I say something wrong?” Roni asked.
A low reply came. “They don’t like us talking. Only working. I can help you get ready for bed now.”
“Who’s us? You and me?”
The girl shook her head. “Other girls. Please, senorita, let me help you. I can’t be gone too long.”
Roni ignored the plea in her voice. Something felt off in this already off place. “There’re more girls like you? How many?”
“My counting is not so good. And the number, it...it changes.”
“Changes? Because girls quit?” Roni would have to think the turnover was pretty high in this warped place.
The girl’s silky hair swished side to side with the shake of her head, but no answer came. Instead she peered out from behind her hair at the corner of the room as though someone watched. A wave of nausea swept over Roni. The picture of captivity this girl painted for her had all the details Roni needed to put two and two together—and what it meant for her. The owner’s earlier compliment of her beauty sickened her even more. Guerra and Gunn had paraded her in here like some horse to be put on the auction block. “They have no intention of ransoming me, do they?”
The girl shrugged again and lifted her chin a bit. Roni caught her first glimpse of her youthful face and too-sad eyes before she dropped them again.
The kind of business the owner of this place ran became evident.
Human trafficking.
“What’s your name?” Roni asked, fighting a surge of anger.
“You can call us sirvientas.”
“Servant girl? I don’t think so.” No big surprise the girl wouldn’t be called by her name. Her captors knew how to make her forget she was a person with an identity. “I’ll call you by your name only. So what is it?”
She tilted her head in uncertainty. “I used to be called Magdalena.”
“Then that is what I will call you.”
“No.” She raised her chin a little farther. “Magdalena is...gone.”
The young girl’s sad eyes had seen too much. Roni could spit nails, but that wouldn’t help this young woman and who knew how many more there were.
“Then how about I call you Maddie. Will that be all right?”
The girl nodded with a twitch of a smile. The smile quickly vanished.
“My name is Veronica, but my friends call me Roni. So you can call me Roni, too.”
Roni stepped up to the girl but dared not touch her. Her scars weren’t visible like Roni’s, but they were there just the same.
“Will you tell me how you got here? Were you taken like me?”
Maddie frowned. “I come from a village in Mexico. My mother, she was very sick, but we were too poor for medicine. A woman came and promised her I would marry a rich, handsome man if I go with her to work. She said she had a job for me. She was speaking our language. My mother trusted her. The woman paid my mother enough for medicine, and I went with her. We drove for a long time. A lot of hills went by. She brought me to a house and left me there. The man there, he pay her money before she go.” Maddie dropped her chin to her chest and finished, “After she left, I knew my mother made a bad choice.”
Silence ensued. “When was this, Maddie?”
“I’m nineteen now. I was sixteen.”
“So three years you have been held captive, forced to work for no money.” There was no sense asking her if that was true. It was obvious this wasn’t a job.
A knock on the door broke their conversation. The lock clicked, but when it swung wide, it wasn’t Gunn this time. It was the owner of this place. Roni curled her fingers into her palms. Never had she wanted to punch someone more. Not even Jared when he admitted to using her to spike his racing career. Not even when he checked to make sure her scarf covered her neck every time they entered the Winner’s Circle to be photographed.
“Sirvienta! What is taking so long? You should be gone by now.” The owner spoke fast, his skin taut over his clean-shaven cheeks, his black hair unmoved by his outburst.
Roni stepped in front of Maddie. “It’s my fault. I was being chatty.”
The man’s jaw ticked, but after a second of staring over Roni’s shoulder at Maddie’s dropped head, he nodded once and gave Roni his full attention. “There’s no chatting here. Don’t forget you are a prisoner.”
Maddie made her way to the exit, but Roni knew she couldn’t let her go. “Sirvienta, I really need your help with...with finding some things before... I go to sleep for the night.”
Maddie paused for direction from her master.
After a few seconds, he walked to the door, fury in his every step. “I’ll see you in the morning, Miss Spencer. In the light of day, you’ll see your future is really quite limited.”
The door shut and clicked over. One look at Maddie’s sad eyes and Roni knew she was just as trapped as this young woman.
She had to get out. Tonight, if possible.
Roni grabbed the chair to sit. Her hand grasped the Mulberry silk and the smooth material repulsed her. “I’m not going to bed, Maddie, but I do need your help.” She glanced around the room and mouthed, “To escape. And you’re coming, too.”
Maddie’s sad eyes sparked with what could only be her last shreds of hope. The innocent girl was still in there somewhere. Whatever tactics Maddie used to save herself from fully disappearing had worked.
Still, the spark died out with the shaking of her head back and forth. “Oh, Roni, not me, but I do want to help you. It would mean so much to me, but how?”
Roni pushed a pad of paper and pen toward the girl, then whispered, “Draw me directions to where the Boss keeps his cars. I’ll take it from there.”
A guard in a black suit stood at his post by the Boss’s office. From the stairway, Ethan watched around the corner as the guard read an incoming text on his phone. Ethan held his breath to see if an alert had gone out about him being missing from his post by Roni’s room. As soon as Roni’s guard took the maid down to the basement, Ethan made his way up the stairs to the top floor—the floor with the Boss’s office.
Entrance into that office was critical. And so was time. Roni would only be safe for so long locked up in her room. He had to figure out how to get her out of this place, but first he needed to get an ID on who the Boss really was. Ethan needed a name, something Pace could use to hold the guy on while they ramped up the trafficking charges.
Ethan knew his team was out there, ready to move in, but would hold off until they had evidence in hand. Rushing in would only botch all their work.
The guard’s phone rang.
