Little Girl Gone

“Mr. Williams, where are your friends headed?”

“What friends?”

“The ones you gave the girl to. The ones on the jet?”

He shrugged. “Sorry. Don’t know.”

Logan smiled, then kicked him hard in the ribs. “You’re already in this for kidnapping. Quite possibly human trafficking, too. You sure you don’t want to cooperate?”

“You ain’t no cop. You can’t charge me with anything.”

“That’s true. But you know what that means? I don’t have to follow any of their rules. Where are they going?”

“Go to hell.”

Logan kicked him again.

“Ah! Come on. Stop it!”

“You tell me what I want to know, and I will. Until then…” Another kick.

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I’m the guy standing over you with my foot in your ribs, and your guns in my pocket. Good enough? Maybe we should see how hard that head of yours is.”

Logan adjusted his stance so that it appeared as if he were going to kick the guy in the temple.

“Dude, lay off. All right? I don’t know where they went. They just hired us for the job here, you know? A little muscle, a little driving, some babysitting.”

“Who hired you?”

When it didn’t look like he was going to answer, Logan tapped his ear with the toe of his shoe.

“Okay, okay,” Williams said. “The guy’s name is Andrews. That’s all I know.”

“The suit who was in the car with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Who does he work for?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know anything more.”

“And I’m telling you, I don’t believe you.”

“It’s the truth, man!” he pleaded.

“You never met anyone else in charge?”

“No.”

“Just this Andrews guy?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Just him. How many times do you want to hear it?”

Logan wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not, but he knew he didn’t have the time to waste trying to get the info out of him.

Once again he got a hold Dev through his father, and arranged for some more of the Marine’s vet buddies to pick up these two, and hold them somewhere until Logan decided what they should do with them.

“You got quite an operation going,” Dev said once Logan had explained everything.

“It’s not a problem, is it?”

“Hell, no. It’s great to be doing real work again.”

22

Ruth called Logan back as he was pulling into the motel parking lot just before midnight.

“Please don’t tell me the plane’s stolen, too,” he said.

“Now that would be interesting, wouldn’t it? No, not stolen,” she said. “Chartered.”

“From who?”

“A place called Midwin-Robb Express. The plane was chartered by a company called Kajiwara Research, specifically by a man named Robert Andrews.”

“What do you know about Kajiwara?”

Sarcasm dripped from her voice as she said, “Wow. I so did not expect you to ask that question. Lucky, I accidentally looked them up while I was at it. Well, tried anyway.”

“Tried?”

“Kajiwara’s a shell company. Incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Runs through a half dozen other corporations that I’ve been able to find so far.”