Author retains all rights to this original work of fiction.

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Friday, June 8th, 4:51 p.m., Phoenix, Arizona
Getting back to the office turned out to be a quicker trip than I thought it would be, though I had to use Lyft first to get my car from the police station. This late in the day, the office was almost empty, and my attempt to find Valerie and recruit her in my quest to deal with Gabriella fell way short. She'd gone home for the day due to a sick child. Damn it!

I saw Kevin while walking to my desk and asked about expensing purchases related to a story. He assured me that I just needed to keep the receipts for any reasonable expenses, and The Post would cut me a check fairly quickly. Hearing that was a relief because I really didn't have a pile of money in my bank account and had just paid twenty-three dollars for a ride I hadn’t expected to need.

I called Lena to break our date for tonight and got her voice mail. I told her I was working on a ‘real’ story, knowing she would know what that meant because I'd complained a few times about the crap assignments I'd worked on over the past year. I promised to call her later and would make it up to her with a nice dinner to celebrate tomorrow night. The act of leaving the message seemed very hasty, and I felt a pang of guilt, but I also needed to get moving if I was going to make it back to the hospital by 6 PM.

Target was my next objective, and upon arrival, I was glad to see the parking lot wasn't very full. Not that I was worried about 'passing' most days, but in my current state of rushing around barely in control of my shit, I didn't feel as in control of any 'passing' confidence I normally had. That one little thing—that constant fear, gnawing at your core—was extremely taxing emotionally and mentally at times.

Why do people even give a shit? I wasn't hurting them or getting some advantage in life over their existence by being myself. I shouldn’t have to worry about what others might say or think about me while in public or doing something as simple as shopping.

Little kids tended to have the best ‘Trans-dar’, aka tTrans radar. While maybe a little comical to watch some suburban housewife try and squash her three-year-old from pointing out ‘that lady is a man, mommy’ – I just didn’t need the distraction right now or unwanted attention.

Shop and get out of here that’s the plan. I made my way to the women’s clothing area and picked up three push-up bras, size 32 A, with extra padding per Gabriella's request. The same quantity of boy shorts panties - size small, three cute but blank T-shirts - size medium, so they would be baggy, hang low, and reduce tucking concerns. I had tapes and probably every item known to the Trans world necessary to solve any tucking concerns at my condo—there might even be ‘emergency’ tape or something in my car – I’d have to remember to check.

What’s next? I looked toward the athletic clothing section of the store. Two pairs of workout tights and a pair of shorts, all size small, made it into the cart. Shoes - I decided to keep it simple: one pair of white skateboarder-style tennis shoes. And the last clothing item was a three-pack of anklet socks. I hit the makeup section for a hairbrush and the basics: mascara, eye liner, a palette of eye shadow, foundation, and a cheap lip gloss. On an end cap for toiletries I grabbed a toothbrush.

The last item to get hadn’t been on my list of essentials, but was a request from Gabriella—a pre-paid phone with international calling ability to Mexico. The guy behind the counter assured me it would be simple to get activated and was the most cost-effective model for dialing Mexico. My 'Latina' look got me that assurance from him, as if I needed to call home or something. His sales tactics were very annoying, along with his assumption of my desire for the phone.

My debit card took a $162.88 hit to pay for all this stuff. Payday was at the end of the week, so my car payment should be safe if I don't use my debit card for anything else. My disability check from the Army was still two weeks out, so I guess I'll be loading up my VISA card for anything else—not ideal. I probably should have charged all this stuff rather than depleted my ready cash. I needed to slow my thought processes down or I was going to make mistakes at some point—maybe one neither Gabriella nor I could afford.

When I returned to my car, I organized my purchases into a nice stack and put them into my now-emptied backpack, which I used to cart my lunch and laptop to work. My work items were dumped unceremoniously into the empty bags from Target and placed in my trunk. What else would she need immediately? Think… Crap! An image of her in the hospital bed popped into my head, and I immediately thought about her request for bras with extra padding. She had breasts... Yeah, of course she did, you idiot!

