on the sidewalk near the gate, one ambulance tore out of the estate, followed quickly by another, and a third after that. Though she couldn’t see inside, Hannah was sure they were transporting the enslaved girls to the hospital.
After that, the squad cars drove out with men in the back. Up near the house, she could see others being led to cars in handcuffs. She didn’t recognize them but waved anyway.
“Don’t do that,” Marie hissed. “You don’t want to make yourself a target.”
“What do you mean?”
“If we don’t convict all of them, some might come looking for payback. We need to get them all to fall, like a series of dominoes, starting with your friend Rico.”
The words had barely left Marie’s mouth when Hannah got an idea. She knew exactly how she could ensure that Rico would turn on his boss and get those dominoes falling.
These were horrible men and they had to pay, even if it required her to cut a few moral corners. Just the thought of it made her giddy, almost like she was high. She knew in that moment that she would never stop chasing this feeling.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Jessie got to the maze first.
Somewhere behind her, she could hear Karen on her cell phone, instructing some officers to meet them there and others to go to the back alley. She tried to block all that out and focus on what was in front of her. The green walls of the maze were about seven feet high, too tall for her to see over as she rushed in.
As she made her way through, she scanned the ground, looking for blood drops even as she hoped to hear either man’s voice. But the foliage seemed to suck up all the sound so that the only things she could hear were her own footsteps and shallow breathing. Karen’s voice wasn’t even audible anymore.
The maze was too dark to see any blood but she did notice something else. A narrow strip of grass was visibly pressed down more than the rest, as if it was more highly trafficked. The obvious conclusion was that this was the route most often used by someone who knew the maze well.
She bent down, doing her best to follow the same path while still keeping an eye on what might be around each bend. Each twist and turn took her closer to the center of the maze. As she curled around an impressively zigzagging stretch of wall, she heard Karen’s voice call out from somewhere nearby.
“Jessie, where are you?”
She was just debating whether or not to respond when the zigzagging ended and she found herself in the middle of the maze, where an ornate fountain periodically shot a spray of water out of a stone dolphin’s blowhole, making a loud whooshing sound.
Lying on the ground next to the fountain was Jasper Otis. He was on his back and looked to be unconscious. She moved carefully toward him and knelt down. There was a large pool of blood by his left forearm but his chest was rising and falling. He was still alive.
As the blowhole shot another spray of water into the air, she sensed movement nearby more than heard it. Spinning around, she saw a metal blade slashing toward her head, and flung herself backward. The knife missed her but the force of her movement sent her careening back and she felt her head slam into the side of the fountain.
Dazed, she looked around, attempting to get her bearings. Gilliard, wearing a gardener’s uniform, was advancing toward her. She raised her right hand to fire before realizing that she’d lost her gun. He was almost on her when Karen called out again, this time from much closer.
“Jessie?”
Gilliard spun around and looked in the direction of the voice. He moved toward it quickly.
“Knife,” Jessie screamed as she tried to scramble to her feet. “He’s got a knife.”
Gilliard crouched at the edge of the hedge as Karen came into view. She was looking the wrong way.
Time seemed to stand still. Jessie flashed back to the moment only months ago when she watched helplessly as her ex-husband plunged a knife into the chest of her partner, the man she loved. Now it was all happening again. Another partner was about to be attacked and she was too far away, powerless to stop it.
But almost as quickly as she had the thought, she rejected it. It wasn’t true. She wasn’t powerless. This didn’t have to end the same way.