Caribbean Rescue (Coastal Fury Book 16), Matt Lincoln [best book recommendations .txt] 📗

The girl nodded stiffly before looking up at us.

I noted at once that her hair wasn’t tangled anymore. It had clearly been washed and brushed, and even her skin had a healthier tint to it now.

“Jenny has agreed to speak with us for a while.” Olivia turned to look at us. “Which was very kind and brave of her. Of course, if you want to stop at any point, just tell me, okay?”

“Okay.” Jenny nodded again before peering up at us nervously.

I moved to sit down on the couch opposite them. We were in some kind of break room. There was a table and a small fridge at one end of the room, and even a vending machine tucked in the corner. It had definitely been a smarter choice than sticking her in some tiny interview room.

“Thank you for agreeing to talk with us,” I told her slowly as Holm and Crowley also sat down. “And I’m sorry if I scared you earlier. That wasn’t my intention.”

“No.” She suddenly shook her head furiously. “You didn’t. I mean, you did. But it’s okay. I was just—I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Jenny.” Olivia reached out to take her hand. “He isn’t mad. None of us are upset with you at all.”

Jenny’s shoulders were hunched up almost to her ears, and she looked like she didn’t totally believe us. I clenched my jaw in frustration. What kind of awful things had those monsters done to get this woman to react like this to an apology, of all things?

“She’s right,” I replied. “I’m not mad. You seemed scared, so I was just worried I might have upset you.”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized again before smiling bitterly. “I don’t know why I did that. I’ve dreamed of having someone swoop in and offer to take me away. It’s just… the first thing that popped into my mind was how much trouble I would be in if Antonio found out what was happening. Girls have tried to run away before, and it never ends well for them. Sometimes they don’t even come back… I didn’t want him to be mad, so I just started screaming. I’m really, really sorry.”

She was starting to cry again, and Olivia reached a hand out to rub her back comfortingly.

“It’s okay, Jenny,” she insisted firmly. “We all understand that you were just scared. What’s important is that you’re here now, safe with us.”

“Thank you.” She smiled weakly at Olivia before turning to look at me again. “Um… Olivia said you want to ask me some things.”

“That’s right,” I replied. “To start with, can you tell me if you know a woman named Allison? She was about your height, with curly blond hair and blue eyes.”

“No.” Jenny frowned. “I’ve never met anyone named Allison. But there was a girl here once who looked like that. Her name was Cat, though. At least, that’s what we called her.”

“Did she have a child?” Olivia interjected. “A little boy about five years old, named Eddy?”

Jenny’s eyes went wide, and her jaw dropped at the name.

“Yeah, that’s Cat,” she gasped. “Do you know where she is? She disappeared one day a few weeks ago. There were rumors that she’d run away, been sold off, killed. No one knew for sure. Is she okay? Where is she?”

She was hitting us with questions rapid-fire, her small hands clenched into fists as she spoke.

“Jenny, I’m sorry,” Olivia began delicately.

She didn’t have to finish her sentence for Jenny to deflate, her eyes reddening as fresh tears threatened to spill.

“No,” she whimpered as she dropped her head into her hands. “But… why? She never did anything wrong. She always did just as she was told, so they wouldn’t hurt Eddy.”

She gasped again and snapped her head up to look at us.

“What about Eddy? Is he okay? Don’t tell me--”

“He’s fine,” I hurried to assure her. “He’s with his grandmother now, and his aunt. Allison, er, Cat made sure that he made it to the US safely.”

“He’s with his grandma?” She smiled with disbelief. “So she did run away. I can’t believe it… I’m so glad.”

“Was she a friend of yours?” Olivia prompted.

“Yeah.” Jenny sniffed. “She was really nice to everyone. She’d been here for a really long time too. A lot longer than I have. When they first brought me here, she was the first one to be kind to me.”

“It sounds like she was a good person.” Olivia smiled sadly.

“Yeah,” Jenny sighed before suddenly frowning. “But wait, if the men didn’t kill her, and she made it to the US, then what happened?”

“We think she died of exposure,” I replied honestly. Her face fell as I spoke, and I felt a pang of sympathy for them. It must have been painful to hear that she had managed to make it so far only to die in the end, after all.

“A combination of that and dehydration, most likely. She took off on a fishing boat and managed to make it all the way to Miami. Eddy survived the trip, but unfortunately, she didn’t.”

“That’s Cat.” She nodded as she wiped her eyes clear. “She did everything for that little boy. Danny told me that she had run away, but I just wasn’t sure what to believe.”

“Danny?” I repeated, the name ringing familiar in my mind.

“She’s one of the girls,” Jenny clarified, her voice suddenly a few degrees colder. “Though sometimes it seems like she’s more on the men’s side than ours. She’s kind of like the mother hen, you know? Keeps an eye on everyone and everything when the men aren’t around. Sometimes, I’m not sure how much I can trust her, so I didn’t know what to think when she’d told me that Cat had run away.”

That was when it hit me. Eddy had talked about a “Danny” as well. He’d said that she was a friend of his and his mother’s, the same one who had taught him the names of the dinosaurs.

He’d made her