Not that that was a surprise or anything, but that means we’d need to figure out her HRT medication and get a refill. If she'd had some with her during her border crossing or a prescription, it was long gone now. Okay, nothing I can do about that—maybe the hospital could step in temporarily? Slow your thought processing down! Cross that bridge when it becomes necessary. I just need to spring her from the hospital and move on to finding the other Trans woman who had been abducted with Gabriella.

Friday, June 8th, 5:57 p.m., Phoenix, Arizona
I still had my visitor pass from earlier, so I clipped it on and went to the floor Gabrielle was on without anyone giving me a second look. When I entered the room, she was sitting up and only had a single IV connection in the back of her hand. There was relief in her eyes; I could see the stress draining from her as she smiled at me.

In Spanish, she said, "I asked the nurse if I could go to the cafeteria with my guardian to get dinner, and she said I could."

I answered in Spanish, "Are you ready now? Do we need an IV holder thing?"

"Yes, I’m ready... I'm going to disconnect this tube," she said, twisting the base of the tubing and removing it from its connection point. "They will think a nurse did it; they are very shorthanded. It is only a hydration liquid. I can remove the flexible needle later."

"Are you sure?" I asked, sounding a little worried and kind of grossed out. We’d eventually have to ditch the IV; I guess it made sense to do it here and now.

"I am not fearful," she said, smiling as if this were something she did every day.

God, I would kill for half of her confidence right now! Focus...

"I have everything," I replied, patting the strap of the backpack on my shoulder.

"I need the old one; is there room for it?"

I looked towards the sink and picked it up.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes..."

Okay, it looked like shit, but if you say we need it, I'm not going to argue, not right now. I unzipped my backpack and folded hers into it.

"Let's go..."

I walked to the side of her bed and was present in case she felt woozy or something, but she stood without issue and took hold of my arm.

"For appearances..." she said, smiling.

Cafeteria, here we come!

Friday, June 8th, 6:07 p.m., Phoenix, Arizona
We stopped at the nurse's station on the way to the cafeteria, and Gabriella played the clueless, non-English-speaking illegal perfectly. I asked for directions, and she asked in Spanish what I was saying. I explained to her that I was asking for directions, and then told the nurse what she'd asked. The nurse told me to keep an eye on her and that if she felt dizzy, faint, or ill, she should call for assistance right away. She added that there were no dietary restrictions. Gotcha...

We took the elevator to the first floor, made a left, followed a long hallway, and could smell food wafting towards us as we walked slowly. Gabriella was still holding onto my arm. We could win an award for our acting skills, I thought absently as an older couple passed us going in the opposite direction. Just prior to the cafeteria, there were two single-person bathrooms capable of handling people in wheelchairs – it was just what we needed. We would certainly have plenty of room to move around and get her changed into street clothes comfortably.

I pulled the contents of the backpack out, setting her backpack aside, and let her choose from the limited choices of outfits I’d bought. She looked relieved to finally get a chance to wear clothing that validated who she was. She picked up a bra, removed the tags, which I should have done back in the Target parking lot, and turned away from me to put it on beneath the hospital gown. She made quick adjustments to the straps, and she turned back towards me, smiling as if she were pleased.

I offered a pair of boy short panties, which I'd removed the tag from while she made on last bra adjusted, and she didn't waste time shimmying up legs that looked pretty good for having been shaved a couple days ago. There was another smile.

"It has been a couple days since I have shaved my legs..." she said, a little embarrassed. I nodded, smiling back at her and offering her a choice of T-shirts. She chose the yellow one, snapped the tag off, and got out of the gown to dawn the shirt.

Given her legs needed a shave, I figured tights were the right answer rather than the shorts I’d bought, so I removed the tag from one of the pairs and waited to hand them to her. She turned, draped in the T-shirt that was sort of like a shift dress, and raised an eyebrow.

"We don't have a lot of time or resources just yet, so to help with," I paused, "The need to tuck, I thought this was the easiest solution." I had guessed that she hadn’t had any surgeries yet.
She looked at how she was swimming in the shirt, then back at me.

"Yes, you are probably right; this is good," she said with a little more confidence than the look she’d given me. She patted the fabric down around her hips and seemed satisfied with the choice I’d made.

