Ant speaks up, describing the building as the exact kind he’d been kept in before. I exchange a look with Charlie—Nacho’s instincts were spot on.
“It was like they were told at the last minute that this shipment was coming because the original mission messed up their plans. By the time Ant and I got to her, the trailer had been taken over, so her plans were doubly fucked.”
“But then she continued with the project?”
Nacho nods. “Makes you think. Charlie takes down one location in a completely different state, and this one pops up two days later. Maybe they’ve got more coming, maybe they were already going to put something up at the property, and this accelerated those plans. Not that I know anything. It’s probably just some wild theory, but…”
Charlie shakes his head and so does Erik. “Not some wild theory. Pretty fucking educated guess. Definitely worth looking into.”
“So there seems to be some urgency to this,” Levy observes.
Erik nods. “It’s the property next door.”
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath.
Levy laughs. “They have no idea they just set up shop next to an entire anti-trafficking organization.”
Charlie grimaces. “We still have to be careful how we play this. We thought we’d cut the head off this organization, but they regenerated rather quickly. A little too quickly. The building, the fencing, the fact that it was all expedited…money, money, money.”
As we contemplate the grim reality of the situation, Ant asks the obvious question.
“What are we going to do?”
19
NACHO
Charlie looks at Ant incredulously. “Youaren’t going to be doing anything. The rest of us are putting a plan together, and we’ll go from there.”
“Why are you excluding me? You always exclude me!” he shouts, curling his hands into fists.
Charlie lets out a patient breath. “Ant, buddy. You’ve obviously seen the operational side of what we do, and that’s exactly why you can’t be a part of this side.”
“Why not? This affects me directly.”
“We don’t know what we don’t know yet, and I’m not going to include you in a damn thing without first talking to Bram and Levy.”
Ant gestures at the two brothers dismissively. “Why would they know anything about anything?”
Charlie’s look is patient and kind. “They live with you, Ant. They’ll be able to tell us if you can handle this kind of information. The way you’re handling it now makes me think I was right to question it.”
I grimace, thinking about the details I’ve already given him.
“I’m not a kid. I can handle the truth of what you’re doing.”
“Nobody thinks you’re a kid,” Charlie says.
Erik quickly shutters his disbelieving expression, but Ant sees it. Ant’s lip curls as he walks up to him, his anger almost making their height difference disappear.
“Youdoknow I was made to look younger so the men could pretend they were fucking an underage girl,right? You do get that what that does to a person is theoppositeof whatever a kid is,right? That, of everyone here, I’m the only one who’s seen and lived through this experience?”
All the guys with advanced degrees and rescue experience go quiet.
“You’re right,” I say, touching his shoulder so he’ll look me in the eyes.
I continue in Spanish, fast and low so the guys can’t pick up what we’re saying. “Just a guess here, but they’re worried you won’t handle this information very well.”
“Not handle the information very well?” He switches to English. “Nacho, I know you mean well, but there’s a big difference between information and…I don’t know, actually living through being fucked by an eighty-year-old man with a doll fetish.”
