PANIC

Chapter Thirty-Nine - ROOK

Ford and Spence take turns driving through the night and by mid-morning the next day we’re at Lake McConaughy in Nebraska pulling into a campground.

“The safe house is in a campground?” I ask Spencer as I strain to see out the window. It’s pretty boring sitting in the makeshift back of a van on the floor, not even able to gaze out at the passing countryside.

“Not just any campground, Rook. My campground.” He swings the van around a circular driveway that allows him to pull up next to the main office and parks the van. “Wait here.”

I jump up into Spencer’s seat so I can at least sit in a real chair for a few minutes. “Spencer sure does own a lot of businesses.”

“Yeah,” Ford replies. “He’s not into holding onto money. He spends it as fast as he makes it.” And then he stops to look up at me. “He likes to own property and businesses. Some grand scheme of his.” Then he absently looks out at the campground. “He tried to get me to come deer-hunting with him out here a few years back.” I try to picture Ford deer-hunting and then we both burst out laughing. “It’s like he had a mental breakdown that day. I dunno.” And then he looks at me again and gets serious. “I do not hunt.”

“I figured. Me either. I won’t be joining that party.”

Spencer returns and pushes me out of his seat. “We got the Eagle’s Nest cabin. Sleeps ten, but at least it has a bathroom.”

We stop off at the campground market to pick up provisions, then head out to our new digs. It’s a pretty place—very Daniel Boone.

Inside the cabin is just like a three-bedroom house, complete with wi-fi and satellite TV. Spencer starts the grill to make burgers, Ford is still messing around on his computer, and I just sit and watch them from the dining room table, thinking about home. “Maybe we should call Elise or Antoine and see if there’s any news of Ronin.”

“Negative,” Spencer says. “Those FBI assholes are just waiting for us to show ourselves.”

When lunch is ready we all grab some food and eat in silence and then when we’re done, Spencer hands everyone a beer and brings a bottle of Jack and three shot glasses out to the living room, beckoning us to take a seat. I take a large overstuffed chair, Ford sits opposite me in a wingback, and Spencer stretches out on the couch. “OK, Rook. Spill it. Start from the beginning and end with climbing up a coal chute yesterday.”

So I do.

And it feels good to finally get it all out. I tell them about my mom overdosing when I was just a kid, all my various foster homes, and how I ended up with Wade. Spencer’s heard this part before, but Ford hasn’t. They lean in a little as my story progresses into the time after Wade. “I was in my last foster home and the father”—I stop to snort—“tried to come into my bedroom and touch me a few times. And believe it or not, even after all those foster homes, the crack ones, the single moms with scummy boyfriends, the ones who collected foster kids just so they could make the mortgage every month, this was the first time one of the grownup guys tried anything. And I figured I’d had enough. I was sixteen, I already took my GED, so I never went to school, and I was just done being someone’s problem. So I left and lived on the streets for a while with a girl I knew from a previous foster home. Then she got busted for drugs and I was all alone. And then Jon found me in a diner, scarfing down a sandwich that I bought with my beg money.

“And he had everything, you guys. And he was handsome. He was just like Ronin. He had a college degree, he had an apartment in Lincoln Park. It was small, and not all that nice, but it was still an apartment in Lincoln Park. He had a job and a car and food.” I shrug my shoulders and look between Ford and Spencer to see what they think of this but they just nod, like they get it.

“So I stayed with him. He never touched me at first. Not for a long time actually. I was only sixteen and he waited months before even kissing me. It lulled me into a false sense of security. Like he was a gentleman or something.

“But he wasn’t. He was a predator who knew exactly what he was doing because I wasn’t the first girl he took in and I definitely wasn’t the last one either. He liked the kinky sex, that Fifty Shades shit. Except… not sweet.” I stop and look directly at Ford. “He liked it rough and mean.”

Ford’s jaw clenches and he downs his shot and pours himself another one. We all stop to drink. Me because I know what comes next, them because they can take a good guess.

“So one day, before we even slept together, he came to me with this piece of paper. It was a sex slave contract. And even though I realize now that it wasn’t legal, I really thought it was back then. I feel so stupid, but I just didn’t know any better. And he said this was what he needed from me in order to allow me to stay with him, so I signed it.”