I handed her the tights, and she wasted no time getting them on. I busted a pair of anklet socks loose from their packaging and gave them to her when she was ready to put them on. With each item of clothing she put on, she looked more and more comfortable with herself. Finally, the shoes, which apparently fit judging by her smile after she tied them, I gathered the gown and robe and hung them on the back of the door. Her slippers found their way underneath used paper towels in the garbage can. All that was left was a little makeup and whatever she could do with her hair.

"I'm sorry this stuff is so cheap." I said, placing the makeup and hairbrush I'd bought on the sink, "It's the best I could do."

I felt a little self-conscious about the things I'd purchased for her, but in truth, it was difficult enough to buy things for myself even after five years of doing things my way, in my comfort zone, let alone trying to do them for another woman. The age gap alone, styles, tastes...

"No," she said, reaching out to take my hand. "Everything is perfect. You did very well."

"Yeah, well, compared to you, I'm an old lady," I replied with a chuckle.

"You are," she huffed in a quick breath. "Very kind..." She lowered her head, trying to stifle sobbing outright.

I pulled her close and hugged her.

"It's alright...," I cooed. "Let's get finished up. You'll feel a lot better when we're out of here."

She squeezed me tight, then pulled away to wipe tears away. I smiled back at her and nodded toward the sink. She approached the sink and studied her face in the mirror, shaking her head a little and touching the still-swollen lip gently. There was resolve in her eyes; she was going to be alright. I laid out the exit plan while she began applying her foundation.

Friday, June 8th, 6:37 p.m., Phoenix, Arizona
I'd planned how we were going to make our exit from the hospital and where we were going to lay low. Once out of the hospital, we would crash at my condo. It certainly wasn't ideal, legally speaking, but easiest place to stash her.

Throughout this process, the lure of helping someone like me who was in trouble really pulled at my heart more than I expected. Having firsthand information for this story helped my 'All In' attitude, but helping her was my first priority, followed by finding the other Trans woman she’d mentioned. The story was frosting and M&M’s on the brownie.

How to get her out of the hospital was a loose plan I wasn’t so sure of. It involved leaving Gabriella to finish getting ready in the bathroom while I made my way back to my car in the parking garage. That would provide plenty of opportunity to get myself captured on the hospital's video system, and that was part of the plan. I would act like any other visitor, take the elevator to the visitor parking garage, get my car, and appear to leave. Then I would drive to the hospital's outdoor parking lot across the street and wait.

Before parking in the garage, I had cruised the outdoor parking lot checking for cameras; if we were lucky, there would be a blind spot somewhere so she wouldn’t be seen getting in my car. Optically speaking, chances were good the resolution of the cameras out there weren’t all that great, so they might capture her getting into my car, but good luck proving that in a court of law.

When Gabriella was finished in the bathroom, she was to retrace her steps to the elevators. The main entrance to the hospital was across the lobby from those elevators. There were no security guards, only a visitor’s center desk. She could walk right out the front door, cross the street, and I would be waiting for her in the parking lot. I’d see her coming, and I would flash my lights so she would head straight towards me. Video cameras would certainly capture each of our exits; the key was that we wouldn't be seen exiting together. I was hoping that would be enough to cover or deflect any blowback by officials—police, hospital, or both.

If or when they reviewed their camera footage, the best they could do was claim I got her clothing for her escape. Likely nothing legal would land at my feet, but I should have gotten written assurances of that from Kovachev. A text message, at least. So much for thinking I was doing better with my planning and execution, given I’d missed that detail. I’d been out of the game to long and my remembrances of complex military operations weren’t what they used to be; I certainly was showing my rust. Whatever!

It was only a matter of time before the hospital contacted Kovachev, and he called me. He'd sanctioned this operation, proving that would be something I would add to my bucket of stresses and find a solution for if it became necessary. I should call Lena for legal advice at some point. There were so many moving pieces, and this was just the beginning.

My biggest fear was: would Gabriella stick to the plan or bolt once out of the hospital and leave me high and dry?

Friday, June 8th, 7:02 p.m., Avondale, Arizona
"Are you alright?" she asked.

