My parents and the wire transfers.
Missing girls.
The sex trafficking ring at Aventine.
More missing girls.
The Cantwell Resort and Spa, built as a destination for powerful men who wanted to buy and use kidnapped women.
Missing girls.
Then, Maeve’s kidnapping last winter, the podcast incel who’d taken her to Romania, who’d told her he was going to sell her off once he had his fun.
Unfortunately for him, he’d underestimated Maeve, to say nothing of Bram, Poe, and Remy.
And there had been another story teasing my memory, one I only vaguely remembered from the news: some kind of cult up north that had been raided by the FBI. I thought maybe some girls had been rescued, girls who’d been kidnapped, at least one of them local.
I couldn’t help feeling it was all connected. I was missing some pieces — I was just as sure of that — but everything that had happened tied together somehow.
Because the pieces I did have had one thing in common.
Blackwell Falls.
There was something rotten at the core of the town I called home.
“I still don’t get what this has to do with you,” Daisy said. “Why would someone try to kill you because of all this stuff that happened so long ago?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
I didn’t want to give voice to the possibilities swirling in my head. Daisy had been through enough. But I was beginning to think the sex trafficking ring — and the people responsible for it — weren’t in the past after all.
That they were very much in the present, and because of the Hawks’ visit to Travis Dorsey, I was a target now too.
22
VIGO
I setthe plate of enchiladas in front of Cassie on the outdoor table and took a seat next to her. Hawk and Jagger were already sitting with their food — we’d argued over who got to serve Cassie because apparently we were all pussy whipped and wanted nothing more than to wait on our mouse — but I’d won, mostly because I’d refused to give in.
Hawk had called me a child but I was a child who got to serve Cassie her dinner so as far as I was concerned I still came out on top.
“Thank you,” Cassie said, feeling on the table for her fork. “It’s nice to eat outside.”
She was so fucking pretty it made my heart hurt, and I hated that she couldn’t see the candlelight at the center of the table, the plants around the patio illuminated by the soft landscape lighting.
“Sure thing.” I couldn’t take credit for that one — it had been Jagger’s idea — but we were all trying to think of ways to mix things up for Cassie now that she couldn’t see.
“How’d it go with Rafe?” Hawk asked just as I bit into one of my tacos.
“Good. We’re adding a camera at the back of the house and one on either side, plus two more on the driveway.” I finished chewing. “Turns out, he had a brush with the trafficking thing too.”
Cassie froze. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know all the details,” I said. “Those guys are like fucking black boxes but?— ”
“Which guys?” Cassie asked.
“Rafe, Nolan, and Jude,” Jagger said. “They live on the mountain, used to be special forces.”
