Taming Cross (Love Inc 2)

Except…there's a small square picture in the middle of two columns of text, and the face is identical to the one in my picture.

Meredith Kinsey, college feminist.

Holy shit.

I SPEND THE next hour looking for more information, trying to figure out how a college student with strawberry-blonde hair, twinkling green eyes, and a wide smile turned into Missy King, governor's mistress and small-time extortionist-turned-sex slave.

I click on every link I find, reading through a couple of her news stories and one more opinion piece (“Holiday Celebrations Can Be Inclusive And Traditional”) before the timer on my screen flashes, and I'm forced to give my computer to a woman who's wearing a pink suit and texting on a red cell phone. I pay three dollars for a permanent card, which will buy me unlimited time tomorrow, and head out into a drizzling rain.

The photo my father gave me is tucked into a little pocket on the inside of my beat-up jeans, but I can see her face as I roll down the streets of downtown Napa. The bike's tires make a shhh sound, tossing up a spray of rainwater that makes my ankles cold and chills my feet through my boots.

I don't get it. Is this some ruse my father cooked up? Why would a college girl—and no need for student loans—turn to a life of prostitution?

I know what they say. People like Lizzy. “The girls choose to be escorts. It's their choice, Cross. Smarter than giving yourself away for free like some of us, mm?” Marchant fed me even more cliché lines: They're stakeholders, some of them have stock portfolios, working on college degrees through the University of Phoenix, la da da.

I bet most of them don't have college degrees. I bet they didn't get into the whoring business just for giggles.

As I fumble for the garage button with my elbow, pressing into the pants pocket where I keep my keys, I feel the familiar sting of guilt. Whoever she is, Missy King deserved better than what she got. And as far as bullshit goes, I'd have it coming out my ears if I didn't admit that it's my fault nobody went after her. I could have told somebody. I should have. Instead, I tried to forget about her. I told myself it wasn't my business. That she was already out of reach.

It might have stuck, if I hadn’t been taken to Mexico myself and watched as my best friend was on the auction block. Ever since that day, it's been under my skin like a bad rash. Missy King was just as helpless as we were.

And for all my lofty thoughts about desperation and how escorts have no other options, I want to believe that Missy King is not Meredith Kinsey. I want to believe that Missy was a shallow girl who wanted to drive a shiny Porsche and wear expensive jewelry. A girl who, like me, was giving it away to anyone who asked and figured why not charge?

If I let myself believe that this girl—the one inside my pocket, with the happy eyes—was sold off to some drug lord, I'll go fucking crazy.

THE NEXT MORNING, I wake up early, take my time shaving, and ride back to the library. I take the third-to-last seat in the computer lab, and by the time I'm ears-deep in a story Meredith Kinsey wrote about date rape, a pair of teenage lovebirds come in and take the seats on either side of me. As I lean in to the computer, they lean around me, laughing about something they saw on Snapchat. For some reason, their whispers piss me off. I glance at the dude, giving him more of an evil eye than I intended. He looks like a kid. If Meredith started college at 18 and that was almost eight years ago, that means she’s 25 or 26 now. That means the year that she was 23—my age, Suri’s age, Lizzy’s age—she was on her way to becoming a fucking sex slave.

My desire to know what happened to her amps up a notch, so much so that my hands feel sweaty and my temples throb. How did she get to Vegas? After another hour of searching, plus some credit card fees paid to various databases, I find a missing person report filed a little over four years ago—or rather, I find her on a list of missing people. I can’t get any information about her specific report unless I travel to Georgia, and that would waste too much time. A few minutes later, I’m surprised when I come across a news brief in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It mentions that police are looking for 22-year-old Meredith Kinsey of Albany, Georgia, for questioning in relation to the arrest of Sean Tacoma. I feel almost sick with curiosity.