I know I was radiating stress, but I was hoping Gabriella wasn’t paying attention. I chuckled. So much for her not sensing my stress.

"Yeah, just a lot I need to process..."

"Helping me can't be more stressful than when you decide to transition," she said with a little giggle and smile.

I laughed. "Let's just say it's a different kind of stress today." She looked like she was going to ask something, and then thought better of it, so I pressed, "Do you have concerns?"

"I have many, but I feel like I need to hurry my journey along," she said, turning to look at the family who had just crossed the street in front of us at the light.

"Your transition?"

"No, but that is always on my mind. May I ask about your transition?" she asked.

"Everyone's transition is different, so mine is likely not going to be like yours..."

I hoped that didn't sound like I didn't want to talk about it. Over the years, I'd talked about the internal struggle with plenty of counselors and people I'd met along the way. My story wasn't remarkable by any stretch, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to share, but right now I could barely keep my thoughts straight.

"I believe that is true, but," she paused, "I am only a few months from a year into my transition, and my HRT results are not like yours."

I looked at her, and then went back to concentrating on making our way through traffic. She looked uncomfortable about having admitted that.

"Again, everyone is going to react differently to HRT and T-blockers." I reached over and squeezed her hand. "Trust in the process; it can't be rushed."

She shook her head. "I have some, many anxieties, though."

"If you didn't, you wouldn't be human. I know CIS women who are more anxious than I am about the way they look or are perceived. Seriously, it takes time, and battling against the process will only make you go crazy."

"When I started HRT, nothing happened. Then I was sad all of the time, and it was very difficult to continue to present as male without making those feelings worse," she said, as if putting that out there was cleansing.

The obvious question was to ask was why she couldn't live her truth, but I decided to defer the question.
"You're progressing at the pace your body needs," I encouraged. "Do you have a prescription we can access for you? To get you back on track...

She nodded. "It will take a little bit to get that and resume." She looked like she was struggling with something. "My mother and aunts have had much breast growth at a very young age; I have seen their pictures. You also... I have not much..." she stopped abruptly and looked away.

"Whoa, not everything is as it appears," I smiled. "When I started HRT, my doctor said I was probably not going to see much breast development due to my age and being well past puberty. After a year of struggling with virtually no breast development other than enlarged puffy areola areas, the anxiety of 'passing' and crushing dysphoria because I felt like a man wearing a dress, I got implants. The best money I ever spent on myself... Which brings me to the greatest piece of advice I can give you: do not compare your journey to others. You certainly aren’t doing this for them, so why involve them in the equation?"

She nodded, but I felt like she wasn’t buying it or something else was weighing on her, which was probably true given her border crossing and subsequent abduction. Were those things connected? We drove on in silence, and when I would look over at her, she appeared to be studying our route—filing landmarks, signs, names of streets—or maybe she was just curious about being in this country. So much I wasn’t sure about with this kid...

We entered Avondale and turned off West Buckeye Road to enter my gated condo community. Mine was the middle unit of three units per building, with an attached garage, which was a mess, but I could still park in it to keep the car out of the sun. I pulled in, cut the engine, and when the garage door closed, I said, "It's kind of a mess out there; watch yourself getting out."

She smiled, squeezed through the door, and walked around the back of the car. I waited for her at the door to the stairs leading up to my unit. She looked anxious.

"Are you alright?"

"Yes, but the phone," she said, looking at the backpack. "I must make a call."

"Absolutely... Let's get upstairs and get it activated," I said, smiling but a little concerned.

Friday, June 8th, 7:08 p.m., Avondale, Arizona
We sat at my small dining room table and worked through the phone’s activation process. My 'friend' from Target was correct; it was simple to get the phone setup and activated. The first call was to my cellphone so I could capture the number. I handed her the phone after that.

"Okay, I think you're good to go." I watched her consider something, and then she set the phone down.

"There are many complications in my life, Cass. I am a complication for my father. People would be very happy to hurt him because of who I am as I become my true self. My father," she said, looking away. "He is a difficult man to please, and he does not understand who I am, but he is trying. I do not fear him, but there are others I do. I did not ask for this mind that cannot accept the body it resides in. You understand this struggle, and like you I must live for myself."

