Livia Lone

54-NOW

She spent most of the night at her desk at headquarters. The coffee was burnt, so she made a fresh pot, then poured herself a large mugful, cutting it with milk and a scoop of the turbinado sugar she kept in a desk drawer.

Senator Lone was the easy part. All she needed was his website and Wikipedia. It was so obvious, now that she had some of the pieces.

He’d been active against human trafficking since his time as a freshman senator. Wrangled himself a position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he worked to raise consciousness on the issue. Multiple trips to Thailand, to pressure the Thai government to do more against the scourge of trafficking. And every time he was out there, Livia knew, he would have fucked every impoverished child he could get his disgusting hands on.

His website trumpeted his work, claiming his efforts had led to the protection and rescue of thousands of children and unprecedented cooperation from governments that had formerly turned a blind eye to trafficking-countries like Thailand, where Lone had fostered joint law enforcement efforts that had led to the near destruction of Thai organized crime groups involved in trafficking.

Unsurprisingly, she found nothing about a Thai gangster going by the name Kana. But there were dozens of old news articles on Thai criminal groups generally. It seemed that once there had been three large ones, all of which were known to move human cargo through Southern California and, to a lesser extent, San Francisco and Oakland.

But no known instances of people-smuggling through Portland.

So maybe they used Hammerhead because they knew there was going to be a bust. Not despite Hammerhead’s lack of experience moving people, but because of it, as she’d wondered when talking to Tyler. If a bust was indeed the plan, they wouldn’t have wanted to bring heat on their profitable California routes. If they had to sacrifice something, it would be a relatively small-time narcotics operation in the Northwest, and the expendable peckerwoods they used as distributors there.

She thought of her conversation with AUSA Velez again, and how he had told her containers were usually jammed full of trafficked people because packing the container was just sound economics and risk management. Well, of course that’s why there were so few of them on the barge. They knew the shipment was going to be intercepted. It was supposed to be intercepted. The less wasted cargo, the better. And likewise the shipment from Bangkok. It was a decoy operation. They probably didn’t have local buyers. Those other children, the Hmong boy Kai… Skull Face and the rest probably had to ship them individually to wherever they had buyers, at additional cost and risk.

Or simply dispose of them. But Livia couldn’t allow herself to accept that. It was too close to Nason.

So whatever they were getting in exchange for this one shipment, it was worth more than the fifty thousand they’d paid Tyler and his gang. Worth more than the sacrificed cargo. It was worth risking an entire Pacific Northwest Thai ganja operation.

She kept reading. It seemed two of the three Thai gangs had been crushed with multiple arrests and prosecutions. The third had been seriously weakened.

All around the time she and Nason were trafficked to America.

All around the time Ezra Lone was on a crusade to get the Thai government to crack down on trafficking groups.

She put her elbows on her desk and rested her forehead against her knuckles. Could that have been it? Some kind of quid pro quo?

She imagined Senator Lone pitching it to some of his corrupt government contacts, or even directly to one of the criminal groups. Or maybe to both. There’s a storm coming, he would have told them. I can’t head it off. But I can give you an umbrella. Joint law enforcement to destroy your rivals. Adoring press coverage about your unprecedented cooperation. I report to the Senate that Thailand has made tremendous progress in the battle against trafficking, with more investigations, prosecutions, and convictions than ever before. The Senate recommends to the State Department that Thailand be upgraded from Tier 3 trafficking status, the worst, to Tier 2, or maybe even Tier 1, with all the trade benefits the improvement entails. We clear the field for you. And bring in a boatload of US trade. You’ll make more money, have more power, than you ever dreamed. And all I want in return is that you provide me children to fuck when I visit on my periodic fact-finding missions.

And two custom-ordered sisters, who you’ll obtain and ship to America per my instructions.

Probably she was wrong about some of the particulars. But she was pretty sure she had the general contours. The sisters part especially. It explained why her parents had given out the photo of her and Nason-so the Lones could select exactly the type of girls they wanted.

She remembered a concept from one of her college psych courses: the “breastplate of righteousness.” It was a biblical phrase referring to the armor of God, the goodness required in the battle against evil. But in psychology, it meant a protective shield of super-propriety, like when a closeted man railed in public about the evils of homosexuality-attending church regularly, proclaiming the importance of “family values,” and overall cloaking himself in political conservatism. Sometimes it was a defense mechanism. More often, it was a deliberate attempt to avoid or deflect suspicion, like that anti-gay senator who had been caught soliciting anonymous gay sex in a Minnesota airport restroom, or like any of the countless fire-and-brimstone ministers and politicians who had been similarly caught out in their hypocrisies.

Why her and Nason, though? Did the Lones want hill tribe girls? A certain age? Sisters? Some combination?

Just sisters, she sensed, thinking again about how Skull Face had used Nason against Livia, how the Montlake rapist had used those two women against each other.

But she needed to be sure.

She finished her coffee, then ran a search on Matthias Redcroft. Zero hits on social media. One hit for tax records-he was indeed employed by the senator. And one hit for military service-twelve years in the army, the last six with Special Forces. What the hell was a former SF guy, with the social media profile of a ghost, doing as a “legislative aide”?

She lifted her head and rubbed her eyes. She could see the opportunity. And most of the means. And the motive was obvious, in the very abuse she herself had suffered. What was missing was the pathology that had created the motive. She could sense it, but not yet see it.

If they’d wanted sisters, if that had been important to them… then maybe there was a chance. The smallest chance, but still a chance. That Nason was alive somewhere. That Livia could find her.

But no matter what, there was another chance, too. The chance that she could just know. Yes. Please that. Just to know. Before she died herself, just to know what had happened to her little bird.

She took a deep breath and blew it out.

And started searching for Becky Lone.