Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Aria had taken a sip of water and now set it down. “Thanks for meeting me here. I feel like I haven’t had a day off in weeks. There’s not a lick of food in my house.”
“Still working the task force?”
“Yeah. Gang activity has been off the charts lately. A four-year-old boy was shot in a drive-by on Saturday.”
He grimaced. “How is he?”
“It’s touch and go right now. Say a prayer if it’s your thing.”
He nodded. It wasn’t necessarily his “thing” on any regular basis, but he wasn’t averse to reaching out to God on behalf of a four-year-old little boy who’d been shot by some piece of shit looking to prove his allegiance to a group of criminals.
Aria had been assigned to the gang unit a month or so before. It was an issue that was becoming a bigger and bigger problem in Reno. And, of course, with gangs came more drugs and therefore more crime, not only committed by the gang members but by the citizens who ended up hooked on something that required money to keep up. And there was always the more serious issue of human trafficking.
The waitress approached and took their drink order, a glass of wine for Aria and a beer for him. It was technically off-hours after all. “So it sounded like you might have something for me,” he said.
Aria nodded. “Maybe. I’m not sure. I figured I’d let you decide.” She reached into her purse beside her chair and handed him a folder. Evan laid it on the table and flicked it open, his brow creasing as he glanced over the details.
He’d been looking into abductions during his free time and asked Aria to pull aside anything that caught her eye that met his criteria. Naturally, he’d first had to tell her about his past, but she’d already known. She’d blushed when she’d admitted it, but she hadn’t needed to. He wasn’t surprised she’d remembered his name, considering the news coverage his and Noelle’s story had gotten in the year after their escape. No one knew the whole truth. Certainly not the media, something both he and Noelle had ensured with their refusal to speak with them. The last thing he wanted was for someone to look at him and immediately associate rape and violence.
Of course, the Feds had swooped in and taken over the case almost immediately. It was a kidnapping, after all. Not just across state lines but into another country. But Aria had access to some information, and anyway, what he had requested from her was of a more general nature.
He flipped the page in the file, understanding why she’d flagged this one. “He told police he was kept in a cage,” Evan murmured, the hair on the back of his neck standing up.
He almost startled when the waitress placed their drinks down on the table, closing the file that had photographs of a skinny man with multiple lacerations on his arms. He was surprised to see that he was an old man. He looked pale and wide eyed. Shock.
“Are you ready to order?” the chipper young girl asked.
“Do you want a minute?” he asked Aria.
“I’m ready if you are.”
He wasn’t, but he usually got the same thing when he ate at an Italian restaurant. He waited as Aria ordered a pasta dish and then put in his order for chicken parmesan. When the waitress turned away, he opened the file again. “He was kept in the basement of a warehouse in . . . Texas.” Texas. That wasn’t even close.
“I know,” Aria said. “That was the only thing that seemed off. Unless whoever abducted you moved or works with a large network.”
Whoever abducted you. He was tempted to correct her, to make sure Noelle was included in that sentence. It hadn’t been just him who was abducted. They’d been a team, and it felt wrong—even now—not to acknowledge her. He pushed thoughts of Noelle aside, though. Of all the things that still caused those old scars to pull and stretch uncomfortably, it was the thought of Noelle.
Noelle, who he hadn’t seen since that spring day in San Francisco.
He forced his mind back on the file in front of him and what Aria had just said about a large network. “I’ve always thought it was possible,” he said. “We were on camera constantly. People were watching. They could have been stretched all over the globe, as far as I know.” Some of them anyway. He figured the ones who had paid money to rape them or beat them had been closer to where they were kept in Mexico, in a dirt-poor town a few hours across the border.
Aria sipped her wine, her gaze stuck on him, eyes sad. She seemed to adopt that look any time he talked about the crime committed against him, or even alluded to the things he’d suffered. Her sadness said something given that the work she did on a daily basis was tragic as hell. “And yet, in all this time, there haven’t been any reports of a similar abduction,” she said as she set her glass down.