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was right about that. The streets were deserted. Even the drug dealers and hookers
    were smart enough to hunker down somewhere with a heater. He wondered what exactly that
    said about his own intelligence.
    Just then the door to the apartment complex opened, and a woman stepped out with a
    teenage girl. The woman wore a heavy parka, and the girl was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her
    black hair swirling around her shoulders. Blake felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on
    end, and he stepped back further into the shadows.
    “Hello, Susan,” Annis whispered.
    They could hear bits and pieces of the conversation between Susan and the girl, and it
    became apparent that the girl was crying.
    “Please,” the girl said.
    “Shut up. He’ll be here soon. I’m getting a lot of money for your ass.”
    “What did she just say?” Annis asked quietly.
    “It sounded to me like Susan is about to sell the girl.” Holy shit, this was big stuff. Child
    trafficking?
    “Humans actually do such things? What will become of the girl?”
    Blake was quiet for a moment. Most likely the girl would be sold into prostitution, put on
    drugs, and spend the rest of her terrible life getting raped. “Nothing good,” he whispered.
    “Well, then, we can’t let that girl go anywhere,” Annis said.
    Hell no. “Agreed.”
    Up the street, a black sedan slowly turned the corner and skidded on the snowy street.
    The car crept closer, and Blake willed it to keep driving by. He wanted more time for
    recon, but when the car came to a stop in front of Susan, the girl started to cry harder. The whole
    watch-and-learn plan had gone right into the shitter.
    “Fuck,” he whispered.
    “Is this the buyer?”
    “Probably.”
    Annis stepped out of the shadows. “I’m going to kill them both.”
    She might as well have announced she was going to do a load of whites.
    Blake followed Annis across the street, catching the tail end of the conversation between
    the guy in the car and Susan.
    “I told you, two thousand dollars,” Susan said.
    “And I’ve got fifteen hundred.”
    The girl squirmed to try to get away from the grip Susan had on her upper arm, but she
    couldn’t break free.
    “Knock it off, you little bitch,” Susan hissed at the girl, who calmed immediately, a look
    of defeat washing over her.
    Susan leaned back into the car. “Fine. Give me my money and then you can go and enjoy
    your new toy.”
    The girl was the first to see their approach, her eyes growing wide. She glanced at Annis,
    then over at Susan. She looked back over at Blake.
    He shook his head slightly, hoping to convey that she was to remain silent of their
    approach.
    Apparently, she got the message and cast her eyes downward.
    Annis arrived at the driver’s side door and flung it open, pulling out the man by the scruff
    of the neck and took him down to the ground, the snow puffing up around him like smoke. Blake
    briefly checked out the guy while on his way over to Susan. He was average height, average
    build, and especially with the element of surprise on her side, the guy didn’t stand a change
    against Annis as she straddled him and punched him in the face.
    Blake met Susan’s gaze, and it seemed that she finally registered what was going on. She
    looked down at the girl, into the now-empty car, over at Blake, then took off down the street in a
    dead run.
    “Stay here,” Blake said to the girl. “We’re here to help you, and if you take off you’ll
    freeze to death tonight.”
    He ran, the boots crunching under his feet. Although he had lived in Phoenix for nineteen
    years where you had to go to the high country to see any sign of snow, something from his
    childhood of growing up in Alaska clicked in his mind, and his feet were able to hit the snow
    without too much slipping and sliding.
    Susan was obviously a native of maneuvering in the snow. She hauled ass about thirty
    feet in front of him.
    He cursed and put it into high gear.
    After she turned down