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Back Minutes to Kill Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Contents
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Chapter Ten
  15. Chapter Eleven
  16. Chapter Twelve
  17. Chapter Thirteen
  18. Chapter Fourteen
  19. Chapter Fifteen
  20. Chapter Sixteen
  21. Chapter Seventeen
  22. Chapter Eighteen
  23. Chapter Nineteen
  24. Chapter Twenty
  25. Chapter Twenty-One
  26. Chapter Twenty-Two
  27. Chapter Twenty-Three
  28. Chapter Twenty-Four
  29. Chapter Twenty-Five
  30. Chapter Twenty-Six
  31. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  32. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  33. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  34. Chapter Thirty
  35. Chapter Thirty-One
  36. Chapter Thirty-Two
  37. Chapter Thirty-Three
  38. Chapter Thirty-Four
  39. Chapter Thirty-Five
  40. Chapter Thirty-Six
  41. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  42. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  43. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  44. Acknowledgments
  45. About the Author

She followed Douglas into the room. Lola was sitting up in a bed. Her eyes opened wide when Hannah walked in and greeted her in Spanish. But she wouldn’t respond to any of Hannah’s questions. The girl’s eyes kept shifting to the detective with suspicion.

Hannah turned to the cop. “Would it be possible to give me a few minutes with her alone?”

“I guess it’s worth a shot,” he said. “I’ll be right outside the door.”

As soon as the cop left, Hannah pulled a chair to the bedside. “Now it’s just you and me,” she said in Spanish. “Why did you ask to talk to me?”

“Because you helped Jewel,” Lola said in Spanish. “And because I did something bad. I told on her. If it wasn’t for me, she might have gotten away.” She studied her hands twisting in the sheets. “I was a coward.”

Hannah’s heart ached. “I’m sure you were scared.” What had the Arnette brothers done to this poor girl?

Over the next thirty minutes Lola slowly opened up with her harrowing story and enough details to possibly find more victims. Hannah had also determined that the e-mails hadn’t been purposefully cryptic. Lola’s English was too limited to express what she’d wanted to say.

Hannah asked her about that night.

“We worked that place often,” she said in Spanish. “Men coming out of the club were always looking for sex. That night was a private party. Special arrangements had been made.”

Suddenly, Hannah knew. The girls had been hired for Herb’s big bash. Initial shock was replaced with fury. How could Herb do this? She liked him. How could she not have seen what he was hiding under his regular-joe charm? Wait. Maybe she was jumping to conclusions. Surely, other private parties had occurred that night. Carnival was huge. But something nagged at Hannah, an image of Herb squeezing his waitress’s butt. The girl had been at least thirty years his junior, and there was no question that he treated his female employees like sexual objects. How young was his taste?

She smiled at Lola and told her to hang tight. Out in the hallway, she found Douglas. He rose. “Any luck?”

“Yes. Lola told me about a place she was kept, along with dozens of other girls. A warehouse. It sounds like a processing center of some sort. She might be able to give you enough details to find it.”

And maybe Jewel.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Six

If she doesn’t stop humming, I won’t have to worry about the men with guns. I’m going to kill myself.

Jewel rolled onto her side, pressing one ear into the pillow and covering her other ear with her hand. On the cot next to her, Penny hummed something that sounded like a nursery rhyme, not that Jewel had many warm or fuzzy memories of those.