Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 432(@200wpm)___ 346(@250wpm)___ 288(@300wpm)
Then they start unloading.
Even though I suspected it, and even though I hoped beyond hope I’d find some sort of evidence tonight, I truly didn’t think I’d see the women.
The first one is hauled up from below, her wrists cuffed and a man’s hand at the back of her neck. Then another one behind her. Then another. Six total, and my stomach churns with nausea.
I’ve got my gun on me. I could take them by surprise and free the women, but I’m outmanned five to one.
I snap off a few pictures and slowly ease up to my knees. I need to make it back to my vehicle so I can follow them. Yes, that’s what I’ll do, and then I’ll call our FBI liaison and they’ll swarm.
The case will be solved and I’ll be a hero.
The professional part of my brain—the part my father trained from the time I was eight years old, the part the NSA refined and then Jameson sharpened—does what it’s supposed to do.
Frame. Focus. Document.
Don’t panic.
I quietly move from my knees to a squatted position, ready to low-walk my way out of here without being seen.
For a moment, it occurs to me that I might get in trouble with our intrepid leader, Malik Fournier, over this. I was supposed to be here with one of the other agents, Reid Calder, but he got called in to support another mission and I was told to table this surveillance for later in the week. I’m directly disobeying Malik’s orders, so even if I’m successful in rescuing these women, I’ll be in trouble.
I put that out of my mind because it’s irrelevant to worry about now. The bottom line, BOB said there was a likelihood of this going down tonight, so I had to come. The next data point that lets us reconstruct this opportunity might be six months out.
That’s six months of women being trafficked and I can’t stomach that.
The plan from here is uncomplicated. I’ll pull back through the trees the way I came in, get in my SUV, and tail the van when it leaves the access road.
I put the camera to my face and click off a few more snaps of the last of the women going into the van.
That’s when the arm comes around my throat from behind, fast and hard, hooking under my jaw, and then I’m being dragged backward into a chest that feels as big as a refrigerator.
A second hand pins my right wrist against my own collarbone before I can get the camera up to swing it as a weapon. That doesn’t stop me from thrashing though, my heartbeat slamming against my rib cage with fear.
“What are you doing here?” The man’s voice is low, clearly Russian.
“Photography,” I manage to squeak out, hoping to sound like a dimwitted woman. “Night work. Long exposure. That old dock on the channel was perfect in the moonlight. That’s all.”
“But you took pictures of more than just the dock, no?” he inquires with menace.
And then he’s dragging me again. Through the brush, along a switchback and down onto the dock, where the other men turn in surprise.
“Who’s that, Sergei?” one of them asks, also with a Russian accent.
“A woman I find hiding in the bushes with a camera,” he says, and then releases his hold on me. He then shoves me hard in the back and I stumble forward several feet before I right myself.
One of the other men approaches me. “Do you have identification?” he demands.
“In my truck.”
“Where is truck?” he asks, his accent heavier with deeper rolling R’s.
“Up the access road, about a quarter mile.”
He smiles, and it’s not friendly. “Who do you work for?”
“Nobody. I’m freelance.”
“What is your name?”
“Sarah Klein. I’m just a photographer, I swear,” I say, real panic lacing my words. “I’m entering a nighttime photography contest. I was just photographing the dock.”
The men exchange glances.
“I mean… yeah, I saw the boat come up,” I babble, hoping something good pops out. “And yeah… the women, so I just assumed… hey, party boat. Know what I mean? I didn’t take pictures of that, though.”
Lame, Josie.
So lame.
The man pulls a gun from inside his jacket and it’s clear he doesn’t believe me. He grabs my arm and presses the barrel of his pistol into my lower back.
“Mikhail… we should not leave her in the channel,” the man says to the others. “Current goes south. Body might come up off Whidbey by morning.”
“Weight her,” one of them suggests.
I’m struck by the fact that they’re not whispering or lowering their voices. They’re talking about killing me like they’re discussing tomorrow’s forecast.
I’ve been a Jameson agent for only three months. Before that, I was an NSA analyst for six years. Prior to that, I was a graduate student. Before that, I was a kid taking apart computers in my father’s study and putting them back together while he timed me with a stopwatch. None of those previous lives nor the training I received in the NSA or at Jameson have prepared me for this very real scenario of standing on a dock in the dead of night while three men decide whether to weigh down my body before they put it in the water.