Unseen (Will Trent / Atlanta Series)

through one of the files until she found a photograph. She put it on the table. The young girl in the picture was pretty and blonde, posing for the camera in that seductive way that teenage girls don’t know is dangerous.
    Branson said, “Marie Sorensen. Sixteen years old. She worked at a cheese shop in River Crossing, one of our upscale malls. Lots of bored suburban kids hang out there. Sorensen’s by far the prettiest. She managed to catch Big Whitey’s eye.”
    Nick told Amanda, “I’ll scan it in for you.”
    “Don’t bother.” Amanda guessed, “Big Whitey got Sorensen hooked on heroin?”
    “He got her into his car.” Branson took out another photo, this one showing Sorensen looking ten years older and twenty pounds lighter. Both eyes were bruised. There were open sores on her face. Patches of hair were missing from her head.
    Branson said, “Another one of Big Whitey’s patterns, but this one he does himself because he enjoys it.” She put the pictures side by side on the table. “He tells them that he works for a modeling agency. They buy it because they’ve been told they’re beautiful all their lives. He gets them to the car, forces them into the trunk, then drives them to a hotel on the coast—Tybee, Fort King George, Jekyll. He rapes them. His friends rape them. He shoots them up with heroin. He tricks them out.”
    Branson paused. She looked away from the photos.
    “Sorensen was defiant at first. He put her in a dog crate to teach her a lesson. Took about a week to break her, then he put her up for sale on the Internet. One-sixty for the lunchtime special, two-fifty for an hour. Four hundred for two hours. She does ten, fifteen clients a day. Her habit runs a couple hundred dollars. Not a bad business model. Do the math.”
    Faith stared straight ahead. She couldn’t look at the photos, either. Will wondered if she was thinking about her daughter.
    Will asked, “What happened to her?”
    Branson said, “Sorensen got old real quick. That’s the problem with these young girls. They don’t stay young for long. After two months, she was moved to the next stop on the circuit. That’s what these guys do—they move them around, never let them get settled in one place.”
    She paused again. The pain was obviously still fresh. “Eventually, the girls get sent out to California, where they’re tricked out on the streets. Sorensen ended up in LA. She managed to call her mom a few times, tell her what happened. Mom hired a private detective to try to find her.”
    Faith asked, “She didn’t file a report in Macon? The girl was sixteen years old.”
    Branson’s face told the story. This was the ball she had dropped. This was why she was so obsessed with the case. “We filed a missing persons report when she disappeared. When the mom told me about the phone calls, I reached out to LA. They told me it was a lost cause. They’ve got so many girls streaming into the city that they had to close the Hollywood bus station.”
    Faith smoothed her lips together like she was putting on lipstick.
    Branson slid out another photo. Will recognized the tiny ruler beside Marie Sorensen’s head as the kind that medical examiners used during autopsies.
    She said, “The private dick in LA tracked down an address. The police searched the apartment three times before they found her. She was crammed into a suitcase underneath the bed. Still alive.” Branson let out a slow breath. “Still alive.”
    She looked down at the autopsy photo. No one pushed her to go on.
    Branson took another deep breath.
    “Mom got the first plane out to California. Marie’s in the hospital for three weeks. They patch her back together, get some weight on her, take her down off the heroin, only they can’t heal her brain. Two weeks after mom gets her home, she sneaks out and kills herself. Heroin. Cops found her behind the church. She was six months to the day from walking out of that mall with Big Whitey.”
    They were all silent after that. Will looked at the three photographs. Branson hadn’t exaggerated. Sorensen was beautiful. He could imagine the girl would believe a modeling agency was interested. The autopsy photo was a sharp contrast, a dark reminder that the only person who would want her now was her grieving mother.
    Finally, Amanda asked, “You talked to Sorensen when she returned to Macon?”
    “Yes.” Branson looked down at her hands. “He never gave hera name. She was told from the start to call him Big