I listened as Patricia described what she said felt like a regular morning for her and Amy. She had a small breakfast, with Amy, and the other foster girl in her care, and they headed to school. Amy started a job at a local fast food place a few weeks earlier, so she told Patricia to expect her in a later than usual. But Amy had never returned home.
“He might’ve been from that organization she used to attend before she got her job.”
Micah sat up. “What organization?”
Patricia shrugged. “Don’t remember the name. Someplace for kids like her. They have ’em in Dallas, too.”
“They worked with foster children?”
She nodded. “Yeah, all types of kids from poor homes. Things like that. Helping Kids was the name or something like that.”
Micah scribbled in the notepad he pulled out.
“I moved out here a few months after Amy disappeared, and the sheriff’s department didn’t seem interested in finding her,” Patricia continued. “Felt like someone was watching me almost everywhere I went. It probably was all in my head, but that was when I decided my fostering days were over.”
Micah and I looked to one another. Wordlessly, we communicated the same thought. Patricia’s instincts were probably right. She hadn’t been making it all up.
After about two hours of talking and Micah combing through Patricia’s story, asking seemingly unimportant questions, we all stood from the table.
“Thanks again for your time.” Micah placed enough money on the table to cover all three meals.
“Thank you,” I said to Patricia, sticking out my hand.
“Are you going to find Amy?” She looked between the both of us, and I saw a spark of hope in her eyes. She had cared about the girl.
“We hope so.” Micah’s voice didn’t hold any promises. There was a heaviness to it that weighed on my chest. Patricia had to have felt it too because the spark quickly evaporated, and she lowered her head.
He didn’t have to say it explicitly, but the assumption was in the words he didn’t speak. Chances were that whoever had taken Amy, had disposed of her long ago. At best, we would be able to track down her body.
Watching Patricia pull out of the diner’s parking lot, I tightened my fists underneath my folded arms. Hound, who’d been waiting in the bed of the truck, stuck his head in between Micah and me. He licked the side of my cheek, comforting me.
Mindlessly, I scratched behind his ear while Micah reversed the truck and pulled out of the parking lot as well.
“Could this be a part of a sex trafficking ring?”
He was contemplatively silent for a minute. “That would be my first guess. Amy would’ve been easy prey for a trafficking ring. An older guy could’ve talked her into thinking she was his girlfriend. Gets her isolated and before she knows it ...” He let that hang in the air.
“Micah,” I turned to him, “that means there are possibly two sheriff’s departments taking part in this.”
He shook his head. “The Abilane Sheriff was up for re-election during the time Amy disappeared. His department worked to make it look like crime was down, ruling her case as a runaway, served his purpose. I don’t think they were a part of her kidnapping, though.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
He pushed out a heavy breath, running one hand over his head. “Me either. Those shitheads were supposed to protect her, but politics got in the way.”
Nausea rippled through my stomach. I pushed the button to open the window, needing some fresh air to stave off the real likelihood that I might throw up my entire lunch. The idea that Harlington deputies, who were supposed to protect the interests of a community could be involved in something as horrible as sex trafficking, made me sick to my stomach. Add that to my grandfather’s murder, and it all pissed me off.
“Micah, we need to get these sons of bitches,” I declared.
“What’s that?” Jodi asked from the opposite side of the hotel room.
I looked up from the table and the file that laid open on top of it. Something in my expression must’ve told her this was serious as she quickly shut off the television and stood, moving closer.
“Who’s this?” She lifted the picture of another teenage girl from the top of the file, observing it.
“Her name was Karyn. Karyn Titum.”
“Was?”
