13. 13
“THE TIME HAS CLAIMED NEW VICTIM”the headline of the front page of the newspaper reads. It’s been online since last night, but somehow seeing it in print makes it that much worse.
“Portland Police Bureau has confirmed that the infamous serial killer ‘The Time’ has claimed a new victim. Our editors received an anonymous tip containing details about the killer taking girls on days of the month, corresponding with numbers on a clock, earning him the nickname ‘The Time’. His latest victim has been abducted the first of this month. When police were confronted with this anonymous tip, they confirmed working on the case, saying the FBI is doing everything they can to stop this vicious killer that can’t be stopped. After all, before you know it, it’ll be the second of the month, and you could be next.
Read all about it on page 3, where we tell you how to best keep yourself and your daughters safe while authorities keep failing to apprehend this culprit.”
I don’t even open the newspaper to see what’s actually being written on page three. Living through this case is enough. Media attention is the last thing this man needs. It’ll only drive him further to get their attention, make him bolder. And what I really, really hate about media coverage on serial killers, is that the victims always are reduced to just that. Why isn’t Elaine’s name mentioned? Why is she suddenly just ‘his latest victim’? Will she be all forgotten when she’s no longer the latest?
When FIX Foundation manages to save kids, we make sure we give interviews about what a good thing it is for the children to be home again, to be back with their families again. In most cases anyway. Sometimes their families are the reason they are being sold for whatever reason and they under no circumstances will go back home. No matter what, we focus on the well-being of the kids. We don’t use the media to get more attention for the organization and we certainly do not use the media to give the perpetrators a voice.
Seeing the article makes me grumpy. I throw it in the trash and walk out of my office. Coffee will probably help. It can’t make it worse in any case. Chester is standing in the little kitchen, looking pissed as hell, his hair wild and his clothes disheveled. Not a good sign.
“What’s going on?”
“They delivered the wrong coffee beans. Miranda ordered the right ones, because she’s fucking awesome, but they delivered the wrong ones and they’re not willing to make an express delivery.” He slams a fist on the kitchen counter, rattling the glassware in the cupboards.
“Okay, let’s go,” I say as I grab his elbow and make my way to the exit.
“What are we doing?”
“We’re going on a coffee run. I’m grumpy, you’re grumpy, we’re getting a muffin and then bringing back coffee for everyone.”
Chester grunts as he gets in the elevator with me when it arrives, letting his head fall back against the wall and closing his eyes.
“Did you sleep?” I ask as I let myself fall back against the elevator wall next to him, our arms touching.
“Eh, a little. This is mostly lack-of-coffee tired. But I did spend some time cross-referencing all the kids we saved to see if they look like you and if they’re living in the general vicinity of the places The Time uses to grab his victims.”
“Don’t call him that,” I snap. “He’s the serial killer or the Unknown Subject. He’s not The Time.”
He opens one of his eyes and gives me a tired look. “Get me some good coffee and I won’t make mistakes like that again.”
“On it,” I answer as the elevator reaches the ground floor. “Did you find anything?”
“They all seem to be good, unless he suddenly changes to boys, then there’s two guys that are in trouble. But I feel like his kills are gender specific. We’ll check with Winny and Becky anyway, just to be sure.”
That’s a relief. I have no idea who he’ll take next, but I’m relieved it won’t be one of our kids. Unless he’s changing his whole M.O., but that’s something I don’t want to think about. We turn the corner and walk to the little coffee shop with the good but expensive coffee. It’s a quiet morning, and I start firing off a humongous list of items to take back to the office with us.
“Yeah, and let’s do some pastries. We need pastries. Oh, and muffins!” The barista starts smiling more with every item I add and when she finally has it all, she starts making it all at an exceedingly slow pace. Chester is busy paying the bill when I startle because two hands are put over my eyes. I almost respond in self-defense by throwing my elbow back and stomping whoever’s foot it is behind me, but I manage to hold myself back.
“Guess who?” Remy’s warm voice reaches me as he presses a kiss to my cheek.
“Hm, are you Randy? From last week? Of Joseph? From last month.” He takes his hands off my eyes and I turn around, facing him with a huge grin.
“No, it’s the annoying dancer from last night,” he says, a slick smile spreading over his own face.
“O, it’s you! I thought you looked familiar.” Giving him a wink, I start grabbing the filled boxes of pastries on the counter. “What are you doing here?”
“Had to be in the neighborhood,” he shrugs.
