

Looking into his eyes, she smiled. “That sounds amazing,” she admitted. Walking out together, she left in her car, seeing Tony standing by his SUV until he was out of sight.

With a quick prayer for Betina and the other girls trapped in that life, she headed home.

* * *

Tony and his crew were circled around the conference table looking over the information that Lily and BJ had been able to pull together. Matt and Shane were on a conference call with their police chief.

Lily said, “I’ve traced Hernando’s money beyond the grocery and laundry. It seems that he’s able to fly under the IRS radar by using workers that don’t get paid, so they never show up on any of his filings. That’s how he uses so many workers—he doesn’t pay them.”

“What do they work for if not to get paid?” Gabe asked. “Who’d want to work for free?”

“It looks like Quentin rents some low-rent apartments that were meant for a small family and he has about eight workers stay there. Hernando gives them enough food for one meal a day,” she added.

Shane agreed, “With this setup, Hernando gets loner kids, ones who are ready to hit the streets if they aren’t already on the streets and offers them a deal. They work for him and he and Quentin take care of them in their own way. Then Quentin launders his club money through the businesses that Hernando and others like him run.”

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