Stolen Daughters, Carolyn Arnold [rainbow fish read aloud .txt] 📗

She started toward the house.

“Nuh-uh. I’m sticking right to your side.” Malone hustled to catch up with her.

She was dizzy and panting for breath, but she would push through for as long as she could.

She went to the west side of the house and traced around the building, shining the flashlight from her phone ahead of her. “There!”

Barely visible was a door practically buried in the grass, but there had been some recent foot traffic that had flattened some blades.

She bent over to open it and swooned.

“Let me get it,” Malone huffed out.

He threw the door open, and she shone her light into the hole. She couldn’t see anything from the entrance, and slowly proceeded down some wood steps. She reached the bottom and put her flashlight around the space. Wood-planked walls just like in the photo.

“Logan?” she called out hoarsely.

She heard mumbling and followed in its direction. It took her around a large shelving unit full of canned goods.

Logan was there, and he widened his eyes at the sight of her. Fear replaced by relief.

She hurried to him, pulled the gag from his mouth, and freed his wrists and ankles.

“What happened to you?” He pressed the pads of his thumbs to her cheeks and held them for her to see. They were black.

Soot. Of all the things for him to say first… “Never mind me. You okay?”

“I’ve been better.”

She put her arms around him and squeezed tight, but she was the first to pull away. Her chest felt heavy, but there was also something she wanted to do. “Logan Hunter, this is Scott Malone. He’s my sergeant and also a family friend.”

“Hey,” Logan said, “we spoke on the phone before.”

Malone glanced at her, and she shrank under his gaze. The time Logan had referred to was when he’d provided Amanda’s alibi.

“Nice to meet you,” Malone said. “Now, I don’t want to come across as an ass, but you both need medical attention.”

She and Malone helped Logan out of the bunker and summoned for a stretcher.

It wasn’t until he was loaded and on his way to the hospital that Malone turned to her. “Why am I still looking at you? Shouldn’t you be in an ambulance yourself?”

“I’ll be fine.” It took all her power to suppress another cough.

“Nope. You’re out of here.” Malone signaled to another paramedic to come over.

“Fine, I’ll go, but…” She was almost hesitant to ask her next question in case she’d fabricated all of it.

“But?” he prompted.

“Who was—” she coughed, no longer able to hold it back “—that woman?” If she was real—and not imagined, that is—Amanda needed to know her identity.

Malone held up his hand to stay the paramedic, who came to a standstill about thirty feet away.

“I should say ask her yourself,” Malone said, “but then you’d go do it. She was taken to the hospital for treatment. Again, something I recommend that you do.”

“She survived?”

“No thanks to you, I’m guessing?”

“That woman tried to kill me.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Are you going to tell me who she was?”

Malone blew out a big breath. “We believe she was hired by the DC sex-trafficking ring to take out Daniel Ross because he was killing their girls.”

“Trent and I thought that might happ—” She silenced under his glare. No one liked being interrupted. “Sorry.”

“Uh-huh. Well, Ross’s van was found near a dive motel in Dumfries—where Hart was shot.” He held up a hand, and she shut her mouth. He continued. “We have an eyewitness who saw the entire thing, and his descriptions line up. Hart was shot by the woman and stuffed in the trunk of his Nissan by her and Daniel. There was also a young girl in the car.”

“The one I pulled from the barn.”

“I’d assume.”

“Okay, but if the woman was hired to take out Daniel, why didn’t she shoot him when she shot Hart? And why did Daniel help put Hart’s body in the trunk?”

“She had Daniel at gunpoint. But why she didn’t just kill him then, too, I don’t know.”

“Do we know the woman’s name?”

“This part you might do better sitting down for.”

“Tell me, and I’ll go to the hospital.” She’d prepared her mind to anyway, but Malone didn’t have to know that.

“She let it slip that Daniel was her brother.”

Her mind was murky, but eventually the name surfaced. “Christina Ross? But how? She’s dead.”

“She was ID’d incorrectly. Sometimes it happens…”

Malone had been right when he’d suggested it would have been best for her to be sitting for that news. Wow. Christina Ross was back from the dead—and she’d returned to kill her own brother. So many questions, starting with: what had happened to turn Christina from sex-trafficking victim into one of the perpetrators?

Sixty

Five days later, Sunday

Amanda hadn’t slept very well since the fire. The screams, the smoke, the heat, the feeling of being strangled. Every time she closed her eyes, she was back in the barn about to die, and she’d wake up drenched in sweat, the sheets soaking wet.

She’d survived, but she hadn’t gotten away completely unscathed. She’d hit her chin really hard in that loft, as well as her knee when she’d fallen down the stairs—not that she’d noticed until much later thanks to the adrenaline coursing through her veins—and she’d inhaled more than her fair share of smoke. But she was grateful there were no burns. Her doctor said she was lucky and told her to get some rest and pop ibuprofen as needed to ease the pain.

The “lucky” part was debatable, and certainly not how she felt at the moment. Malone had forced her to take sick leave until her fate with Lieutenant Hill was decided.

But Amanda had her reasons for doing what she had. At least the girl was going to be fine—though it would be a long road ahead. They discovered her name was Abigail Butler, only fifteen years old. And Logan, who Daniel had taken from his home Monday night, had been dehydrated and starved for over twenty-four