“You’re in the neighborhood a lot.”
“There’s a dancing company around the corner that allows me to dance with them,” he says as he takes the pile of boxes with baked goods from my hands, so I can start grabbing the coffees that are starting to pile up on the counter. Chester makes his way back from the registry, steps up behind Remy and then wraps his hands around his eyes, kissing the dancer on the side of his mouth.
“Guess who?” my friend mirrors Remy’s words.
“Ah, this must be the infamous Randy from last week!”
“Shit, what gave it away?” Chester jokes as he lets Remy go.
“I’d recognize you anywhere, Randy.”
Both boys snicker as they start picking up the rest of the coffees. I don’t tell them, but I like this playfulness between them and I can see why they’ve hooked up. I saw some of it last night, when I managed to get myself out of my funk and fed them, we talked about safe topics. Chester filled Remy in on exactly what set off my home demolition: office edition episode, and they hung out while I cooked and then made them eat so much we now only have enough food left to feed one orphanage instead of two. We make our way back into the office, loaded with good stuff, and I remind myself to hit the gym later today, because eating like this is going to get me out of shape.
When the elevator hits our floor and the door opens, a little whirlwind called Zoey comes rushing to us. She’s a caffeine addict as well, so I assume she’s making a run for the coffee, but the look on her face tells us something different is going on.
“Found a lead on the foster home kids,” she says, grabbing one of the coffee cups out of Chester’s hands. “Come, check it. I can’t believe you missed it.”
“I missed it?” Chester asks, setting everything in his arms down on Miranda’s desk. “Fuck!” He storms after the little girl to his desk, rubs Kurt Cobain’s Funko doll’s head and starts up his computer.
“I’ve sent you the link, if I’m right they’re being used in front cameras from one of the biggest child pornography cam sites,” Zoey says, as she pulls her desk chair to Chester’s desk and starts pointing things out to him. Remy helps me give everyone a coffee and a pastry while a neverending slur of swear words leaves Chester’s mouth.
“What’s going on?” I nervously ask. I need to know what’s going on.
“There’s this huge network,” Chester starts explaining, “where pervs can buy some time with underage boys or girls in front of a camera. They advertise on the dark web every now and again and you have to buy your in. I’ve run into old messages from them before, but they never leave the right information up for long, changing stuff up. I’ve bought my way in a while back. The conundrum is I can trace all the pervs who are looking at the girls, but I can’t exactly prove that the girls are doing it against their wills or are underage, which means I have no ground to go after the guys who are behind this. I’ve reported them to several authorities multiple times by the way, but as you can see, it’s still up and running. Now, we’ve got at least one girl who we know is there against her will. Serena Neale did not run away from home, so now I have grounds to go through all the ones and zeros that’ll lead me to exactly where they are and then you can go get her.”
My smile widens and I take the double-double espresso that I ordered for Chester and put it in front of him. He downs the whole thing in one go and then starts typing away at a speed I did not think was possible. I’ve heard him do this before, through my earpiece, but the rush he’s in is a sight to see.
Zoey is looking over her shoulder at me with a crease between her eyebrows. I raise my chin at her, asking her what’s up without words.
“The message was put up an hour ago. Usually it isn’t up for much longer than that. If I hadn’t seen it, we might’ve missed it,” she whispers. I see Chester perking up, hearing those words, and then bend back down over his keyboard again.
Fuck, because he got distracted checking up on all the previous kids we saved, we almost missed this one. I can work myself up about it, but I choose to let it go instead. This is neither the time nor the place.
“Talk to me, Ches,” I say as my eyes try to focus on everything that’s happening on the screens, but it’s too fast for me to make any sense of.
“Call everyone in, get ready, I’ll have a location for you within fifteen minutes, half an hour tops.”
“You’ll get bounced,” Zoey snaps. “Don’t you think I’ve tried?”
“Fuck off, Zoey. Let me do what I do. If I say I’ll have a location, I’ll have a location.”
“The firewall…” she tries to argue, but gets cut off in an instance.
“The firewall is there to be ruined. I’ll tear it apart, taking every zero and one there is until there’s a vacuum of nothing. Let. Me. Work.”
Zoey looks pale. Chester is usually a friendly co-worker, and Zoey’s good at what she does. But the whole team of hackers that help Chester aren’t in his league. I don’t think there is a league for him. Which is intimidating for his co-workers, and lonely for him. Before I take off to call in my team, I grab a danish out of the boxes with baked goods and press it into Chester’s mouth.
