Patti blinked a few times to get herself together, rubbing her palms on her jean clad thighs. “Her name is Rachel?”
“Yes,” Nasa confirmed.
“We've um, we've had forty-six women come in since Rachel was here. Thirty-two of them have moved on, fourteen are still here, and I've got thirty-eight women plus ten kids currently in residence. We're at max capacity.”
“Is that normal?” Nasa asked, looking to Dillon with a fair amount of surprise. Sadly, it was.
“Yes,” Patti confirmed with a compassionate sigh. “We're a safe house where women fleeing domestic violence can stay for thirty consecutive days.
"On average, we get about two hundred women and children per month who move through, and a quarter of them are here for the whole month.
“The shelter provides resource assistance with advocates, lawyers, health care professionals, and rehab programs to get the now single women back on their feet.
"Sometimes there are special circumstances where a woman needs to stay longer, and while they're here, everyone helps out with housekeeping.
"It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for any of the women to move things around while changing sheets or sweeping floors. We probably wouldn't notice unless things did go missing.”
Nasa nodded thoughtfully, his gaze once more roaming over the Spartan room. “Did Rachel tell you why she needed to get out of town so quickly?”
After a heartbeat or two of silence, Patti shrugged and gestured at the private room. “Rachel honestly didn't say much at all once she was here; her face was so swollen it was hard for her to speak.
"Portia was the one to tell me how dire the situation was. Rachel had been taken off the street and held captive by a gang. Then beaten, raped repeatedly, starved, and chained up to keep her from running away. Frankly, I'm shocked she survived, or that they'd care enough to take her to the hospital.
“Portia said she hadn't even finished stitching Rachel up when one of the other nurses poked her head in and quietly told Portia a detective had called looking for a girl matching Rachel's description.
“Portia got in contact with me right after that, spooked the caller was either an informant for the gang or was one of the guys who'd kept her prisoner, pretending to be a cop in order to get information on when he could come get Rachel to take her back to whatever hellhole he'd kept her in.
“I didn't know it, but apparently, the actual cops put out information to all the hospitals for doctors and nurses to be on the lookout for the type of tattoo Rachel had, you know, down there? Portia said it has something to do with human trafficking, and she was dead set on getting Rachel out of Dallas.
“I knew there were details Rachel had left out of her story, but it didn't really matter in the long run. If she went back to the hospital, whoever put her there would know exactly where to find her.
"So, I asked Rachel if she wanted to leave Texas, and she immediately said yes. Then I called Dillon for an emergency transport. When those bikers showed up, I knew we'd done the right thing.”
Nasa agreed with a stern nod. “You did, and I will confirm those assholes are definitely into human trafficking.
"They tattoo the women and kids they steal off the street with their gang logo, a blue octopus, and sell them to the worst of the worst.
“If you ever have another person come in here with that tattoo, I can give you the number of an FBI agent who’s running the investigation, and he'll help get them someplace safe without putting any of your people in danger.”
Patti nodded quickly, a pinched, but determined look on her face. “I don't like involving the authorities unless the women here ask me to, but I get how serious this all is, so I'll take that number. Do what you need to do; I'm going to go upstairs and make sure everyone stays put.”
She left without another word, and when Dillon could no longer see her, they headed for the bathroom.
Nasa looked to her with a lift of his chin. “Where do you want to start?”
He could have completely taken charge and started to give her orders, telling Dillon where he thought she should look, but he respected this was her house. Dillon hadn't felt valued or respected much in her life, and to experience it regularly caused more than a fair amount of shock and awe.
“You check up under the sinks; I'll do the toilets.”
He nodded, reaching into his cut—with its many supply laden pockets—to hand her a pair of blue hospital gloves. “Put those on first.”
Dillon accepted them with a sage nod, biting into her cheek as she turned away to keep from laughing. All she could think about was the day she'd come back to Austin and how vehemently he'd spouted statistics on germs and public bathrooms.
He'd made her smile then too, even as scared as she'd been.
Now, as Dillon lifted the tanks off the toilets, searching for the magic key to unlock the mystery of why the Leviathans wanted her and Rachel so badly, she couldn't wait to get back home to the compound with Nasa.
A glance over her shoulder showed him crouched down with a small flashlight, carefully studying the underside of each sink before moving onto the next.
She hadn't actually said the words back to him, and even though they crowded on the tip of her tongue, she held back for some reason.
The bathroom wasn't exactly the place to declare her feelings and certainly not the place to physically express them.
Although, the idea of a hurried bout of sex flavored with the thrill of getting caught—surprisingly—got her hot and bothered.
Who knew she had an exhibitionist streak?
She had a job to do, and even as she got to it, Dillon thought about all the many ways they could utilize a public bathroom for their pleasure.
Nasa already proved to
