Chapter 19

As soon as she had Magic Carpet high enough, Jennifer turned back and flew over the airstrip, where they could see Ellen and Robin starting back toward the ranch. “Wow,” Jennifer said, “That worked out a lot better than I thought it would.”

“I thought I could see that coming,” Norma smirked. “I think it’ll work just fine. But Jennifer, you realize, don’t you, that this may be the easiest rescue we’ll ever have?”

“That was easy?” she replied as she rocked the wings to wave goodbye to the two on the horses, then turned to the south and started to climb. She didn’t want to be real high until she was through the Las Vegas area since it would simplify dealing with the air traffic controllers.

“It wasn’t necessarily easy for us since we weren’t prepared for it, but a lot of the tricky pieces fell right in our laps. We didn’t have a difficult intervention separating the girl from her pimp, since Clay took care of most of it for us before we were really aware of what was happening. Robin had no doubts about getting away from the life. She was flying on drugs, true, but nothing that had her addicted very badly so separating her from them was easy, with no withdrawal problems or freakouts. She had understanding people around her while she went through it and recovered from her injuries. And, thanks to Ellen, she’s in a position where she has an alternative to going back to the life. It may or may not be a long-term solution, but Robin will have a chance to figure out what she wants to do with her life. That’s what we were trying to accomplish, after all.”

“Yeah, well, when you put it that way, I can see how it could have been a lot harder.”

“It’ll probably be much harder at times, but I’m glad we did this because I think there are a number of lessons we can learn from it.”

“I’ve thought that too,” Jennifer agreed. “One of the things I think we’ve learned is that we’re going to have to be ready the next time. We threw this rescue together on the fly, but we were lucky that we had the cabin close by and Ellen to help us out.”

“I couldn’t agree more. That’s one of the things I think I’ve learned. I’ve always known we need to have a place where we can separate girls from the life for a while so we can give them a chance to get their feet under them, some place where they’re not going to have pimps bugging them or easy access to drugs. I’d been thinking in terms of some suburban house in the Phoenix area, but I’m thinking now that it’s going to have to be more isolated. Don’t get me wrong, Jennifer. You’ve got a nice place for what you want, but I was uncomfortable there and I think it’s a little too isolated.”

“I’d have to agree with that. We’d have had it a lot worse if I hadn’t had this plane available, and I had the time to get free to fly it in and out. I suppose it’d be possible to find some place more in the country but within easy reach of Phoenix.”

“We’d have to be quiet about where it is,” Norma agreed. “But it would be good to have it on a piece of land big enough that what we do won’t annoy the neighbors. That was another thing that had me concerned about the idea of a suburban house, since a lot of them in Phoenix are right on top of their neighbors, like mine.”

“Well, it probably could be done,” Jennifer agreed. “But the thing that really concerns me is how we’re going to deal with girls who are underage, like Robin. Let’s face it, a girl who’s over eighteen is one thing, but one her age or younger, that’s a whole different problem.”

“It’s a problem, no doubt, and I’m sure we will come up with girls who are younger than she is, perhaps much younger. I’m a little less concerned about it in the Phoenix area, mostly because I know people in the children’s services agencies, and they know what I’m trying to do even if they don’t always understand it. I’m hopeful that we can get Hearts of Gold set up as a short-term foster care facility, but that’s going to mean other hoops to jump through. I’m hoping we can come up with some people who are willing to act as long-term foster care providers who will also understand the particular problems these girls have, but other than a few ideas that’s mostly on the to-do list. That’s especially important in that we’re going to find girls like Robin who we don’t dare send back to their families.”

“Now that we’ve had the chance to listen to Robin when she wasn’t freaking out, I don’t think her family was as bad as we assumed when we first heard her,” Jennifer replied thoughtfully. “But I don’t think they were very good either, and under the circumstances I would be very reluctant to send her back to them.”

“There will be cases where the family isn’t bad and will be supportive, but we won’t be able to know that until we’ve done some investigation. What’s more, I don’t think we want the typical family services agency being the ones to do the investigation since they’re likely to miss something important, at least from our point of view.”

“How are you going to handle that?”

