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suites, as these were the places where they held the working girls, and I had already figured that CJ probably wasn’t pressed into prostitution yet. She probably was in a holding pattern, which would mean that she probably was in one of the abandoned warehouses or trailers.
    “Let’s start at the warehouse in Jersey,” I said. “From what I understand, that’s closest to where she was picked up.” I figured that this would be the logical place to begin. I doubted very seriously that they would have transported her to one of the other warehouses, located in upstate New York, just because there really wouldn’t be any reason for this.
    At that, we got into my Jaguar and headed down to the abandoned warehouse that I knew about in Trenton.
    I prayed that they still had this warehouse as a holding cell for their girls.
    As we sped toward Trenton, however, I got an unexpected phone call. And I suddenly knew just what these men wanted, and exactly who was behind it all.

Chapter 2
CJ
    I woke up and had no idea where I was. I also was feeling extremely woozy, like I did when I took those sedatives at the hospital that one night when Scarlett had to pick me up. It was like that feeling, but yet, different. All that I knew was that it was dark, I was feeling slightly euphoric and not at all frightened. My subconscious, however, was absolutely panicking. I could feel it, just below the surface of my emotions.
    I felt the material underneath my body, and it felt like an old cot or something. There were men, milling about. I could see them just outside the room that I was in. I looked at my wrists, and one of them was tied to a stake that was right next to my bed.
    Somebody was speaking a language that I didn’t understand. The cadence sounded familiar, though. I was sure that I had heard this language spoken before, if only on television or in the movies.
    I heard a voice. A man’s voice. He was speaking English, and was clearly an American. At least he didn’t have any kind of foreign accent. Unfortunately, he was speaking low, so I didn’t quite know what he was saying.
    A woman came into my room. She sat down next to my bed. She was a beautiful woman, very dark, with black hair. “I’ve come to check on you,” she said. She had a thick accent, but her English was perfect. I couldn’t quite identify the accent, though. Again, I had to rely upon my limited knowledge of the world and the accents and dialects of different countries. My knowledge of all of this pretty much consisted of my watching television and movies that had people with different tongues. Of course, living in New York, and having traveled the subway, I heard people with different accents all the time. But I was never actually able to identify any of them all that well.
    With a hoarse voice, I said “where am I? Why do I feel this way?”
    She whispered. “You’re safe for now. Please don’t worry. You won’t be sold like these other girls.”
    “Sold?” I couldn’t quite comprehend what she meant by that. “Sold? I’m sorry, I don’t think that I understand.”
    “Shhhh,” she said. “I said that you won’t be sold.”
    “Why would I be sold? And for what purpose?” I felt incredibly naïve to even be asking this question. White slavery didn’t quite occur to my brain during this time.
    She brushed my hair off of my forehead. I sighed as she did this. I remembered all the times that my mother used to do the same. Whenever I was sick, she would put a cool rag on my forehead and lightly brush the hair off my face.
    Tears came to my eyes, but not because of where I was and the situation that I was in. I felt this acute pang as I remembered, anew, that I no longer had a mother, for all intents and purposes. And I remembered, anew, exactly why that was.
    Why was I thinking about this, of all things? Why wasn’t I panicking about the fact that I was apparently being held by somebody unknown and for apparently evil reasons? I felt as if my