AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Piece-of-shit car.
Stupid kid.
Fucking dog.
Damn Cameron Pope to hell.
He was drifting in and out of dreamland from all the opiates in his system when the door to his room flew open and two men in dark suits walked in. He knew before they opened their mouths they were feds.
Then they flashed their badges and proved him right.
“Daniel Lee Biggers. I’m Special Agent Howard, and this is my partner, Special Agent Pickard. We need to talk to you.”
Biggers eyed them closely. Howard was built like a linebacker and bowling-ball bald. Pickard had pale-green eyes and a scar across his right cheek.
“I’m not talking to anyone without a lawyer,” Danny muttered.
“That’s your right,” Howard said. “But you need to know that a lawyer can’t save you or change one aspect of the justice that’s coming to you. You have just added robbery, theft, another four counts of violent assault, and one count of kidnapping to your sentence, and it’ll be up to the judge how many years they add on to all of that for participating in human trafficking.”
Danny’s gut knotted. “I didn’t traffic anybody,” he muttered.
“That’s because you got caught in the process,” Howard said. “Lindy Sheets has been visiting you in prison.”
Danny frowned. “So what? She’s my girlfriend. I’m allowed visitors in prison.”
Then Pickard unloaded.
“She’s also a prime suspect in a human-trafficking ring. And you just kidnapped someone else’s daughter and got caught on your way to meet Lindy Sheets at a drop-off location. Don’t bother denying it because we traced your texts to her from the phone you had on your person. You thought you were going to sell the little girl for big money, didn’t you?”
“I got nothin’ to say to you,” Danny said.
Pickard snorted. “Biggers, you’re obviously not very smart. Mean. But not very smart. You need to be grateful you got caught, because if you’d made the drop expecting to get paid for the kid, you would have gotten a bullet in the back of your head for your trouble. That’s how this gang works. They promise big money for kids, teenage boys, and pretty women, and kill the person who delivers them. They’re eliminating the middle man, selling to an Asian and European market, and keeping all the money.”
Danny’s stomach roiled. “You’re lying.”
Howard shrugged. “No, we’re just stating facts. And since you are now linked to one of their contacts and got caught, your life isn’t worth two cents, and I doubt hers is, either.”
Danny broke out into a cold sweat. “You gotta protect me.”
“We don’t ‘gotta’ do anything but send you back to jail,” Howard said. “Unless you want to help us catch them. But that’s up to you. Still want to talk to that lawyer? Or do you want to wait for the other shoe to fall?”
Danny groaned. “What do you want to know?”
“Why did you go back to the house of a woman you’d raped?”
Danny’s shoulders slumped. “I didn’t know it was her. I just went to pick up the kid and take her to a drop-off.”
“Why would they want an escaped prisoner to do that? They had to know the authorities would be looking for you.”
Danny’s eyes narrowed, and then he sighed. He’d gotten himself into this, but he wasn’t taking the rap for anyone. He didn’t know anyone but Lindy, and he had no loyalty to her.
“I might have mentioned something to Lindy about the riot and escape before it happened. She might have mentioned something to the effect that if I made it out, I should give her a call. She had a job I could do to make some quick money to disappear. So I made it out. I called her. But when she told me what the job was, I almost turned it down. I didn’t want anything to do with snatching a kid, and I damn sure wasn’t moving up to murdering parents to do it. And then she said, ‘Ten thousand dollars.’” He paused, groaning as a ripple of pain rolled through him. “I grew up in this area. I know the mountains. I know every shortcut and switchback to be taken to get over the mountains to the drop-off point. And I thought I could do it and get away.”
“Except you didn’t,” Howard said. “You stole a piece-of-shit car. You came face-to-face with a woman who already knew who you were. You left her alive, and from the sheriff’s report, her brother and his dog ran you to ground on that mountain and caught your ass. And you’ve made yourself a liability to the crooks who trusted you. So you weren’t so smart after all.”
Danny was bordering on tears. “You have to protect me.”
“You’ll be behind bars. That’s protection,” Pickard added.
