“He never…” Gard trailed off, clearly struggling to find the right words. But Lia knew what he was asking.
“He didn’t have to…force me to do anything. I thought it was… I thought he…” She didn’t have time to be squeamish, ashamed, embarrassed. “I thought he cared about me. And I didn’t realize he was manipulating me. Not then.”
She’d dealt with this in therapy. The strange dichotomy of never having saidno, but being a victim all the same.
“So, I was considered his and protected by him for a few years. Towards the end…he started to get a little violent, but it was better than what happened to the other girls. By that time, I was starting to understand they were getting…sold off, mistreated. A few slaps was hardly as bad as that.”
She couldn’t look at Gard when she said that. She couldn’t think about him at all. She just had to get through the story.
“At some point, we were at this concert—a whole group of us. And I kind of got separated and this woman approached me. She was very direct. She told me she was an FBI agent, and that she could help me get out of this trafficking ring. I told her I didn’tneed help, and there was no trafficking and she was crazy. But I took her contact information, and I hid it from JJ.”
Lia could still physically feel how terrified she’d been. Terrified the woman was right. Terrified JJ would find out and this tenuous grasp she had on survival would be over.
“But I didn’t tell him about her. I wasn’t going to help her, because I didn’t want to stir things up. Except then… These new girls came in. And I could see… Something was changing. JJ didn’t want me anymore. He wanted this…younger girl. Younger than even I’d been when I first got there, and that’s when I started to…question things. I knew what happened once you were discarded. It wasn’t pretty. And I knew… In ways I couldn’t see when I was the young one he was using, how messed up it was. He was a grown man, and this girl wasthirteen. So, I started to plan. Not because I wanted to do any good—just because I didn’t want the bad things to happen to me.”
“It clearly wasn’t just for yourself, Lia,” Gard said, his voice oddly…tight. “Or you wouldn’t have cared that the other girl was thirteen.”
Lia didn’t know about that. She’d absolved herself of a lot of things she’d done without knowing better, but that still felt like…the kind of thing a bad person did. A selfish, horrible person. Because at that point shehadstarted to know better.
So she ignored his comment. “I contacted the FBI agent, and I worked with her. She told me what to look for, what to ask about. She told me the signs and I gave her all the information she needed to bring them down. Three years too late, but I brought them down.”
“It wasn’t too late for the people you helped save, Lia. At what? Eighteen? You don’t get to play that down. Not to me.”
Still, she couldn’t…engage with that. With the way her chest felt too tight and tears pricked in her eyes. Because this wasn’t abouther. It was about Sammy.
“But it all adds up. The job offer. The drug house. The suspected trafficking ring. They won’t have multiple properties. They’re too small-time in a town as small as Hardy—probably some offshoot of something bigger. Maybe even just a stopping point in a ring. If they have that abandoned house as their party center, the people they’re keeping—against their will or not—will be nearby.”
She noted Gard was slowing down the truck’s pace. The road was dark—not a light to be seen anywhere except his headlights. They had to be getting close.
He pulled to a stop on the side of the road, turned the truck’s lights off. “It’ll probably be best to approach on foot.” He paused. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ll stay here?”
“Not one.”
He sighed heavily. “All right. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to walk down the road until we get to the address. Our only goal right now is to find Sammy. Everything else comes second to that.”
He reached across to the glove compartment, stuck his key in, and opened it. He pulled out a gun. Lia knew she shouldn’t feel uncomfortable. God knew they might need it, and Gard knew what he was doing. She might have some insight into trafficking groups, but he was acop.
“You’re going to do what I say, Lia. And you’re going to stay behind me. I’m trusting your knowledge of this kind of situation, but you have to trust my cop instincts. We can’t save Sammy if we’re not safe, so you have to listen. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding emphatically. She didn’t want to cause problems or ruin anything. She just wanted to help.
You’ve done this before. You’ll do it again.
“All right, let’s go.”
They got out of the truck. The night was frigid and dark and Lia had to blink back tears of fear. Gard skirted the truck and grabbed her hand, warm and steady.
“Lia, I’m sorry all that happened to you,” he said, very quietly, very sincerely.
Her throat tightened. It meant something, not just that he’d say it, but make sure to say it now so she understood, just like she’d always kind of expected, Gard wasn’t going to hold her past against her. That he’d seen enough to learn grace, and he was strong enough, good enough to lean into that over resentment.
“I am too. I’m sorry about a lot of things that happened to me.” She squeezed his hand. “But, Gard, if it helps us find Sammy and bring her home, I don’t care. It’ll be worth it.”
Gard really didn’twant Lia by his side right now. This was too dangerous. Worrying about her split his focus.
But he couldn’t deny her story meant she understood the ins and outs of something he’d never dealt with. Sure, he’d had some training here and there about what to look for when it came to trafficking, but nothing this in-depth.
Certainly not an actual inside view.