“I don’t know yet,” Norma sighed. “I suppose while we’re still pretty small I can do it myself, but there’ll come a time I’m going to need someone to help me on that. I just hope I can find them before we need them. That’s another problem, we’re going to need staff. You’re not going to be able to help out except in an emergency, and Jennifer, as much as I like you and as committed as you are to Hearts of Gold, you’re not really in a position where you can be a counselor.”

“I saw that when we were working with Robin. About all I could do was to follow your lead, and I found myself wondering what I could say if things got bad.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that, because we need more than counselors. You’re the facilitator, and that’s something I can’t do anywhere near as well as you can. Besides, if you’re moving up to the ranch in the future that’ll be about all you can do. But I have to admit, several times I was wishing that we had Nanci with us while we were working with Robin. She’s a lot closer in age, she’s very level-headed, and she’s been there and done that. I think she would make a great counselor for Hearts of Gold.”

“Well, maybe,” Jennifer frowned. “I have my doubts, and one of them is that I doubt she’ll be available to us in the first place. Just between you and me, Jon and Tanisha tell me she’s trying to make up her mind about whether to go to seminary so she can be an ordained minister. She’s already what Methodists call a ‘local minister’ and is associate pastor of a church in Flagstaff.”

“I didn’t know that. That makes me think even more that she’d be a good counselor for us.”

“I’m not so sure. Yes, she understands what the kids are going through, but is she going to take a religious approach to solving their problems? That might work for some girls like it worked for her, but it will turn others off.”

“You might be right on that,” Norma replied thoughtfully. “Still, she might work out well for the staff we need, and we’re going to need staff. I still want to have as much staff as we can who have been in the life, and they’re not exactly everywhere. What’s more, we’re going to need some medical contacts like Liz, who can help us out and not be real anxious to just dump a girl into the system.”

“It’s possible we might be able to get Liz herself,” Jennifer smiled. “I mean not as full-time staff but as our medical contact. She was telling me she’s getting tired of the hours she has to work in Las Vegas and was thinking about looking to get into a private practice somewhere or just moving somewhere else. I haven’t actually sat down with her to find out what she’d have to have to move to Phoenix, but I’ll be seeing her at least twice in the next two or three weeks.”

It took three hours to fly Magic Carpet back to Phoenix, and the two talked about what they’d learned from the experience all the way, and Norma took a lot of notes during the trip. Both of them agreed that while the way this rescue had come about had been a pain in the neck, they’d learned a lot in the process. They still had a lot to do – more than they’d understood before the experience – but they had a better idea of what was going to be needed to make the project a success.

Back in Phoenix, Jennifer had to pick up some pieces of her life that had been scattered by her unexpected absence. Fortunately things had been slow at Lambdatron so she hadn’t been missed too badly, but there were still loose ends to pick up.

One of those loose ends was Will. While she’d called him virtually every time she’d been near a phone just to check in, she’d had to cancel being with him the previous weekend. So one of the first things she did when she got back to the condo was to give him a call to see if he would be free the coming weekend. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it,” she told him. “But it was in a good cause. I have to say it wasn’t anywhere near as much fun to be at the cabin and not have you there.”

“Yeah, Miz Hoffman, I missed you too. I take it everything is cool now?”

“I think so, except that it looks like you have a temporary stepsister. Your mom wound up taking Robin back to the Bar H Bar. It turns out the girl is absolutely horse-crazy, and I think she caught it from your mom. I don’t know how long she’s going to stay there or what’s going to happen in the long run, but it’ll be a safe place for her to stay while she works out a few things in her life.”

“Knowin’ Mom, it don’t surprise me none,” he chuckled. “It ain’t gonna be the first time she’s done somethin’ like that, although I gotta admit that this time was a little different. I ’spect that it was just as well that I wasn’t there for that, since it might have interfered with buildin’ the girl’s trust in you. It’s the same thing as workin’ with an abused horse, the first thing you gotta do is to get them to trust that you ain’t gonna hurt ’em. Sometimes that ain’t easy.”

“That’s it, exactly. We were having trouble with that until your mom showed up with Suzy, and that turned the kid around as much as anything. Anyway, if I can get Skyhook this weekend would it be all right if I came to see you?”

