Dark Hope

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR DARK HOPE

  “Young people are especially vulnerable to human trafficking, in great part, because there are not enough resources focused on prevention. Dark Hope fills that void. It is a compelling story that will appeal to young readers while giving them critically important information on how to escape this scourge and sparking conversations among each other.”

  —Deborah J. Richardson, executive vice president,

  National Center for Civil and Human Rights

  “Monica tackles the real-world problem of human trafficking in the intriguing world of fantasy that is Dark Hope. Young adult readers will be turning pages quickly as the battle of good and evil unfolds before their very eyes. It is my hope that Dark Hope will inspire and propel another generation to action to protect children against trafficking.”

  —Cheryl DeLuca-Johnson, president

  and CEO of Street Grace, Inc.

  “An effortlessly strong narrative voice, engaging writing style, and intriguing details that make you want to read on. What’s not to love?”

  —Aaron Kite, author A Touch of Poison,

  2012 Watty Award recipient for

  Most Popular fantasy book

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by River Grove Books

  Austin, TX

  www.rivergrovebooks.com

  Copyright ©2014 Monica McGurk

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.

  Distributed by River Grove Books

  For ordering information or special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact River Grove Books at PO Box 91869, Austin, TX 78709, 512.891.6100.

  Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group

  Cover design by Greenleaf Book Group

  Cover images: [background image] ©iStockphoto.com/Rasica; [replacement girl]

  ©iStockphoto.com/quintanilla; [angel illustration] ©iStockphoto.com/hypergon; [birds] Copyright Background Land, 2014. Used under license from Shutterstock.com

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-938416-69-9

  eBook Edition

  Other Editions

  Print ISBN: 978-1-938416-67-5

  To my husband and children, for their love, patience, and support, and for my fan fiction readers, for their inspiration and encouragement.

  A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to organizations that fight human trafficking, especially the sexual trafficking of minors.

  PROLOGUE

  When the SWAT team stormed the motel room, the first thing they saw was the little girl. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding her blankie and sucking her thumb, her bare legs hanging over the edge, absentmindedly kicking at the faded bedspread.

  The television set blared—Wile E. Coyote getting crushed by a falling anvil, courtesy once again of the Road Runner.

  The girl turned her big brown eyes and stared at the men. She didn’t scream; she didn’t cry; she just looked at them as if she had been expecting them all along, as if they were as natural a part of the run-down room as the peeling, speckled wallpaper and the rust-colored shag carpet.

  They turned and fanned their guns around the room, looking for the man who had taken the girl, the bad man who had hurt other little girls, the man who was lurking in the corner or hiding under the bed. But he wasn’t there. The door to the bathroom was closed, however, so they surrounded it.

  Two of the men, who looked like bugs in their funny helmets and gas masks, began talking to her, touching her hair, her arms, as if to reassure themselves that she was there, really, really there. Was she all right? Was she hurt?

  While they wrapped a blanket around her, another bug-man kicked in the bathroom door and rushed inside, brandishing his gun.

  “Oh dear God,” he choked out, his voice sounding tinny and far away as he backed out through the door. An acrid smell floated out with him.

  The other men rushed into the bathroom to see what he had seen. Suddenly, they had to strain to move their feet, as if springs were pulling them back. The faded linoleum had melted and was sticking to their boots, stretching apart like long strings of taffy. There, in the middle of a scorched, black circle of gooey plastic, lay a pile of ash flecked with little chips of white. Teeth. Bones. The body was still smoking, its whispery tendrils rising up to leave a film of soot on the ceiling. One of the men kicked the pile, revealing a few misshapen lumps. A putrid smell washed over them as he kicked around the remains, musky sweet and tangy, like copper.

  One by one the men came out, holding their hands over their faces. One rushed to the little Formica table in the corner, thrust up the front of his helmet, and vomited into the wastebasket. Walkie-talkies started buzzing and bulbs started flashing and everything seemed to get hot and loud all at once.

  The first man, the man who had kicked in the bathroom door, knelt before the little girl on the bed.

  “What happened? Who did this?” he asked the little girl. “Was there someone else here with you?”

  The little girl just stared at him with her big brown eyes and sucked her thumb. She had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” the man said, his voice rough. He swept her up in his arms, pulling the industrial blanket tightly around her. She was so tiny, almost weightless. He wound through the crowded room and headed toward the open door, trying to block the memory of what he’d seen in the bathroom.

  He emerged, blinking, into the gray light. On the concrete sidewalk he paused, taking great gulps of fresh air. Emergency personnel swirled all around them while police barked at the gathering crowd, pressing them back from the caution tape where they surged, hoping for a glimpse.

  The girl whimpered against his shoulder, clutching her threadbare blanket even tighter.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured, patting her awkwardly on the back. “We’ll find your mommy and your daddy. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  He didn’t wait for her answer before striding purposefully across the parking lot, moving closer and closer to the flashing lights, the cameras, and the crowd.