Shit... Part of what she had said sounded ominous; the rest was just what you get from trying to live life as yourself.

"I can understand all that... My parents would not accept who I was either. I feel empty because of that some days. But I can't live my life for them, so I don't dwell on it much." That was a lie; not having a connection with my parents weighed on me all the time, but I wasn’t going to say that.

"I wish this wasn't our burden, as we live for ourselves. The people my father works for are more troubling..." She looked around me to the kitchen, then towards the living room. "I must do something I was hoping I would not have to do, and you shouldn't know about it. Do you understand?" she asked.
I was beginning to figure her out a little – cerebral like me. That blade cut both ways though. What did she need to do?

"If you need to make a private call, you can do that in the spare bedroom. I certainly don't want to intrude."

I might not want to intrude, but I was certainly curious. Two lies in the course of twenty seconds, though—what kind of trust was I building? I needed to show trust to gain it, right?

"Thank you for this," she said, grabbing the phone, standing, and waiting to follow me to the bedroom.
I showed her to the room, took some boxes from the guest bed, and placed them on the floor near the closet.

"Take your time. I'm going to order pizza if that's alright."

"Yes, thank you... I am hungry," she approached me and, without hesitation, gave me a hug.

Friday, June 8th, 7:43 p.m., Avondale, Arizona
The pizza arrived quickly, and not knowing how long Gabriella was going to be, I inhaled a couple slices. Since she was making her call, my belly now full I had things I needed to do. The most pressing was getting something written that could be turned into the PIO (Public Information Office) at the police station. After they'd edited out details they didn't want released, I would probably have some rewriting to do. I was probably pushing my luck with some of what I wanted to get published; I guess we'll see after their review.

Regardless of what I submitted to them, what I wrote needed to be worthwhile and ultimately had to get past Carol Black. I was stressed, but as I typed, the story just poured out of me quickly as my fingers flew over the keyboard. There would of course be a rewrite and questions about the included facts, but I knocked out what I thought was a worthwhile addition to our story about these abductions and assaults.

Surprisingly, when I was done, I didn't hesitate to email what I had compiled to the PIO Office—my usual mode of rewriting and rewriting thrown aside. Shocker, where did that confidence in what I wrote come from? Was it because I had a personal connection with Gabriella that the story almost wrote itself? Had she inspired me?

I called Lena after grabbing another slice of pizza. She was happy to hear from me at first, until I started telling her about the story I was working on. I didn't hold back any of the details; that might have been a mistake. To say she wasn't pleased would be an understatement. She was stressing hard about the blurry line Kovachev had let me cross without guarantees of police support or immunity from prosecution if things went sideways.

I was legally exposed—by at least a half-dozen ways, and she complained about a few of those exposures pretty hard. She asked for Kovachev's phone number and said she would call him to get guarantees in writing and protection for my involvement with Gabriella. I pitied Kovachev. Lena was a partner at the second largest and most prestigious law firm in Phoenix; she would not take any crap from him. I was in good hands legally speaking, even if she was a little miffed at me right now.

She stressed a number of times that Gabriella was the responsibility of the Phoenix Police or the immigration authorities and that my involvement was a bad idea, which made her complaints about what I was doing seven times during the call. I had to assure her I wouldn't do anything stupid and tried to justify my reasons—she wasn’t buying any of them. I really appreciated that about her—no PC crap, just straight talk from an amazing woman who obviously cared about me.

Her last warning had to do with being careful and not taking any unnecessary risks. She was worried, and I could hear it coming through the tiny speaker on my phone. Her warning was that whoever was doing this to Trans women in the area wouldn't discriminate between US citizens and immigrants. I got the message that I was Hispanic, I was Trans, and my citizenship wouldn't matter.
The ‘Goodbye’ was tension-filled, and when I hung up, I felt very alone. Did I just screw up everything with her? I considered calling back to apologize, but the train I was on had already left the station. I’d make it up to her.

