Chapter Twenty-Four
Gabe
Thursday
Yesterday, leaving the Joint Task Force, Gabriel had put his other cases aside to focus on this video the Joint Task Force handed him.
When his eyes grew fuzzy, he went home. But he had an itchy, unsettled feeling that had him tossing and turning all night.
Today, girded with an extra-large coffee and a fat cinnamon roll for encouragement, he was back in his rat hole of an office, with the door shut and the lights off.
He was hoping that today he’d develop his own third eye, his own psychic vision, and have some piece of evidence to hand to Joint Task Force so they could get on that search.
The thing that kept looping through Gabriel’s mind was what it was like out on Sweet Gum. The tangles of rhododendron and sweet briar, the glades with buckets for meth production, random shacks that had no rhyme or reason.
Hiding four special agents in the mountains wouldn’t be hard.
It didn’t even need to be uncomfortable for the criminals.
There were houses so far back from society, down dirt roads, hidden by the trees, that it would be easy enough to rent. They could have a clean bathroom, bed, cook up their dinner on the stove while the beer chilled in the fridge—all while their victims suffered.
Little Bird. She had been so heavily on his mind. She was so obviously in some urban house. She was probably too weak to call out. And she would probably die there, inch by inch.
There was nothing Gabriel knew how to do that could help her.
Gabriel adjusted in his seat and brought his mind back to the video. Here, at least, he had images. “Come on, tell me your secrets. Show me how to get to this place in the world.”
The video was bravely long.
There was no happenstance in this video.
It was a young man—a kid, young enough to be working on his first weak mustache. Silky thin strands tried to hide a chin dotted with zits.
The reflection of the young man’s face, partially covered by his camera, was hazily reflected in the van’s dusty back windows.
The goal of this video was to show the insides of the van and four men who had been packed in the back. They were laid out long, arranged like Gabriel stacked his glasses in the cupboard so that they fit perfectly: one glass up, the next one down—head, foot, head, foot.
The men weren’t the same height or weight, but they were all face down with their hands cuffed behind their backs.
All of them wore the same pants and shoes. All of them wore a jacket emblazoned with the bright yellow FBI lettering.
Why did the driver feel comfortable walking away from the van?
The victims seemed unattended, at least by anyone in the frame. And if they saw the kid with his phone in hand, they would have made a move on him.
Obviously, the driver parked the van off to the side of a building but not so far off that someone couldn’t wander by and see.
Maybe the driver had to take a monster dump and pulled up to a place to make a run for it.
Maybe the family had given the task to someone who wasn’t strategic or careful.
That part of the puzzle wasn’t his to figure out.
Location. Location. Location.
He refocused.
It was an old eighties-style van in brown, peeling paint, and rust spots at the dents.
In two frames, the witness dipped the camera, and Gabriel could see a partial mud-covered plate. By upping the contrast, he was able to pull out L K 4 but nothing more.
Gabriel wrote it down. How many vans from the eighties were still on the road that had this series in the license number? The license was probably meaningless; it could easily be a stolen plate.
The kid must have practiced in his head, making this video; he must have calculated then actuated.
The witness was smart up to a point. Catching the name of the store or the address would have been super helpful.
Gabriel looked back at the video frame that showed the inside of the van with the most clarity.
All four of the men were bald.
One with razor cuts across his scalp, the others with stubble growing in.
All of them had blood visible even in the darkness of the back of the van.
Four.
Gabriel had been prepared for two.
He pushed his laptop forward, crossed his arms, and laid his forehead on the edge of the desk where it was cold, and there was the sting of the edge pressing against him.
Images of war pinged around his brain.
These images were close to home for Gabriel.
He remembered the night when he came back to consciousness, peppered with shrapnel. His hands were bound behind his back. He was faced down. And as he lay there, he hoped that before he got put in anybody’s snuff film, he’d bleed out.
He lay there and prayed for the blood to flow freely into the puddle underneath him and let his life fade gently away, saved in the end by a Delta Force team.
Was that what the four men were thinking? Let me die before I get where they’re taking me.
