Chapter 25

A look at Steph and I could tell that she was nervous, so I turned her so that she was resting against me. Maybe if she couldn't see my face then she'd feel more confident with what she was about to tell us. Her voice was quiet as she started to talk, but it was as if she was talking about someone else, her voice sounding so detached.

"After you left, Ranger, I had a good week collecting skips. No food thrown or fires, so I felt happy with how things were going. I felt strong emotionally and felt justified with telling Joe that we were definitely over. It didn't bother me because I knew a relationship with him wasn't going to work and to be honest, I felt relieved that he wasn't in my life anymore"

I couldn't help but notice how Steph glossed over her relationship with Morelli, or that it had finished. I was almost regretting not being able to see her face so that I could judge if there was more to that than she had said. I wasn't aware of them having argued though knowing Morelli he'd probably done something stupid for Steph to have made such a final decision. The fact that he'd spent his time trying to talk to Steph certainly confirmed that.

"I'd taken Eula into the police station, in fact she was the last FTA that I had that week. Lula wouldn't come with me because she hated the smell that Eula carried around with her and to be honest Eula didn't like Lula. Eula never gave me any trouble and she was usually quite chatty with me but that time she was very quiet. When I asked her what was bothering her she told me that she'd missed her court date because she was worried about a young girl, that this girl had disappeared. Eula was so upset, and I had nothing else to do so I offered to help find her. I knew that maybe the girl had just moved on but when Eula told me that she'd left her bag in a locker I had to admit that I was worried as well"

Her saying that had me remembering the last time that she'd agreed to find someone. A neighbor of her parents had asked Steph to find her daughter and granddaughter. Even I didn't realize at the time how much trouble Steph could find with doing that. Having Jeanne Ann involved really hadn't helped but it was Abruzzi that had been the most dangerous.

The way that he had taunted Steph with his stupid antics and scared her to death, but it was when he kidnapped her and burnt her that I had lost my patience with him. All because of some damn medal. It was then that I knew that I had to step in, to try and stop him, but trying to talk to him wasn't enough. The man was found in his car at the meat market with his gun in one hand and a suicide note in the other. Steph had never asked anything about it, and for me, well he was one man that wouldn't haunt me. I continued listening to Steph, so worried about what had happened next.

"I started in the usual places, hoping that nothing had happened to her. The hospitals and even the morgues. I even went to see Eddie and went through all their files of missing people but never found anything. None of the shelters had seen her but I knew things happened to girls who were on the streets so started to ask around. That took me onto Stark Street and some of the women that I knew who worked down there"

"They suggested that a man named Duane Rivera might know something and actually told me where to find him. He was annoyed when I eventually found him, but I think he knew of my connection to Rangeman and begrudgingly told me that he hadn't seen a girl matching Lainey's description"

Rivera would know better than to mess with Steph. He worked the streets and lured unsuspecting girls into his houses, but he knew what would have happened to him if he'd even considered doing anything to hurt Steph. It did make me wonder if Steph knew what he did, though if she'd spoken to any of the women maybe she would know.

"I tracked down the building that he had control of and eventually spoke to some of the young girls that worked there. They hadn't seen Lainey"

I was aware that Steph faltered as she finished her sentence and knew straight away that she was upset, probably from the truth of what happened to those young girls. I never wanted Steph to be so aware of the underbelly of what went on in Trenton, but this seemed to be something that I couldn't protect her from.

"Steph, are you okay?"

Elaina picked up on how upset Steph was so maybe Steph hadn't told her everything that she'd seen and heard.

"Sorry. It was purely by accident that I saw an old friend at Pinos. Megan and I had been to school together but we'd each gone our own way afterwards. She was working for Children's Services and to be honest I didn't envy the job she was trying to do. When Megan started to talk about a man who abducted kids off the streets to sell them over the internet, well it came to me that maybe he was someone I needed to talk to. The problem was that Megan had no idea who he was, where he lived or how to find him"

The name Megan rang a bell for me and as Steph told us her occupation it came to me that Megan was the woman that Brown had brought in to help us when we captured Lapira. It had always puzzled me how Steph had come across that man, but I should have known that it would be through her network of friends.

"I got in touch with Briggs, knowing how good he was at trawling through the internet. I don't know how he did it and I didn't ask, but he gave me the name Lapira and a place where I might find him. Maybe he was able to track a phone or something. I found him down by the river near to where some of the homeless were hanging around"

I had never underestimated how good Steph was at finding people and how she used the people that she knew, but I had to admit that it was a stroke of genius as to how she had located Lapira.