Yeah, almost missing the opportunity to get these kids makes him crabby, but not having eaten enough will do the same. He tries to mumble something to me, but I can’t understand him with his stuffed mouth.
Zoey gives me a grateful look, and I give her a wink before I leave the room.
I’m finishing up putting my tactical gear on in the dressing room, when Zoey comes rushing in. Alex, Scott and Dylan all look up at the same time as I do, all of them somewhere in the process of getting dressed.
“He’s got an address,” she says, looking both impressed and annoyed. Then her eyes fall on Scott, who’s still busy trying to put his shirt on, and her eyes linger as her mind seems to wander. When she mindlessly cocks her head, I can’t help but smile.
“Where are we going?” I ask her, getting her attention back.
“Just outside of town, seems like a remote place. He’s sent the address to your phones already. Says he’s currently connected to Abby’s earpiece.” Her eyes stay focused on Scott, and I wonder if she’s ever paid him any attention before she saw him half naked. Not the right time, they can ogle each other or fall in love for all I care after we’ve retrieved these kids.
“Thanks for telling us, Zoey. Good job on the lead,” I praise her. Without her, we’d not be heading out right now. It’s only after she leaves the room that I’m putting my earpiece in. “Ches?”
“Yeah, here. You on the way?”
“Going once Dylan sticks his feet in his shoes. What’s the deal?”
“They tried to ping me around, but I ponged them harder and now I know where the signal from these girls is coming from.”
I laugh out loud. “You did not just say you ponged them harder.”
“Then how do you want me to say it?” he snaps at me.
“I don’t know. How about tearing up the ones and the zeros into vacuums? You were rude, but it was better than saying you ponged harder.”
It’s silent at the other end of my earpiece.
“I think I owe Zoey an apology…”
“Yeah, you do.”
“I’ll make sure I do that.”
“Atta boy,” I say without being able to keep a smile out of my face. “Just, leave your balls out of your apology.”
“My balls?”
“Yeah, your ping-pong balls.”
Chester starts cussing me out as I start laughing. It’s the moment all the guys are ready and we start heading to the cars. We’re taking two cars again, expecting to bring three girls back with us. My insides twist in anticipation as I get into the right mindset to make sure this day ends well.
It’s a half hour drive to a secluded area just outside of Portland. We shouldn’t be finding anything here, but Chester picked up a signal coming from here and says there’s a small building that is used to hold girls. There’s nothing in the area, so we have two options. First, we dump the cars a little way back and walk the last bit, so we can be stealthy and they hopefully won’t see us coming. Second, we drive over to the building and barge in, praying it’s small and there won’t be many people there.
We’ve been discussing it for the whole ride, but we’re finally settling on option one. The kids they put in front of a cam are usually in pretty decent shape, so they should be able to manage the walk over to the cars. Better safe than sorry. Besides, we can always come back to get the cars if that turns out to be necessary. The thought of why these kids are usually in good shape sickens me.
When we turn the corner and drive to where the GPS is telling us to go, we’re almost immediately in front of a huge compound. There’s no possible way to sell it as small. It’s huge. Like, freaking motherfucking huge.
“Ches, call for fucking backup right now, there’s a huge compound,” I say through my earpiece. Forget being stealthy, if anyone looks outside right now they’ll see our cars no questions asked. “Why didn’t this come up in your fucking research?”
“Because there’s no cameras in the vicinity besides the cams the kids use and that’s only the inside and old satellite images only showed a small building. They must’ve expanded since.” His voice is snappy and short and I can hear him tapping away on his keyboard. “Backup will be there in twenty.”
“Who did you get to come?” I ask curiously. If they can be here in twenty, they must be fast.
“The FBI.”
That confuses me. “What do they have to do with this?”
“Right now? Nothing. But chances are we can find a reason why it’s legitimate for them to be there.”
“That’s working things backwards.”
“Funny, that’s exactly what Becky texted.”
“You texted Beckett?” I ask louder than I intend to. “Why?”
“Because you needed backup,” he says as if he”s confused why I’m even asking.
We’re talking in circles and this is useless. I want to roll my eyes at him, but I’m very aware the asshole can’t see that.
“Let’s get out,” I tell Scott, who I’m driving along with. Alex and Dylan took the other car. As soon as they see us get out, they get out as well. We gather around in a huddle.
