Whistleblower ✓

46 | josefina

All the news outlets used the same photo of Josefina Rodriguez—a tiny, pixelated shot taken over a year ago at someone's birthday party, with the flash on.

Whoever had done the red-eye correction had clumsy fingers, because the black dots meant to align with her pupils were slightly off. Josefina was nineteen, round-faced with acne speckled cheeks. Dark hair, dark eyes, deep brown skin. She had a wide smile and the arm of a friend who'd been cropped out of the picture draped over her shoulders.

I'd had nightmares about her.

The worst ones weren't the gruesome ones—though those were pretty horrible. Her body, cold and shriveled and black with bruises, stuffed in a duffle bag and tossed into a mound of garbage somewhere on a back road. Floating face-down in a water tank. Tucked in a field of maize somewhere off a well-traveled road, passed by thousands of oblivious souls every day.

I'd tried to think of Josefina as a subject. A story to be reported, and nothing more. It made it easier to sit through class without wanting to press my forehead to my desk and scream.

But as I marched down the hall to Ellison's front door, Josefina Rodriguez was not my subject.

She was a girl.

She was a stranger and mi hermanita and someone I wanted very, very much to be okay.

But I had prepared myself for the worst.

I was ready for it.

So when Ellison opened her apartment door, her face white as printer paper but her eyes wet and puffy, I braced for the sucker-punch.

"She's alive, Laurel."

Breath left my body like a ghost. Like I'd been haunted—like something awful and heavy had been occupying the space in my chest where my lungs should've been allowed to expand.

"Oh my God," I whispered. "Oh my God, are you—are you sure?"

Ellison nodded.

I pressed my lips together tightly and squatted, because I felt like my knees would buckle if I remained upright. I rocked on my heels, one hand covering my eyes and the other clutching the doorframe so I wouldn't topple over.

She's alive.

Ellison cleared her throat and said, from so close I knew she'd squatted along with me, "She's talking to the FBI right now. She was in Texas. She said Vaughn gave her seven grand and told her to keep her mouth shut, so she made the trip up and crossed the border into McAllen. She heard about the article on TV. She waited to come forward because she was scared they'd deport her. But then she heard about Sarah, and—"

"Vaughn gave her seven grand," I repeated, then lifted my head to look Ellison in the eye.

He'd paid her off.

Seven thousand dollars. That was what he'd said he spent at the bar.

"They were able to confirm it from that email account someone tipped them off about," Ellison said. "Apparently almost everything in there was spam except for a few deleted messages sent the night Josefina went missing. Something about needing cash. They think Vaughn sent a friend to that bar to get it. Charged it to his card to cover their tracks."

Bodie St. James had been right. That email account was sketchy.

Josefina was safe.

She'd escaped. She'd crossed the border.

She'd gone through so much alone.

I sniffled and wiped at my eyes again.

"Can we—can we meet her?" I asked, my voice small and squeaky through my tears.