Chapter Thirteen
Dominic
The elevator doors open, and I see Naomi looking absolutely panicked in front of our hotel door. “What happened?” I ask forcefully.
“She’s gone,” Naomi says carefully. “The agent fell asleep. Cameras spotted her leaving the room and exiting the building alone.”
“She wouldn’t…” I start.
“She would, and she did,” Naomi says. “She would absolutely do what she was told to do if she thinks Rose is in danger.”
“Fuck,” I snap. “When did she leave?”
“About thirty minutes ago, hotel camera footage from the valet area caught her going into the alleyway to the left of the building. A white van pulled up and left a few seconds later,” Naomi says. I turn back to the elevator, and she runs after us. “Wait. Dominic, you have to…”
“Have to what?” I turn and yell at her. “You lost my wife, and now I’m going to find her. Go do your job and I’ll do mine.”
The moment we get to my truck, Trish grabs her laptop from the back and opens it up.
She is a computer engineer and essentially a computer hacker.
She gets to work on accessing the messages on Myra’s phone.
Matt and Natalie walk toward the restaurant next to the hotel.
I do not doubt that they are trying to get hold of their camera footage.
We can always hack in and get it, but this way would be easier.
We know that there are cameras in the alley on both sides of the hotel, but this is the only one that’s truly accessible.
“Why didn’t she call me?” I ask myself aloud.
“She acted impulsively to try and save her daughter,” Trish says, handing me her laptop. I read through the messages, and it makes sense. I don’t blame her, and I likely would have reacted the same way. She may not have been the one to raise Rose, but she’s still her mother.
“We need to go see Paul and Megan,” I say, handing the laptop back and pulling out my phone.
I got in contact with them last week. They know the entire situation and asked that I keep them updated on everything.
I need to make sure that Rose is okay. Walter likely never even knew where she was; he only knew of her existence.
“Hello?” Paul answers sleepily.
“It’s Dominic. I’m sorry to wake you, but it’s an emergency,” I say.
“Is she okay?” he asks, suddenly awake.
“No. Go make sure Rose is okay. Right now,” I say.
Paul and Megan Wilson are wonderful people.
They truly care about Myra. What she does not understand is that Rose has never called Paul and Megan “Mom and Dad.” From the time she could understand, she knew she was adopted.
She introduces them as her grandparents.
Paul told me that she overheard him and Megan talking about how they wish that they could have Myra as a daughter, also.
She took this as Myra still being her mother, and her adoptive parents being her grandparents.
That is how it’s been since she was seven years old.
Rose is incredibly smart for her age and empathetic in ways that not even adults are.
She’s not upset at Myra and simply told her adoptive parents that her mom will heal, and she is excited to meet her one day.
“She’s pretending to sleep while reading under her covers. What’s going on?” Paul asks.
“Is Myra okay?” Megan asks.
“No. She was lured out of the hotel, thinking that someone had Rose. She was told to go to the alleyway, or Rose was going to be hurt. Now she’s gone.
The FBI apparently is investigating it, but I’m done trusting them.
I’m doing this my way now, and those two little fuckers aren’t gonna make it out alive. ”
“We aren’t in the safe house. We are in our vacation home. Meet us here. We have plenty of room for everyone,” Paul says. “I am going to be honest with Rose. Obviously, I want the gritty details spared, but I promised her that we would keep her updated on Myra.”
“I want to be upset at her for not calling me first, but I don’t blame her,” I say as Matt gets into the front seat. “I’m putting you on Bluetooth. Everyone is here.”
“Got it,” Paul says.
“Get anything?” I ask Matt.
“Uh. Yep,” Matt sighs and hands me his phone. “Their alley camera by the back door has sound.”
I sigh and take his phone. I watch the situation unfold, and I’m realizing there’s a third person. Walter and Alvin were with her, but someone pulled up in that van. I zoom in on the video slightly and see that the driver has black hair. Nothing else is clear enough to see.
“Running the plate,” Trish says.
“Dom, I texted you the address,” Megan says. I pull up the GPS, and I see that it is only twenty minutes away.