"He was talking to a young kid so I made the kid go away so I could talk to him. He wasn't what I expected. I was a bit scared to be confronting him but was actually surprised when he sat with me on the bank by the river, the both of us just staring across the water. I remembered our conversation vividly because it changed how I saw the man and I almost felt sorry for him. He told me he was fed up with people asking about the girl, Lainey, and at first, he wasn't going to tell me anything. That was when I realized that Lainey might be in trouble, that there were other people looking for her. Turns out that he had spoken to Lainey. I think he was hoping that she would maybe help him to lure the kids out for him. Lainey had asked him if he knew a man called Joseph Thomson. Of course he didn't, but it was another name for me to follow up on"

My mind went back to when we had Lapira in our cells. Steph was right, he wasn't what I was expecting either. Maybe what he was doing with kids was what had happened to him as a child, so he knew no different. I just hoped that I hadn't made a mistake by taking him on under Hector. Steph had a good sense for people and from how she had talked about him I was sure that she would agree with me to give him a chance.

"I wasn't sure what he meant when he told me not tell them that he'd spoken to me and he left as soon as he'd said that, making me wonder who he was referring to. There was no one that I would be talking to, so the conversation would be our little secret"

Lapira had thought that the men were from Rangeman so no wonder he had asked her not to say anything.

"The next day I mingled with the men and women down by the river, under the embankment. They were wary of me to start with but when I told them a girl had gone missing, they told me about men coming into one of the camps and taking three of the women. That they were scared, too many of them seemed to have gone over the summer and never come back. That was the first that I had heard of that and no one I spoke to seemed to know anything about it. It was as I was down by the river that I noticed a large boat coming upriver and thought that it was unusual, so I watched where it went. I just had a feeling that seeing it was important"

"I'd bided my time and returned to the area a few hours later, trying to make out that I was just a person walking along the river. I hadn't realized that there were so many derelict buildings to walk past before I came to the one where I was sure that the boat had docked at. I knew that I needed to be careful so found somewhere to watch from, an old building that had a great view of the old warehouse. I didn't see anything, so didn't stay long, but there was something bothering me about it, or it was my spidey sense going haywire"

Shit, had Steph used the same building where we had talked to the old man? Maybe, it was a good place to watch the warehouse from. It made me wonder how long she had stayed there for, maybe if it was for just a short time then that was why her trackers never showed her at the place. Steph never had been good at surveillance she was bored easily and had the need to be on the move.

"I knew that I needed to get in there but also knew that I needed a closer look at the entrance. I walked past it on my way back to my car and saw the large new padlock on the door. That gave me everything that I needed to know. I just knew that I had to get inside that building"

Just listening to what Steph had done made me nervous even though she was sat right here with me. In some ways I was annoyed with her for not contacting someone. Okay, I hadn't been there, but Santos or Hector would have been there to support her. Or was it that she just didn't see the danger of where she was looking? Maybe that was it, after all we hadn't realized what had been going on in that building.

"The following day I went to an old hardware store and took a look at their padlocks, attracting the attention of Evan Juposki. I was sure that he was one of the men my mother had tried to introduce me to a few months ago, but I was stuck with him stood next to me. Five minutes later I had a key and Evan thought that he had a date for the following night"

"I knew which building the boat went to and managed to get the door open. It was weird though because there was a metal wall behind the door. I managed to squeeze through between the wall and the metal and found that the space got bigger. That was when I heard voices and I realized they were coming through a ventilation duct"

"I couldn't believe what I was hearing, it was like dropping into the middle of a horror movie. Me being me, I wanted to see who the hell was talking, so very carefully eased part of the duct away from the wall. It seemed it was situated next to a machine, one that I recognized and hated, the one that recorded a heartbeat. Only it wasn't making the beep-beep sound, it was just making one long continuous beep. Looking through I saw the back of a man in a white coat, only recognizing that he had short grey hair. The other man though, I could see his face clearly. He had long thin grey hair framing a face that looked gaunt. He was taller than the other man but thinner and was dressed in what seemed to me to be an expensive suit"

Shit, had she seen the man in charge of that operation? From her description of the man I was almost sure of who it was and caught CJ looking at me as though he was thinking the same.

"They were talking about a girl and what blood group she was"

As Steph stopped, I realized that she knew exactly what had been going on in that building. I took hold of her hand as a way of showing her that I understood what she was feeling.

"Babe, you don't need to say anymore"

I wanted to protect her from that memory, but it seemed she wasn't going to stop now, as though by telling us was what she needed to do.

