Prologue
Alyssa
Finding somewhere to be alone on a high school campus during my lunch hour was a lot more difficult than it should’ve been. I’d purposely picked my spot in a cubby all the way in the far corner of the library because I wasn’t feeling social today. Slouching deeper into my seat, I pressed my lips together to keep my sigh of frustration from slipping out. The last thing I wanted was for the two boys who’d wandered in my direction to notice me. Chuck and Mike were not my biggest fans.
“Dude, Leon’s brother has access to shit that will blow your mind.”
Assuming they were talking about drugs and not wanting them to think I was eavesdropping if they spotted me over here, I popped my earbuds in—but using the hear-through mode because my dad had drilled into my head how important it was to be aware of your surroundings. Noise-canceling headphones in public were a big no-no in his book. With these two near, breaking his rule would be a bad call.
Toward the end of our sophomore year, they’d been caught on campus with drugs and blamed me for their trouble since my locker was next to Chuck’s. Being the sheriff’s daughter tended to make me the enemy of criminals by default. So he’d assumed I’d gone running to my dad after seeing him slip the drugs in there even though I hadn’t paid any attention to him and his friends. Getting caught had been a stroke of bad luck for him during a random locker inspection.
He hadn’t hidden how much he hated me ever since he was allowed back in school. I figured the only reason he hadn’t acted on the anger I saw in his eyes every time he looked at me was because he knew my dad would toss him in jail and throw away the key. But the threat of legal trouble only offered me so much protection, so I’d done my best to stay away from Chuck and his friends over the past two years.
“You think we’ll ever get a taste of the merchandise before it gets shipped off?”
I barely refrained from rolling my eyes over the fact that they weren’t even trying a little bit to hide what they were talking about. If they’d been this clueless back when those drugs had been found in Chuck’s locker, he shouldn’t have spent all this time blaming me for something he and his buddy had probably caused all by themselves. The principal probably knew to target his locker during the inspection. As they kept talking about how awesome it would be to get their hands on Leon’s brother’s supply, the only thing that surprised me was that they’d managed to keep themselves out of trouble other than that one time.
Except then they shocked the heck out of me when Mike said, “You know some of them still have their cherries when they’re sold off.”
Cherries? Sold? Holy crap!
I’d gotten it all wrong. They were talking about human trafficking. The merchandise Leon’s brother had was girls, not drugs.
Every muscle in my body tensed with the effort it took me not to reach for my phone so I could record their conversation. But it was in my backpack, which was at my feet under the desk. Grabbing it was sure to alert them to my presence, and if I hadn’t wanted that to happen before…I really didn’t want it to happen now.
“Fuck, yeah, they do.” I almost vomited when Chuck made a smacking sound with his lips and added, “What I wouldn’t give to get my hands on one of those girls and break them in before some old loser got to take her virginity just because he has money.”
“Yeah, it’s not fair,” Mike agreed. “We help Felix out with his business sometimes. We should be able to get a taste of the goods for our effort.”
Keeping as still as possible, I listened to every word they said. I memorized as much as I could and hoped like heck I’d have the chance to do something with the information.
“Maybe the next time he mentions a cherry target, we should just snag her for ourselves instead. Make him think we did it because we wanted to move up in the organization or something,” Chuck suggested.
“How would we get the girl to keep quiet after we hand her over to Felix? You know how much of an asshole he is about making sure the virgins stay untouched since he gets more money for them that way.”
“Shit, you’re right. Then he’d cut off our supply of drugs, and we don’t want that to happen.”
Chuck’s voice started to trail off toward the end, and I couldn’t hear Mike’s reply. I waited a few more minutes before I moved, just to be safe, and then I flipped open my laptop and typed out everything I could remember. I felt like I was pulling some Veronica Mars crap, lurking around trying to solve a mystery. The comparison fit a little too well since I also was the daughter of a sheriff and still in high school. However, unlike the fictional private detective, I didn’t plan to turn the bad guy over to my dad. Men who trafficked young women deserved a lot worse than jail, and his hands were tied when it came to how to deal with scum like them. But there was someone in town who didn’t always follow the letter of the law—the Silver Saints MC.