Patricia frowned. “How’s that even possible? Girls from The Family aren’t allowed to travel.”
“Have you ever heard of human trafficking?”
Again Patricia and Agnes replied in unison, this time shaking their heads.
“Human traffickers specialize in taking young girls, some as young as six or seven, and selling them to the highest bidder.”
Agnes looked puzzled. “They sell them?” she asked. “Why?”
“For sex,” Ali answered. There was no way to sugarcoat the explanation, so she plowed on. “There are evil people in this world who prefer having sex with children rather than with adults. I think it’s likely that the young girls in question were sold to people like that.”
Patricia made the connection first. “The Not Chosens?” she gasped. “The girls who disappeared? Is that what happened to them?”
Ali nodded. “That’s what we believe,” she said. “Governor Dunham is planning on taking immediate action to prevent another group of Not Chosens from being sent away.”
“What kind of action?” Andrea asked.
Instead of answering, Ali looked closely at Agnes. “You mentioned that several men were involved the night your half sisters were taken, right?”
“Yes.”
“The assumption is that most of the older men in the group are either involved in what’s happening or know about it. The raid tonight will be to collect family Bibles, which we hope will contain records of the girls who disappeared—names, birth dates, et cetera. There will also be warrants to obtain cheek swabs for all the adult males in hopes of connecting the DNA dots between them and some of the unidentified victims.”
“A raid,” Patricia asked, looking horrified. “You mean like with guns and everything? I remember hearing about something like this. It happened a long time ago. The old bishop—Bishop Lowell’s father—used to preach about it in church. He said there was this group of people who believed in polygamy just like we do. He said they all got sent to jail, even the little kids.”
“This is a lot more serious that just practicing polygamy,” Ali said. “The human trafficking element makes all the difference. Governor Dunham is determined that what happened at Short Creek, the incident you’re talking about, won’t happen again—at least we hope it won’t. To make that work, though, we’ll need your help and Agnes’s, too.”
“Our help?” Agnes said faintly. “What kind?”
“It’s likely that many of the men will be taken into custody or at least in for questioning, on the basis of the ages of some of their wives if nothing else. The people left behind—the women and children—will be frightened. We’ll need you to convince them that we may be from the Outside, but we’re not their enemies. You’ll need to help explain that if they want to stay where they are, they’ll be allowed to do so, but if they want to leave—as you two did—they’ll be allowed to do that as well—that there will be people on the Outside, like Andrea here, who will help them find places to live, food to eat, and suitable clothing to wear. From what you’ve told me about the way you and Agnes were treated, I suspect there are other Brought Back girls who will want to leave.”
Patricia nodded thoughtfully. “The others might stay, especially mothers with children, but I think most of the Brought Back girls will want to leave.”
“I’m trying to grasp the scope of the problem here,” Andrea said. “How many Brought Back girls are there?”
“I’m not sure. We know there are others, but we’re not allowed to communicate.”
“Do any of the Brought Back girls have children?” Andrea asked.
“If some of the others do have children, those children would be living with other families, not their mothers, but most of the girls who run away do so before they have kids—before they get pregnant. That’s what Agnes and I did, anyway.”
“But not Enid,” Ali said. “Her baby was due in a month or so.”
“And not her mother, either,” Patricia said.
Ali was surprised. “Wait, you mean Enid’s mother ran away, too?”
Patricia nodded. “Anne Lowell was a year or two younger than we were. She told us she was leaving. We wanted to help her, and we tried to give her Irene’s information, but she said she didn’t need it—that she had someone on the Outside who would help her.” Patricia shrugged. “I guess that’s what happened. Anne must have gotten away. No one ever saw her again.”
Ali had serious doubts that Anne Lowell had made good her escape, but she needed to know more.
“So Enid was already born and her mother was pregnant with a second child when she ran away? She just took off and left Enid behind?”
“She was scared. She didn’t think her husband, Brother Lowell—he wasn’t Bishop Lowell then—was the father, and she was terrified about what he’d do to her if he ever found out she’d been with someone else. I don’t blame her for that. Bishop Lowell pretends to be a minister, but under the white robes he wears, the man’s a monster. There’s no telling what he would have done to her.”
“Did Anne give you any hints about who that other man might be?” Ali asked.
Patricia shook her head. “No. After she left, there were rumors that she’d been seen with someone from Outside, but that was all just gossip.”
“Do you remember exactly when Anne Lowell took off?”
Patricia considered before she answered. “I’m not sure. Without a calendar to keep track, it’s hard to tell how much time has passed, but Enid was little when her mother left, not more than three or four.”
Ali did the math. Enid was sixteen now. The Kingman Jane Doe, most likely another refugee from The Family, had been found dead twelve years ago. What if Jane Doe turned out to be Enid’s mother? The time lines might just match.
“You said Amos Sellers was the one who brought you back?”
Patricia fidgeted before she answered. Ali could see that Patricia wasn’t at ease discussing any of this. “Brother Amos wasn’t a deputy sheriff back then. He got hired to do that a few years later.”
“Would he have been the one sent out to retrieve Anne Lowell?”
Patricia shrugged. “I’m sure he looked for her, but he never found her.” She frowned. “Why are you so interested in Anne?”
Ali wasn’t prepared to answer that question, not right then, so she deflected it. “Looking for connections is all. Did Enid know any of this?”
“I told her who her father is,” Patricia admitted. “I thought she had a right to know that. I didn’t tell her all of it. It was bad enough that her mother ran away. Knowing the rest wouldn’t have done her any good. If anything, it might have made things worse. Besides, it was more gossip than anything else.”
“Look,” Ali said, changing the subject. “It was brave of you to leave with David here last night. It was also smart of you to trust him. I think you could tell immediately that he meant you no harm, but those other women at The Encampment have most likely spent their entire lives being taught that everything outside The Family is evil. Will you go with us this evening and help convince them otherwise?”
“Yes,” Patricia said at once. “I’ll go.”
Agnes had to think for a moment; then, rather than speaking aloud, she simply nodded.
Ali turned to Andrea. “It’s going to be cold up there tonight, and we’ll probably be outside a lot of the time. Can you have someone take them shopping for clothing suitable for that—for coats, boots, and whatever else is needed? Whatever it costs, I’ll handle.”
“I could take them shopping,” David Upton offered, “but I don’t have a car right now.”
Without a word, Andrea handed him a set of car keys.
“Okay,” David said. “Tell me where we’re supposed to go when we finish.”
“Their apartment should be ready in about an hour or so,” Andrea said. “It’s being stocked with linens, pots and pans, and a minimal supply of food. Come back here, and I’ll give them the key.”