“We will be there soon. Trish, can you work on seeing where they might take her?” I ask. “They headed north toward the interstate.”
“If they have any brain cells, they won’t keep her nearby,” Paul says.
“No,” I say. “They’ll move her as far away as they can. We will be there in just a little bit.”
As we drive, I let myself feel this for a moment.
Tears roll down my cheeks as I navigate the streets.
I’m trying not to be consumed by things that I cannot control.
I have to focus on the things that I know to be true.
They won’t kill her like Leon would have.
I will find my wife and kill every single person who put their fucking hands on her.
When we pull into the driveway, Paul and Megan are on the front porch. I have not met Rose before, but I’m sure she is just as sassy as her mother. Megan and Paul are easily old enough to be Rose’s grandparents.
“Hey,” I say with a sad tone.
“Hey, sweetie,” Megan says, hugging me tightly. She moves to hug the others who are in similar states of sadness, while Paul greets us with a firm handshake.
“Come in. Rose is dying to meet you all,” Paul says.
“I wish Myra were here to meet her,” Natalie says quietly.
“We may not know Myra as well, but we know her daughter. She is a fighter. We will bring her back where she belongs,” Paul says.
“We aren’t asking you to be involved,” I ask. “We just wanted to make sure that Rose was okay.”
“We have the money and the means. We love Myra just as much as we love Rose. We are helping you,” Megan says, giving no room for argument.
When we walk in, I’m stunned to see Rose.
She looks just like her mother, just younger.
I remember Myra at eighteen, and I do not doubt that Rose will grow up to be a clone of her mother.
“What happened to her?” Rose asks. “This is about my mom, right? Why else would you be here at nearly midnight?”
“It is,” I say, waving her over to sit on the couch with me. I glance at Paul and Megan for a moment. “Can I?”
“Yes,” Megan says.
“Myra…”
“Mom. She’s my mom,” Rose corrects me firmly. “She saved me from her life, and I know one day she will be able to finally get to know me.”
“Your mom was tricked,” I say. “Her biological father and your biological father tricked her into thinking that they were going to hurt you. To protect you, she was told to leave the hotel where we were staying. Out of desperation, she did what they said. We have the camera footage of them getting to her. Your biological father drugged and kidnapped her.”
“What is the plan then?” she asks. “You have to have a plan. In all the shows, they set up a board and write out everything that they know. So, what is the plan? What do we know?”
“Rose,” I say softly.
“No!” she yells at me. “You have to have a plan. I haven’t gotten to meet her yet. I haven’t been able to tell her that I love her and that I am thankful for the decision she had to make, but I want to get to know my mom. Don’t treat me like a baby. I’m not a baby.”
“Okay,” I say. “We don’t have a board, though.”
“I do,” she says as she jumps up and bolts down the hallway.
“How involved are you going to let her be?” I ask.
“Let’s be real,” Matt says. “She is just like her mother. Good luck keeping her away from this.”
“I was about to say,” Natalie laughs. “We may as well call her part of the team.”
“She’s a smart girl, but she’s stubborn as hell,” Paul says. “It’s easier to include her, or she will end up going off and finding out on her own. She is homeschooled, so it’s not getting in the way of anything.”
“Here,” Rose says, setting down a huge whiteboard against the wall in the living room. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”
“You just remind me of Myr… of your mom,” I say with a soft smile.
“So, what do we know?” she asks, setting the whiteboard up before writing “Mom” at the top. I watch as she writes her date of birth and her full legal name under it.
“Walter Carrington and Alvin Chambers do not own any property that was not seized by the FBI,” Trish says.
“Ew. They even sound like rapists,” Rose says, writing their name.
“Shouldn’t you—I don’t know—be in bed or something?” I ask.
“Shouldn’t you—I don’t know—be focused on your wife or something?” she says with a frown. I can’t help but smile because she is just like Myra.
“See?” Paul says. “Stubborn.”
“She keeps herself out of trouble, and she always does her schoolwork, so we don’t mind if she has freedom. The fact that she chooses to use that freedom to research how to help her mother definitely makes me want to cry, though,” Megan says.