  “Hope!”

  A wild-eyed woman broke through the tape, past the restraining arms of the police officer, and then was swallowed up in the crowd.

  “Mommy!”

  The girl squirmed in his arms, straining toward the voice.

  “Hold on now,” the man cautioned, but the little girl was kicking at him now, determined to get to her mother. Carefully, he set her down on the cracked pavement. “Be careful, you’re barefoot,” he warned her, holding her back ever so slightly. It wouldn’t do to lose her now.

  A pair of EMTs fell upon her, peppering her with questions as one shone a penlight in her eyes and the other took notes. Reporters crowded around them, microphones eagerly thrusting forward like branches of trees, showering questions down upon the little girl’s head.

  The little girl shrank back against the SWAT leader, who instinctively wrapped her in a protective arm.

  “Hope!” A desperate voice rose above the chatter of the reporters. “That’s my daughter! Let me through!”

  Slowly, the crowd parted for the woman who was clawing her way through.

  “Hope!” she sobbed, falling on her knees before her daughter. In an instant, a man, eyes heavy with shadows, fell in behind her—the father.

  The woman laughed t
hrough her sobs, running her hands over the little girl, checking that she was whole, as if she were a newborn.

  “Oh my God, what did he do to you?” she choked out through her tears, clutching the little girl in her arms. Her husband wrapped them both in his embrace, weeping silently.

  The SWAT leader cleared his throat, leaning in to speak to the parents. This part always made him uncomfortable, but it had to be said.

  “She seems unhurt,” he said steadily, low so that the reporters would not hear, “but we haven’t had a physical examination yet. We don’t know what he may have done to her. We need to take her in now. To be sure.”

  He locked eyes with the father, who blanched. He’d heard the father had been the one with her at the time she was snatched. He felt for the guy. It would be hard to live with yourself, if the worst had, indeed, happened.

  The mother just kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “Of course,” she said. “But we go with her. I’m not leaving her side.” She rose to her feet, shifting her baby girl in her arms. The girl made a little sound of protest where she rested her head against her mother’s shoulder.

  “Oh, poor baby, your hair is caught,” the woman said. She hitched the girl up on her hip and swept the girl’s cascade of silky hair around her neck.

  The SWAT leader started. “What’s that?” he demanded, pointing at the little girl.

  “What’s what?” the mother responded, confused.

  “There, on her neck.”

  The woman turned to face her husband. “What is it, Don?”

  Her husband shuddered and reached out with a tentative hand to lift up her hair and touch his little girl’s neck. She flinched from the touch.

  Her husband’s face hardened into a mask of fury as he let her hair fall back into place.

  one

  Ten years.

  Mona straightened the picture frame on the bookshelf. There, captured under glass, three-year-old Hope smiled up at her with big brown eyes that were untouched by fear, by danger, or by sadness.

  It had been more than ten years since that portrait sitting. She remembered holding Hope’s favorite stuffed animal behind the photographer, making it dance and fly around his head in an effort to get her daughter to laugh. The sound had bubbled out of her, the sound of unadulterated delight, and with a snap of a shutter the photographer had frozen that moment in time forever.

  They hadn’t known, then, that their carefree days were about to end.

  Mona ran her finger along the edge of the frame, checking for dust. She stepped back and looked at the other photos, taking them in one by one.

  There was the snapshot of her and Don graduating from Georgia Tech. A gust had threatened to lift away her mortarboard, and she’d lifted her hand to hold it down while the wind blew her long chestnut hair off her shoulders. She was laughing, and Don was turned, admiring her, the reflection of her face in his Ray-Bans and a broad, toothy grin lighting up his own.

  They’d had jobs—good jobs—lined up: she as an analyst with a consulting firm and he as an engineer. They were young and crazy in love; it was there, plain to see in that simple snapshot taken by one of their friends. They were going to conquer the world. And they were unaware that at that moment a new life was already forming inside of Mona, a new life that would change everything.

  So young, she thought wistfully. So young to have so much responsibility thrust upon us. But what could you do? She lingered over the wedding portrait that was tucked behind the others. Their marriage had been hastily arranged. She hadn’t really cared about the fancy wedding—after all, she had no family to speak of, no one to impress or to worry about tradition—but Don had insisted.

  “You deserve the whole thing,” he’d stated emphatically when, after tallying up the budget for the affair, she’d suggested once again that they should simply elope to Savannah. “The big dress, the flowers—all of it. And I want it in a church,” he’d said. That was the only part of the deal, she knew, that wasn’t open to negotiation. “I want the holy bonds.”

  Mona pulled out her portrait and held it up close, peering at it with a critical eye. She’d chosen the dress wisely, she thought, always knowing what flattered her petite frame. The long column of white was elegant, the Empire waist just enough to hide the tiny bump that was beginning to show. If you didn’t know it already, you’d have never been able to tell that she was already five months along in that photo. The studio had expertly wiped out the red of her eyes, eyes that had become bloodshot from the horrible morning sickness that never went away. She smiled, grimly remembering the intersection where, every morning on her way to work, she’d had to pull over and vomit, the fumes from the commute too much for her roiling stomach to bear.

