Her fingers gripping the edge of the table had gone numb. “As a gift to herself on her eighteenth birthday, Natalie got a red butterfly tattoo on her right shoulder.”
Silence swallowed the room again.
Not in triumph or with relief. But with dread now that they had proof, no matter how circumstantial, that her sister had been trafficked.
“Can you tell who bought her and where she went?” Gaby asked Callan.
“I’ll need more information about Natalie. Let me bring up the standard asset specifications.”
He made it sound like a product specification in an online store, and she barely kept from flinching.
That was how she had felt standing under hot lights, dragged onto a stage, reduced to measurements and checkboxes. Hair. Eyes. Age. Weight. Skin. The camera had zoomed in, clinical and merciless, cataloging her body for faceless men who callously appraised her. They didn’t see a person. Just goods.Inventory. A commodity measured by how closely it matched a buyer’s appetite.
Natalie would have felt that too. Worse.
Just the thought of that took her breath away, but Gaby forced the memory aside—something she was becoming an expert at—and focused on the screen. She’d deal with the emotional fallout later.
First, she had to find her sister.
She scanned the extensive list, the ugliness of it staring at her in sterile black and white. But she quickly filled in the blanks for Callan: blue-eyed, blonde, petite, only 5’3” and 110 pounds.
“You two are sisters?” Mateo asked.
When she looked at him, she sensed the others’ eyes on her too. Understandably. Natalie looked nothing like her—the exact opposite, actually. Fair and delicate, where Gaby was darker, with discreet strength beneath her curves.
“We’re half-sisters with different fathers,” she explained before continuing. “You know about her tattoo. Just pierced ears, as far as I know. She’s healthy. I’ve never known her to have more than a cold her whole life. She’s a sweet girl who befriended everyone, which is naïve and dangerous in retrospect, and she looks much younger than her age.”
“Which is probably why they targeted her,” Leland said in disgust.
The last item on the list gave Gaby pause. Virginity status.
At her hesitation, Callan’s eyes rose and met hers.
Gaby’s voice came out barely louder than a breath. “I don’t know.”
The tension in the room increased tenfold as she explained, “I’m nine years older. Natalie was ten when I went away to college. After I got a job in the city. She dated, had crushes, but I don’t know if she ever…” Her throat worked. “If she was still…”
Unable to finish, she stopped and cleared her throat.
“In either case, I doubt she is now.”
No one contradicted her.
With compassion shining behind his blue-blockers, Callan nodded. “I’ll include both in the parameters. This should only take a minute.”
Rhys moved then. He rolled his chair closer and rested his hand lightly on Gaby’s arm. “I know that wasn’t easy. Do you need a minute?”
The question caught her off guard. So did the gentleness in it.
Her gaze locked with his, truly connecting. For a fleeting instant, their conflict subsided, like when they were just Gaby and Rhys, not a victim’s sister, not coworkers, or investigators hunting down the dregs of humanity, when they had trust between them—at least on his side.
Wishing for what might have been was a waste of time, however.
She inhaled deeply and shook her head once. “I’ve already lost enough minutes,” she said. “I can’t afford more, and neither can Natalie.”
His hand tightened almost imperceptibly before it fell away.
“Here we go,” Callan murmured as columns of data populated the screen.
