Girl, Forgotten by Karin Slaughter

Author:Karin Slaughter [Slaughter, Karin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller
ISBN: 9780008303587
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-06-01T16:00:00+00:00

6

Andrea sat on the edge of the bed in her motel room staring down at the photograph that Star Bonaire had taken. The woman had used her finger to carve a single word in the white flour.

Help.

Andrea had waited until she was alone with Bible to show him the photo. He hadn’t said much beyond telling Andrea to get showered and be ready when he called. That was well over an hour ago. Andrea was showered. She was ready. Bible still had not called.

Help.

How terrified would a woman have to be to do something like that?

Andrea swiped back to the photos of Alice Poulsen. Her throat tightened over the ravages by starvation. Anorexia was about control, but then, to some degree, so was suicide. You were literally taking your own life into your hands. Alice Poulsen had walked into that field and known that she would not turn back. What kind of nerve did that take? What kind of desperation?

The same type of desperation Star Bonaire had probably been feeling when she photographed her cry for help.

Andrea couldn’t look at the photos anymore. She tossed her phone on the desk. She stared all of her helplessness into the black television screen across from her bed. The curtains were drawn. The lights were off. Her left wrist ached where Wexler had grabbed her. Stray memories flashed through her mind—Wexler’s face pressed against the steering wheel; Nardo lighting a cigarette; Star’s ghostly presence as she moved around the kitchen; the two women who’d walked out of the barn. The yellow dresses. The long hair. The bare feet. The attenuated limbs. The matching ankle bracelets.

Victimized. Tagged. Degraded.

Cult. Cult. Cult.

Stilton was right. There was no federal or state law that said you couldn’t be in a cult. Nothing could be done to save those women. Star Bonaire’s mother had already tried the most extreme version of a rescue. She’d ended up arrested and hit with a restraining order barring her from seeing her own child.

Andrea stood up. She started pacing. She felt so fucking powerless. She had all this training and none of it, not one piece, could help Star Bonaire. Or anyone else, for that matter. She looked at her phone, willing Bible to call her. He was probably hitting the same dead ends that she was. Her eyes darted to the notebook and pen she’d placed on the desk. She’d been so filled with purpose when she’d started an internet trawl for all the dirty laundry on Dean’s Magic Beans.

An hour later, the notebook pages were still blank.

She mentally reviewed what little she had learned about the operation. Dean’s Magic Beans had been a registered Delaware corporation since 1983. Andrea had found the original articles of incorporation. Dean Wexler was listed as the president. Bernard Fontaine was vice president. Which was interesting given the fact that Nardo was only nineteen in 1983, around the same time that his father had been arrested for bank fraud, but not interesting in any way that could move an investigation forward.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.