"It's okay. One man talked about having bids for kidneys but then the older man got annoyed saying he wanted them to find a woman, that she was the only one who would be a match for him"

I watched as Steph looked up and over to Elaina so knew that they were both aware of how close Elaina had come to dying and that maybe it was her father who was responsible. Had Markovic set up the whole operation in order to secure himself organs for transplant. He had a blood group which would be hard to match, so had he decided to find one himself.

"I was close to panicking when I realized what they were doing. Shit, it was like that place that I'd found all those years ago but instead of tempting corrupt men with their freedom and killing them, these people were kidnapping people from the streets. I couldn't understand why they were so interested in women or why he thought they might be a match for him. That was when I suddenly realized that maybe that was why they were looking for Lainey because he thought she was the one that would be a match. It didn't make sense at the time"

"I followed the ventilation shaft along the wall and came to a place where it separated and went into what could be a room. It wasn't put together very well, and I soon pulled the duct away to reveal a vent. I could see inside and saw someone pacing the room. It was the third girl, so I got her attention and between us we managed to move the vent. It was a good job that she was small and as soon as she was out, I led her back to where I had got in, relocked the padlock and we were heading back to my car and apartment"

"We'd driven back in silence I think both of us intent on watching around us, making sure that we weren't being followed. To be honest I was shaking by the time we were inside my apartment, and it was the girl who was the one to calm me down"

"It was only when I'd looked at her sat opposite me at the dining table as she'd thanked me for getting her out that I really looked at her. Her hair was short, cut into layers and she had brown eyes, I had no idea who she was, only that I'd been able to rescue her from that place and what they were doing"

"I was only aware of who she was when she told me her name"

So it had been Elaina who had admitted to Steph who she was. I suppose it would have been difficult to recognize her from the photo from the bag, because she did look totally different with a new hairstyle and her face had matured from the young girl that I'd seen. All the time that Steph told her story she was looking intently at Elaina as though wanting her to corroborate what she was saying. Steph must have been really shaken up after that experience, but I suppose also relieved that she'd managed to get Elaina out and to safety.

"After Ellie told me her story and we talked through what had happened to her, that was when we started to connect the dots together. That maybe the man that I had seen in the warehouse had been her father, and maybe he was after Ellie because he would think that she would be a match. He definitely didn't look well, and it certainly accounted for why he looked so thin and gaunt. That he wanted to find his daughter just to have her kidneys shocked both of us but accounted for why he was so keen to find her now"

I listened as Steph told me what she had done and how she'd eventually worked out what was happening. That she hadn't got herself killed in the process was a miracle but then that was Steph. She followed the clues until she found an answer, one step at a time not realizing what she was getting herself into. Maybe she never really saw the danger until the end.

"I was going to call Tank for some advice but as we sat there talking there was a hammering on my apartment door, at first, I thought it might have been Joe but when it didn't stop, and I looked through the peep hole there were two men I didn't know outside. Ellie hid in the closet in the bedroom, as I went to the door. They produced FBI badges and said that they needed to talk to me, so I let them in. They insisted that I had to go with them but when I went through to the bedroom to get a jacket Ellie had gone, which was a good thing because those men followed me to search the room"

Elaina suddenly sat forward as though she wanted to add something to what Steph had said.

"I used the fire escape and went up to the next floor, gave the old dear there a hell of a scare but she seemed more interested in what was going on"

I smiled at Elaina as she said that, yeah, having Elaina burst into her bedroom would have given Mrs. Bestler the most excitement that she'd seen in days.

"They used some sort of electronic device over me which went nuts at my earrings, so I knew they were checking for trackers. They made me take them out and wouldn't let me bring anything with me, so my bag and phone were both left in the apartment"

So that was why all of Steph's trackers and her phone were in her apartment, not because she'd left them there but because the FBI had removed them all. I knew that Steph hated the FBI, to her they were bumbling idiots, so I was pretty sure that she would have given them a hard time.

"When I started to wriggle to get free and made to get away from them that was when they tasered me. When I woke up, I was scared stupid, especially as I seemed to be in some sort of cellar"

That had me annoyed. I knew that Gregson had said that they had taken her to a safe house but not that she'd been treated like a common criminal by them.

