Lucy watched as Siobhan left with Ana in the ambulance.
Noah came up to them. “Villines and I are going to check on another property—see if you can talk to the girls before they’re transported.”
He left, and Lucy walked over to where the two girls who weren’t obviously pregnant were being treated by a lone paramedic. The two ambulances had already left. She said in Spanish, “We’re getting you help. A doctor.”
The paramedic was fluent and had put them both at ease. They were crying, but one of them said in English without any trace of an accent, “I want to call my mom.”
“Where are you from?”
Tears streamed down her face. “I—I’m from Houston. I ran away last year with my boyfriend. And … and it got bad. He … he hit me. And then … he left. And I was pregnant and my mom … my mom told me if I left with him never to come home.”
“Honey, mothers are forgiving. What’s your name?”
“Abby Bridger.” She drew in a deep breath. “I-I just want my mom.”
“How did you end up here?”
“I thought … I thought if I had an abortion everything would be better. I could go home, beg my mom to forgive me, never tell anyone. I went to a clinic and they put me under and I woke up somewhere else.”
“When was this?”
“February. And … and I had my baby last month and I wanted her so badly and begged them not to take her, but they did.”
“Why didn’t they let you go?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t ask, I didn’t want to go, where would I go?” She squeezed the hand of the girl next to her. “It’s all my fault.”
“Abby, none of this is your fault. None of it, okay?” Lucy took her other hand, the one that wasn’t clutching her friend. Both girls were staring at her with wide, dirty eyes. “These people forced you into this, terrified you, hurt you. Took your baby. Kept you prisoner. They will pay for it.” She took out a photo of the house in Freer. “Is this where you were staying?”
Abby nodded. “Since April. First we were someplace else, but it burned down. I think they burned it down on purpose. And then we were there. Until…” She stopped talking.
“Until one of the women ran away with a baby.”
“They took us all, except Eloise. Did you find her? Is she okay? She was so worried about her baby. She’s very sick.”
Lucy softened her voice. “Eloise died. I’m sorry. We think her baby survived.”
“No. No!”
“We’re looking for Marisol. Her sister Ana was here—have you seen her?”
She shook her head. “No one has come for us. They were looking for Marisol.”
“Abby, I need you to be strong. You’re going to the hospital. There will be a police guard there to protect you—to protect all of you. But honey, we need you to tell us everything you know. We need everything you know about these people, what they said and did and who they are. We need more information to stop them.”
“Will—will you call my mom? Explain everything to her? Tell her I’m sorry?”
“Yes—but Abby, the first thing you need to do is remember this. Remember it forever: This is not your fault.”
The paramedic took the girls together in the third ambulance and Lucy watched it drive off. Nate said, “One of the deputies confirmed that the dead girl isn’t Marisol.”
Lucy wanted to be happy about it, but she was so weary.
“I want to show you something.” He handed her a photocopy of Loretta’s book. “We didn’t have time to go through it, but I noticed something. You pointed out that Elizabeth wasn’t Marisol’s first baby.”
“I’m assuming that both Marisols in the book are the same person.” Lucy flipped through the pages. “Jasmine and her people picked immigrants—legal or illegal, it didn’t matter—who didn’t have family connections because they would be the least likely to go to the authorities. Or runaways like Abby who had lost hope.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know as a fact, just an educated guess based on what we’ve seen already. I thought Macey was an outlier because she was Caucasian, until Abby. Did you notice that the baby boy was Macey’s second delivery? Just like Marisol.” She frowned.
“That’s what I wanted to show you. The dates.”
She stared. Marisol was the third delivery in the book, and the last. Marisol had given birth six months after she’d disappeared from Monterrey.
“That bastard.”
“You’re thinking what I’m thinking.”
“Zapelli. Marisol was pregnant in Monterrey. Want to bet it was his kid? That’s why she trusted him. How could a father sell his girlfriend and his unborn child into the sex trade?”
“Lucy, you know as well as I do that he probably killed her when he picked her up Tuesday night.”
“Then dammit, I want to bury her body.”