Page 103 of Born for Starlight

I knew that face now. I'd catalogued it across four lies at a lunch table, and I was looking at it again. He was basically saying the buyers weren't the mission. The buyers were the bait that flushed out the higher-ups.

I slid my hand out of his and pressed it flat against my stomach while he watched. I could see it in his eyes—he felt what I felt.

“But the girls will be safe?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” he said. That wasn’t a lie. That was God’s truth.

"And Luzia?" I asked. "What happens if she isn't one of the girls being auctioned?"

"She will be."

"She's seven, Matthew. She could've gotten sick again. She could've fallen and broken her arm. If she's not one of the thirteen, what then?"

"Then we break into the locked dormitory."

He looked away. I tried to catch his eye, but he turned to look at Bruno. Now I couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or not. It was killing me.

“Matthew,” I practically begged.

“She’ll be taken care of. We’ll get her.”

“But maybe not tonight, is that what you’re saying?”

“All thirteen girls will be safe tonight. Aurora will be taken down and a search for Luzia will happen. But I need to get the people who are coordinating everything.”

There it was. He’d finally told the truth.

I gagged, begging my stomach not to throw up again. There was nothing left in it anyway. There was nothing left in me either, except the one thing that mattered. Luzia.

I looked at my brother Bruno. His face was impassive. He’d help me, wouldn’t he? And Jase would help me.

He’d remember the little girl in the cage from thirty years ago.

At seven thirty-five, Matthew stood up and buttoned his jacket.

The plan was simple. The auditorium sat in an outbuilding across the yard, and the men needed to reach it by seven fifty. Deke was somewhere, but nobody knew where since I was wearing his comm.

Between them and that building stood Ferraz with his radio, and Costa with his phone.

And Julian. One could never forget Julian.

We invited them in. Bruno opened the office door and put sixteen years of calm into four words.

"She needs a doctor."

I heard Costa's footsteps break into a run halfway down the hall. He burst in with his handkerchief already out.

"Senhorita! I am here. Tell me, what do you need, what can I⁠—"

"Angelica!" Julian shoved in right on his heels, phoneless and loving me more than ever. "Oh God, is she dying? She looks like she's dying!"

"Julian, please," Costa begged.

I lay flat, kept my breathing shallow, let my eyes flutter.

Ferraz came last.

He stopped inside the doorway and he did what any professional would do. He scanned the room. Bruno stood easy by the desk. Vargas and Pinto started to file in behind him from the hall.