"They took me to what they called a safe house, but it was more like an underground bunker. The place was cold with only concrete floors and walls and there only seemed to be one way out, that was kept locked. They kept asking questions about the warehouse and why I was there, so I only told them that I was looking for a young girl who'd gone missing. They seemed to know that I'd helped a young girl to escape, maybe they'd been watching the place when we came out, but I wouldn't tell them anything else"

"I was uncooperative, who wouldn't be. The two men who I came across tried every trick in the trade to get me to talk but I just feigned ignorance. Okay I shouted at them, cried for them, all of the time trying to find a way out of there. It was hours later that they left me alone as though they were starting to believe me"

"I'd almost given up hope of them letting me go when Joe turned up, I don't how he knew I was there. I decided to be nice to him because I thought that he would get me out of there. It seems that he'd come to some sort of deal with the FBI, disappear with him and I could go free"

"I actually believed that Joe was there to get me away from the FBI, that we'd go home, and everything would go back to how it was before. Until he started to tell me that it was a great opportunity for us to be together, set up somewhere new and live our lives together. Yeah, he really thought that was going to happen. From being nice to him I lost my temper with him"

"Maybe he'd tried to grab hold of me, to try and shake some sense into me which was when I had lashed out at him, my hand slapping the side of his face. I'd never done that before and even though I was seething with anger I regretted that action as soon as I'd done it. I was surprised when he didn't hit me back, hell he was so angry. His hands were closed into fists and his face was red, but not from my slap. I suppose it took some control on his part to rein in his temper and I'd breathed out a sigh of relief as he'd turned and walked to the other side of the room. I watched and waited as he'd worked on calming himself waiting for what he would say next"

"Joe told me that it was all arranged. Word was already doing the rounds that I'd left town with him. The FBI had set it up to look like we were moving to Atlanta. He said that I wouldn't be let out of there unless I agreed to go with him and then walked out of the room"

"I was totally stunned by what he'd said. Not sure that they could do that, or that they had the right to. As time passed and I'd thought through what he'd said I actually became worried that what he'd said was right. So I started to think through how I could use what Joe had said to my advantage. Once out of that place I could easily give Joe the slip, and I could go back to Trenton. I even considered trying to get in touch with you Ranger but had no idea if you'd come back from your last mission. There was always Les or Tank though, they'd have helped me"

I was pleased that at least she had considered calling for help knowing that the men would always be there for her. I tried to put a timeframe together for when she'd been with the FBI and realized that I was still in Venezuela. The rumors were going around Trenton about Steph and Morelli, so no one knew that she was even missing.

"That decided I knew that I needed to make Joe think that I'd changed my mind. The idiot had left the door to the room I was in unlocked, so I'd gone looking for him. I hadn't realized what a warren the place was until I started to walk around, and I obviously managed to find somewhere that I wasn't supposed to be. Voices ahead of me had me stopping to listen because I was sure that one of the voices was Joe"

"They were talking about me leaving with Joe, saying that I'd come around to the idea. The other man, well he said that he'd paid Joe a lot of cash for that to happen so that I would lead him to Elaina"

My heart sank at hearing that, that Morelli would use Steph to get information for the FBI. Then again, a lot of the cases that he got credit for solving had been because of Steph. He was all too happy to let her do all of the chasing about but never swapping information with her. Worst of all was how Steph would have felt when she realized that, it was a betrayal of her, plain and simple.

"I'd retraced my path back to that horrible room, ready to greet Joe. I'd be very forgiving and contrite with him to get me out of there and then I'd have to come up with a way of losing Joe"

"It sounded as though Joe was only there to trick me into finding Lainey for them, though I was surprised that they'd paid him in cash, though maybe they thought that would stop anyone from following us. The next morning, we left and seemed to be heading north so I asked Joe where we were going. He said that we needed to change cars and that he'd set that up before he found me"

"He never suggested looking for Lainey and when I mentioned it, he cut me dead. I had an awful feeing that Joe was up to something but couldn't figure out what. We'd been travelling for maybe a couple of hours when the car started acting up and we came to a halt on the side of the road. I stayed in the car while he was outside sorting it out. I was trying to reach for my sweater when I knocked Joe's jacket off the hook and that was when I found a large black wallet in his jacket pocket. There were passports and bank cards in different names. Two for each of us and that was when I realized that his intention all along was to get me somewhere with him. That he was going to double cross the man he'd been talking to"

So Eddie had been right when he'd told me how worried he was that Morelli had basically taken Steph to make her change her mind. No wonder we couldn't trace any movement of what he might have been up to because he would have used a different ID. It did make me wonder where the hell he was heading for and how he thought that he would keep Steph with him. That he was now dead didn't surprise me, the stupid man had taken money with the intention of disappearing. What concerned me the most was that I couldn't see the FBI doing that, so did that mean that Morelli had been duped by the mole inside the FBI. The building that Steph had been taken to certainly didn't sound like a place that the FBI would use. Did that mean that there were other players who had devised his involvement and when he'd failed then they simply got rid of him. The fact that there was another woman in the crashed car had me thinking that the latter was probably true.

I was once more looking across to Elaina, surprised to see her leant against CJ. I raised my eyebrows at him which only got a smile from him.

