I stood perfectly still. The desert wind blew a hot gust of dust across the parking lot. I could feel the burner phone under the sole of my boot. I could remember the text message. Subject 3 failed. Are you at the drop point with 4?
If I pushed the issue right now, the deputy would arrest me. I’d be sitting in a holding cell while Karen drove away with the kid. I couldn’t save him from the inside of a jail cell. I had to play the long game.
“Alright,” I said, my voice heavy with calculated defeat. I looked down at Leo. Gently, I peeled his small, cold fingers off my jeans. The boy looked up at me, his eyes pleading. It felt like I was shoving a knife into my own chest.
“Go with the officer, kid,” I muttered, turning away so I wouldn’t have to look at his face.
As I walked back to the picnic table, I smoothly reached down under the guise of picking up my dropped sandwich wrapper. My fingers closed around the black burner phone. I slipped it into the deep pocket of my chaps before the deputy or Karen could notice.
I walked to my Indian Chief, threw my leg over the leather saddle, and turned the key. The massive engine roared to life, violently vibrating the frame. I didn’t look back as Karen rushed forward, grabbing Leo by the arm and dragging him toward her silver SUV parked in front of room four. I pulled out of the parking lot, hitting the highway and accelerating until the diner was nothing but a speck in my mirrors.
I rode for exactly two miles.
Then, I pulled onto a dirt shoulder, navigated down into a dry river wash hidden by tall, dead brush, and killed the engine. I dragged the bike behind a cluster of massive boulders, entirely concealing it from the road.
I pulled the burner phone from my pocket. It was locked with a four-digit PIN. I couldn’t get into the main menu, but the lock screen still displayed three missed calls from a contact simply named: The Clinic.
There was no state foster registry. There was no behavioral issue. This woman was a broker. And she needed to deliver this boy today.
I checked my heavy steel dive watch. It was 3:15 PM. The deputy would likely stick around for another twenty minutes taking her statement and verifying her fake paperwork before leaving her to finish packing her car. If I was going to find out what was really happening, I needed to see what was in that room before they left.
I started the long walk back toward the motel, keeping low in the dense scrub brush that lined the highway. The desert sun beat down on the back of my neck mercilessly, but the anger boiling in my chest kept me moving.
By the time I crept up to the rear of the motel, my shirt was soaked with sweat. I moved along the back wall, listening to the hum of the cheap window AC units. I stopped behind room four. The back window was small, overlooking a rusted chain-link fence. I peered through the gap in the curtains.
The room was empty. The front door was wide open, letting the heat in. Through the open door, I could see Karen’s silver SUV parked out front, the trunk popped open. The deputy’s cruiser was gone.
I quietly pried the screen off the back window, jimmied the cheap aluminum lock with my pocket knife, and slid silently into the room.
It smelled heavily of bleach and cheap floral perfume. The bed was unmade. On the small circular table near the shattered front window sat a large, heavy-duty blue plastic cooler. The kind you take camping, but this one was sealed with a heavy digital padlock on the front clasp. Next to it lay a thick manila folder.
I stepped quickly to the table and opened the folder. Inside were forged documents. A fake birth certificate, fake state transport orders, and a heavily redacted medical file. I flipped through the pages. There was a detailed blood workup for Leo. Bone marrow density charts. Genetic markers.
My eyes landed on a yellow sticky note attached to the last page. In neat, feminine handwriting, it read: Match confirmed for private client. Extraction scheduled for 1800 hours. Airstrip 4. Do not feed subject prior to procedure.
Bile rose in my throat. I had thought she was illegally adopting kids out to wealthy families. But this wasn’t an adoption. It was a harvest. They had matched Leo to a wealthy buyer who needed a donor, and they weren’t planning on bringing the kid back after the procedure.