Page 12 of With You

“This is beautiful,” I trailed a finger over the smooth surface, admiring the craftsmanship of the piece.

“Thanks, I made it. Pecan,” his eyes skittered away from us self-consciously. A look that softened the hard features of his face, making him appear younger.

“It’s amazing, you’re really talented, man,” Roe added. He was so good at making people feel at ease, a trait that I’d always really liked about him. Roe had the kind of welcoming demeanor that made people want to talk to him, to be his friend. A trait that my introverted self, had never understood. Baz muttered a thanks and then resumed leading us outside to a screened-in porch.

A wrought iron table surrounded by four chairs in the same style took up most of the space. Two wooden rocking chairs sat in one corner and I had the suspicion that Baz made those as well. He gestured to the empty chairs and we each sat down, placing our drinks on the table.

“I know why you’re here,” Baz started, avoiding any more small talk. “James gave me enough over the phone to get the larger picture and I’m not sure if what I have to say is related to the missing girls you’re trying to find.”

Falls Security had been hired by our local FBI field office to assist on a missing persons case. They’d been investigating a human trafficking ring that was responsible for the disappearance of young girls, right around their eighteenth birthdays. We’d helped to identify a handful of stash houses where the girls were kept after they’d been taken. Unfortunately gaining a warrant took time and whenever one finally came through, the houses had already been cleaned out.

Tired of dealing with the red tape, our bosses Gray James and Kane Rodriguez had decided to see what information we could dredge up on our own. Hence, why Roe and I were in the middle of nowhere talking to Baz now. He’d refused to talk to us at all until we’d assured him the information he told us would not be handed over to the FBI.

“We understand,” I leaned forward in my chair. “If you don’t mind, we’d still like to hear what you have to say. The investigation is at a standstill and we’re open to anything that might help these missing women.”

Baz nodded his head a few times and then leaned back in his own chair, crossing his large arms over his chest. Through the holes in the table, I watched as he stretched out his bad leg, his hand rubbing at his thigh.

“I have a friend. Good guy, served with him, still trust him with my life even out of uniform. He didn’t have much of a family, like a lot of us, but he did have a little sister. Talked about her all the time and how he couldn’t wait to make a better life for the two of them. Make her proud, you know?”

Yeah, I knew. Part of why I’d signed up myself was to make my mom proud, to make a difference and have a respected career. I glanced at Roe out of the corner of my eye, his brow furrowed as he listened to the story. He had a family, too, but they hadn’t spoken in years. From statements he’d made in the past, I could tell his relationship, or lack thereof, with his father was what made him enlist and never go back home.

A sharp pain threaded through me at the thought of him having no one to write to or think about on those long nights when we were deployed. I’d had my mom who’d sent letters and care packages, always answered the phone when I was allowed to call home. On my own long nights, I’d thought of Roe and where he was, way too much for my own comfort.

“This little sister got a boyfriend. It was her first year in college and she stayed on campus while my buddy was deployed. She had good friends that she could stay with on holidays and things like that, trusted friends that my buddy knew well. But he’d never met the boyfriend, who’d been mentioned in letters here and there. Something felt off to my friend. The sister said he was just being overprotective and he had nothing to worry about. I even told him he was overreacting, to let his sister have the sweet life that we were fighting for.”

Baz took off his ball cap and laid it on the table. His head was shaved and he ran a hand over the smooth skin as he looked upward like the memory was replaying in his mind.

“He still worried, like we all do when we’re oceans away from the people we care about. He was right to worry. She always wrote him letters, whenever we were somewhere that we could receive mail, he’d get a stack full of ‘em. But one day he didn’t get a letter, nothing the next mail call either so he set up a phone call and she never answered. He called every friend of hers he knew and they all said the same thing. Haven’t seen her in a while, heard she has a boyfriend, maybe she’s with him, and so on.

“Eventually he was able to get a buddy of his to check out her dorm room, her roommate said she hadn’t been there in months. And when the buddy did some checking around campus it turned out that she wasn’t even enrolled, she’d withdrawn before midterms.

“At this point he’s terrified, positive something bad has happened to his sister and the boyfriend had something to do with it. As soon as he got home, he went looking for her. He used every penny he had, every favor at his disposal to try and find her.”

The story had me feeling sick. We didn’t know for sure what was happening to the women that were taken but we could guess and none of those guesses ended happily for them. If the sister was one of them, then this story was about to get worse.

“Was he able to find her?” Roe asked warily. This case had been hard for him. We all did our own investigating but it usually started with leads that he gave us. His job often consisted of combing through disturbing images and chat rooms on the dark web. I had no idea what kind of depravity Roe had to search through to find a single thread we could follow.

“He did,” Baz turned sad eyes to Roe. “It’s a common thing apparently, for these assholes to charm a young girl, play the role of boyfriend until he has her complete trust. It’s easy for them to isolate her from her friends, even her family, until she has nothing but him. Then she’s just gone one day. Completely disappeared like she never even existed. Police like to play it off like they’re runaways, like they skipped town with the boyfriend on purpose. Bullshit excuse to not investigate.”

Everything Baz said was the truth. I’d met some of these desperate families firsthand when they’d hired us. They’d beg us to look for their loved one, most of them receiving dismissal after dismissal from the people who were supposed to help them.

“Her brother found her in South America and he asked for my help in getting her back. I helped him.”

There it was. The reason Gray thought Baz could help us. He’d done this before; he and his friend took matters into their own hands and rescued the sister. He was a good man, that was obvious. Though helping a close friend was different than him agreeing to help us.

“Any chance you’re going to share the name of your friend and his sister so we can talk to them?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

He lifted one full black eyebrow and recrossed his arms in silent refusal. Fair enough. Roe shifted in his seat and pulled a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket. He placed it on the table and gently unfolded it, smoothing out the creases when it was open. The woman who was barely a legal adult stared up at us. My heart felt like it stopped. He’d been carrying her picture around all this time?

“This is Stephanie Marshall; she was the last one taken that we know about. I know you want to protect your friend, and they deserve their privacy and safety after everything they’ve been through, but so does she,” he jabbed the picture with his fingertip.

We all felt a deep responsibility to the ones who’d been taken. It was a damn miracle that Baz and his friend were able to find the sister.

Baz stared at the photo, that same tired look in his eyes from before. “I’ll talk to him, it will take me a while to get a message to him, though. Think you can stick around?”

“This is our only case. All we care about is finding them and bringing them home,” I assured him.

Baz stood up, making it clear the conversation was over for now. We followed suit, walking back the way we came through his house until we made it to our car. He led us once again to the gate and walked to Roe’s open window once he’d unlocked it.

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