  She set the picture down. A mother at twenty-two. She wouldn’t have believed it herself if it hadn’t happened to her. It was definitely not a part of her plan. But Hope—well, Hope was worth it.

  She turned back to the photo of her three-year-old daughter. There was a big gap after that: no pictures for a long, long time. Then just a trail of obligatory school pictures, her daughter in school uniform, her eyes wary, her spirit seemingly snuffed out. In each one, she seemed to shrink behind a curtain of hair, willing the camera away, hoping she could hide from it.

  Ten years.

  Had she done the right thing? she wondered. After Hope’s abduction, she had tried to make it work with Don. She hadn’t ever blamed him for what had happened. She knew how often she, herself, at the playground would sneak a glance at her mobile while her daughter played on the slide or in the dirt, trying to catch up on what was going on in the office. She knew how quickly it could have happened, and it could have happened on her watch just as easily as it had happened on his.

  No, she had never blamed Don. But he had been unable to forgive himself. Even though Hope had been returned to them whole—undamaged except for that damned mark on her neck—he couldn’t let go of the feeling that he was somehow responsible, and that there was more to the story. He couldn’t accept that their daughter had been taken randomly by a sick, sick man, a man who had died a fiery death, a man who was no longer a threat.

  Don’s vow to never let it happen again had been the poison that had destroyed their marriage. His vigilance became obsession until it was the defining thing in his life, crowding out the happiness they’d once had together, crowding out even his love for her, Mona, until there was nothing left but paranoia.

  She’d had no choice. She still believed that, even after all these years. She’d had to leave him, even though it had torn her apart—because, after all, she had still loved him. Or at least she had loved the memory of him: the man who had sold his beloved pickup truck to buy her a diamond ring, which she’d found inside her fortune cookie after wolfing down some kung pao chicken; the man who had gone out in the middle of the night without complaining to buy her Dutch apple pie when that had been all she craved, always coming back with an extra pint of ice cream; the man who’d cried when the doctors placed his infant daughter in his arms and whose voice, like magic, was the only thing in the world that could stop Hope’s angry, newborn wailing.

  Mona had made her decision, thinking that with a separation she’d be able to shield her daughter from Don’s increasingly crazy rantings. On her own, she could filter Hope’s exposure so that she saw only the best of her father. So while Mona couldn’t bring herself to divorce him, she’d filed for a formal separation and custody, thinking that would be enough.

  Instead, she’d lost her daughter when the judge deemed that her work schedule would prevent her from being a good mother. The injustice of it burned even now. The loss of custody had been bad enough. The court-ordered visitations—her tenuous link to her daughter’s love—had been continuously strained by Don’s insistence on keeping up security, approving every place they went, screening each site carefully for risks. Her gifts had been rejected, as if somehow the wrong blouse or dress would paint a target on their daughter, exposing her to harm
. So as Hope grew older, Mona’s attempts to connect with her became strained and forced, their entire relationship carefully controlled by Don’s vigilance.

  For ten years, Mona had mourned the loss of her husband and her daughter. She’d mourned the loss even as she soldiered on, advancing to partner in her firm, making sure that if nothing else, her broken family’s material needs were met.

  And now this. Hope had asked the court for a change of custody, and this time, the court had listened. This time, Hope was coming home with her.

  This sudden change of events was a gift, one she was determined not to waste. She’d done everything she could to make her house ready. Hope’s room had been updated to what she supposed would appeal to a young teenager. Her closet was stocked with clothing—not too much, because she still didn’t know exactly what her daughter’s preferences would be, but enough to see her through the start of school. She’d bought a new treadmill so her daughter could keep up with her beloved running—her only pastime, as far as Mona could tell.

  No, she would not waste this opportunity. She stuffed down the pang of sympathy she felt for Don. She’d lost her daughter before. She was not going to let it happen again.

  Her cell phone began ringing, the no-nonsense, anonymous tune that she’d never bothered to reset interrupting her reverie. It was Clayton Ross, the managing partner of her consulting firm and closest thing she had to a boss. And a friend.

  “Checking up on me, Clay?”

  “You know I’d never do that, Mona. But I did want you to reconsider my offer to drive with you to Alabama. That’s a long way to drive alone.”

  “You’ll let me fly halfway round the world to negotiate nasty mergers, but I can’t handle a leisurely weekend jaunt up I-75?” she teased.

  She could almost hear him smiling over the line.

  “You know that’s not it. But it’s a big day. Thought you might like some backup if he doesn’t play ball.”

  Clayton was referring to her husband, of course, and whether or not he would respect the order to absent himself when Mona came to pick up Hope and take her home for good.