“You couldn’t have known, Rook,” Ford says. “It’s not something a child should ever know about. It’s not your fault.”

“I know, Ford. But I just accepted it. I was so dumb. So after that he started having sex with me and it started out bad right away. I was a virgin and the things he was doing to me… they were just weird. I was so confused, and it was just too much for me. I—God, I’m so fucking embarrassed to tell you guys this.”

“Rook,” Spencer says, “we’re not judging, OK? We just need to understand how we got to this day, you know? We need to know so we can make the right decisions going forward.”

I get that part, but it’s still so embarrassing. I take a deep breath and continue. “Well, to cut to the chase, even though he tried his hardest to make me… come”—I look away and blush as I say the word—“I just, it just… it never felt good. You know?” I look up and they’re both nodding at me, somber frowns on their faces. “And this made Jon very angry. And one night he took me to his BDSM club to do a scene and I didn’t… get off. And his friends there realized he wasn’t able to get me ready, and they all talked about their girls and how they should trade us off, see if that might improve our… responsiveness.”

“Oh, fuck, Rook,” Spencer says.

“No, Jon didn’t agree. He was possessive of me. But he did agree to help those guys with their girls. By this time we had already moved out to the country in the serial killer house, that’s what I called it. So these girls would come stay with us and he… trained them in the basement. He liked them a lot better than me, to be honest. He stopped fucking me so much after that. I sorta just became the house slave. Which I could definitely live with, but he got more and more violent.

“And then, I’m not sure how it happened, but somehow he became involved in like, matchmaking. Selling, I guess, since there was money exchanged. They had auctions in our barn, I kid you not. Girls showed up, willing, money was exchanged, and at first I’m pretty sure the girls were the ones getting the money wired to offshore bank accounts. Their contracts had expiration dates. Six months, a year, that sort of stuff. But later, those girls were not there because they wanted to be. They were kidnapped.”

I look over at Ford and he’s slumped over, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. Spencer’s got his hand over his eyes, like he’s picturing the scene and wants it to go away.

“Jon came to me one night soon after this started. I’d just found out I was pregnant.”

“Pregnant?” Spencer and Ford say at the same time.

“Yeah, I had just found out I was pregnant and things sorta got better. Jon seemed happy about it, and by this time we were already married, so in a rare moment of trust, he came to me and asked me to help him hide some stuff. In case these partners of his ever decided they wanted to get rid of him or turn him in for what he was doing. He told me it was in my best interest since I was his accomplice. So we went down to the basement where his uncle had already made the hidey-hole underneath the laundry room drain grate. Jon knew about it but he was too big to do anything with it, he needed me to squeeze down there, dig it out and make a safe spot where he could keep me and the important things he had in case anyone ever came to mess with him. I would be his ace in the hole, he said.”

“What happened to the baby?” Ford asks quietly. He’s still got his head in his hands.

“I lost it. Miscarriage.” I continue quickly before they start asking too many questions about my son. “Things got pretty bad after that happened. Jon was angry and I mean constantly. He started beating me. Violently, much worse than any of the stuff he ever did sexually. And then he almost killed me. And that’s when I ran away and ended up in Denver.”

We sit in the silence for a few minutes and I take the opportunity to down my beer and take a shot.

Spencer is still pinching the bridge of his nose and covering his eyes at the same time.

It’s killing me to know what they think of me right now.

“Rook.” Spencer blows out a long breath of air and then opens his eyes and stares straight at me. “You are the bravest fucking chick I’ve ever met.”

I realize I was holding my breath and I let it escape in a rush.

And then Ford straightens up, leans back in his chair and starts talking. “Those drives contain the names of everyone involved in that little trafficking ring Jon was part of. There are seven FBI agents, twelve Chicago cops, a mayor of a small Illinois town, a state senator, two US House members, and a shitload of well-off businessmen. One of whom”—Ford raises his eyebrows at Spencer for this—“is our friend Cooperson Smyth from Boulder.”

Spencer sits up for this bit of news. “No.”

