Page 132 of Captive Audience
He kissed me, brief but firm. “I have to go talk to Finn. Are you ready?”
“Just give me five for shoes and lipstick.”
He nodded, then headed toward the living room.
As I slipped into my heels in the closet, a phone rang close by with an unfamiliar tone.
Strange.
I followed the sound to a drawer on Rook’s side of the closet, and when I opened it, I found a bunch of cheap-looking phones. Must’ve been Rook’s collection of burners.
Only one was lit with an incoming call—an old-school flip phone. I waited for it to stop ringing before fishing it out.
I wasn’t sure why, but something compelled me to open it.
It was locked, which meant I probably had three attempts at the PIN.
I tried allzeros first. No luck.
One, two, three, four?
Holy shit. It unlocked.
I glanced toward the doorway. Rook and Finn’s voices carried from the living room. I had time to toss the phone back in the drawer if I heard them coming. Besides, Rook had never told me anything was off-limits here.
I thumbed through the phone. Missed calls, messages about meetups, photos of?—
No.
My stomach lurched so hard I had to slap a hand over my mouth.
Dozens of women. Bound wrists. Tear-streaked cheeks. Bruises like ink stains under the skin. Some sobbing, some staring blankly into the lens.
All of them were terrified.
My pulse thundered in my ears. These had to be trafficking victims. There was no other explanation.
Ice shot up my spine as a cold thought gripped me.
Was this one of Rook’s burners? Oh my God. Were the Beasts involved in human trafficking?
No. They couldn’t be. Rook would never be part of something so vile.
But why hadn’t he told me about these women? We had to help them.
And if we found them, it could lead us to the Soul Collector. This was the biggest break of the investigation yet.
It didn’t make sense why Rook hadn’t shown me what was on this phone.
And then I found her.
Sierra.
Her face was so gaunt that her cheekbones cut shadows. One eye blackened, pupils blown so wide the blue had nearly vanished. Drugged. Dazed. Barely hanging on.
I wanted to reach into the phone, put my arms around the troubled teen, and tell her that it was going to be okay. That I hadn’t given up on finding her, and to hold on a little longer.
And Rook had hidden this from me.