“It’d be fine with me,” he replied. “It ain’t been that long and it still seems like too long. The only thing is that I’m going to have to spend some time working with a horse over at Robertson’s, and I don’t think nobody ought to be around when I do. She’s still pretty skittish but I’ve been workin’ with her every night and she’s startin’ to come around. But I don’t think I want her gettin’ distracted.”

“I suppose I can go shopping or something for a while,” she replied. “Not that I’m a shopaholic or anything, but I could kill some time with it.”

“That’ll be fine, Miz Hoffman. I’ll be lookin’ forward to seein’ you so’s you can tell me the whole story.”

The next day Jennifer was busy at her office at Lambdatron, trying to get a few things caught up, among them straightening out why a project she was responsible for was lagging behind. It was something where she didn’t want to stick her nose in too firmly, because she was trying to build confidence in the relatively new engineers working on the project. There had to be some way to nudge them in the right direction without getting too involved, and she was trying to figure out some way to manage it when the telephone rang.

As always, she was not very happy about being interrupted by the telephone, but her irritation eased considerably when she heard, “Hi, this is Brenda Hodunk. I’ll bet you thought I’d fallen off the face of the earth.”

“Not quite,” Jennifer said. “I see a report you’ve done every now and then, but now that I think about it, it has to have been a while since I saw the last one.”

“Well, I hope it’ll be a while before you see another one I’ve done from the sandbox. In fact, never again would be real good although I don’t hold out a lot of hope for it. That’s proving to be a lot bigger mess than anyone realized it would be.”

“To tell you the truth I haven’t paid a great deal of attention to what’s been going on in the gulf since my husband got back, and that’s been a while, now. So what can I do for you today, Brenda?”

“I’ve been back for a few weeks and have been trying to catch up with the pile on my desk,” Brenda told her. “I’m calling about that idea you pitched to me, an hour report on sex work. I still think it’s a good idea, although it’s clear that it’s going to have to be carefully done. I just wanted to find out if you’re still interested in being involved before I start trying to sell it upstairs. I have to say I’m more likely to get approval of the idea if you’re part of the project.”

“Yes, I’m still interested in it,” Jennifer replied, brightening up. She’d all but given up on the idea, although she wasn’t about to admit it to Brenda. Now it looked like it was showing signs of life again. “I told you last year that this is always going to be a problem, and a year isn’t going to change things very much.”

“That’s one of the things that’s appealing about it,” she heard Brenda say. “If we can take our time doing it, maybe do it a piece at a time, we can do a much better job than if we had to throw things together in a big hurry. That happens a lot in this business. The only thing is that I want the segments to be reflected all over the country, not just in Phoenix and Las Vegas.”

“About all I can say is that I can ask around. Norma and I probably know of some people we could talk to, but the odds are they’re still going to be around the west somewhere.”

“It would be real good if we could do at least one segment here in New York,” Brenda replied thoughtfully. “I think I know of some leads where we might be able to find someone to talk to.”

“I think we should reflect different aspects of the business. I’d really like to find someone who’s been on the streets, had a tough time of it, and barely survived. We can’t keep this all sweetness and light. I think we need to reflect the dark side, too.”

“I think you’re right on that. We need to be balanced and objective.”

“Look, I’m working on a book that tries to set out the good and bad parts of the life. It’s aimed at beginners or girls who are considering it. I can e-mail you a copy of it, and it might give you some food for thought.”

“It sounds like a good idea, and maybe it will help me sell the project. I’ll pass it upstairs and see if it helps arouse some interest. Let’s keep in touch. I’m in a position now where I can do a better job of it.”

On Friday afternoon Jennifer fired up Skyhook and pointed it toward Will. It hadn’t been a long time since she’d seen him, but it seemed long. This business of flying to Mississippi every two or three weekends to see him was a stopgap at best, but it was better than having him in the Persian Gulf where she couldn’t see him at all. At least the end was in sight; in another six months or so his tour at Keesler should be ending, and then he’d be going somewhere reasonable, or getting out of the Air Force entirely not long after that.

She was flying eastward, away from the sun and into the oncoming darkness, so in spite of an early start and the long days this time of year it was getting close to dark before Skyhook was on the ground at Gulfport-Biloxi Regional. It was a place she had gotten to know all too well for her tastes.