"Your turn Ellie"

Steph said wanting her to recount what she'd been up to while Steph was stuck in that damn hole. I also thought that emotionally Steph was probably at the end of her tether, telling us what she had must have been very emotional for her.

"I watched and waited from upstairs, with Mrs. Bestler forever trying to tell me stories about some of the things that had happened in the building because of Steph. The FBI car was parked out back, such an obvious vehicle. I just knew that they'd take Steph somewhere, so I went down the stairs and out through the front of the building. I owed Steph and because of me she was in trouble, so I looked around for some way to follow her. Some idiot had left his Ducati parked down an alley so I, err, borrowed it"

I was pretty sure that the idiot was Morelli and that he'd been watching out for Steph to return to her apartment. I knew that he owned a Ducati motorcycle that he sometimes used when the weather was dry. If he was already in on what was about to happen then maybe he was there to make sure that she didn't get away. Had he planned on trying to outsmart them by lying about helping Steph find Elaina for them in order to take her out of town?

"I followed the car south through Trenton, they never once suspected I was tailing them, and when we started to leave the builtup area I just drove without lights. They ended up at a weird building, all concrete, and disappeared inside. There was only one door in and that was locked, so I hunkered down and waited"

"Men came and went with some bloke turning up that I now know was Joe Morelli. He spent time talking on his phone before going inside and then he came out and met another car. There were words said before the other man handed a bag over to Morelli and he put it in the trunk of his car. I was too far away to make out who the other man was or what was said but they both disappeared inside"

"It was the next morning when I saw Steph come out with Morelli and man, did she look pissed. I was back to following them again when I noticed the car parked up by the side of the road. I pulled onto a side road and then doubled back through the trees. Him squatted there cursing at a flat tyre was too much of a temptation, so I used a branch and hit him over the head"

I remembered that the autopsy had said that Morelli had died from injuries to his head and was hoping that it hadn't been Elaina who had killed him. If she had then that would add a whole new dimension to the trouble that they were in.

"Once Steph had got over the shock of seeing me, I opened the trunk to get her bag out and looked through the other bag there, I couldn't believe how much cash was stashed inside. Between us we dragged Joe to the back of the car and then managed to roll him into the trunk. He was already shouting and screaming as we ran away from the car along the road"

I was so relieved to hear that he was still alive when they left him and was thinking just how pissed off he must have been. As Elaina finished telling us that part of their story, she looked up to Steph so was obviously expecting her to continue. Steph wriggled slightly and looked down at her hands as though she really didn't want to have do that. What the hell could they have done to warrant Steph being so nervous about continuing?

"We used the bike and headed back down to New York City and found a motel to stay in. I think we both needed the sleep and I suppose evaluate what the hell had happened. We both agreed that we couldn't trust the FBI, or even the police, because we had no idea if the FBI had put out a BOLA on us as persons of interest. Ellie was worried about her mother because she hadn't heard from her and wanted to go see her, so it made sense to her to visit her, plus it would get us out of the country for a few days. I was feeling pretty nervous about doing that but when she talked it through with me there didn't seem to be much of an alternative and at least we'd be safe. We hit a mall and bought what we needed, including a wig for Elaina. We had two passports that I was pretty sure no one knew about except Joe, and I didn't think he would expect us to leave the country"

In some ways I agreed with what they had planned, they were right, it was the safest option to hide out somewhere until the heat cooled down. The mention of two passports though, I suppose that was an ingenious move as long as it had been Morelli who had them produced and not the people that he was working with. What Steph said next though had me closing my eyes. It had been an opportunity to help her and keep both of the women safe, they wouldn't have needed to hide out anywhere or even consider leaving the country.

"I tried to phone Rangeman, even spoke to someone on reception, but he just wouldn't put me through to anyone I named. He said he needed my name and number then he'd get them to call me back. I couldn't give my name in case anyone had tapped the phones and I was calling from a payphone. I wasn't going to buy a phone for someone to trace it"

"I had been so upset after that call as though the one lifeline that I had always depended on had suddenly been cut. The feeling of guilt and dread at what I was doing was nearly my undoing. No one would know where I was, I was putting all of my trust into Ellie, a woman who I hadn't known for long. We travelled using the passports for Michelle Galbacci and Sophia Fernetti, the wives of Morelli's new identities David Galbacci and Gareth Fernetti. We were travelling out to see Elaina's mother"

I was so busy thinking about the names that it took a few moments for me to compute her last sentence. If they were going to see Elaina's mother did that mean her adoptive mother or her real mother. The sinking feeling in my stomach made me realize that it could be the latter which had me blurting out a question that I wasn't too sure I wanted the answer to.

"You went to Serbia?"