Gabriel needed to think.
He needed clarity.
He needed to be that hero that he and Daniel had talked about being while they read books like The Three Musketeers, The Black Arrow, and Robin Hood, willing to face evil and fight for a good outcome.
It wasn’t like he was in the field going hand to hand.
He could get himself together enough to embody the person he’d imagined he’d become in those fawn days when he and Daniel had been soft and sweet.
The two of them had been nature hungry. Give them some mud and some tadpoles, a tree to swing from, another to climb.
And they dreamed of growing up to become hard men who rode war horses into battle.
Battle was nothing like Gabriel had imagined it. He never felt bigger-than-life heroism. He was someone who went from task to task and made sure his brothers came home.
That was it.
The totality of his service.
Now he sat in a dark room staring at people’s nightmares, trying to make sense of the locations.
He could use a drink, Gabriel thought, a pill, something to take the edge off this emotional storm that had been churning since he walked up to Sommer Hayes’s door, where he sensed something brewing like a storm in the near distance.
With his feet in the muck all day, it was easy to catastrophize life.
That was why he refused himself any kind of self-medication—too much would be too easy, and it would just make everything so much worse.
And Cathy was there, eagle-eyed, watching for any signs that he’d broken his promise to her to stay sober except for surgery, and maybe a broken bone.
The knock that sounded at Gabriel’s door, dragging him from those thoughts, was antithetical to his mood. It was a bright and excited ratatat-tat.
The door pushed open, and Candace Martins stuck her head in. “Two seconds?” she whispered.
Gabriel pushed back in his seat.
Candace stood in the door frame and looked left then right before she said, “I’m not going to turn on your light because I know your eyes are adjusted to the photograph you’re working on.
” She did another hall scan. “I wanted to let you know as soon as I could that we have her.” Candace lifted fists in front of her face and shook them fast and hard in celebration.
Her voice was tight with constrained emotion. “We got her early this morning.”
“Little Bird?” Stunned, Gabriel pressed down on any elation until he had the whole picture.
“Little Bird! Yes, Little Bird.”
“Alive though?” He held his breath.
“They took her to the hospital, and from there, I don’t have much information only the legal stuff.
I know that they’re trying to identify her, and social services will make sure that she has a safe place to go next.
But since no one’s reported her as missing, we don’t think there’s a mom and dad wringing their hands around the kitchen table hoping for her return. ”
Anger rusted the shiny surface of this victory. “How in the hell did she end up with that man?”
“Could be anything,” Candace said. “She might have been sold; she could have run away from home. Someone might have stopped on the side of the highway and put her out of the car.”
“Like an old dog? What is she saying about this?”
“She hasn’t said anything yet. We’re not sure that she can.
Trauma or medical issue, we’re not sure.
They’re trying different languages, showing her pictures.
Right now, she’s not communicating.” Candace paused and lowered her voice.
“I was told there are no signs of sexual assault. I thought that would be important for you to know.”
Gabriel had allowed those thoughts only limited space. But yeah, he was horrified by the idea of what could have been going on in that filthy room.
He was back to the sense of overwhelm he’d felt that morning; it had been like that all day long.
It had been like that ever since he’d walked back out through the gate at Sommer’s house, a vague restlessness. A sense that he should be saddling up.
He kept seeing her videos in his mind’s eye, and he was worried.
Gabriel chalked all of this up to the grieving process, poor sleep, and a wildly busy time at work.
Day to day, Gabriel triaged the images that came across his desk, but there was a price to pay when he went home at night knowing he was walking away from helping some teenager who was snatched and trafficked.
He got to go home and laugh in front of the TV and a missing woman?
The FBI special agents in the van? Time away from his desk often felt like he left a mission halfway through, and his brothers were in harm’s way.
Time off wasn’t restful or restorative. So he ran fast and hard out in nature. It was the only place he got respite.
This week in particular had him churning difficult emotions, and the last damned thing he needed was to react in front of a colleague.
Gabriel fought his emotions down.
The Hoover building was stoic.