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He didn’t wait to see if they agreed, just headed for a hatch and climbed down into it. Kenna followed. Jax came with her. Below the deck was a small enclosure, but it seemed someone lived in here from time to time. It smelled like salt and dead fish. Maybe the owner liked what those scents represented.
Freedom.
The thing they wanted to give back to Maizie tonight.
For some people, freedom wasn’t a right. It was a gift that had to be given to them.
“Okay,” the agent began. He faced them both, one of his hands braced on the low ceiling. “There’s nowhere to sit, so we’ll just have to do this standing.”
“I’d rather be on the deck watching the boat.” Kenna wanted Maizie in sight—as much as that was possible.
“Be that as it may…” He paused to catch his balance as the boat swayed. “We need answers from you as to what’s about to happen.”
Jax said, “We’re about to rescue a seventeen-year-old female trafficking victim.”
Kenna’s stomach lurched, and it had nothing to do with the rocking of the ocean under them.
The agent looked at her. “Do you always bring minors on cases with you?”
She didn’t know how to answer that.
“Once this is complete, you will accompany the other agents and I back toourplane to return to the US, where you will be fully debriefed at our FBI field office in San Diego.”
Go back to the FBI to make a statement? She glanced at Jax, not sure her heart could handle him in any more danger.
He nodded. “It’s the right thing.”
“I can’t even think right now,” she said. “We just need to get Maizie back.”
“And then you’ll be returning to the US with us. And your friends will be coming as well.” The agent shrugged. “You can stay together while you explain who you all are and why you’re down here.”
Jax shifted. “I told you when I woke up in the hospital how we got here, Farnes. We aren’t part of your case.”
“Right, you’re just material witnesses,” Agent Farnes said. Then he glanced at Kenna. “And you roll with a former ASAC who dropped off the grid after he retired. What about your teenage friend? Who is she?”
Kenna didn’t want to say if she didn’t have to. “I’m assuming you looked her up?”
“You have few known associates.” Farnes stared at her. “Of those listed, a teen isn’t one of them. So who is she, and where did she come from?”
They really needed her to answer? Couldn’t they just focus on saving Maizie and then figure it out? The girl could procure a fake ID by then that would be convincing enough. She could be Kenna’s cousin, and then the FBI would never know where she’d come from.
Jax shifted slightly. “How about the truth?”
She didn’t look at Jax. The insinuation in that question indicated yet again his ability to read her. It was a little disconcerting. Or right now she was simply not doing so well hiding her feelings from her expression.
“Fine,” she said.The truth.“I’m sure you have people who can access those databases of seized material labeled ‘child exploitation.’ You know, the ones where the children have never even been identified and no one has any idea who they are, or where to find them.”
The agent stared at her.
“Why don’t you run her image through a search of those. When we get her back. Because unlike social media, or any educational institution, doctor’s office, family album or sport…she might actually show up there.”
Only because Kenna was pretty sure Maizie had deleted any record of herself from the servers at the company run by the man who had held her for years.
“So she’s nobody.”
Kenna bristled. “She’s very definitelysomebody.”
“You know what I mean.”