“Okay,” I say. “I need for the two of you to be honest with me… How do you know Myra?”
“What do you mean?” Paul asks innocently.
“Paul, I am a psychiatrist. I have studied body language. The two of you are lying to me,” I say. “Myra consistently lies when we ask about the first time that she met the two of you.”
“Oh, come on,” Rose scolds them. “Paul was the fire chief when Mom surrendered me. Megan was there when Mom showed up.”
“We talked for a long time. As long as Myra could be away without being noticed,” Megan sniffs.
“She told me about what her father and uncle were doing to her. She understood what would happen to Rose if she didn’t give her away.
I knew then that she loved her daughter and didn’t want to do that, but that she didn’t see a way out for herself that didn’t get her killed.
I promised her that I would take care of her daughter until she was ready to be a mother.
She was surrendered directly to me so that we could have a better chance of custody.
The court did not hesitate to let us take her, since she was already staying with us.
Myra stayed in contact with us the entire time.
She’s been there her entire life, just from a distance. ”
“Fuck, that’s pitiful,” Natalie says.
“Are they going to sell her?” Rose asks. We all turn and look at her, and she immediately gets an attitude when no one says anything. “Well? Is anyone going to talk, or is everyone going to stare at me?”
“Why would you think they’d sell her?” Paul asks. “You do understand what that means, right?”
“Yeah. Trafficking. You forget that you’ve let me watch crime shows for my entire life,” she says, waving him off.
“Alvin had significantly fewer trafficking-related sentences than any other judge in the city. Also, 26 years ago, he was accused of being involved in trafficking. It never went anywhere because whoever had made the complaint died.”
“How do you know this?” Megan asks.
“More importantly, how did the FBI not know?” I ask.
“Because they are doing things legally,” Rose shrugs.
“Rose,” Paul sighs. “How many times have we told you? You cannot do that. If you get caught, that will hurt you for the rest of your life.”
“Wanna know what else will hurt me?” she asks coldly. “If I have the capability to help my mother, and I don’t because of stupid laws. I’d be charged as a minor anyway. Oooh, so scary.”
“I’m confused,” Matt says.
“Our girl is a little hacker,” Trish says with a grin. “You cover your tracks when you go on these expeditions?”
“No one has even suspected that they’ve been hacked,” she shrugs.
“Wait,” Natalie says. “Roses have thorns.”
“Did you have a stroke?” Matt asks, turning to her.
“Roses have thorns,” she says to Trish.
“Oh, hell,” Trish says.
“Oh God. What did you do, Rose?” Paul asks.
“There is a hacker on the dark web calling themselves Thorn. Everyone thinks it’s a man, but they expose pedophiles and submit tips to the police departments near these people.
They are responsible for putting away nearly one hundred pedophiles for having child porn on their computers,” Trish says, looking at Rose. “And that’s been in the last year.”
“Well then,” I say.
“You’re going to get caught, or worse. They’ll find out you are just a fourteen-year-old girl looking for revenge. Do you understand what these people will do to you if they find you?” Megan asks. “This isn’t crime fiction, Rose. These people will do awful things to you.”
“Like they did Mom?” Rose asks. “You know, I found every hospital report from every injury she had growing up. The day after she gave me to you guys, she was in the hospital for six days for supposedly falling down the stairs. She had a concussion, and her arm was broken, Megan. An investigation with social services was opened, but no one did anything to help her. No one cared that a little girl was being abused. They had to have known that she had just given birth, right? Why didn’t anyone help her?
If I can expose these awful people, I’m going to keep doing it.
Maybe this isn’t a crime fiction show, but it’s my life.
That could have been me at eleven years old, giving birth to a child out of incest because they decided to harm me also.
Be mad all you want, but I will keep doing it. ”
“Fine,” Paul says with a tight tone.
“I will make sure no one can find her,” Trish says. “I am blown away that she can do things that people twice her age have yet to figure out. She is incredibly smart.”
“Well… Let’s start from the beginning,” I say. “What do you know about her past?”