River of Glass by Jaden Terrell Page B

moonlight, the scars on her face seemed softer, like the shimmer of heat.
    After a moment, she said, “You think Tuyet okay?”
    “I don’t know.” I moved to the next stall, and Crockett nudged my hand. I asked him to target my other palm, and when he did, I gave him a treat. “We have to work it as if she is. And we have to assume she hasn’t been shipped off somewhere. We have to assume she’s someplace we can find her.”
    She rubbed at her upper arms. “My country, many ghost. People die from war, die from mine. No body, no ritual. No one pray over.” Crockett put his head over the stall door, and she gave his nose a tentative stroke. “No rest. Become con ma— hungry ghost, cause bi ben tah —mean ghost sickness. If Tuyet die, we need find, make good ritual. Make sure she no hungry ghost.”
    “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
    “Believe, not believe. Not believe not make not true.” She pulled Jay’s sweater tighter, drifted to the open door of the barn, and stared out at the house. It stood in shadow, an isolated square of light in the upstairs window.
    I rubbed the flat space between Tex’s eyes and said, “There are no ghosts here.”
    “You wrong,” she said, clasping the edges of the afghan just beneath her chin. “This place, many ghost.”

12
    I f there were ghosts, they kept to themselves. I slept unmolested and woke to the smell of buckwheat pancakes. Outside, leaves rattled in the wind, and the trees waved their branches against an angry sky. While Jay and Eric armed themselves with umbrellas and left to plaster have-you-seen-this-woman flyers in coffee shops and grocery stores across the city, I loaded Tuyet’s photo and Eric’s drawing of the suspect onto my phone and laptop.
    Khanh, fumbling with the buttons of a sweater Jay had given her, looked over my shoulder as I printed out hard copies and Googled the address for Hands of Mercy, the rescue organization that had featured so prominently in the news articles I’d read.
    “Why we go there?” she asked, as I tapped the address into my phone. “You think they rescue Tuyet?”
    “No. If she’d been rescued, she would have called. But if someone’s buying and selling Asian women, these folks might have them on the radar.” I handed her the folder with the copies in it. “Hang on to these for me, would you?”
    We stepped out into a brisk wind, too cold for the season. I flipped the collar of my jacket up. Khanh held the folder against her chest and pulled Jay’s sweater tight around her.
    I waited until we were on the interstate to dial Frank’s number. Got his voice mail and hung up without leaving a message, punched in Malone’s instead. She answered on the fourth ring.
    “What now, McKean?”
    I grinned. Her phone knew who I was. “What do you know about Hands of Mercy?”
    After a beat, she said, “They do good work. Rescue and rehabilitation. Why?”
    “We’re heading over there now. I just wanted to know if they were legit.”
    “Something wrong with your computer?”
    “I know what the public records show. I want to know what you think.”
    There was another silence while, presumably, she weighed the consequences of talking to me. “They’ve helped us build a few trafficking cases, consulted on a lot of others. Claire does the hands-on work with the women. She’s a painter and photographer, had a few gallery showings—very successful, as far as I can tell. Then she gave it up and got degrees in psych and art therapy. Started Hands of Mercy right after graduation.”
    “Takes a lot of money to run a show like that.”
    “She comes from money. Plus grants. Plus she exhibits her artwork and donates the proceeds.”
    “Altruistic.”
    “Seems that way. Plus, Andrew does a ton of PR and fundraising.”
    “Busy folks.”
    “It’s a big job. Claire does the therapy, Andrew directs the rescue operations.”
    Claire and Andrew. She felt comfortable enough to call them by their first names. I said, “I