On The Run: Part Two

Chapter Thirteen - "Searching For Yesterday"

And somehow ended up in New York.

Is this what the system had come to?

I felt like crying. I felt like just curling up in my backseat and weeping. What had I done?

The only people I could talk to about this were my dad or Jake. My dad couldn’t know about this, or he’d look further into it and find out things I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. And as for Jake, I wasn’t sure I was ready to drag him into my misery; we were just becoming friends again, and I treasured that.

The thing that was still tinkling at the back of my mind was the three-month gap between June and September in 2006, and how she’d ended up in America.

I picked up my phone and dialed the last number that had called me. He’d left me a voicemail, which said we needed to talk. ASAP.

“Mike, what’s up?” I asked, dropping my head into my hands.

I doubted that Mike was even his real name. He was a private investigator I’d hired a week ago to keep an eye on Chloe and to look into her past; I figured he’d have more unorthodox ways of getting information, so I thought there might be a few differences between the things we found out.

And apparently, I wasn’t wrong.

“It’s big.”

I let out a sigh, “Okay. Tell me.”

“Well, I was looking into financials. I of course went all the way back to the Lanes’ and it was exactly as you had said; they left her quite a bit, but she doesn’t get it until she’s twenty-one. Then I looked into the Carr’s financials; that’s where it gets interesting.”

Not good. Joan Carr had seemed so honest and sincerely interested in Chloe’s welfare; I didn’t like the thought that she might have been exactly the opposite.

“Go on,” I said.

“Right after the death in July 2005, Chloe went to live with Joan and Billie Carr. Then in June 2006, she wasn’t with them anymore.”

“I know this much, Mike. Get to the point,” I said, impatiently.

“Joan Carr received three hundred thousand dollars that same month.”

“That’s not possible; she said they were broke,” I said.

“They weren’t. At first, I thought it might have been the life insurance from the Lanes’ death, but they’d used that up earlier on bills – they had loads –and Chloe’s private school fees; the wills stipulated that Chloe still continue to receive the same educational and extra-curricular activities she participated in when they were alive. Then I dug deeper into the finances. Turns out that the payment came from a bank account in Moscow.”

I frowned, “Russia? What? Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I traced the account back to one Yakov Vasilevich. He was arrested in 2006 for human trafficking. I talked to a buddy of his, Grigory Ivanova, who served time with Yakov until last year.”

My blood ran cold.

Mike continued, “I showed him a picture of Chloe, and he said he didn’t know who she was.”

I let out a sigh, “So?”

“Well, I talked to him some more, and three hours later, he admitted that there had been a few children acquired in 2006, and that two or three of them got away after a raid at Yakov’s club. Chloe was one of them.”

My heart stopped.

“Oh my God,” I breathed, “What are you saying?”

Breathe, Sarah. Breathe.