“Yes,” Ford says. “He was part of it so you know what, Spencer? You can stop with your own guilt about that now. He was even dirtier than we could ever have imagined. I never heard about this, did you?”

“No, I knew about the money crimes and what his daughter told Ronin about him…” Spencer trails off as he looks over at me.

“His name is all over these documents. And it makes you wonder, right?” Ford looks over at me now, shaking his head and huffing out a breath of incredulity before continuing. “If this was fate after all.”

Our conversation all those months ago at Coors Field floods back. When I told Ford that I got off the bus because of the film department at CU Boulder. ‘Fate,’ he’d said. ‘Weird,’ I’d replied.

But maybe he was right.

These guys have always been my future.

“That’s just the US people. We have several dozen international men as well. Including one particularly nasty cartel head from Columbia. We have signatures, wire-taps, which are probably not admissible in court, video, which probably is admissible, phone records, bank account numbers and transaction records, passwords, and a complete list of girls—both the ones who were traded by mutual agreement and those who were kidnapped and sold. Jon kept very, very thorough records.”

“Great, so we’re good, right? We can use that to bargain for Ronin, can’t we?”

“Well, Blackbird,” Spencer says from the couch. “Yeah, it’s damn good stuff. Almost airtight, in fact. But the problem is, we might be killed for exposing it. This is high-level shit. People will not take kindly to us barging in on their well-planned crime ring, guns a-blazing, making demands.”

“So what do we do?”

Spencer blows out a long breath of air and pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers, staving off a headache or trying to beat one back down into submission. “Take them all down at once, knock them out before they see it coming. But we’re down a team member. We need a front man, and it’s gotta be you. Because Ford and I do not, let me make this clear, we do not get involved in the public side of things. We’ve got too much history, Rook. We can’t do it. Ronin is like a brother, but we can’t risk being the face of these crimes. And just so you know, you’re a nobody now. Next year, if we never get involved in this, you’ll be a minor curiosity with the show and the modeling.

“But if you do this you’ll be famous whether you want to or not. People will dig up your past, smear your name, probably send you hate mail and stand outside wherever you live with giant signs telling you you’re going to hell.

“They’ll call you a whore, find every last foster home and get them to talk shit about you, and you’ll never be invisible again. Say goodbye to grocery shopping and say hello to your own Wikipedia page complete with editors fighting over how to portray you publicly for years to come. Your children will grow up knowing you were a sex slave for a sadistic man and watched human beings being auctioned off in your barn. And that’s just for starters, God only knows what could happen. So, Blackbird…” He sighs deeply. “It’s your call. You lead, we follow.”

I chew on my nail a little, thinking it over. I’m so ashamed that I was part of what happened back in Illinois. And if I’m honest with myself, that’s why I always want to run from things. I have no guts. I’m so weak. Ford was right. And I have done so many stupid, stupid things that I’m not sure I can even make up for it.

But I can try.

Even though it will be difficult and I’ll have to admit all these things to the cops and reporters, and God only knows who else—shit, maybe they’ll even put me on trial for not turning them in sooner—I still have to try.

I look over at Spencer and swallow down the fear. “Can you come up with a plan that will make sure the cops believe me? Might they just blow me off? Maybe the person we tell is involved? I mean, I know how far-fetched that is, but there are a lot of names on that list, Spencer. What if that’s not all of them?”

“That’s your risk, Blackbird. This is most definitely not all of them. You can bet that Jon’s whole part in this scheme was small, it’s international. Even if we get all the names on this list, this is probably a small fraction of the people involved.”

“Will they come after me?”

He shrugs. “Maybe. Look, we’re not gonna just leave you to deal with it alone, OK? We’ll be here behind the scenes, but we won’t be fielding questions in front of cameras. You’re the one connected to these people through Jon. Ford and I will just make it more complicated. They’ll start looking into our pasts, they might even try to pin it on us.”

“I might throw up.”

“I already have a plan buzzing around in my head and we’ll just kick back here for a few days and figure it all out. I’m certain I can set it up so at the very least Ronin will get out of jail for the comments about getting him arrested. And we can probably get some of the people on this list arrested, but beyond that, Rook…” He throws out his hands. “I have no idea. They could all walk in the end. That’s just how the system works.”