ESCAPE FROM AMBERGRIS CAYE Read Free Page A

her perfume. It was the same stuff his mom
often wore.
    She squinted, sending vertical lines between her
eyes.
    “See that girl,” Jackson put his finger on the
screen and pointed at the balcony. “Now watch.”  He advanced the tape a
frame at a time. They watched as a man came out and forced the girl inside.
    “So?  Maybe he’s her dad and she was s’posed to do chores or homework and disobeyed him.”
    Jackson faced his partner. “You notice the look
she gave him?”
    “Play it again,” Izzie said.
    He cued the tape and they watched, their faces
close to the screen so they could catch every nuance of the unwitting
performance being played out before them.
    “I see what you mean. She looks scared.”
    Jackson didn’t know if she really thought he’d
caught a crime in progress or was merely humoring him. “So what do we do?” he
said.
    “Do?  I don’t know,” Izzie shrugged her
shoulders. “What can we do?”
    When Jackson didn’t reply, she added, “Let me
grab some lunch and I’ll think about it. Our next shoot’s not till two. We’ll
talk about it then. I’m starving.”
    Jackson turned back to the screen and decided to
dub a copy to VHS. He’d review it at home. Maybe there was nothing amiss. It
wouldn’t be the first time he’d let his imagination run away with him. It had
gotten him in trouble before, so he didn’t want to go off half-cocked yet
again.
    He finished his package and had a few moments to
relax before his next assignment, so he decided to go online and see what more
he could find out about human trafficking.
    After twenty minutes, what he learned sickened
him. According the Polaris project website, modern-day slavery run by
multinational crime networks is the second largest and fastest growing illegal
trade in the world. As many as nine hundred thousand victims a year are
enslaved through fraud or coercion. And the United States is a major
destination country for as many as fifty thousand.
    My God, it’s happening under our very
noses.  The problem’s so hidden we don’t even know it’s happening. Victims are broken down, “groomed” by beatings and rape, and
imprisoned in dog cages, even kept in the trunks of cars. They’re forced to
work as laborers, sex slaves, even beggars and are so intimidated they fear
reporting it. People around them aren’t even aware that it’s going on.
    Could that young girl be the victim of such a
hideous crime? The prospect horrified Jackson. He couldn’t get it off his
mind. He simply had to make certain she wasn’t a slaver’s victim. But how to
find out?   His mind began to churn out ideas: most of them bizarre and
some downright illegal.

Chapter 6
     
    Lifting his tripod and camera from the back of
the station jeep, Jackson set up as close to the scene as the cops allowed. He
leveled his lens and hit the “record” button. It was obvious something had died
and not recently either. The area stank like rotting meat and spoiled eggs. He
had to cover his nose and mouth to keep from gagging.
    He tuned back in to hear Izzie report the corpse
was a female, who apparently died from a gunshot wound to the head. The body
was partially decomposed and bloated. A faded yellow blouse, shredded plaid
skirt and some underclothes were the only evidence police reported. The victim
had a tattoo behind her right earlobe, but they didn’t know what, if any,
significance it carried.
    Izzie concluded with a plea to the public to
contact police if anyone knew the identity of the victim or the circumstances
surrounding her death.
    On the way back to the station Jackson tried to
shrug off the tragic story, but a voice inside his head wouldn’t let it go. A
woman was dead—and no one missed her? How could that be? His thoughts went
back to that girl on the balcony. What if? No, don’t go there.  
    For a change, Izzie was quiet, for which Jackson
was grateful. His mind wandered back to stories he’d covered in the past few
weeks: A