“Backup is going to be here in twenty,” I tell them, even though I know they all heard even though I know they all heard Chester too.
“Let’s wait for them and have a look if we can see anything useful before they arrive. Split up the way we drove over here. Don’t do anything reckless and don’t make yourself known unless strictly necessary.”
I fall into my role as a leader as if I’m stepping into my own skin. It comes naturally to me. My team is used to it, and follows me to the letter. Then again, they’re not afraid to call me out on my bullshit if that’s what I’m telling. It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally they do. Those times, they’re absolutely right. Glad that my ego isn’t too big to be able to see the truth to that.
We split up into two teams and I signal Alex and Dylan to go to the right and Scott and I take a left. There doesn’t seem to be any outside security, but for all I know they have cameras set up and saw us long coming. Perhaps they don’t, or else Chester would have been able to access them? I don’t know. I don’t want to risk talking out loud now.
We make our way to the side of the compound that seems to consist of plates of corrugated iron. Comes in handy when you want to build quickly. I didn’t lie when I said it’s a big compound. It’s two stories high and roughly the size of a football field. What the hell is going on in there?
I’m in full action mode in that moment, having steadied my breath and my brain process. My heartrate is calm and even. I’m trained to stay calm in high pressure situations.
I haven’t found an entry yet, but I do see a window that looks to be about seven feet up. I want to have a look, see what we’re dealing with. Prepare myself. Knowledge is power and all that shit. I hesitate for just a second but then decide to go for it. Fear is the path to the dark side, after all.
Using hand signals, I let Scott know to give me a lift so I can see. He folds his hands together as he stands with his back against the building, providing me with a little step to get up on. He holds me up like I don’t weigh exactly one whole fully grown human, but more like I weigh as much as a little kid. Show-off.
With my fingertips I reach for the windowsill, slowly pulling myself up to get a glimpse inside. But before I can see anything, I find someone staring back at me as his mouth moves and I can hear him start to scream muffled things I can’t hear to people I can’t see.
“Oh fuck,” I say when I jump down as the first bullet is shot through the window, making shards of glass rain down on both me and Scott.
Through my earpiece, I say: “We’re compromised, I don’t know how bad it is.”
“Shots fired,” Scott says through his earpiece as I take my gun out and hold it at the ready. His back is still firmly to the compound wall. As we’ve seen no doors on this side, it’s the safest option for now. They can’t easily shoot us from the window if we’re this close to the wall. It’ll only work until someone comes running through the front door and has a clear path to shoot us though, but let’s box that thought for the time being.
“ETA on the backup, Ches?” I say, aiming my gun at somebody stupid enough to stick his head out of the window so he can shoot us. I aim and squeeze, hitting him in the shoulder and he yells as he falls back inside. Fuck, I do hope they won’t take this out on the girls.
“Five,” he grumbles, incessant typing in the background.
“Can’t be five, it hasn’t been that long since you said twenty.”
“Might’ve let Beckett know when things started to go south, he’s stepping on it.” Good, that’s good. We need the backup, I’m sure of it. There are too many people in this building with less than good intentions. I hear footsteps coming in. It sounds like more than two sets of feet are coming this way, so it can’t be Alex and Dylan.
“Run,” I say to Scott, pointing my chin to the cars, “I’m covering you.”
While Scott starts running to the cars as fast as he can, I walk to the cars backwards slowly, emptying my gun at no less than four men coming at us in rapid tempo. I hit one in the knee, making him go down with a very ladylike yelp, which I somehow find impressive. I’d have expected a louder yell when getting an injury that’ll make sure you won’t use the leg again. Another of the guys goes down, grabbing at his leg and screaming a lot louder than the first one. I wasn’t aiming at him though, so that must mean that Scott has reached the cars and is now covering me.
I up my speed, still never taking my eyes off the two remaining guys out there. I quickly change the clip of my gun for a full one and when Scott shoots the third guy in the arm, I hit the fourth in his knee. Turns out I’m in the mood for making people kneel for me today.
When I reach the cars, I quickly crouch down behind one of them. I peek over the edge of my car, but nobody is following us.
“Alex, Dylan? You guys safe?” I say through my earpiece.
“We’re clear. We were around the other side of the building in some bushes. I don’t think they realize we’re,” Alex softly says, which brings me some relief. I don’t think me fucking this up and then getting them into trouble would go over particularly well today. Meanwhile I can still hear Chester typing away like a madman.
