A wave of relief came over me when I saw her walk in the far entrance to the left. She looked like a high school kid in her T-shirt, ripped jeans, and sneakers, with her hair pulled back. I waved, and she headed up the stairs toward me.
“Hey, hope you’re not mad that I’m late. The trains were a mess.” She placed her coffee and book bag on the table, then leaned over to give me a hug. She smelled amazing, and if I was mad, I couldn’t be anymore. “You been here long?”
“Nah, not long at all,” I lied.
“Good. Now, I have a ton of questions I need help with.” She pulled her GED book out of her bag and turned to me.
I just gazed at her silently.
“What?” She moved a few hairs from in front of her face. “What? Do I have something in my teeth?”
I shook my head. Despite the importance of what I wanted to talk to her about, I was suddenly nervous and tongue-tied.
“Well, what is it then?”
I took a breath. “First, I don’t want you to get mad. Okay?”
Her eyes met mine. “Mad about what?”
“About this.” I opened my laptop and maneuvered it so that she could see what was on the screen—a copy of her passport. “I hacked into Marie’s computer and pulled your file.”
“Oh.” Kia sat back and stared at me. She looked a little taken aback. “Why would you do that?”
“To help you find out what happened to your sister.”
She turned to the screen. “But Marie doesn’t know anything about my sister.”
“I realize that,” I replied. “I used the information from your passport and backtracked it to the date and entry point that you entered the U.S.”
“And what did you find?” I couldn’t tell if she was mad or impressed, but at least she looked curious.
“That there were a hundred other girls that entered the United States via San Francisco from Korea that day. Some of them were students, but most were brought into the country under an old GI war babies clause. Your passport was issued under that clause. From what I’ve read, they use fake adoption agencies and stuff like that to get underaged sex workers into the United States, then disperse them throughout the country.”
“Yes, I remember that day. They told us not to speak English to anyone, only Korean, and if we told anybody that we had family or that we were prostitutes, they would beat us.”
“Beat you?” I repeated loud enough to get some stares from others in our section.
“Yes, I’ve been beaten many times, Nevada,” she said sadly.
“Marie doesn’t beat you, does she?” I whispered.
She shook her head. “No, Marie isn’t holding me captive like these people did. I’m free to come and go as I please. She’s my boss, not my master. She’s also a good person, Nevada.”
“You don’t know how glad I am to hear you say that.”
“I can see it on your face,” she replied, then turned back to my computer screen. “Now, what else did you find out about my sister?”
I took a deep breath. “Well, actually, I think I found her. Is this her?”
I pulled up the photo of the young woman I’d discovered.
She leaned closer and studied the photo for a second, and I watched her shoulders slump with disappointment. “No, that isn’t my sister.”
“Are you sure? It has to be. She’s the only black and Asian girl in the same age range that came into San Francisco that week.” I felt deflated. I had thought for sure that was her sister.
“Nevada, my sister isn’t biracial. She’s fully Korean.” Kia looked like she was about to cry. “I appreciate you trying to help me, though.”
“Hey, I’m sorry.” I felt like crawling under the table. “I know you probably think I’m an idiot.”
“No, you’re my friend, and you tried to help me, and I really appreciate it.” She leaned on me.
“I still think I can find your sister. I just have to pull all the entry records for South Korean nationals entering the country the same day as you,” I explained, and Kia lifted her head. “I’m just going to need your help to identify her.”
“I can do that.” She was surprisingly upbeat. “Okay, let’s do it.”
“There is one thing, though,” I said, kind of backtracking.
“What’s that?”
I looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, and then leaned in close to whisper, “I have to break into Homeland Security to do it, and it’s . . . a felony.”
She looked a little scared.
“I can mask my IP and all that stuff—it’s how I got the picture of the other girl I thought was your sister—but there’s a chance they might detect me and track us here to the library. I’m not saying it will happen, but I have to warn you.”
“I don’t want to get you in any trouble, Nevada.”
“I’m just a kid. Not much they’re going to do to me with all the lawyers my family has. But you’re nineteen. They’ll use you as a scapegoat and make it seem like you manipulated me. I’ll take the blame, I swear I will, but I can’t promise what my mom will do. She’s a pretty influential woman when she wants to be.”
She took a second to think, and then asked, “How good are you at this? What’s our chances of getting caught?”
“Less than fifteen percent. We’re not breaking into the Pentagon, and there’s probably a hundred computers on the library’s server right now. I can make it look like it’s one of them.”
“Those are pretty good odds . . . and it’s not like I’ve never been arrested before.” She put her hand on my forearm and gave
