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Shit. Callie never closes her door on us. Something big must have gone down. Tex looks surprisingly calm, like he’s busy thinking, but Devon looks ready to kill.
“What just happened?” I bite my tongue hard to keep from swearing. Forced calm is necessary right now. She may have closed the door, but Callie’s only a few feet away and the walls are paper thin in this dump.
“Short story?” Tex asks quietly, and I nod. “Callie woke up, it was a good day, she wanted to go for a walk.”
My eyes widen, and I open my mouth to unleash all the questions that I have, but Tex holds up a hand to stop me.
“On our second lap round the building, Devon pulled up on his bike and approached us. Callie fainted.”
Shit. This is bad. Her first time outside in months and she faints? Fuck!
“When she came round on the sofa, she reacted pretty hard to seeing Devon in his leathers and she couldn’t remember that he had a bike, or that she used to ride it with him.”
“Fuck.” My heart sinks. It’s bad. We all knew Callie was suffering from some form of PTSD – her personality change was too much of an indicator – but to lose memories from before her ordeal like that? She must have triggered hard. Unease settles around my chest like a vice. “The bike?”
“And the leathers,” Tex confirms. I frown and look at Dev. He’s in pieces.
“Did we profile any of those involved as riders?” I ask, but I already know the answer.
“We didn’t.”
“Fuck. He could be our missing piece.”
The other two nod at me. This is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because we knew that there had to be at least one other person involved in Callie’s abduction. This has to be our guy.
It’s a curse because she won’t tell us anything. She hasn’t spoken one single word about her time away from us. Asking when she first came home caused such a violent involuntary reaction in her, that for her own safety we had to stop.
We couldn’t even use our connections within The Order to get her the help she needs or to find out who took her. It cost us everything just to locate her.
Piecing the case together has taken so long because we had nothing to go off, no support. To begin with we were a mess, shooting theories, bickering, going round in circles. But then Tex really started to pay attention to Callie.
We never asked another question, but she would react to certain things. Words we said, noises on TV, smells, the click of a lock, the bath...She changed her shampoo, and even uttering the word ‘peach’ would cause her to cringe and curl up into a ball. Her behaviour gave us our clues. It wasn’t easy, hence why we’re months down the line and only just ready to make our move. All except the one missing puzzle piece. The mysterious rider.
“Shit. What do we do?” I run my hands through my long hair, a move I always do when I’m stressed.
“I’m going to have to talk to her,” Tex declares quietly. He’s right of course. He has all the skills, but we had desperately hoped to avoid the situation.
“CI?” I check.
“Yeah.” He sounds about as happy about it as I feel.
“No!” Devon pipes up. “You can’t do a cognitive interview on her! There’s a reason why we didn’t do it before!” He sounds terrified, not angry.
“We need to know, Dev. We can’t let anyone involved in this walk free. This is essential. They will come back for her if they figure it out.” I push my point. If Callie was abducted and sold into a sex trafficking ring – which we’re almost certain is what happened – we know they would be hunting her if they thought she could give away their identity.
“I won’t CI the whole thing. I’ll take her in on the day she went missing, and up to leaving the flat,” Tex promises. “Let’s try to find out why.”
We knew she wasn’t taken from the flat, there were no signs of forced entry. So that means something or someone made Callie get up in the middle of the night and leave the flat voluntarily. Finding out why might help us solve this puzzle once and for all.
I nod. Devon is anguished. He really doesn’t want to do this. But I can also see that he’s torn.
“Fine,” he barks, before storming off into our one shared bathroom. A moment later the shower is cranked on, and I relax. He’ll be calmer after his shower, he always is.
“Tomorrow?” I ask Tex. He hesitates.
“Actually, I think I need to do it tonight. Before her mum calls.”
Fuck, he’s right of course. That woman always fucks everything up. I nod to give him the go ahead, and he gets to his feet.