“Ches, what’s keeping you so busy?”
“Getting to all the pervs watching the girls. Some started to notice shit was going on so they’re logging off. One of these bastards is gonna pull the plug on the broadcasting soon enough, so might as well catch as many of them as I can before that happens.”
Fuck, I love the way that man’s brains work.
“Good thinking.”
We all sit in silence for a while, the sounds of the wounded men grunting on the field in front of us the only thing that reaches my ears while we never take our eyes off of the building.
“ATA one,” Chester suddenly says. My steady heartbeat quickens for a moment. Then I hear the sound of cars getting nearer. Four big SUVs pull up right next to our cars, and feds with bulletproof vests get out of the car. How the hell does Beckett have access to this many men, ready to go at no moment’s notice? I find him amongst the feds, quickly making his way to me.
“Talk,” he snaps.
“There are underage girls who were reported as runaways inside that building, in front of cams, making kiddyporn for a bunch of pervs. It was supposed to be a small building, we didn’t expect this huge compound. Went to check the parameters when I saw an opportunity to look inside, got spotted and then they started shooting. No casualties on our side. Four men down in the grass right in front of the cars. No idea on the numbers inside.”
He’s nodding along to everything I’m saying. “Boards!” he yells, which is the name of a buff looking guy, and not some object as my head had made it out to be. “Round ‘em up. Be careful. Kids inside.”
Winny, who got out of one of the other cars, is calling in for EMTs. If this building is filled with kids, we’re going to need a lot more backup. The agents all start making their way to the building in a way they’ve obviously trained for. Dylan and Alex are making sure the four guys on the lawn are being obtained.
“Got the people who are watching?” I ask Chester through my earpiece.
“As many of them as I could,” he replies. And that’s all I need to just give in to my instincts. I follow Beckett, who’s making his way to the compound with two other agents. To my surprise one of them is a woman. In my experience, there aren’t enough female FBI agents and most of them are held back and don’t go out into the field. Winny staying at the cars is a prime example of it. I don’t know if that’s by choice or by demand.
“What are you doing?” Beckett says, as I catch up with them.
“Getting my kids back,” I say, as we near the entrance. At this point, the door is just open and we don’t see anybody. I have an inkling the men behind this whole operation fled the moment those other four didn’t come back. We push our backs to the wall of the compound, guns at the ready, waiting for the signal to go in.
“They’re not your kids,” Beckett argues, looking at me with those green eyes of his, but he doesn’t stop me from coming along.
“Yes, they are,” I all but whisper, “society gave up on them, authorities gave up on them. You know who didn’t give up on them? One of their uncles. One. And he got through to Chester. And then Chester got to me. And now, they’re my kids, because everyone else stopped giving a crap about them as soon as they became a statistic. A statistic of a black kid running away from a foster home. There’s something fundamentally wrong with that.”
Beckett doesn”t answer me. Maybe it’s the wrong time and place for this conversation, perhaps he agrees with me. I don’t care. I’m just going to get my kids back.
Beckett gives the signal to the agents around us to go in and clear the place. I don’t know where I fit into this well-oiled machine, but I know the drill and I’m the most driven out of all of them. They don’t know Jo-Anne, Serena and Latoya. They just got called in for backup. But just like I told Beckett: this is personal.
There’s a huge hallway with closed doors on both sides. There’s so many of them I can’t even count them. Beckett’s team clears everything as soon as they can, and I see a huge guy who gets ready to kick in one of the doors. I have an idea what’s going on behind these doors. I know what to expect. And whoever it is on the other side of that door doesn’t need yet another trauma added to his or her life in the form of a giant FBI agent barging in with a gun pointing at them.
“Stop!” I yell before he can force the lock. The agent looks up, and seeks approval by looking at Beckett, who does fuck-if-I-know-what, but the door doesn’t get kicked in. Standing in front of the door, my eyes plea with the agent. Knocking on the door, I bring my mouth closer to it.
“Hello, I don’t know who’s behind this door. My name is Abby. We’re with the good guys. We’re going to come in now and I don’t want to scare you. Can you sit down and close your eyes? We need to make sure the room is secure first.”
The agent who was about to break in the door looks at me in confusion. Sounds of movement come from the other side of the door. When I signal him to go ahead, he kicks the door open. He clears the rooms like he has been taught to clear the room: gun in hand, looking in all the corners and all the spots a person could be hiding before clearing it.
