But Nason hadn’t even made it to Llewellyn. Skull Face and his men had sold her somewhere else. Or . . .
. . . killed her. Because no one would want to buy merchandise as damaged as that.
She pushed her fist to her mouth and bit down on the knuckles. She hated thinking it, but of all the possibilities, that the men had killed Nason seemed by far the most likely. The only thing that made the thought even remotely bearable was that it didn’t feel true. Her mind could say what it liked, but in her heart, she had never stopped believing her little bird was alive, out there somewhere, and that one day she would find her, envelop her in her arms and never, ever let anything bad happen to her again.
She waited again for the emotions to pass and her mind to clear.
All right. Maybe the Lones had wanted sisters because sisters would be easier to use against each other, easier to control, something like that. Maybe some kind of sick turn-on. The same sort of thing Skull Face had found so irresistible. The same sort of dynamic involved in the Montlake rapes. But then . . . Nason would have been on the barge from Portland with Livia. And Skull Face and his men never would have damaged her the way they had.
Unless they hadn’t meant to damage her. Not the way they did. Only to use her, like they had used you. And then you cut them, and Skull Face forgot he was handling merchandise ordered by a customer, merchandise he was supposed to deliver more or less intact. He lost control. He needed to hurt the helpless victim who had just cut out his eye. Hurt her in the worst way imaginable. Through her sister.
She choked back a sob. Many times before, she had suspected it was her fault the men had hurt Nason so badly. But it had never felt so true.
She remembered how afterward, Skull Face’s men had restrained him from going after her. He’d wanted more revenge, but cooler heads—dollars-and-cents heads—had prevailed. She tried to find holes in the theory, but couldn’t. It was simple. Skull Face was supposed to deliver two intact sisters. But he’d lost control and hurt one so badly that he could only deliver the other.
She’d been just a little girl when it happened. She’d only been trying to protect Nason. She knew it wasn’t her fault.
But it was her fault. It was. If only she hadn’t attacked the men . . .
She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She pushed aside the guilt and forced herself to focus. Focus.
If the Lones had wanted sisters, why bring other children on the barge from Portland, just to poison them? And why poison some of the adults, too?
Because Mr. Lone couldn’t adopt four kids. He had wanted something he could control. Four would have been too many. But they didn’t want it to look as though they were singling out the children. An adult, or adults, needed to die, too, or at least get sick. So it would look random. Accidental.
It was as though a window she had been trying for so long to see through, a window on what had really happened, was suddenly clearing, at least partly. It was what she had hoped for. But it was also almost too much. She staggered over to a bench and sat.
The Lones wanted sisters. But Fred Lone couldn’t go out and just adopt a pair—it might have caused speculation, suspicion, even in a town as devoted as Llewellyn to not seeing what he really was. So they arranged for a shipment somehow. A shipment that was supposed to be a mix of adults and kids, but with the sisters the only kids surviving the journey. The ones no one would know what to do with. Except Fred Lone, the great benefactor. He would adopt them.
She could feel her mind still trying to resist it. For so long, she’d believed she and Nason had been the victims of circumstance. But a conspiracy?
And they needed a bust, of course. That’s why someone phoned in an anonymous tip to Chief Emmanuel. But there was no tip. Mr. Lone told Emmanuel exactly what to do. Save the victims. Execute the traffickers. Tie up loose ends.
But Tyler . . . he survived.
Remember, there were federal agents, too. Emmanuel had to do the whole thing by the book to avoid scrutiny. He, or he and his men, tried to kill all three, but somehow they couldn’t get to Tyler. Maybe the feds got to him first. Whatever the reason, they went to plan B: not a word, Weed, or your ass gets shanked in prison.
Besides, Tyler didn’t know that much, anyway. But they would take as few chances as possible.
She tried to imagine it from their perspective. How it would look when it was done.
It’s the perfect appearance: routine human trafficking. Heroic local police and federal action. Adoring coverage in the press. A group of adults, all subject to repatriation. And two poor little refugee sisters no one knows what to do with.
No one except Mr. Lone.
But Livia had told them her parents were dead. They couldn’t have predicted that. What if she had told them what had really happened?