She put her elbows on her desk and rested her forehead against her knuckles. Could that have been it? Some kind of quid pro quo?
She imagined Senator Lone pitching it to some of his corrupt government contacts, or even directly to one of the criminal groups. Or maybe to both. There’s a storm coming, he would have told them. I can’t head it off. But I can give you an umbrella. Joint law enforcement to destroy your rivals. Adoring press coverage about your unprecedented cooperation. I report to the Senate that Thailand has made tremendous progress in the battle against trafficking, with more investigations, prosecutions, and convictions than ever before. The Senate recommends to the State Department that Thailand be upgraded from Tier 3 trafficking status, the worst, to Tier 2, or maybe even Tier 1, with all the trade benefits the improvement entails. We clear the field for you. And bring in a boatload of US trade. You’ll make more money, have more power, than you ever dreamed. And all I want in return is that you provide me children to fuck when I visit on my periodic fact-finding missions.
And two custom-ordered sisters, who you’ll obtain and ship to America per my instructions.
Probably she was wrong about some of the particulars. But she was pretty sure she had the general contours. The sisters part especially. It explained why her parents had given out the photo of her and Nason—so the Lones could select exactly the type of girls they wanted.
She remembered a concept from one of her college psych courses: the “breastplate of righteousness.” It was a biblical phrase referring to the armor of God, the goodness required in the battle against evil. But in psychology, it meant a protective shield of super-propriety, like when a closeted man railed in public about the evils of homosexuality—attending church regularly, proclaiming the importance of “family values,” and overall cloaking himself in political conservatism. Sometimes it was a defense mechanism. More often, it was a deliberate attempt to avoid or deflect suspicion, like that anti-gay senator who had been caught soliciting anonymous gay sex in a Minnesota airport restroom, or like any of the countless fire-and-brimstone ministers and politicians who had been similarly caught out in their hypocrisies.
Why her and Nason, though? Did the Lones want hill tribe girls? A certain age? Sisters? Some combination?
Just sisters, she sensed, thinking again about how Skull Face had used Nason against Livia, how the Montlake rapist had used those two women against each other.
But she needed to be sure.
She finished her coffee, then ran a search on Matthias Redcroft. Zero hits on social media. One hit for tax records—he was indeed employed by the senator. And one hit for military service—twelve years in the army, the last six with Special Forces. What the hell was a former SF guy, with the social media profile of a ghost, doing as a “legislative aide”?
She lifted her head and rubbed her eyes. She could see the opportunity. And most of the means. And the motive was obvious, in the very abuse she herself had suffered. What was missing was the pathology that had created the motive. She could sense it, but not yet see it.
If they’d wanted sisters, if that had been important to them . . . then maybe there was a chance. The smallest chance, but still a chance. That Nason was alive somewhere. That Livia could find her.
But no matter what, there was another chance, too. The chance that she could just know. Yes. Please that. Just to know. Before she died herself, just to know what had happened to her little bird.
She took a deep breath and blew it out.
And started searching for Becky Lone.
55—NOW
None of the available police and federal databases had anything on a Rebecca or Becky Lone. A social media search was similarly fruitless. Not surprising—it had all happened decades earlier. And if Livia’s intuition was right, Becky would have kept a low profile anyway.
But her intuition suggested a few other things, as well. Someone fleeing an abusive past and desperate to build something safe and secure. A new family. A new life. And someone who wanted those things not far in the future, but soon. Maybe as soon as graduating from college, or soon after. Maybe Becky had met a boy, the right kind of boy—sane, stable, reliable. She’d married him, and taken his name. Probably a California boy, since about eighty percent of Berkeley undergraduates were from California. And Livia knew from having lived in the Bay Area herself that people from there tended to stay. That gave her a lot to cross-reference with alumni organizations, property records, car registrations, voter registrations, and vital records databases. Of course, she could have been wrong about any of the particulars, in which case she would have to expand the search. But her gut rarely failed her, and she sensed she was using the right parameters.