The room looks like a brothel. There’s no other way to describe it. I’ve seen legitimate porn that was shot in more amateur environments than this room. It’s all purples and reds and blacks, trying to make everything look sultry or sexy or something. It makes me sick to my stomach.
In the corner, on the floor, is a Latino boy. He’s got his knees pulled up and is resting his head on his knees, covering himself with his arms. From where I’m standing he seems to be naked. He’s visibly shaking and something primal inside of me wants to roar at the world. What the hell is wrong with people? What kind of fucked-upness do we live in? I walk to the boy, crouch next to him.
“Hey, this is Abby again. You can look now.”
Ever so slowly his head lifts up from his knees, and big brown eyes stare back at me. “We’re getting you out of here. There’s a lady outside, her name is Special Agent Luta, but we get to call her Winny. She’s making sure someone will come over here to check you out and then we’ll see if we can get you somewhere safe.” His eyes shift away again, looking at the ground. Maybe there’s nowhere for this boy to go, and it breaks my fucking heart. I hold out my hand, which he grabs when he carefully gets up. Not naked, just very tiny boxer briefs. God, he can’t be more than twelve years old. Fucking sickos like ‘em young. I hold his hand tightly as we make our way to the door. With my forehead, I point to the opening of the compound.
“There’s a lot of agents out there. Most of them are men, but none of them will harm you.” His hand squeezes mine tighter. “Do you think you can make your way over there and get to Winny? We can let her know you’re coming. I need to help these guys open all the other doors.”
Beckett nods his head behind me, yes, we can let her know he’s coming. The boy gives me a nod that’s so short I can hardly see it.
“Who can we tell is coming her way?”
Something in his vision gets blurry. “M-miguel,” he answers. “Before all this, I used to be Miguel.”
My throat feels thick. “Well Miguel, I’m so glad we have found you.” I give him another squeeze, as one of the agents walks inside with a blanket that he lets Miguel wrap around himself before the two of them make their way out.
I turn to Beckett, waiting for me to get yelled at for overstepping, but it’s not coming. He’s looking at me expectantly, which makes me scrunch my face. In the end, I just take over the whole situation, like rank has nothing to do with any of this.
“Get the female agent you have to come talk to every door before you repeat this ritual. It’s not foolproof, but most of these kids will have a traumatic response to a man in a role of authority.”
Beckett nods.
“Get them all out to Winny, and make sure Winny is the first person outside they talk to. Make sure the kids are together, no kids alone with agents. And no questions. It can wait.”
Another nod. This is getting kind of spooky. He must be able to see so on my face, because he cocks his head in question.
“Aren’t you mad Chester called the FBI in for backup?”
He shrugs. “Chances are we’ll find something that’ll get us involved.”
Now I really am confused. “Why aren’t you fighting me on this? That we’re doing it all wrong and we should follow proper procedures?”
He lays a hand on my shoulder and the weight of it feels like a warm blanket. “Because you’re doing a good thing here.”
His green eyes show nothing but kindness, and I wonder if this is the same Beckett I’ve met before or if he’s had some sort of Bodysnatchers moment. He looks into the hallway. “Now go get your kids back.”
Twenty-three. We got twenty-three kids out of those rooms. Only the four men on the lawn were taken into custody, the rest of them were long gone. More than five hundred people watching the streams were identified. There were several politicians, a rock star and a judge amongst them. There are warrants being made to take them in right now. The evidence Chester gave the FBI was a good basis to get this ball rolling. Having the statements of the kids and what they did, proof of how old they really are, the locked rooms and the messages on the dark web will get them convicted. The youngest of the kids is just nine years old, the oldest fifteen.
The numbers that keep going through my head that evening when I’m lying in bed are the numbers one and three though. One man. There was one man who kept believing in his niece. One man that kept opening his mouth until someone listened and did something. One voice that moved mountains.
And three girls. All taken from the same foster home. Thankfully retrieved in relative safety. Three girls, who now hold a future, because of one man. One voice. He’s taking them all in. He said he’d rather die than see them go back into the foster system.
For once that evening I don’t think of all the kids out there that aren’t safe. The kids I’m doing nothing for. Those I leave to fence for themselves in a world they’re not built to be able to survive in. All it takes is one person to create a snowball effect. For once, I believe that I’m enough. Tomorrow, I’ll be the voice of another kid and I’ll see where that leads me. It might just turn out I will be able to save some of them again. Even if it’s only one, it’ll be worth it.