Lone would have just argued that they couldn’t send the poor children back. Their parents would only sell them again.
She put her hands to her head and moaned aloud. How could she have missed it all, for so long? Was it because she didn’t want to see?
No. It wasn’t that. It was information she had lacked, not insight. Before Tyler, she had no reason to believe she and Nason were anything other than routinely trafficked children, just two among thousands, hundreds of thousands. Why would it have occurred to her that the two of them might have been specifically requested by a degenerate—a degenerate whose brother had the political connections to order a customized set of child sex slaves?
The political connections. She needed to look into that. Who would a senator have to know to order two sisters all the way from Thailand? He’d need the contacts. A conduit. A circuit breaker, for deniability. How would Ezra Lone have set up all that?
She thought of his “legislative aide,” Matthias Redcroft. That would be one piece—probably the go-between, the bagman. But how would the senator know where to place the order? He trusted someone, and they trusted him. Enough to do this kind of business. And what did he pay? Was it cash? Political influence? Something else? Whatever it was, it was valuable enough so that whoever had paid Tyler and his gang to move Livia and the others to Llewellyn didn’t mind losing fifty thousand dollars in the process. And the cargo, too, obviously.
She remembered her initial impressions of Llewellyn. How she had always sensed something rotten about the town, something she could almost smell. She’d read a book in high school called Watership Down. It was about rabbits—well, rabbits as people. And there was one group of rabbits that lived on a farm, accepting the farmer’s food, grateful that he shot foxes and stoats, their natural enemies . . . and accepting that he laid snares, so that anytime he wanted to make a stew from one of his nice, fat rabbits, he could.
She realized that’s what Llewellyn felt like. The people had known. But they found a way to not know. Because they wanted what Mr. Lone and his brother provided. The ammunition factory. The mill. All the people they employed, through Mr. Lone’s businesses and Senator Lone’s votes. Against all that, why would they care if the Lones decided to snare a little refugee girl . . . and eat her?
The theory felt right. In fact, her own discomfort, her resistance to believing it, suggested it was sound. Still, there was one thing missing, one imaginative leap she knew needed to be bridged. She wasn’t trying to make a case that would stand up in court. But she needed all the pieces to fit. The whole thing had to be solid enough for her to take the next step. Whatever that might be.
She’d always assumed Fred Lone was simply a freak. Maybe there was an explanation—he’d been molested by a priest or a teacher or a coach, and infected by evil. She’d certainly seen enough of that. Or maybe he’d just been born twisted. She’d encountered plenty of that, as well. Evil with no explanation, no origin.
But two brothers, and both of them monsters? That wasn’t a coincidence. Something had happened to them both, when they were boys. If she could find out what that thing was, maybe she would be one step closer to finding Nason.
She thought about Fred Lone’s funeral. The family crypt, with the sister who had died when Lone was young. Livia had never thought to ask about that before. She’d never cared.
Well, she did now.
53—NOW
She walked back to the parking lot. She was getting cold, and anyway it was too windy for a phone call.
She turned up the heat in the Jeep and pulled out onto Admiral Way, heading toward the West Seattle Bridge and Georgetown. The streets were quiet, the windows dark in the buildings she passed.
She called the number Tanya had given her when they’d talked after Livia had graduated from the academy. Answer, she thought. She didn’t want to wait for this information. She’d waited so long already.
The phone rang only once, then Tanya’s voice: “Livia Lone, as I live and breathe.”
Livia smiled, relieved. “Tanya. You must be on call.”
“You guessed it. Not that you’d be waking me anyway. I’m a night owl. How are you, sister?”
“I’m good. I’m sorry to bother you this late, but I have a strange question, if you don’t mind.”
“I never mind, and I told you, for me it’s not late. Tell me what I can do to help.”
“Thanks. You’ve lived in Llewellyn for a long time, right?”
“Born and raised. Went to Llewellyn High School, just like you.”