“That’s understandable.” She looked round the coffee shop. “It looks like the shop keeps you pretty busy.”
“Do you mind telling me how you got involved?” I asked. “In the… cult thing? Sorry, I don’t know what else to call it.”
“That’s as accurate a word as any, although I think some were in it for the cult and others were in it for something else.” She took a nervous drink of her coffee. “As for how I got involved, well, I used to work at this shitty bar, and one night I saw a girl being shoved into a car out back. I think it was Rain, but I didn’t know that until later.”
I sat up straighter. “Yousawher being kidnapped?”
She nodded. “And the people who took her knew I’d seen it and came after me. That’s how I ended up with Rafe, Nolan, and Jude, in case you’re wondering.”
Her cheeks flushed pink.
“I wasn’t wondering,” I said, even thought I totally was because I was only human.
“I know how it looks after what happened in high school,” she said.
“That’s not my business,” I said. “It’s nobody’s business but yours.”
She nodded and took a breath. “Anyway, the guys took me in, and even though I should have let it go, I just couldn’t, so I agreed to go to this… school to try and figure out what had happened to Rain, to the other girls. I mean, there’s a lot more to it than that but that’s the gist.”
“A school?”
She frowned. “That’s what they called it, but it was really a place to groom girls. They’d all been taken from around here and there were all kinds of lessons and rules and weird ceremonies.”
I leaned back in my chair, trying to process what she was saying.
“What kind of lessons and rules?” I would get to the “ceremonies” later.
Because what the actual fuck?
“No offense,” she said, “but you should probably do what I didn’t and let this go. The people who were involved were — are — bad people. Dangerous people.”
I drew in a breath. “I can’t really do that.”
“Why?” she asked, training her green eyes on me. “I mean, I know why I couldn’t let it go, but why can’t you? It seems like you have a nice life, a business, friends.”
She probably knew about Daisy and Sarai, knew we’d been best friends since high school.
“I think the people who are trafficking girls killed my parents.”
She blinked in surprise. “Oh… wow. I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago. But they were… I don’t know, I guess you’d call them activists or independent journalists or whatever.”
“And you think your parents were close to something?” she asked. “When they were killed?”
“I don’t know, but I found a bunch of their papers recently and then some… friends of mine started asking questions.” I blushed thinking about the Hawks, how ridiculous it was to call them friends when they spent almost every night using me as a test subject for their toys. “And after that someone ran me off the road on the mountain.”
I moved my hair to show her the scar on my forehead.
“I broke my arm too, and some other stuff.” No point telling her about how I’d lost my sight. “Anyway, I can’t help thinking it’s all related. I thought maybe you’d remember something from your time at the… school that might help me figure out who was behind it all.”
“I doubt it,” she said. “The FBI raided the place and arrested some of the women who were running it, but they won’t say anything about it now. I stopped calling for updates. All they ever told me was that the investigation was ongoing.”
I rolled my eyes. In the years since my parents’ murder, I’d heard the phrase enough to last me two lifetimes.
“You mentioned ceremonies,” I said. “What does that mean?”
She picked at the lemon scone and I felt suddenly sorry I’d contacted her. Sorry I was making her relive what sounded like a harrowing experience.
