Our boss, Jacob Branch, is right; we have been over this more than once. That doesn’t mean Raj will let it drop. If anything, it will make her push even harder. Rajani Agarwal enjoys going head-to-head with the boss, and to be honest, I think she’d be disappointed if he ever gave in.
“Look…” She leans into the speakerphone. “I don’t think any of us had a day off in the past two months. None of us are spring chickens anymore, and pretty soon the bodies are gonna start falling apart, then where would you be?”
“Hey, speak for yourself,” Janey pipes up, looking away from her computer screen for the first time this morning to throw Raj a dirty look.
Raj makes a good point though. We may not be old—just starting our forties—but we also don’t bounce back as easily as we once did.
“Nowhere without the three of you,” Jacob admits, “but we’re still not hiring. Now, can we get back to the list of potential cases?”
The cases he refers to are those of missing children.
Two years ago, Jacob Branch founded GEM, which stands for Gather, Evaluate, and Mobilize. The group’s objective is to search for, rescue, and recover missing and exploited minors. Our focus is mainly on disenfranchised kids, the most vulnerable ones, who often slip between the cracks. The runaways, street kids, those bounced around the foster system, or from unhealthy home lives.
Having lived a childhood like that myself—and still carrying the well-hidden scars—I didn’t have to think long when offered a chance to join the crew. An opportunity to stand up for forgotten and vulnerable children, the way I wish someone had stood up for me.
Jacob had been convincing; despite the fact I never met him in person. The first time he called me I almost hung up on him, but then he mentioned the names of the other two women I’d be working with. Names I hadn’t heard in two decades. He offered assurances in the form of high-ranking law enforcement officers he suggested I contact for references, including my commander at the Kentucky State Police Academy, where I worked as a firearms instructor. I took that to mean he was law enforcement too. Whoever Jacob Branch was, he had friends in high places.
With the promise of being reunited with Janey and Raj, the offer of a salary I never thought I’d see in my lifetime, and a chance to seek justice for the powerless using the skills I’d honed these past twenty years, I jumped.
“Opal!”
Jacob’s sharp voice snaps me to attention.
Opal is the code name he’s given me. Janey is Pearl and Raj, Onyx. It all seemed a little over the top to me at first, until he pointed out some of the work we do might put a target on our backs and it was safer to create alternate identities.
We use the code names in communications, but when it’s just the girls and me in the office, we tend to forget.
“Sorry, what was that?”
“I asked if you are ready for a case that may be a little close to home.”
I look over at Raj, who eyes me with concern. Clearly, I missed something important.
“Close to home? What do you mean? Hebron or Dry Ridge?”
Hebron is where the GEM office is located, conveniently close to the airport. I have a place about thirty miles south, just outside the small town of Dry Ridge, only I rarely get to spend time there. I’m mostly on the road, staying in hotel rooms.
“Neither. I’m talking about Lanark.”
Janey rolls her chair away from her desk and closer to the conference table, her eyes holding the same concern as Raj.
“Lanark?” Even just the name of the town I grew up in has me swallow hard. I left when I was eighteen and never went back. I take a deep breath and force myself to ask, “What’ve you got?”
“Got a call from a volunteer at The Youth Center in Lanark. She’s concerned about a girl who suddenly stopped showing up about a week ago.”
“It’s a youth center, don’t kids come and go all the time?” Janey points out.
“Maybe, but according to the woman, this girl was a regular. Showed up religiously for the after-school homework program and she always stayed for a meal. Sally Kendall, the volunteer, said she’d been in touch with the girl’s mother, who confirmed she hadn’t seen Melissa in five days, but didn’t seem to care much. She admitted the school had called and she’d lied, telling them her daughter was sick, just to get them off her back. According to Sally, the mom’s a meth head whose only worry is where her next hit is gonna come from.”
I start jotting down information on my notepad.
“Melissa, what is her last name?” I ask.
“Romero. Fifteen years old, five foot two, slight build, dark, shoulder-length hair, brown eyes, pierced nostril and earlobes.”
“Why is this Sally woman calling us?” Raj wants to know. “Why doesn’t she contact local law enforcement? And why is a volunteer sounding the alarm on this anyway and not the center’s program manager or director?”
Jacob explains the woman apparently did go to management but was cautioned not to cause waves for the center. It was a conversation she indicated ‘left her feeling uncomfortable.’ She found our name when she scoured the internet looking for information on how to find missing children.
“Sounds fishy,” Janey comments.
“The volunteer or the situation?” I direct at her.
“The situation. Management at the center. The mother. Lanark,” she clarifies. “It’s all fishy to me.”
“I agree, which is why I want to move on this. It could be just a coincidence, but what if it isn’t? What if something is still happening in Lanark?”
None of us respond. We don’t need to because what he suggests is already worming its way into our thoughts. I don’t even have to look at the others to know their minds. We were all victims, and Jacob is aware of this.
I asked him once how he knew about what went on at Transition House, to which he cryptically responded the house may have burned down, but the ghosts linger. I always assumed that to mean he perhaps knew someone there, or lost someone connected to the group home. He never clarified, but it’s clear—just like the rest of us—he’s never been able to let go.
It’s why Jacob picked us for GEM. Our common trauma.
It’s what ties all of us together.
It’s what drives us to do what we do.
Mitch
“It’s a camping trip, Sawyer, not an extended stay at a luxury resort,” I mutter at no one in particular, lugging her massive suitcase to the truck. The damn thing is going to take up half the space in my tent.
She comes bouncing down the porch steps, wearing short-shorts, a skintight tank, and her feet in the new Birkenstocks she just had to have, but are no match for the kind of terrain we’re heading for. Sturdy hiking boots would be more suitable for the rocks and sandstone cliffs. I give her a stern look, but she grins back, her blond hair framing her happy face, and as usual, I cave.
Sawyer owns me and she knows it.
“Can we stop at Starbucks on the way out?” she pleads, pushing her luck. “Pretty please?”
“You know a Keurig pod costs less than fifty cents, right?” I grumble.
She’s heard it before and laughs at me, the happy melodious sound a balm to my dark mood.