To quell my mind from screwing up with Lena and waiting for Gabriella to finish her call, I switched gears and began searching Google Maps. This was likely going to be impossible—finding an abandoned hotel or motel on a remote road, roughly twenty to thirty, maybe forty miles from Buckeye? My first couple searches got me nothing. So, I searched for 'Buckeye, AZ + closed hotel + remote'. The results only got me hotels to stay in that weren't closed. Think....

I heard the bedroom door open and the bathroom door close. I continued searching, but it was in vain. When Gabriella was finished, she joined me at the dining room table, sitting next to me to see what it was I was doing. She looked tired, her makeup was a little smudged, the fringes of her facial bruising were showing through ever so slightly, and her eyes were puffy. She'd been crying I suspected.

"You alright?" I asked.

"Yes, but my hunger could smell the pizza," she said sheepishly.

I stood and went to the refrigerator, pulled the pizza box out, got the oven going, put a couple slices on a sheet of tin foil, and slid them in.

"Would you like something to drink?"

"Yes, please... water?"

I pulled a glass from the cupboard and began to fill it, but when I turned to bring it to her, she looked disturbed.

"Would you prefer bottled water? I wouldn't blame you; this water won't taste like home."

"No... That is how they drugged me," she whispered.

Oh crap...

"Let me get you a bottle of water..." I said, putting the glass in the sink and returning to the refrigerator to grab a bottle.

"Thank you..."

While she certainly saw me fill the glass, maybe it was a trigger of sorts. I wasn't going to discount her discomfort, and to switch the focus, I asked, "Were you able to get a hold of who you need too?"

"Yes," she said, taking the bottle from me when I offered it.

"Is everything alright?"

Gabriella looked down at the table and asked, "Do you believe there are consequences for our actions?"

"I suppose... actions have consequences; it's how we learn sometimes," I offered, thinking her call set something in motion she was battling with.

"I agree...," she said, turning her focus to the laptop and the Google Maps satellite image of Buckeye on the screen. "It was not a hotel I was brought too. It was a large building with many doors, a fence, and an angry dog that barked all the time."

"Why tell us it was a hotel?"

"Trust," she said, bowing her head. "Since I've been in your country, I have had little to trust in. I believe I can trust you, but I needed to get out of the hospital and continue my journey. Too many details presented to your detective may have made that impossible." She squeezed the bottle slightly, and it made a crinkling sound.

I wasn't sure how to react to that. On one hand, I'd certainly hung my ass out there to move this kid along on her journey—admittedly partly for my own gains—but come on! Did I need to bleed for her to cement some trust in me? Was her trust issues due to what had happened to her or something else? Grrr! I needed to remember that she was eighteen, and while she played the 'I've got worldly experience' game, in truth she was just a kid.

"Okay, trust begets trust, Gabriella. I trusted you at your word that you would help us locate the other woman who was with you. I trusted you at the hospital that you would meet me in the parking lot. I'm trusting you in my home... I've got plenty to lose here; legally, what I did today, sanctioned or not by the detective, could get me in a lot of trouble, even arrested."

"It was not my wish to make you feel as if I did not trust you or to put you in this position. Things went very wrong, very different than they were planned," she looked up. "If I involve you more, I fear it will endanger your life even more."

"These people who did this to you can't get at us," I stated as confidently as I could. I considered that statement for a split second; did I really believe that?

"What about after I am gone and you write your story for your newspaper? I cannot accept putting you more in danger."

There was certainly a chance there could be blowback from some shadow group of assholes doing this to Trans women, but I felt like the risk was pretty minuscule.

"I can handle myself, Gabriella, I promise..."

She was studying me, calculating her reply, "How?"

"How do I know I can handle myself?"

She nodded.

"Well, I may not look like it, but I was in the Army not too long ago." It felt odd to say that out loud after all these years, but also a little liberating and empowering: "I've been in battles with the Taliban in Afghanistan and Iraq... I'm still here; I don't fear these people who did this to you."

"Is this true?" she asked, surprised, maybe a little shocked.

I smiled at her, "Yeah, I can show some of my records if you don't believe me. Maybe I can even find my combat boots in a box someplace, probably in the mess you crawled around in the garage." I chuckled thinking about how keeping my combat boots after all these years was a little odd, especially since they wouldn't go with any of my current wardrobe.

