“I’m certain their roommates know something, but I couldn’t get anything out of them.” Neither could Kane, and he was far more intimidating than Siobhan. But Kane tracked them until they disappeared-dead or in hiding, he couldn’t say, but he’d spent a lot of time helping her. “Now they’re gone, too.”
“Did you run it through RCK?” Noah asked.
“You know of… of course you do. You know Rick and Kane and Sean. No one filed a missing persons report on the roommates, but things are handled a little less… formally, you could say, down south.”
“Do you think someone misled the girls? Maybe enticed them with more money, and then tricked them?”
“Not Mari,” Siobhan said. “She was too smart to fall for anything like that. And she wanted to go home. The job was supposed to be for two years. She was translating for the company to help them gain more business in the US. They manufactured children’s toys. Wooden puzzles, mostly. Ana… maybe. She was sweet. Mari wanted to go home, Ana might have been a bit more excited about Monterrey.” Siobhan hesitated. “I’m the one who took them from their village, traveled with them, got them to Monterrey. The job. And left them there. I should have checked up on them more often, made sure they were okay.”
“They could call you, right?”
She nodded. “They knew that.”
“Then stop blaming yourself,” Lucy said.
Siobhan sighed. “I’m not.” But she was.
She leaned forward as they rounded the corner and she saw the rental car. “Thank God,” she said and crossed herself out of habit. “It’s still here.”
Noah parked behind it and Siobhan got out. So did Noah and Lucy. “I want to show you the house. I know, you can’t go in, but you should still see-” She opened the trunk and frowned. Her camera case was on the right side of the trunk and she was positive she’d put it on the the left side, like she always did.
She opened up the case and checked her camera. It was gone. “Well, dammit.”
“What happened?” Noah asked.
“Someone took my SD card.”
“Are you certain?”
“Of course. I locked my camera in the trunk; the camera is here, the memory card is gone.”
Lucy raised an eyebrow. “You don’t sound all that upset that you lost all your pictures.”
“I didn’t lose anything. They save automatically to the cloud through a phone app that your brilliant fiancé set up for me ages ago. But that SD card was the best I had, costs two hundred bucks a pop.”
Siobhan was even angrier that someone had gone through her things. She glanced through her satchel and backpack-nothing else appeared to be missing. She’d left her laptop in the hotel safe. It was a bold move to grab her SD card-could they have also taken her hotel card key and gotten into her room? Maybe… though they wouldn’t know what room she was in.
“Are you certain you didn’t misplace the card or drop it?” Noah asked.
“Of course I’m certain,” she snapped. She rubbed her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get snippy with you. I know, you can’t prove that deputy came here and stole my SD card. I just know that he did. Or he gave my key to someone else. No one broke in, and the car and trunk were locked.”
“Wasn’t the evidence bag sealed with your belongings?” Lucy asked.
“Yes, but they didn’t have me sign it or anything. They could have put everything back in a new envelope. I just verified nothing was missing.” She glanced at Noah. “I need to go back to the house.”
“Since they let you go so quickly, I suspect they already cleaned out the place.”
“There’ll be something! You can do forensics and stuff, right? Get fingerprints?”
“We’d need a warrant.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not going to be that easy to get,” Noah said.
“But I saw a pregnant woman in that house with her ankle chained to the bed! Locks on the outside of the doors!” Were all cops like this? So rigid about rules? Someone was in trouble. A pregnant woman was in danger. Why didn’t that trump everything else?
“And you illegally entered the house.”
“I saw her in the window and she looked to be under duress.” That was all truth. She’d swear to it on a Bible.
“It might fly, but it’s not going to be a slam dunk.”
Lucy said, “Would it hurt to stop by and see if we can talk our way inside?”
Siobhan looked at Noah. “Please?”
Noah nodded, but he didn’t look happy about it. They all got back into Noah’s car, and Siobhan directed him the three blocks to the house.
“I’d like to see the pictures you took as soon as possible,” Noah said. “We can run the images through the federal database and possibly ID one or more of the individuals involved. If there’s an arrest warrant, that’ll help me get a search warrant.”
“I can download them to my phone or on my laptop. I just need to see if that young woman is okay. She was upset, angry with me, angry-” Siobhan paused.
“Did she say something?” Lucy prompted.
“Her Spanish was street-level, very lowbrow, I guess you’d say. Slang. I didn’t really understand her, and that’s unusual because I know Spanish better than most gringos. I mentioned Marisol and Ana, hoping to forge a connection with her, and that’s when she started shouting. She called me Satan. I thought she said more trouble, but I could be mistaken.”
“She didn’t want your help,” Noah said flatly as he parked directly in front of the house.
“Girls like her are brainwashed. Her family could have been threatened. She was scared-yes, angry, but also very scared. I’ve met girls like her. She needs our help, even if she thinks that being bought and sold like cattle is normal.”
Who was this guy and why had Rick sent him? Siobhan didn’t think she should have to explain this to a federal agent.
Lucy put a hand on Noah’s forearm, and Siobhan could practically see them speaking telepathically. They must have been partners for years to be able to just know each other that well.
Lucy turned to face Siobhan in the backseat. “Stay here.”
“But-”
Lucy repeated, “Stay. We’re going to check it out, but we don’t know what we’re facing, and you don’t want to get out of this car. Understood?”
“Fine.”
Siobhan watched from the rear window. The truck that had been parked in the back was gone. Noah knocked on the door. There was no answer. He and Lucy walked around the house, then returned several minutes later and got back into the car.
“No one’s home.”
“Maybe they’re just not answering.”
“We have no cause to enter. All the doors are locked. There is no vehicle in the driveway.”
“Mrs. Hernandez will know. She’s home. I saw her looking through her blinds. She’s not going to talk to you, you’re cops. She’ll tell me.”
Noah glanced at Lucy. Again, the unspoken communication.
Lucy said, “I’ll go with you. It’s not up for discussion.”
“You sound like Kane,” Siobhan snapped and got out of the car.
Lucy followed her to the house kitty-corner from their location. “Was that an insult or a compliment?” Lucy asked her.
“Both,” Siobhan said. She knocked on Mrs. Hernandez’s door. No one answered. She knocked again. “Dolores, I know you’re in there, I saw you. Please, I need your help. I need to know what happened to the woman across the street.”
It took a long minute, but the door opened. Dolores Hernandez didn’t unlock the screen. “They’re gone.”
“When?”
“Last night. They left.” She eyed Lucy suspiciously.
“What time?”
“Late. Midnight. Maybe a little earlier.”
“Did someone come back for the woman?” Siobhan said. “What about the pregnant woman? Was she okay? Did you see her?”
“That’s all I know. Leave.”
Siobhan was growing increasingly frustrated with this entire situation. How could she be so close to Mari and Ana and still not find them? It wasn’t fair!