Page 49 of The Outsider
“Tell me what you know,” John said at last. “I’ll fill in the blanks.”
I sat across from him in the other chair. “Let’s start with this whole Jameson thing.”
I told him what Asha had said about the family’s feud and their strong opposition to outsiders. When I finished, he leaned back in his chair, considering me.
“All true,” he said. “They won’t accept you. Wouldn’t matter who you were; you’re not one of us, and the fact that it’smebringing you home is gonna be a major thorn in the old bastard’s side. He never liked me.”
“Why?” I asked, and he shrugged.
“I never did anything to them personally, but he and Granddad always hated each other, so I guess I inherited the grudge. Having a bit of a wild streak when I was a teenager didn’t help.”
A ghost of a smile touched my lips. I’d heard all about John’s stint as a rebellious teen—the silly pranks he’d played, the trouble he’d gotten himself into. Against my will, it softened me a little, reminded me that Ididknow him…whatever Asha said.
“What happened when your grandfather died?” I asked, more gently this time. “I…heard that Jameson was supposed to become chairman, but then something happened to change people’s minds.”
John chuckled darkly. “You could say that. That ‘something’ was a bunch of human traffickers.”
I blanched. “What?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, his eyes glazed with memory. “See, they got a kid to lure Allie to them when the Armstrongs visited the trading post. They get kids to talk to other kids, gain their trust, and then abduct them.”
I shivered at the memory of the woman who’d tried to lure me the same way.
He cleared his throat. “They sell them at slave markets that cater to a certain…customer. The younger, the better. I don’t have to tell you about the kind of people who shop there, because you met them in Little River.”
Just like the man who’d asked him how much I was.
“Anyway, that’s how they got Allie,” John said, and pain crept into his voice. “I’ve known that kid since the day she was born. Held her, fed her, played with her, babysat her countless times.”
I reached across the table and touched his hand. Allie was his favourite of the Armstrong kids, and through the countless stories I’d been told, John had always acted as her protective big brother.
“I wasn’t going to let them have her. I couldn’t.”
“I know,” I said softly. “So you went after her.”
“And what I found will live with me till the day I die.”
I hesitated, afraid of what I was about to hear, but I’d asked for the truth. I waited, and he swallowed hard before continuing.
“I tracked three men back to their camp, prepared to just find Allie and go. But…they had maybe a dozen kids there. Working. Serving them. Wearing ripped, dirty clothes, looking like hell. And while I was doing recon, a boy went into a tent with one of the men and didn’t come out for a while. When he left, he was crying, shaking.”
John’s hand trembled in mine.
“I had to end it,” he said, icy anger creeping into his voice. “I couldn’t just leave them there.”
I nodded numbly, squeezing his hand, and John gave a grim smile.
“They weren’t expecting me, so it wasn’t hard. Took out two of them but kept the third alive. Bound him up and left him there till I got the kids to safety. They were all from the Post, as we call it, so it wasn’t so hard to get them home. I wanted to take Allie home, too…but she wouldn’t let me. She was obviously scared, so she stuck to me like glue.”
I bit my lip. “Did they…hurt her?”
John grimaced. “She was new, so from what she said, they just made her do chores around the camp. They were planning to leave soon, take the kids with them to sell.”
He took a deep breath and continued. “I made Allie hide nearby while I went back to deal with the last guy. I wanted to know where they were going to take the kids, and who they planned to sell them to. Only he wasn’t going to give it up so easy. So…I had to be persuasive.”
The room was silent except for the crackling of the fire, and the air felt suddenly heavy. Finally, I got the nerve to speak.
“What did you do?”