"I believe you, but..." she stopped speaking.

"What's wrong?"

"How are you a Taliban fighter and now a Trans woman with much confidence?" she asked, sounding unsure if she should believe what I was saying.

"Oh, I am not that confident; trust me on that. I also told you that everyone’s journey is different. For me, thousands of hours of counseling," I smirked. "Counseling is what helped me understand the lie I was living. I had thought that if I joined the Army, that would fix my doubting my gender and make me a real man. It did not, and I wasted a lot of time, time I can't get back pretending to be someone I wasn't. I thought joining would reassure my father that I was man enough. I had to come to grips with, as you'd said about yourself that my mind could not function in the body it presented as.

“The Army never had a chance of making me the 'man' everyone thought I should be. And the Army certainly wasn’t going to make me happy with whom I truly was inside. That's been my journey, and I can tell you I've made a lot of mistakes along the way. I have many regrets and things I would do differently."

"Your sister, she is of support."

Her English was a little off, but she was trying, and I respected that.

"Yes, but we are not as close as we should be... I'm lucky to have that connection, though," I said, shrugging as if I couldn’t really explain that any better.

She turned to the computer and said, “I was not aware as they took me to this place, but when they were through, I had to act as if I were still drugged. I saw two signs when we left the bumpy road: ‘Arlington Wildlife Area’ and a sign that said, ‘Highway 80’. The man who took the pictures and video was Asian, but the other two were Hispanic—Mexican, I'm sure. The Asian said something about a restaurant we passed not being open very quickly after we were on this road, ‘Highway 80’.”

I sat at the computer and entered ‘Arlington Wildlife Area’ in Google Maps—so close to Buckeye, likely less than twenty miles depending on where she was originally stashed in Buckeye. The restaurant was there, but was there a building that matched her description? I zoomed in on the satellite image; there weren’t many options for large buildings.

"Here,” Gabriella said, pointing at the screen. “This is the building. I remember this house on the road here.”

“Are you sure? It had to be the middle of the night when they left there to go dump you,” I said, not considering my choice of words and regretting the use of the word ‘dump’.

She looked at me for a long moment and said, “I was nothing to them... They dumped me, but I remember this place.”

Certainly, it was a remote location, but did it fit with the other abductions? Would someone still be there? Was this a new location for them to operate from? Was this where the other women were taken? So many questions...

She interrupted the beginnings of my endless list of impossible-to-answer questions: "We must go there... But first, I must do something very important..." She looked at a clock across the room and said, “I am behind schedule.”

"Okay,” I said, not so confidently. “Is there something I can help with?" I asked.

"Does your computer operate with a VPN?"

Huh? She must mean my internet connection. That's an interesting question, though.

"Yes."

"May I use your computer to remotely connect to another computer?"

Where was this going? If this second computer was also on a VPN, say in a foreign country, tracking what she was about to do was going to be nearly impossible. Terrorists operated like this: shadow agencies, people with something to hide. Was this a consequence?

"You want to remote into another computer? May I ask why?"

"I need to initiate a bank transaction," she said, pulling the laptop square in front of her, then waiting to see if I had other questions.

"Is this an illegal movement of money? Are we talking crypto currency?"

She hesitated, stood, went to the stove, and pulled the pizza from the oven onto the plate I had set out. She figured out how to turn the oven off and returned to the table.

"My backpack contains a micro-SD card; do you have an adapter?"

"It does?”

“Yes, but I need an adapter,” she said.

“I have one... But back to my question, where are we with the legality of this transfer?"

I went to the living room and retrieved her empty backpack, which now explained why she was concerned about it in the hospital and needed it before we left. I found in the kitchen junk drawer a micro-SD card adapter she could use to plug into my laptop and scissors to cut the SD card out of wherever it was hiding in her backpack. Hiding it in the backpack was planned and certainly covert. Who was this kid?

"The money was gotten illegally by the employer of my father. Some will become payment for enslaving my father," she said dryly.

"Wait, I thought your relationship with your parents was strained?"

For someone who didn't want to divulge details about what she was up to and endangering me, she'd certainly changed her tune in the last couple of minutes. Trust?

