Hearing voices close by, he made his way to the upper deck and quickly rolled over the railing and slipped into the water, where he dove deep around the bow. Surfacing a distance away, he saw that one of the men in the rowboats had come back. He’d only ferried his other partner over. Now he was returning to his rowboat himself. Waiting until he climbed aboard, Jerricho dove as deep as he could and headed back toward shore. By the time he made it up onto his own powerboat, Killian stood onboard.
“You find anything?” Killian asked Jerricho.
“Yeah,” he said, “we’re on the right track. She was there.” He pulled out the small wet piece of paper and handed it to Killian.
He looked at it and whistled. “Jesus,” he said, “that’s not good.”
“I know. That’ll hurt us more than help us at this point. But it does tell us that she’s been here. And she’s fighting, and she’s thinking,” he said, “so I’ll give her kudos for that.”
“I know. I was thinking the same thing. It’s just really shitty that we missed her.”
“We can backtrack their movements.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
And, with that, Jerricho said, “I need to get changed into dry clothes. What did you find out from the argument?”
“A lot of dissent in the area. A lot of people without work, looking to make some money.”
“Including people who wouldn’t normally be?”
“Yes, that’s my take. Some men came through the area, looking for women recently.”
“Shit,” he said, “that’s not the kind of search we want to hear about.”
“No, the guy was pretty angry. Anyway he had a receiver that he used, and this guy said it was his. He ended up losing the argument and the equipment because the other guy threatened his life. He said he’s only here, trying to make a living, and he was trying to set up the electronic equipment in his own boat.”
“Did you ID the winner of the two?”
“Yes, and he’s got a bad rep around town.”
“For what?”
He looked at Jerricho and smiled and said, “For buying and selling things that walk on two feet.”
“Ah, hell,” he said. “Did you get a location for this guy?”
“Sure did,” he said. “I was just waiting for you to get back from your nice little sunny swim.”
“Oh, I’m back,” he said. “I’ll change, while you move us out.”
As they slowly moved upriver, Killian spoke up. “That she’s leaving your name is not good.”
“I know. The problem will be if somebody else finds her paper trail and is smart enough to make a connection.”
“And we won’t know that,” Killian said quietly, “until it’s too late.
“Agreed. I already notified Diesel. In the interim, he’ll do whatever stop-gap measure our IT people come up with. Regardless I’m looking forward to a visit with this lovely buyer and seller of flesh,” he said, “presuming you know where you’re going.”
“Absolutely,” Killian said, pulling the boat close to land, and then he pointed up to the shore. “Third house from this side, top row, by the road, windows all shuttered.”
“Of course. Then nobody can see what’s on the inside.” Jerricho hopped off the boat, headed down the wharf, up to the land, where he quickly slipped in between the trees and headed for the house in question. He approached from the downward side, trying to see just how much activity was here. He obviously had seen that one guy, who won the receiver, but how long ago was that? And was he still here and was he alone?
Jerricho slipped around to the far side of the house, but it was absolutely impossible to check inside any of the windows. The house was completely shuttered. As in blinds or black curtains everywhere.
Quietly he put his ear against the lower portion of one of the windows, but no sound came from inside, so he moved to the next window and the next. As he came to the corner, he stopped because he heard voices out in the front yard. He pulled out his phone and quickly put it on Translate and Record. It wouldn’t do him any good if he translated it while his phone was muted because he wouldn’t hear it.
As soon as there was a lull in the conversation, he quickly hit Translate and watched as his recording came up in text form. The men were discussing a deal involving electronics. Only toward the end of the written translation did he read about needing women.
He frowned at that.
One of the men said something about they needed a new delivery because the boss was looking to up the numbers. The other man had responded, “We need to get into that. Good money there.” Almost immediately the men split up, and one took off.
Jerricho waited to hear the door’s slam for the one going inside. Slam. As he counted to three before entering the home, he watched as the other man joined more men and took off in an old rattletrap of a vehicle. That was just fine. They could take off all they wanted because the guy inside the house was the one Jerricho wanted, and alone was even better.
Giving the guy inside another minute, Jerricho noted that most of the windows were now open and had nothing but bamboo curtains waving in and out. He needed to make his move before somebody else came. He pushed aside one of the bamboo curtains and discovered the room itself was empty, pretty well just an open space and a couple room dividers. But he was up and inside in a heartbeat and up against one of the dividers, so that he could keep an eye on the place and not be seen. He heard footsteps and a phone conversation.
As soon as the guy walked past him in the adjoining hallway, yelling into the phone, Jerricho came up behind him and, with a hard blow, knocked him to the ground. Jerricho quickly snatched the guy’s phone, checked to make sure the guy was out, pulled him up onto a chair, and strapped him down. He checked the phone to see contacts and recent texts, even as he struggled to read the words on it. Sometimes the language barrier was almost impossible to deal with. At the same time, he didn’t have time for this. He quickly sent off a text message. I need a translator or an interpreter now.
At that, his phone rang. “Not sure what’s going on,” Diesel said, “but I have somebody here.”
“Good,” he said, “because I’ve got somebody I need to interrogate. He was talking about getting into the women’s trade because the boss is looking for more bodies.”
“Warm and willing?”
“Warm,” he said. “I don’t think willing even entered into it.”
“Of course not,” he said. “Is he awake and conscious?”
“He will be soon,” he said. “Hang on.”
He put both phones on the counter and smacked the guy lightly a couple times. When he groaned and started to open his eyes, Jerricho grabbed him by the ears, glared down at him, and said, “Now talk to me.”
The guy’s confusion cleared and was followed immediately by pissed rage.
Jerricho picked up his phone, put it on Speaker, and said, “I need to know who he was talking to and who his boss is and if they know anything about two women.”
Immediately a voicemail message in a stream of some foreign language spit out of the phone. The guy looked at him and just glared. Only Jerricho didn’t have time for this shit. He unleashed a hard right hook on him but deliberately didn’t knock him out. The guy groaned and started swearing again. Jerricho didn’t need a translator for that.