Page 172 of Lone Star

It was Melanie.

Her throat had been cut, recently, the blood still bright and wet. It had pooled beneath her head, matting her hair, and dripped off the edge of the table. Littleplinksounds every few seconds. She’d died with her eyes open; blood flecked her lips, her chin, her cheeks.

“Do you know who she is?” Walsh asked.

“Yeah.” He searched for grief, but couldn’t find any now. He didn’t guess he could blame her for getting caught up in the cartel’s scheme – it had happened to better people.

But hedidblame her, all the same.Was it worth it?he wanted to ask her.Was it worth your life? And Pacer’s? And Michelle’s?

Mercy touched his shoulder. “There’s live ones.”

There were. Walsh walked him back up to the alcoves he’d passed. Eden was there, crouching down, holding a flashlight. There were women, dozens of them, all of them young, in every combination of skin and hair color. Tattered clothes, exposed, dirt-caked skin. Tied at wrists, and ankles, gagged, sitting in their own filth.

Candy pressed the back of his hand over his nose and mouth. “You were right,” he told Eden. “Theyareselling girls.” His gaze skipped across frightened faces, and white-rimmed eyes. “Is–”

“I already checked. Michelle and Axelle aren’t here.” Her tone was grim. “And it appears Gwen was telling the truth about one thing, at least.” She nodded toward the girl in front of her, a redhead massaging her wrists after Eden had cut them loose. “This is April. She’s from Tahoe.”

“Tahoe?”

Eden offered her a water bottle that the girl took with shaking hands. She spilled more down her chin than she drank, panting afterward. Her voice was croaky and unused. “I was in town to visit my grandmother. And I went to the store, and…”

“She was taken,” Eden said, turning to him. “I’m willing to bet everyone here was snatched off the streets or from their homes, and the FBIhadto know there were way too many missing persons reports being filed, but they covered it all up.”

He straightened, and turned, retrieved his own flashlight. The Cali boys were in the alcove opposite, cutting bonds, removing gags. Loco had another bottle of water, trying to divvy it up only a sip at a time, so everyone got at least a little.

Candy wanted tobreak things.

He went back outside, into the cool freshness of night. Stars wheeled overhead, vivid pinpricks against the blackness, casting the forest in a pale silver glow.

Fox and Reese stood a few paces away from the door of the workshop, voices low murmurs nearly drowned out by the call of night birds. Candy joined them – and then wished he hadn’t. He wasboilinginside. The idea of giving orders, of formulating a plan, had his hands clenching and knuckles cracking. Fuck this. Fuckallof this.

Fox cleared his throat. “I sent two of the Cali boys after the van. Figured you’d want to talk to Cantrell.”

Cantrell. Thatfucker. They’d left him gagged and bound to the security grate in their stolen van, and he was coming here now, and Candy was going tobreak him.

He wasn’t aware of moving or speaking, but suddenly Fox was right in front of him, the mild lift of his brows visible in the moonlight. “Okay, okay, yes, fine. You can feed him his own entrails after all this is done, if you like. But right now, he’s our best source of intel.”

Candy took a deep breath that did nothing to loosen the knot in his chest. Wiped both hands down his face when he felt his eyes get hot and tight. He blinked, and collected himself; he felt patched together with tape and school glue. A hurricane in a bottle.

But he couldn’t do that, not now, not yet. He had to be like Fox. Had to keep his wits, see this through.

When he dropped his hands, he said, “We’ve got to call…somebody. I don’t know who. Someone has to deal with all” – he gestured over his shoulder toward the workshop – “that.” Ordinarily, he would have reached out to Jaffrey, and let him take credit for a major bust. But how much of PD could be trusted right now? Who was on the take with Cantrell and the cartel? And who…

Shit, he had no idea.

“I’m going to call Jen,” Fox said, levelly, soothingly. “Have her talk to Maddox, yeah? There’s no way the whole Bureau is on this. We’ll leave some of the boys behind to see that this is handled, and the rest of us will…”

Headlights cut through the trees, and the van crunched its way up the narrow gravel drive and halted in front of them.

“Where’s Albie?” Candy asked, and didn’t have to wonder for long.

~*~

Albie had to walk out of the workshop because he was deeply ashamed of the fact that he could look at all those poor girls in there – dirty, and hungry, and waiting to be sold into slavery – and not feel anything except sick and desperate because he hadn’t found his own girl yet.

Standing in the narrow front hall of the workshop, voices surging like white noise around him, lungs full of the stink of human waste, he was transported back to an alley in London. Back to tackling his own father to the ground; the pain of impact, the sharper pain of betrayal.

Devin had left them that night. Just left. He’d known about Tenny, and about Pseudonym, and about all the horror that awaited them, and he’d abandoned his own children. Again. Always. Always again and again.

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