The Disappearance (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 34) by Jonas Saul

Author:Jonas Saul [Saul, Jonas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Imagine Press Inc.
Published: 2023-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Maria sat in a dank holding cell, a bullet-resistant vest wrapped around her chest and abdomen. They had brought in an interpreter to interview her with members of the state police.

She’d spent several hours telling them who she was and what had happened that led to her being in their custody. An hour wasn’t enough to cover five years of the sordid tale, but she gave them the basics and glossed over each beating and every violation.

Then they fed her, gave her a large bottle of water, and left her locked in the holding cell with two armed officers standing guard outside her door.

Could she finally hope this was all over?

The door clicked. Someone was coming inside.

It opened slowly, and the interpreter stepped inside with a female officer from the state police.

“We have good news,” the interpreter said. “You are being transferred over to the Antimafia Investigative Directorate (DIA) division. They’re coming to take you into protective custody until their investigation is concluded.”

“How long should that take?” Maria asked, her fatigue evident in her voice. “I just want to go home.”

Her interpreter—she forgot the woman’s name—smiled at her. “Of course, but they need every bit of information you might have to close down the Baglioni human trafficking operation.”

“Human trafficking,” Maria repeated the words, looking off to the side. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I always thought human trafficking was sex workers locked up in hotel rooms and forced to perform.”

The interpreter gestured at the chair in front of Maria’s thin mattress. “May I?”

Maria nodded, and the woman sat. The officer remained near the door.

“There are nearly forty million slaves around the world today, all held for a variety of reasons. Yes, there are sex slaves. But forced labor is the most common. I was just looking at the numbers online, and it stated that modern slavery is increasing across the globe.”

She’d been a slave. But she survived. Samantha hadn’t, like all the others before her. Alonzo was dead. He couldn’t torture, maim, or kill anyone anymore.

“When can I go home?”

“Unfortunately, I’m not at liberty to say. That’s something only the DIA can determine. Their goal, though, as I understand it, is to make this as painless as possible for you.”

Maria nodded.

“Maria, having been inside the Baglioni villa and lived to tell about it, is a miracle. Not only that, I translated your statement. I know you killed your abuser, Alonzo Baglioni, and one of his enforcers. You’re a survivor. Get through the coming days or weeks, and then go back to your family. The hard part is over.”

Hearing those words filled her eyes with tears. It may be over, but she was damaged goods. She’d been violated by over a hundred men hundreds of times since they’d abducted her from the woods where she used to jog in the mornings back in her home state of Vermont. She got up at five that morning, was on the trail by five-thirty, and was bound and gagged in the back of a van by six, never to be seen again.

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