Stalked. Elizabeth Heiter

      “I’m with campus police,” the officer said. “I took the call. I tried to take her statement, but all she’d do was demand you guys.” His face flushed an angry red as he continued, “Didn’t matter how much I explained the law to her. She thought she knew better, little bi—”

      “She said she was the victim of human trafficking?” Jimmy pulled his hand free, which seemed to take real effort.

      The officer huffed an ugly sound through his nose. “Yeah, but it’s pretty obvious what’s really going on.”

      “And that would be...” Kyle stepped forward, getting in the guy’s personal space a little, pissed off by his attitude.

      The officer’s attention shifted to him, and Kyle could actually see him trying to decide which of them would win in a fight. He figured he’d won when the guy stepped back and muttered, “She’s just a prostitute. Probably got beat up by her pimp.”

      “You get much prostitution at Neville?” Jimmy asked.

      The officer’s scowl returned. “On campus? No. But there are slums close by. She could have wandered in.”

      “I thought she was a student at Neville?” Kyle asked.

      “Yeah, well, maybe tuition was a little much for her. I’ll let you guys take it from here,” he said, animosity pouring from him as he strode away.

      “Now there’s a guy I’d hire to protect a campus full of college students,” Jimmy said, rolling his eyes as he pushed the door open to the hospital room.

      Kyle almost walked into his back as Jimmy stopped short right inside the doorway.

      Jimmy’s mocking tone was gone, replaced with a softer, more subdued voice as he said, “Tonya Klein? I’m Special Agent Jimmy Drescott with the FBI’s Civil Rights squad.” He moved over a little and added, “This is my partner, Kyle McKenzie.”

      The woman staring back at him could only do so through one pale blue eye, webbed with red from a burst blood vessel. The other was swollen completely shut, and dark purple. Her cheek was swollen, too, and covered with a bandage. Blood still caked her hairline, where her long dark hair had been shaved so a doctor could sew up the kind of cut that might have come from a broken bottle. Her hands, resting on the stark white sheet, were bloody and bruised, a few fingers splinted. Defensive wounds.

      Whoever had attacked her, one thing was certain: Tonya Klein had fought back hard.

      Good for you, Kyle thought. Regardless of what her story was—whether she was truly a human trafficking victim or if she’d been pulled into prostitution some other way—both pimps and traffickers knew how to make it hard for anyone to get out. Most of them gave up, learned to take the beatings and other abuse, just to survive.

      “Thanks for coming,” she croaked in a tone that had Kyle looking at her neck.

      As she lifted her head, he saw it. More bruising, this time on her neck, and it explained not only her voice but also the damage to her eye. Strangulation victims often showed hemorrhaging to the eyes. And he could actually see the darker spots in the bruises above her collarbone where fingers had pressed in.

      This hadn’t been the kind of beating meant to teach a lesson. Someone had wanted Tonya Klein dead.

      He caught Jimmy’s eye and the younger agent nodded, then told Tonya, “We have a specialist on the way. Her job is to make sure you have all the resources you need. We can wait for her to get here before we start—”

      “No,” Tonya barked, and Kyle tried not to cringe at the cracks in her voice.

      It was painful to listen to her talk. He couldn’t imagine how badly it hurt to do it.

      “Do you want us to wait for a family member to come and sit with you?” Jimmy asked.

      “No. They’re all back in Alabama. It’s too hard for them to get up here.”

      “Do you want to try to write it down?” Kyle asked.

      “No. I just want to tell you, before...” She cut herself off, then began again, keeping her attention firmly on the sheet as she spoke, her voice flat and emotionless. “I was trying to get out. They’d warned me about what would happen, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I tried to go to the police. But they came after me and...” Her hands fluttered into the air, revealing more bruises snaking up her arms. “They said there was only one way out. And that was a body bag.”

      Her voice was flat as she said it, as though she’d heard similar threats often enough that it hadn’t surprised her. Or—a cynical agent who’d heard it all before might think—as though she couldn’t generate real emotion because she was making that part up.

      “Okay.” Kyle eased himself into a seat next to the bed, careful to keep his distance as he took out a notepad. “Is it all right if I sit here?”

      She gave a small nod.

      This was an intense reentry to regular casework. When he’d worked counterterror, he’d seen some human trafficking—it was a common way to fund terrorist operations—but he’d never been the one sitting in a hospital room, taking victim statements.

      Jimmy pulled up a seat on the other side of her bed as he asked, “Do you know who attacked you?”

      She shook her head, cringing and clutching her side with her splinted fingers.

      “How many people attacked you?” Kyle asked. “Would you be able to describe them?”

      “They wore ski masks. There were two of them, but I don’t know who they were.”

      “Okay. Could you tell if they were male or—”

      “Yeah, they were men,” Tonya interrupted. “Not even all that big, either, but they could hit.”

      “Did they say anything to you?” Jimmy asked.

      She shrugged, a short jerk of her shoulders that made pain flash in her eye. “Just what I told you. About how there was no getting out.”

      “Do you remember the exact words?”

      “He said, ‘We warned you about trying to leave. There’s only one way out, and that’s a body bag.’ And then they started punching. I swore to myself that it didn’t matter what it took, that I was finished. But I knew they were going to kill me in that alley and...” Her voice broke. “I told them I’d come back—I begged—and they said it was too late. And then one of them hit me with a bottle that was lying in the alley. I passed out after that. I’m not sure what happened, if they just thought they’d killed me or—”

      “Two students saw you. They scared off your attackers and called 911,” Jimmy said.

      “Now what?” Tonya asked. “Because I read where sex trafficking victims can be protected, that the FBI will go after whoever is behind it.”

      “That’s right,” Kyle said slowly, glancing at Jimmy across the bed. He could see the skepticism in Jimmy’s face, and he tried to keep an open mind. Nothing about this suggested human trafficking yet, but colleges were the new recruiting grounds, so he wasn’t ruling anything out.

      “Let’s backtrack a little bit,” Jimmy said. “To before today’s attack. What can you tell us about your situation, about the people threatening you?”

      “I...” She shook her head, her hand tightening against her side as she looked at the bed instead of them. “I don’t know who they are. I got an email at first.” She flushed, then said, more quickly, “There was a video attached. A video of me and it was...”

      When she didn’t finish, Jimmy asked, “A sex video?”

      “Yeah. But I didn’t take it. I never would have slept with the guy if I knew he was taping it. The email said it would go out to everyone I knew if I didn’t show up at this warehouse outside of town. I didn’t know what