Chapter 3
JOSH
It took every ounce of strength in me not to rush into the bathroom after her to make sure she was all right.
I would have held her hair and rubbed her back while she emptied her stomach.
I would have placed a cold washcloth on the back of her neck and held her until her tears subsided.
I would have run her a bath and cleaned her from head to toe, made sure my touches were gentle and sure.
I would have pulled her out of the tub and dried every inch of her and then laid her out on the bed and dressed her in my clothes or better yet a cute nightgown or onesie.
My computer beeped and Randall’s face appeared.
I threw the empty water bottle in the trash and unmuted the computer.
“Yeah, something’s happening on that floor.
” Randall shared a video of the guys I’d seen down in the lobby time-stamped a couple of hours ago.
They herded four girls into the elevator.
One of the girls was my little guest. She had her head down, but she was more alert than the other girls, who all seemed out of it. Probably drugged.
The video switched to another view of the hall and showed them entering a room at the end of the hall.
“And here’s the brave little one’s escape.
” Two of the guys walked out of the room and left the door open.
My friend took advantage of the opportunity, slid out, and closed the door quietly behind her.
She darted across the hall into the stairwell.
She walked down a few flights, but she stopped on my floor and looked over the edge.
We were eleven floors up. Or maybe she heard something.
She crouched down for a while, then the video jumped a few minutes ahead and she darted out of the stairwell and the video switched to our encounter outside my door.
“Anyone else in or out of the room besides them?”
“No, but the same credit card rented three rooms on the same floor and three gentlemen picked up keys and are in the rooms now.”
“Fuck.” I rubbed my face.
“What do you want to do?” Randall sneered. He was a computer and surveillance expert. All self-taught. If he had his way, he’d plant cameras in every hotel room. Thankfully, he understood it would cause a whole host of other issues if we allowed it.
“Fuck it.” I threw my hands up. “Call it in. Hotel security alerted?”
“Yeah, I want these fuckers out of my hotel and in prison.” He growled and tapped aggressively on his other computer.
I sat back and watched him work. He managed to run facial recognition on the guests and the ones who were after my girl.
He put calls out to our contacts in Interpol and an FBI task force in Europe we knew were working on human trafficking cases.
Since the FBI approached us a couple of years ago to help them bring down these types of people in the US, we had used our resources and money to help in every way we could.
“What about your girl?”
I blinked and stared up at the screen.
Just as the door behind me opened. I spun around in the chair. Her eyes grew wide and stared at Randall on the screen behind me. She squeaked and stepped back and slammed the door.
I shook my head and turned back around.
“You find out her name yet?” Randall asked. He had her photo running, too.
“Not yet.” I reached for the computer screen. “Keep me updated on everything. I’ll see what more information I can get out of her.”
“Sure thing.” He stopped typing and looked straight into the camera. Randall didn’t typically look people in the eye. It was unnerving. “Be careful with that one, okay? She looks like she’s seen too much for a woman her age.”
“How do you know that?”
“I can see it in her eyes.” He popped in the photo of her when she must have heard the men’s voices down the hall, then a second before she decided an unknown stranger was safer than the men who were looking for her.
I closed the screen and walked to the bathroom door.
“I’m sorry about that.” I lightly tapped on the door. “He’s gone. It’s safe to come out.”
I stepped back, and she opened the door and peeked out. She looked at me and then around the room behind me before stepping out.
My clothes engulfed her.
The shirt fell well past her knees, and she tucked it into my basketball shorts that reached her calves.
“A little big for you.”
She shrugged and went back over to her corner at the end of the couch.
“Oh, hey.” I reached for her, but she flinched and flattened against the wall. “Oh my God. I’m sorry. I…”
God, how do I do this? Every instinct in me told me this girl needed help, and I wanted so badly to help her.
I flopped on the desk chair and gripped the handles on the armrest.
“Hey.”
Her eyes darted around.
“Can you please look at me for a few seconds?”
She peeked at me with a side-eye and caught my gaze.
“I promise.” I held a hand over my chest. “With all my heart, I will not hurt you.”
She drew back with a look of disbelief on her face.
“I swear.” I even crossed my heart for good measure. “If you will allow me to help you, we’ll go at your pace. Whatever you need, however you feel comfortable communicating, you’re in charge. Okay?”
The disgust remained, but at least she relaxed from plastering herself against the wall.
