“You’re playing it safe when Zoey’s life is in danger.”
Liam understood her frustration and the fact that she was becoming physically and emotionally exhausted, especially considering she was close to the missing woman. He had to hand it to Rae, she was as strong a person as he’d ever met. “If there was something to go on, then the sheriff would barge into that house. These things take time.”
“Time she might not have.”
“You’re letting your emotions rule you. Time doesn’t have to be wasted. Put your mind to finding something we can use. Have you looked at this guy’s Twitter feed or something? His social media?”
She blew out a long breath. “You’re right. I’ll put in search parameters to track his movements. You know, like geolocated posts on social media that would potentially put him in Denver the day she was taken.”
“That sounds like a plan.” He let Rae work. Astor had resorts in Colorado, so his being there didn’t mean he abducted Zoey, but Liam wouldn’t be any more of a downer than he already had been. Rae needed her creative juices to flow.
“I’ve discovered that if you start digging,” she said, “you usually find dirt. All we need is some dirt that will give us the ability to thoroughly shake him down. I have a feeling about this.”
“Gut feelings have their value, I’ll give you that.”
“When Zoey disappeared in college, she begged me to keep it to myself. I shouldn’t have agreed. Zoey didn’t leave me much choice then. If I hadn’t, maybe none of this would be happening now. Instead, I’ve regretted that decision. Why didn’t I do more? Why didn’t I say something?”
Rae’s words resonated with Liam, and he reached over and squeezed her hand. “You couldn’t have known that your decision to keep her secret would impact her future. Don’t beat yourself up. Sometimes we shouldn’t keep silent. Other times we need to keep secrets.”
“And sometimes we need to speak up. Become a voice for the voiceless. That’s all I ever wanted and why I became an investigative reporter. To follow in Dad’s footsteps, but Zoey was a big part of it too.”
Rae pressed her head against the seatback and released a remorseful-sounding sigh. “She never told me what happened that week. But seeing her like that compelled the journalist in me to expose the truth about what happened to trafficked and abused women and led me down the road to interview women in prison who were being trafficked, being hunted while still in prison. Prisons have become a lucrative recruiting ground for sex buyers. People don’t know about this. The women are promised somewhere safe to go when they’re released, because where else are they going to go? They’re outcasts. These sex buyers, these recruiters, send money to them for their basic needs while in prison. They become a lifeline for the women, and once they get out of prison, the women go into another prison of sorts when they’re trafficked. It’s a never-ending nightmare for them.”
She sat up, her gaze fixed on Liam. “In fact, I think Zoey was the one to bring up the women trafficked out of prison. Her comment was one of many ideas I put into a file to explore later.”
“I get it. The prison trafficking story wouldn’t let you go.”
She cleared her throat as if clearing tears. “No. It wouldn’t. And the next thing I knew, I had spent months interviewing Dina in prison. I gained her trust and she depended on me, Liam.”
He hated hearing the pain, but he knew he couldn’t stop her from sharing this even if he wanted to.
“In the end, I let her down, because then she was trafficked again. I was so scared that she would suffer for talking to me at all!”
He vaguely remembered her telling him this when he was in a drugged-up haze in the hospital recovering from the gunshot he’d taken while saving her life. But when he woke up fully, Rae was already gone, and he was angry and in pain. She’d had her reasons for using him, but he hadn’t wanted to see her.
“That last night,” she said. “That last time we saw each other before everything exploded in our faces. That night before you were shot because of me and your cover was blown, I had overheard your conversation. I heard the name Malcom Fox, and I made the connection.”
Rae wiped her cheeks. “I knew I finally had a name for the man