PANIC

Chapter Thirty-Eight - ROOK

Spencer and I trek all the way back through the woods, me coughing so hard I keep looking around to make sure no one is gonna come kill us because I can’t be quiet.

“Don’t worry, Rook, Ford’s just up ahead with the van. He’s got your bike loaded and I saw those assholes back there leave, we’re cool.”

“How’d you know where I was?”

He chuckles and grabs my arm hard, saving me from a nasty fall that could’ve made the pain in my burned legs unbearable after I trip over a tree root. “I put a tracker on your bike and your jacket. You’re not gonna get away from us that easy, chick. We’re a team, remember?”

“But you’re not allowed to help.”

He glares down at me for a moment and then the hard expression in his eyes softens a little. “We have rules for a reason, Rook. You could’ve really fucked things up. You could’ve been killed, you could’ve—”

“OK, I get it. But Spencer—” I stop and pull on his leather jacket to make him stop with me. “If you knew what I got out of that house you wouldn’t be angry with me.”

“You’re wrong. If they knew you were there they would’ve killed you, you almost got burned alive. You got lucky, Rook. And we’re all pretty attached to you. Ronin will get himself out of this eventually. And when he does, the last thing he wants to hear is that the girl he’s gonna marry died doing something stupid.”

I stay quiet and just limp along after that. We exit the forest a few hundred yards down from where I went in and there’s a large white van waiting for us. Ford gets out of the driver’s seat with a gun in his hand, not even trying to hide it. Spencer and I are walking casually across the parking lot when Ford’s expression rests on me.

I stop dead in my tracks, making Spence stumble. “He’s mad at me.”

“Damn right he’s mad at you. And you deserve it.” Spencer pulls on me hard and hands me off to Ford, then walks over to the driver’s side and gets in.

I look up at Ford and try a pouty frown.

“Save that shit for Ronin. It won’t work on me. I am not talking to you. You scared the fuck out of us, you made me drive a thousand miles in a van alone with Spencer. You missed your university application deadline, and most of all, you didn’t trust me enough to help you.”

Ford takes my arm and pushes me over to the van, opens the door, and barks, “Get in. Sit on the floor between Spencer and me, there’s only room for two up front and I don’t even trust you enough to stay out of trouble locked in back with the bike right now.”

I do what I’m told. They did come get me after all. And my skin might be falling off from the burns instead of screaming at me from the pain if Spence hadn’t pulled me up out of the coal chute. There’s a small space behind the two front seats and a few sleeping bags lying longways on the floor, so I just lie down, stretch out, and let out a long breath. “I might need to go to the hospital. My legs really hurt.”

Spencer has already started rolling and Ford is just getting settled when this comes out. The van stops short and they both look down at me. “What do you mean?” Spencer asks, so I scoot around so I can prop my leg up on Ford’s thigh.

“I’m burned from the fire.” They both look down at my jeans, charred and with a few holes in them, and then Ford lifts up my pant leg and winces.

“Shit, Rook.”

“Is it bad?” I ask. “It hurts.”

“Drive, Spencer. I’ll check it out.” Ford lifts up my pant leg and unties my boot and slips it off, then asks for the other leg. “Take off your pants, Rook. Spencer, we need to find a drug store.”

“Is it bad?” I ask again as I wiggle out of my jeans, trying my best not to cry out as the rough fabric rubs against my red skin. Ford doesn’t even glance down at my goods, just lifts my foot back up. And why should he look? He’s seen me naked so often it hardly matters.

“No, I don’t think so,” he says, patting the skin on my calf gently, but not gentle enough to keep me from wincing. “It’s like a really bad sunburn, but if we find a drug store I know what will make it feel better.” And then he smiles and I lie back and relax.

I’m forgiven. His worry about me outweighs his anger.

I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out the contents of the basement box and my new iPhone and hand it up to him. “Here, Ford. I think this will help us get Ronin out.”

One eyebrow raises. “Is that why you ran?”

“I didn’t run, I just… left. To go get this stuff. And I did trust you, Ford. I trusted that you guys were telling the truth when you said you weren’t gonna help Ronin. So I’m sorry. But I know what these people want. Jon was into some really bad shit and he made me help him hide a whole bunch of evidence in case his partners ever turned on him. It implicates a lot of very important people in the buying and selling of girls to rich clients all over the world. That FBI guy in the house with Jon was involved—”

“What?” they both say together.

“Jon?” Ford asks.

“FBI guy?” Spencer adds.

I gulp some air and swallow, not quite ready to talk about what just happened but knowing I have to anyway. “Some guy named Abelli was the one in charge here and somehow he got Jon out of jail so he could make him give up the evidence. I was hiding in the floor grate, that’s where Jon and I made a safe place a couple years ago and put that stuff.” I nod at the flash drives in Ford’s hand. “Jon’s dead now though. They beat him until he was unconscious because he wouldn’t tell them where it was hidden. And then they shot him and set the house on fire to cover it up.” I leave out the part about Jon apologizing and saving my life. I’m not sure how to process that just yet.

Ford looks down at the drives I handed him and then grabs a bag on the floor near his feet and fishes out his laptop. He looks at me for a second as he pushes the flash drive in a USB port and waits for the files to appear. He studies it as Spence and I wait in silence. I’m not sure I want to know what’s on that drive and Spencer is navigating his way through a nearby town looking for a drugstore, so we sit quietly.