"It is, but not because they are not supportive of me, but because of their fear of his employer."

"Who is?" I asked as if on cue.

"He is a man involved with many bad businesses—drugs, weapons, many bad things."

Fuck...

Friday, June 8th, 8:29 p.m., Avondale, Arizona
I watched over her shoulder as she pulled up a Word document from the micro-SD card she'd removed from the intact backpack strap. The document was in Spanish, but I could read the instructions, which she didn't seem to mind that I was doing. She would be connecting from my computer to another, and from that second one to yet another. Whoever came up with this plan wasn't expecting that her initial connection would be via a VPN, so in total, her transaction would be hidden three times instead of just twice; whatever she was about to do would be impossible to track depending on the backend setup of these computers and anyone else who might have access to them. Tracking software or keystroke trackers wouldn’t be of much use.

Gabriella certainly didn't strike me as being a terrorist, but if she was about to steal money from some cartel weapons or drug kingpin, there were going to be fireworks in Mexico tonight. Then it hit me: "What about your parents?" I asked, concerned.

She replied calmly, "They are already dead."

The look of shock and concern on my face was obvious.

"Dead!" I barked, surprised!

"Yes..." she said with no detectable emotion in her voice as she typed a computer IP address into a Remote Desktop Connection panel.

I could only stare at her in shock. There was no way she was this cold-blooded and heartless. Something wasn't adding up...

"I don't understand... How do..."

She interrupted me and said, "They are not killed, but it will appear that way shortly. I need to do these things to ensure their deaths were part of their captors torturing my father to get at the accounts. It must appear as though my father gave the account information to a rival."

She finished typing credentials, gained access, and then repeated the steps to another computer's IP address. Once connected to the second computer from the first, she opened a browser and navigated to Banco Mexico del Mundo, a bitcoin exchange bank, and clicked the 'Login' link. She entered the credentials from the instructions, typed the password, and hit enter.

The message was clear: 'The username or password entered does not match our records; please try again'. The page presented the two entry fields again, but they were now empty. The IP address of the request was captured and shown under the message. I pulled my phone out and took a picture of the IP address while she reentered the credentials. This time she clicked the 'Login' button rather than hitting enter. Same result: bad credentials. Gabriella looked on the verge of panic and froze.

"What if you just copy and paste from the document? Maybe you fat-fingered the password; I mean, it is a twenty-character or more mixed-case, numeric, and symbol password. I think the username looks correct," I offered.

"I may be too late..." she replied, defeated.

"Just try it..."

She copied the credentials from the document and instinctively hit enter. Success! She looked relieved but wasted no time celebrating the success. I watched her navigate to the 'Wire Transfer' option within the account. Two clicks later, she had the destination exchange account entered, and was asked how much she wanted to transfer. She entered the type to/from as Bitcoin, and then the amount of 3,149.10038, with a current individual Bitcoin value of $44,270.31 per coin (and fluctuating)—the total was over one hundred thirty-nine million US dollars.

"Are you serious? You are draining the account," I asked, surprised.

"This is one of many that will be taken. There are consequences for one's actions," she replied with a raised brow and the tiniest of smiles.

"Whoever's money this is, they are unlikely to rest until they've tracked this transfer down and who did it. Your parents and you are about to change your lives forever. Are you sure about this?"

She hit enter, and less than a second later, the screen showed the transfer as having been completed. She logged off, closed the browser, did something within the Remote Desktop Connection settings, and reopened the browser.

She navigated to Il Banco Espana el Intercambio, logged in, and verified the transfer was complete. All 3,249.10038 Bitcoins were sitting there. She took a deep breath, clicked 'Wire Transfer' and entered the routing information for another account in the document, this time to a different crypto exchange. The amount for this transfer was three hundred Bitcoin, or just over thirteen million US dollars. Completed, she verified that the crypto had been transferred and looked relieved.

"My family is not entitled to all of this money, but we are entitled to the three hundred Bitcoin I just transferred; that was the arrangement with your government."

"My government?" I asked, unable to hide the surprise in my voice.

"Yes, for the financial ruin of the Corbino drug cartel."

Shit...

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