Fact is, I have no idea how I will get him to talk. My best plan so far is to just do what I always do—make a documentary—and I’m basically just hoping that by helping me, he’ll spill his secrets without knowing it.
I’ve been making documentaries—which are mostly just me and a camera asking questions—for the past four years. So far, and not for lack of trying, I have yet to gain access to the underbelly of the human trafficking world. My videos are mostly educational and meant to share the agony of trafficked girls with the world, thereby spreading awareness at just what a huge problem trafficking is in America. But working with this Chance guy during his court-mandated community service—for a crime that would have gotten a lot of little girls abducted had it worked—might change all that.
Lana finishes the rest of her shake with a loud slurping noise and stands up. “I’m picking you up at eight,” she says. “Then we’re going to Treetop, no argument. The line-up is amazing tonight. Harper is performing. Ariel will want to come too. She loves her.”
Lana isn’t wrong. My sister loves the indie singer-songwriter Harper, she listens to her almost exclusively. But what she doesn’t like are large rowdy crowds at night.
I don’t get a chance to tell Lana that though, before she leaps to her feet and rushes off before I can even open my mouth to tell her I’m not going.
That’s fine. I’ll just cancel over text. There’s no reason for me to go out and party. For one thing, I can never let go of everything long enough to relax and for another, I don’t deserve to have a good time. Not with all the thousands of women still in captivity. Not with my sister unable to find her way out of the nightmare she had to live through.
* * *
These days the Ariel’s Voice foundation is just me, an office admin that only works three days a week and an IT guy who works remotely. I sometimes also hire freelance film editors and designers, though mostly, I just do everything by myself.
The office space is on the ground floor of the apartment building I live in. Though most nights I just crash on the sofa in my spacious, light-filled office, most of which is taken up by camera gear and computers.
The foundation raises around three-hundred thousand dollars a year, mostly via my documentaries and the large fundraiser my mother organizes every summer. Almost every cent of that goes to the various non-profits that deal directly with victims. When I first started the foundation, I wanted to build a whole suite of services for the victims, a place where they could come and heal, as well as gain tools and knowledge to re-enter the world, but that was before I realized healing from that ordeal is a lifelong battle. I can do a lot more good supporting other organizations better equipped to offer that service, while being a thorn in the side of the monsters that make it necessary for such organizations to exist.
This is the first time that someone has been assigned court-mandated community service at the foundation, though we put it on the roster a while ago. My goal with that had always been to get someone close to the criminal, trafficking underworld in here so I can expose it all. It’s lucky that this guy is coming today, he’s exactly the type of guy I need to befriend for that plan to become reality, but I have no idea how I’ll go about it. Play it by ear, I guess. That’s how I do most of what I do.
The first thing I do as I enter the three-room office space is open all the windows and clean up as best I can. I’ve spent the last two days and nights editing my latest hour-long film, so the place is a pig sty.
My mother decorated this office for me, so everything is shades of white and earthy pastel colors. I would’ve gone for something darker. The white sofa is covered with food stains, the brightest of which are from yesterday’s accident with a slice of pizza I had for dinner, and my white wood computer desk is covered by coffee stains and cup rings. The whole place could do with a thorough vacuuming and washing, including all the large windows, but I can never seem to find the time for that. Nor do I want to spend money on hiring a cleaning service. I don’t even notice the stains, except when someone comes to visit. My mother never does anymore because all she sees are the stains.
I’m just about done with getting the worst of the mess cleared up when the chime over the wide open front door sounds. A moment later, I hear a man clear his throat in the anteroom where the office administrator usually sits.
I stuff the full garbage bag I’m holding under my desk, wipe my hands on the front of my hoodie and walk out to greet him, my heart thumping in my throat and my stomach twisting with nerves. I’m winded from the frenzied cleaning I engaged in for the past hour, which helped to keep the worst of my jitters about this meeting at bay.
I may have put on a fearless, tough facade for Lana, but I do not enjoy speaking with hardened criminals. Anything can happen with them, anything and at any time, even if they’re here to serve a sentence.
I don’t know who I expected to meet today. I knew the guy—Chance—was my age, but I still pictured him as a weathered, hairy, dirty biker kind of like the ones that took Ariel. And I definitely did not expect to meet this tall hottie, with unruly dark hair with just a hint of copper underneath and blue eyes that shine like two sapphires in the light streaming through the windows. He’s wide without being bulky, the muscles of his arms long and defined, his face clean shaven and his eyes almost kind.
He gives me a once over and by the heat rising in all the parts of my body his eyes touch, I’d say he likes what he sees. I’m still wearing my black yoga pants and sports bra that I exercised in this morning, and I kind of vaguely wish I’d at least zipped up my oversized hoodie all the way before stepping out to meet him. And kind of don’t at the same time. But I do it anyway.
He clears his throat as the sound of my zipper closing fills the silence.
“I’m supposed to meet a guy named Nic here,” he says in a raspy voice that sort of tickles as it enters my ears. “I’m supposed to start working here today.”
He takes another step towards me and extends his hand. “I’m Chance.”
I take his hand automatically, surprised at the butterflies that wake in my stomach as we shake. “I’m Nic. Well, Veronica.”
He looks taken aback for a second, but then a very wide and very suggestive smile spreads across his face. It makes his eyes shine even brighter and makes his face even handsomer, but it also wakes me from this weird trance the sight of him put me in.
He’s a bad guy. He’s someone who abducts little girls and the only reason he’s here is because he was lucky enough, or maybe smart enough, not to get caught this time. I will fix that.
“Well, that’s a nice surprise,” he says and doesn’t let go of my hand like he’s supposed to. I’m ignoring the way the warmth and firmness of his touch is very welcome.
I yank my hand from his grasp, ignore his remark and turn on my heels, telling him to follow me into the office, where I ask him to sit in the chair across my coffee-stained desk.
Funny, how I hardly notice the stains normally, but I see every one of them right now, and remember exactly when they happened too.
He takes a seat in the chair I pointed out and looks around the room. “So what exactly do you do here? Make movies or something?”
I don’t reply right away, nor look at him as I walk around the desk and sit in my squeaky white leather chair, which is also sadly covered with coffee, soda, juice and food stains. I can’t believe I never realized just what a problem my sloppiness has become in here. At least the chair he’s sitting in is clean because I never use it.
“I make documentaries featuring women who have been trafficked,” I say curtly. “The twin goals of this foundation are prevention and awareness. Of human trafficking that is.”