“What’s on the iPhone?” Ford asks after Spencer parks and gets out to go buy me some aloe vera sunburn spray.

“A video of that Abelli guy admitting he was gonna kidnap me and sell me to a guy in Columbia for half a million dollars.”

Ford’s eyes squint down into killer asshole mode.

“And Jon getting the life beat out of him and getting shot in the head.”

His eyes soften at this. “Did you see it?”

I nod.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “No one should have to see that.” He watches me struggle with the tears and then leans down a little. “It’s OK to feel bad about it, Rook. Even if he was evil. It’s still OK to feel bad.”

“Jon saved me at the end. He saw me hiding down in the grate hole. He pretended like he was talking to those guys, but he was really talking to me. He apologized.”

Ford stares at me for several silent seconds and then shakes his head and lets out a long breath. “Is it over? Can you let go now?”

I nod. “Even though he’s not here to witness it, I’ve decided to accept his apology.” I shrug my shoulders and start to cry. “I don’t want to hang on to that stuff anymore, Ford.”

Ford scoots around to the edge of the seat and pulls my head into his lap. “You’re allowed to do that, you know. It’s OK to forgive him and let it go.”

Spencer opens the door and jumps in the van, handing Ford the bag of spray. “You OK, Blackbird?”

“No, not yet,” I say as I sniffle my nose back under control. “But I will be if we can use that stuff to get Ronin out.”

“Lie back, Rook,” Ford says quietly as Spencer hands him a bag.

“I got you some shorts, too, Rook. Just cheap drugstore leftovers from summer, but it’ s better than sitting in your panties.” He winks down at me. “Not that we mind, you know, but I’m sure Ronin would not appreciate us driving you all over the Midwest in your panties.”

Ford hands me the shorts as Spencer takes us back on the road. I wiggle into them, which is not easy considering I’m sitting on the floor of a van behind some seats and my legs are burning like hell, but I manage after several embarrassing seconds of Ford watching.

“Put your foot up here,” he says, pointing to his lap.

I do.

He shakes the can of aloe vera and I wince as the fine mist hits my skin and then the cold spray settles and relief washes over me. “Ohhhhhhh,” I moan. ‘That feels so much better I can’t even tell you.”

Ford smiles and lifts my leg up to spray the underside. “Give me the other foot, Rook.”

We repeat the whole procedure and I moan again. “Thank you, Ford. You’re a genius.”

He shrugs and then he and Spencer exchange a conspiratorial look.

I’ve seen that look before. Back when they started thinking about taking Jon out.

“What are you guys doing? You have a plan I need to know about or something?”

“Rook—” Spencer talks this time. Which means this is a delicate subject. I know them all pretty well by now. And whenever they need to give or get information to or from me, they take turns based on what kind of conversation it needs to be. When bluntness is needed, Ford takes the lead. When the talk involves personal things it’s supposed to be Ronin. And when someone needs to keep things light because I might freak out, that’s Spencer’s cue to do the talking.

But Ronin’s not here, so I guess Spencer is the personal guy now too.

“—we really need to know the whole story before we can do anything with this information, OK?”

I just lie down on the puffy sleeping bags, enjoying the relief from the spray and the coolness of the synthetic fabric. “What exactly do you need to know?”

“Everything,” he says. “We need for you to start at the beginning. Like Rook’s story, day one. And we especially need to know why your ex-husband had this shit in his possession, what his role was…” He hesitates and lets out a long breath. “What your role was. And how all these people are connected. If we get Ronin out, you have to understand, we’re missing a pretty important part of the team, OK? He’s the cleanup, he’s the whole reason we get away with this stuff. Yeah, I make good plans, and yeah, Ford’s good at covering his tracks. But this is the FBI, Rook. They do not take kindly to being fucked with and they ask a shitload of fucking questions, no matter how good the plan is. A shitload of questions. And our front man is incarcerated. You understand this?”

I swallow hard. “I do, Spencer.”

“So, here’s what we’re gonna do.” He stops to look at Ford and Ford nods at him to continue. I guess Spencer really is the logistics guy. “We’re gonna go to Ogallala, Nebraska, lie low and get your story from beginning to end, and then figure it out. Sound good?”

“What’s in Nebraska?” I ask.

“The safe house. And we definitely need it because these guys will pick us up as soon as we go home. We talked to Clare before we left and she said the guy who came to talk to Ronin twice before he was arrested was named Abelli. This Abelli guy is our main problem, because it looks like he was involved in this trafficking stuff and this means he’s desperate to keep his name out of things. Desperate men are very dangerous.”

I wait for him to finish it, but the seconds tick off and he keeps silent, so I have to ask. “What do you mean by that?”

He lets out another long breath. “We could all end up in prison or dead, Rook. Those are the facts we’re dealing with now.”

I stretch my legs out on the sleeping bags and close my eyes. “I’m not gonna think about that, Spencer. Ronin’s in jail because of me and I told him I’d fight for us. So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m done running, these people are all guilty, there are dozens of women I know of personally who are wrapped up in this trafficking stuff. And I talked myself into leaving without them the first time. I rationalized it. I’m just one single tragic girl, what can I do? And that was probably the right decision back then because I was all alone.”

I stop for a moment and Ford turns to look at me.

“But now I’m on the team, so I’m out of excuses.”