The woman and the child looked at each other in a moment of distrust/trust that only comes in an extreme situation like this one. The silence was punctuated once more by el-Habib’s cries. This time, the girl didn’t flinch.

“Alice,” she said at last. “My name is Alice. I’m from Washington, the state.”

“Sip your tea,” Charlie said.

Alice did so, clearly grateful. “I was paid good money to come here.”

“Who?” Charlie said. “Who paid you?”

Alice shrugged. “Some suit.”

Charlie counted to ten to keep her blood pressure at normal. “Did he give you his name? Can you describe him?”

“His name was Dante.”

Dante. The Inferno, Charlie thought. Very good.

Alice took another sip of tea. “He was bald, but you know the way men shave their heads, cuz he wasn’t old or anything. He smiled all the time. He was nice to me. And he was handsome.”

“Any distinguishing features?”

“His eyes were kind of a milky blue.”

“That’s good. Any visible scars or tats?”

Alice shook her head.

Charlie turned her glass around and around between her fingertips. She was no longer interested in the tea. “Help me with something, Alice. How were you and Beth recruited?”

Alice’s eyes slid away to a corner of the kitchen where the candlelight could not penetrate. “We were sold.”

I was right, Charlie thought with a lurch in her heart. Slave trade. “Tell me.”

“Beth and I were taken off the streets.”

“Were you related?”

She shook her head. “We said we were cousins, but, you know, we became family on the streets. She took me in, kept me safe, until…”

Her voice died out into the shadows that surrounded them. Charlie wished she felt more for this little girl, but she had a job to do and she knew she could not allow emotion to get in the way of thinking clearly and making the right decisions going forward. “Beth’s dead, and you didn’t even shed a tear.”

“What’s the point?” Alice cried. “Will crying bring her back?”

“No, but mourning might help you feel better.”

Alice laughed harshly, and raised her arms. “Look around us. You see anything that’s ever going to make me feel better? My life is shit. It always was shit, it always will be shit.”

Charlie sat back. Words failed her. The chasm between her life and Alice’s was simply too vast to bridge. No matter how much she tried she would never be able to imagine what the girl’s life might be like.

“Tell me,” she said, because there was no other way to go with this child. There would be no relevant information without a semblance of rapport.