She began to cry. Siobhan took her hand. “Thank God, thank God, you’re alive.”
“We need to get her to the hospital, stat,” the paramedic said. He gestured to her legs as he carefully put a blanket over her.
Her right leg was broken. The swelling and bruising were severe.
“I want to go. Please,” Siobhan said.
Lucy said, “She’s a translator, knows this girl.” She showed her badge to the paramedic.
He nodded. “We go now.”
Lucy watched as Siobhan left with Ana in the ambulance.
Noah came up to them. “Villines and I are going to check on another property-see if you can talk to the girls before they’re transported.”
He left, and Lucy walked over to where the two girls who weren’t obviously pregnant were being treated by a lone paramedic. The two ambulances had already left. She said in Spanish, “We’re getting you help. A doctor.”
The paramedic was fluent and had put them both at ease. They were crying, but one of them said in English without any trace of an accent, “I want to call my mom.”
“Where are you from?”
Tears streamed down her face. “I-I’m from Houston. I ran away last year with my boyfriend. And… and it got bad. He… he hit me. And then… he left. And I was pregnant and my mom… my mom told me if I left with him never to come home.”
“Honey, mothers are forgiving. What’s your name?”
“Abby Bridger.” She drew in a deep breath. “I-I just want my mom.”
“How did you end up here?”
“I thought… I thought if I had an abortion everything would be better. I could go home, beg my mom to forgive me, never tell anyone. I went to a clinic and they put me under and I woke up somewhere else.”
“When was this?”
“February. And… and I had my baby last month and I wanted her so badly and begged them not to take her, but they did.”
“Why didn’t they let you go?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t ask, I didn’t want to go, where would I go?” She squeezed the hand of the girl next to her. “It’s all my fault.”
“Abby, none of this is your fault. None of it, okay?” Lucy took her other hand, the one that wasn’t clutching her friend. Both girls were staring at her with wide, dirty eyes. “These people forced you into this, terrified you, hurt you. Took your baby. Kept you prisoner. They will pay for it.” She took out a photo of the house in Freer. “Is this where you were staying?”
Abby nodded. “Since April. First we were someplace else, but it burned down. I think they burned it down on purpose. And then we were there. Until…” She stopped talking.
“Until one of the women ran away with a baby.”
“They took us all, except Eloise. Did you find her? Is she okay? She was so worried about her baby. She’s very sick.”
Lucy softened her voice. “Eloise died. I’m sorry. We think her baby survived.”
“No. No!”
“We’re looking for Marisol. Her sister Ana was here-have you seen her?”
She shook her head. “No one has come for us. They were looking for Marisol.”
“Abby, I need you to be strong. You’re going to the hospital. There will be a police guard there to protect you-to protect all of you. But honey, we need you to tell us everything you know. We need everything you know about these people, what they said and did and who they are. We need more information to stop them.”
“Will-will you call my mom? Explain everything to her? Tell her I’m sorry?”
“Yes-but Abby, the first thing you need to do is remember this. Remember it forever: This is not your fault.”
The paramedic took the girls together in the third ambulance and Lucy watched it drive off. Nate said, “One of the deputies confirmed that the dead girl isn’t Marisol.”
Lucy wanted to be happy about it, but she was so weary.
“I want to show you something.” He handed her a photocopy of Loretta’s book. “We didn’t have time to go through it, but I noticed something. You pointed out that Elizabeth wasn’t Marisol’s first baby.”
“I’m assuming that both Marisols in the book are the same person.” Lucy flipped through the pages. “Jasmine and her people picked immigrants-legal or illegal, it didn’t matter-who didn’t have family connections because they would be the least likely to go to the authorities. Or runaways like Abby who had lost hope.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know as a fact, just an educated guess based on what we’ve seen already. I thought Macey was an outlier because she was Caucasian, until Abby. Did you notice that the baby boy was Macey’s second delivery? Just like Marisol.” She frowned.
“That’s what I wanted to show you. The dates.”
She stared. Marisol was the third delivery in the book, and the last. Marisol had given birth six months after she’d disappeared from Monterrey.
“That bastard.”
“You’re thinking what I’m thinking.”
“Zapelli. Marisol was pregnant in Monterrey. Want to bet it was his kid? That’s why she trusted him. How could a father sell his girlfriend and his unborn child into the sex trade?”
“Lucy, you know as well as I do that he probably killed her when he picked her up Tuesday night.”
“Then dammit, I want to bury her body.”
She flipped through the copy again. The babies were few and far between-some of them months-during the first year. The program must have become lucrative because more than half the seventy-two babies had been born in the last nine months. She took some quick notes. “Nate, there were fourteen girls pregnant at one time just last month-including Marisol and Ana. The house in Freer only had eight beds. There must be another place. More girls.”
“Hopefully not like that trailer.”
“I think the trailer was a way station. They had to put them someplace, they were angry because Marisol had not only escaped, but had taken her baby with her, and in doing so brought down the authorities. Eight beds-” She gestured toward the trailer where the deputies were bringing out a body bag. “Five girls here. Plus Eloise, Macey, and Marisol.”
She paused. “Zapelli had to have known about this baby ring, and when Marisol told him she was pregnant, he sold her-and her baby.”
“Then why did she call him?”
“Because she didn’t know that he’d done it. I don’t think Loretta knew, otherwise she would have rubbed it in-she complained that Marisol went on and on about Angelo saving them. And he was the person she trusted the most to call when she escaped.” Shouldn’t she have seen the truth? Maybe not. Zapelli was a slimy bastard, but maybe he had a charming side. Marisol and Ana were girls from the country. They might not see the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
After finding Marisol, there was nothing Lucy wanted more than to see Angelo in prison. And Marisol would help put him there.
That may give her some satisfaction. Some peace.
Death is the only peace. Would it have given you peace if Adam Scott had been arrested? Prosecuted? Living behind bars? Hardly. You killed him because he was evil and would have raped and murdered again and again until he was dead.
She couldn’t go there. Not now. Not when her emotions were so… jumbled.
Nate picked up his phone. “It’s Noah,” he said to Lucy. “Noah, you’re on speaker. Lucy’s here.”
“We traced the Honeycutt phone to a house just outside Laredo, fifteen minutes south from the trailer. I sent you the address. As deputies attempted to reach out to the occupants, they fired shots. Put on your vests if you haven’t already done so-we have one cop in critical condition and they have multiple hostages.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
By the time Lucy and Nate arrived at the standoff, the entire block had been evacuated and a dozen police cars, including a SWAT tactical van, were parked around the perimeter. Noah and Villines were both on the phone, and the head of the Webb County SWAT was speaking into a loudspeaker.