Will was waiting for her, of course; he knew she was flying in and when she would arrive. It was always good to see him again, and a kiss and hug was first on the agenda even before tying down the Learjet.

But this time, Will seemed nervous, perhaps a little unsure of himself. That was unlike him; he was always confident and calm. “Will, is something the matter?” she asked.

“No, but somethin’ unexpected has come up and we need to talk about it,” he told her as he got her one small bag out of the plane. “I think it’s good news, but it’s just that I don’t know how to handle it. Let’s at least get in the car and get the air conditionin’ on, since it’s really soupy outside today.”

“No fooling. It was pretty warm in Phoenix today but this is a lot more uncomfortable.”

A few minutes later they were in the old Chevy that Will drove around locally. It could have been in better shape. Still, Will said it got him where he needed to go, and he couldn’t ask much more of it than that.

Once they were driving off the airport, Jennifer asked, “So what’s the big news?”

“It’s kind of a long story, Miz Hoffman. This horse I’ve been workin’ with, Joyful, is over in Louisiana, not far over the state line. She’s comin’ along but she ain’t there yet, but when she gets recovered she ought to make for a nice casual ridin’ horse for someone who’ll treat her right. Well, anyway, a couple of weeks ago I was real hot when I wrapped up with her, so I stopped at this little store to get me a soda. All I had on me was a five and the guy behind the counter was out of ones. He said he could give me a bunch of quarters or a lottery ticket in change. I didn’t want to have no pocketful of quarters ridin’ around in my pants, so I took the ticket.”

“I didn’t know you played the lottery.”

“Normally I don’t. I’m Nevada boy enough to know that it’s mostly just a way for the house to take your money, only in this case the house is the government. But I figured, hell, it was only a couple of bucks, you know?”

“Will, you’re trying to tell me something. Is it that you hit the lottery?”

“Well, yes and no. I didn’t get all six numbers, but I got five. The pot was gettin’ pretty big, though, so five numbers is worth a little less than two hundred thousand dollars before taxes.”

“That’s a lot of money, Will.”

“It is indeed, Miz Hoffman. I ain’t done nothin’ about it yet, ’cause I wanted to talk to you about it, and maybe have you run it by your accountant so we can figure out how to keep the government from taking any more than we have to let them. I got almost a year before I have to turn the ticket in, so I figure there ain’t no rush to do it.”

“That’s good thinking, Will,” she smiled. “The government is the big winner in the lottery, and they get you coming and going. So what are you going to do with the money?”

“I’ve been thinkin’ about that, too. Miz Hoffman, I ain’t dug into it real deep, but I figure that if the government only takes a third of it in taxes, there’s enough left over for me to finish off buyin’ out the shares in the Bar H Bar that I’ve been tryin’ to do for years. That’d still leave me enough money left over to do somethin’ useful with, like maybe puttin’ some of it toward the new house. I ain’t sure that’s the best investment strategy, though.”

“That would be a good one to run past the accountant,” she agreed. “Since there’s a real estate investment involved, there are all sorts of little tax loopholes I don’t know about, but the goal seems like a good idea.”

“I think so too. Over the years I’ve tried to live real cheap so I can put my spare money into buyin’ out them shares. I ain’t one to throw my money around an’ I don’t think this is going to change things none. What it does do is mean that, if the Air Force decides to ship me overseas and I let my enlistment run out, I won’t be strugglin’ to have to pay off the rest of the shares or have to ask you to help me out with it.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything about where they’re going to send you.”

“No, not a word,” he shrugged. “I don’t expect to hear anything for at least another couple months and it could go longer. But this money, it does make me look at things a little bit different.”

“Are you thinking about getting out of the Air Force no matter where they send you?”

“That’s one thing I could do, Miz Hoffman. It sure would make things easier to decide if they do try to ship me overseas. But the heck of it is that I made up my mind a long time ago that I wanted to get in my twenty if I could, but that was before you came along. So it all wants some thinkin’ about and at least we got some time to do it.”

Jennifer sat back and tried to think about this news a little. It really could change things in unforeseen ways, and some of them she wasn’t sure she welcomed.

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