She held one hand across her midsection and picked at the couch with the other. I turned around and found a small legal pad and a pen.
“If I asked you some questions, could you write the answers down for me?” I set the pad and pen on the coffee table in front of the couch.
She lowered herself and sat on the couch. She stared at the pad and pen for a full minute. I heard the Jeopardy! theme playing in my head. I grabbed another bottle of water from the refrigerator and set it on the table next to the pad and pen.
She eyed the water.
Maybe she was tired of the water.
“Would you prefer tea or juice?” I pointed to the mini fridge. “Or something easier to eat like maybe fruit or some warm soup.”
Her eyes brightened when I mentioned soup.
I tried to use that.
“So, fruit.”
Her head shook furiously.
I held in a grin. Happy to have gotten a direct response to something.
She picked up the pen and paper and wrote on it. When she turned to page to face me, she’d written ‘chicken noodle soup’ on the page. She gave me enough time to read the word before writing more.
She showed it to me again.
I read her words out loud. “Tea.”
She rubbed her throat.
“Is your throat sore?”
She nodded slowly, with a slight tilt of her head.
“Thank you for telling me what you need.” I nodded back. “Soup and tea, coming right up.”
I couldn’t keep from grinning this time.
I reached behind me to call in the order. She leaned back on the couch with her feet drawn up and hugged her knees.
“Can you tell me your name?”
She shook her head.
“Okay, no worries, we can get to it later.” I looked her over and she had cleaned the blood off her lip and her forehead. It must have been an older wound.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
She shook her head and picked up the paper.
“No doctor,” I read out loud.
“Okay, I understand.” I steepled my hands. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t hurt.”
She wrote on her pad.
“A few bruises and a bump on the head, but it’s fine now.” I was happy she wasn’t badly injured. I had seen some bruises on her legs and arms. What did those guys do to her? Maybe I didn’t want to know.
I got an alert and picked up my cell phone. They were about to raid the hotel room.
Randall: I didn’t mention the girl is with you, but they will ask about her.
I frowned.
My guest wrote something quickly on her notepad and showed it.
It said, “What’s wrong?”
Josh: Let’s give her until tomorrow. I want her to trust me before releasing her to the wolves.
My houseguest grunted.
“I’m sorry.” I put the phone down. “No one will come into this room without your permission. You are safe now. You get that, right?”
She hesitated but nodded.
“My friend on the computer, he’s actually one of the owners of this place.” I pointed to the ground. “He has access to the video surveillance in the hall and alerted the police.”
Her eyes darted around. Goose bumps popped out on her skin, and she gasped for breath. She stood up and collapsed back down.
I reached her, but she scurried back against the wall.
“I won’t touch you.” I crouched in front of her. “But you have to breathe for me.”
Her eyes grew wide, and her breath was coming in shallow bursts and close to panic. I had to do something.
I held my hand up.
She covered her head and got as small as she could.
It broke my heart into a thousand pieces. I lowered my hand and fell back on my ass, trying to avoid my own panic attack.
“I’m sorry.” I covered my face. “I am so sorry. I wasn’t going to hit you.” I inhaled and exhaled. “I wasn’t going to hit you,” I whispered. A small hand pulled on my pant leg.
I flinched and sat up. She drew her hand back.
We stared at each other. She initiated touching me. It was a pants leg, but progress. And her panic attack had subsided.
She pointed toward the notepad.
I reached for it and handed it to her.
She took it out of my hand, rested it on her knee, and wrote.
“I am sorry,” I read her words. “They would hit us sometimes when we didn’t do what they wanted us to do. It was reflex. I know you won’t hurt me.”
“How do you know I won’t hurt you?” I smirked.
She took the pad back.
“I think it would hurt you more than it would hurt me.”
“Smart girl.”
And just like that, my heart mended.
She wrote another few sentences and handed the pad to me.
“I can talk, but whenever I go on”—she wrote jobs and crossed it out and wrote dates— “they would ask me to talk a certain way, and I refused. So, it was safer to just remain silent.”
“How long were you with those guys?” I handed the pad back to her.
She held up two fingers.
“Two months?”
She shook her head.
“Two years?” My heart broke all over again. “You are such a brave young woman.”
She rolled her eyes and sat back. She smoothed the blanket across her lap.
A knock on the door startled us both.
“Brave.” I stood up and went to grab her food.
I would do whatever I had to get this woman what she needed.
And those motherfuckers were going to pay.