Hearts and Aces (Kelsey's Burden Series Book 7) by Kaylie Hunter (great books for teens txt) 📗

Jackson shrugged. “We have an acquaintance with medic training less than two hours from their last known location. I gave him a heads up that the team was on their way and to have them call home.”

“Can this acquaintance be trusted?” I asked.

“Yes. He’s ex-army. When he got out, he gave a big F-you to the government and moved to a quiet beach town in Mexico. He’s helped us out a time or two. He might hate the U.S. government, but he’s a soldier through and through, even if he spends all his time these days mixing margaritas.”

“He’s an alcoholic?” Tweedle asked.

“No,” Jackson answered. “He’s a bartender. Who are you?”

“Reel’s wife.”

“Who?”

“Reel and Ryan are the same person,” I explained. “Back to the call. So, we should hear from them in an hour or two?”

Jackson nodded. “Once Shipwreck gets everyone patched up, he’ll find them a boat. He has a few connections in the smuggling world.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Not human smuggling,” Jackson said, shaking his head. “Mostly weed. Okay—a lot of weed. His only involvement in human smuggling is calling Donovan if he hears about a holding location for sex traffickers. Donovan calls Homeland Security. Shipwreck doesn’t trust the government to call them himself.”

“Am I the only one who wants to know why this guy’s nickname is Shipwreck?” Katie asked.

“The locals named him by accident,” Jackson said, sliding into the chair next to Katie. “A storm crashed his sailboat into the shore. They kept pointing and saying naufragio, the Spanish word for shipwreck. He didn’t know Spanish and thought they meant him. It was months before someone translated what was being said. By then, the nickname had stuck.”

“As fascinating as that story is,” I said rolling my eyes, “If we’re not going to hear back for an hour or two, some of you should go back to bed.”

“No way,” Anne said, pointing to the files. “Put us to work. None of us will be able to sleep anyway.”

“You sure?” I asked, looking around.

Everyone nodded.

I turned to Tech, who was typing on his laptop. “What do we have that they can work on?”

“I have some minor cases that could be researched, but nothing heavy. Most of what we have in backlog requires your eyes.”

“What about your Miami case?” Lisa asked. “The one Uncle Hank wants you to solve.”

“A fresh set of eyes might be just what that case needs. Hang on,” I said, leaving the table to retrieve hard copies of the files I had in my bedroom.

“What do we know?” Bridget asked when I returned and dumped the files on the table.

“Uncle Hank noticed a pattern of prostitutes disappearing in the upper west side of Miami. We know of eight, but there’s talk on the street that the numbers are even higher. A lot of crimes against prostitutes are never reported.”

“Isn’t disappearing prostitutes pretty common?” Jackson asked.

“Sure, if they turn up dead or in a hospital, but these women dropped off the face of the planet.”

“International sex trafficking?” Bridget asked.

“Likely,” I said, nodding. “What’s odd, though, is that Uncle Hank can’t find anyone who knows anything about the disappearances. Not even someone who’s too scared to talk.”

“Did you reach out to Mickey?” Anne asked.

“He put out some feelers and got nada back. He’s puzzled, too. He asked me to keep him in the loop.”

“Someone’s stupid enough to do business in Miami behind Mickey’s back?” Jackson asked, laughing. “Total death wish.”

“Who’s Mickey?” Beth asked.

“Trouble,” James answered. “He’s a crime boss in Miami. He’s friendly with Kelsey and Grady, but for us mere mortals, if you saw him walking down the sidewalk, you’d likely piss yourself.”

James leaned back in his chair, extending an arm over the top of Beth’s chair. Storm sat up and growled at James. James slowly pulled his arm back. Storm settled back on the floor, and I swear the dog snorted. Beth winked at me.

I shook my head. “Mickey lives in a world of violence, but I trust him.”

“It doesn’t matter if you trust him, if he can’t help us find the women,” Beth said.

“That’s not our mission. It’s likely the women are either dead or have already been transported to another country.”

“What’s our mission then?” Bridget asked, not looking up from one of the profiles she was reading.

“To find out how the women were taken unnoticed and, if possible, who is taking them. If we can answer either of those questions, we can stop more women from disappearing.”

“What do we know?” Lisa asked.

“We know they weren’t nabbed off the street. We’d have witnesses if they were. We know they had different pimps, worked different corners or hotels. We know they have different backgrounds, education levels, appearances, habits. What we don’t know is what they have in common. I found two girls who lived in the same building, but so far, that’s the only link between any of the victims I can find except, astonishingly enough, none of them were addicts.”

“None of them?” Anne asked.

“None of them. No one could even claim they smoked cigarettes, let alone did any illegal drugs.”

“I’m not up on my prostitute education,” Beth said. “Why is that a big deal?”

Jackson leaned forward so he could see Beth at the other end of the table. “A lot of pimps hook their girls on drugs before forcing them to work the streets. Calculate in that most prostitutes start off as runaway teenagers from abusive homes, and you have a workforce nearly three-quarters of whom are addicts.”

“The lack of drugs has to be a clue,” Bridget said. “But to what?”

“I don’t know. These women didn’t have the education and background to work high-end establishments where they could be easily abducted. They were corner-level prostitutes. They had pimps. They had