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The others were listening intently, learning from an experienced agent on how exactly she took down a large-scale trafficking ring. It felt like it could have been the plot to some crime thriller novel and not a real-life scenario. Abby was an asset, and I already knew the group would officially ask her to join our mission. Her lie was already water under the bridge, luckily for her.
“The first step to infiltrating their organization was to be brought into the fold, and that meant getting myself kidnapped. I got a job at the coffee shop next door just to get their eyes on me. It didn’t take long for them to take notice of a young pretty blonde. My tattoos made me exotic. Bad men would pay a lot of money for a woman who they thought looked like a hot slut.” She paused and winced at her words, like she forgot part of her audience. She shot an apologetic look at Christine and Jasmine before she continued.
“I knew I had my one-way ticket into their circle when the same few guys kept hanging out at the shop each day. They’d ask me a question and try to lure me into a false sense of comfort with them. I played the ditz so they wouldn’t suspect a thing. The dumber they thought I was, the better it was for me. All the while, I kept Bob up with my progress and started tracking the men in the coffee shop. I sent him the camera footage from the coffee shop each night. After two weeks, it was only a matter of time before they swooped in to kidnap me. My bugs and tracking devices were ready. Sure enough, after two weeks at the coffee shop, they kidnapped me as I was closing the store for the night. They put a bag over my head and everything.” Christine shivered at the words, but she refused to meet anyone’s eyes but Abby’s. Abby didn’t look bothered by the experience; it was as if this story wasn’t hers, but one she saw on a TV screen. I knew her attitude toward the experience was unusual. She had trained for this; it was just a part of the assignment.
“After that, I had to convince the traffickers I was valuable to them, that I wasn’t just merchandise for them to move. I had to prove that I wanted to be a part of their world, so I seduced one of the lower-ranking guys, slept with him. I gave him everything he wanted, and then he bragged to the others. I was a spider weaving a web to trap, and they fell for it hook, line, and sinker. After a couple of weeks, it became quite clear that I was something of value to them. I wasn’t like the others; they thought I wanted to be there. It was a novelty they had come to appreciate. They didn’t have to fight me to get what they wanted. A lot of women went off to‘their new homes,’but I remained behind, their plaything. They trusted me enough to keep me around, even if it was just to use me.”
My hands were balled into fists. Not in anger at Abby, but at what she had to resort to. She’d survived enough abuse during her deployment, and then she faced it again during her assignment. She still spoke in that detached way. I couldn’t help but wonder how much her undercover work affected her. Was it as bad as the abuse in the Navy? Or did her focus on revenge save her, as her crutch? It had to be taxing on the mind to live in the enemy’s lair, even for the bravest of souls. Maybe Boss wasn’t a complete asshole when he suggested a vacation, even if it was just another assignment. Maybe he knew that we could help her through the trauma in a different way. I imagined the graying bastard sitting back at his desk smiling to himself, thinking he was clever by pairing us together.
“How many were there?” Christine asked.
“Well, thirty were arrested, but there were probably at least twice that many involved. They have warrants out for ten more, and those were the people I could identify. There were plenty that I couldn’t, but they’ll spend their lives cowering in fear that they will get caught as each one of their associates are brought to justice,” Abby answered.
“You went through all of that, and you are back to work so soon?” Yates asked. His twinkling eyes from earlier were gone. It wasn’t very often that he was serious without cracking a joke.
“Yeah, I take comfort in my work, in making sure those who do wrong are punished.”
“Well, then, I don’t think there’s any doubt that you belong here with us,” Wells said as he took Christine’s hand.
“I’d like that,” Abby said with a tight-lipped smile.
“Good, we’re going to need your help to catch this asshole. Did Boss give you any info on this guy before you left?” Garcia asked. The nerd had a pad of paper and a pen, scribbling notes.
“I think it’s funny you call him Boss. You know his name is Bob, right?” she asked with a chuckle.
“Yeah, when we met him, that’s what he told us to call him and it stuck,” Mendez said.
“He is my boss, and even I don’t call him that,” Abby said with a giggle. The rest of us smiled, and just like that, the intensity from her story was behind us. “The answer to your question is no, I don’t have any more info than you do. That Robbie guy that you busted is a real peach. I watched the video of his questioning. Jasmine, he’s really got it out for you.”
“Yeah, he’ll have to get in line,” Jasmine said with a snort. She leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms in front of her chest. She was proud of her list of enemies, and Jones nearly rolled his eyes out of his head. He was proud of his girl but probably a little concerned with the list of people who likely wanted her dead.
We brought Abby up to speed on what the locals told Jasmine and me the night we arrived. Then Abby and I told the group about the guy we patched up last night.
“So what do you recommend we do next?” Jones asked Abby.
“I think that there are a lot of us, and we need to use that to our advantage. Let’s divide and conquer. We can divide into teams with certain goals in mind. One thing that interested me is that most of the disappearances have happened on this part of the island. Has anyone else noticed that?” she asked.
“I did. I was actually going to bring that up. I put together a map of all the places that the missing persons were last seen,” Guy said.
“That’s great. Can we take a look?”
Guy pulled out the laptop and flipped it into tablet mode. Then he zoomed into the island. A vast majority were centered around the resorts we were in.
“I even color coded the dots to see if we could find a pattern based on how long ago the disappearances were. Red is the oldest, around four years, and then purple is the newest, within the past few weeks,” Guy clarified.
“Holy shit, how has this not become an international story?” I asked. Our part of the island was covered in dots of various colors. The market was also clustered with multiple colors. The rest of the island was only dotted here and there, mainly between the resorts and the market.
There were so many missing people. Government officials for the island had to have taken notice of this. The question was, what was being done about it?
“They likely have the police paid off. Did you notice how no one came last night to the scene until you stepped in to help? I’m pretty sure the police station wasn’t that far from you. What if they didn’t respond right away, because they were paid not to?” Garcia suggested.
“You could be right. Once they were satisfied I knew nothing about how the guy ended up there, the officer stopped questioning me,” I added.
“I took it a step further and actually questioned him,” Abby added with a smug grin.
“I like her,” Jasmine said, stealing the same line Christine used when she met her.Yeah, me too, and if I have my way, maybe I’ll get to keep her.
“What did you find out?” I asked.
