บททั้งหมดของ The Cost of Cheap: บทที่ 1 - บทที่ 9

Once they had their refunds, every last one of them handed the money straight to Bianca.I went back to the agency.Summer had started and business was good. We were closing big bookings every day."That Aurelia trip for my class is off. They think it's too expensive."My parents stared at me. "Nine ninety-nine is too expensive? We only gave them that price because they're your classmates."I made a noncommittal noise and told them what had happened."Mason pulled the rug out from under you? That little punk. Our contract with Northcrest Air is almost up, and his parents have called me three times about renewing. Maybe we just let it lapse."My mother snorted. "That shopping mess had nothing to do with us. I can't stand people who hear a rumor and treat it like gospel."The mess she meant started with a man who bought a designer bag overseas for the woman he was cheating with, then picked up an identical knockoff on the way home and gave it to his wife. She spotted the fake imm

For the next several days my mother and I practically lived at the agency, handling the airline, the hotels, and every ticket across Aurelia ourselves.Booking admissions for forty-odd people ate two full days on its own.On the third day Hannah came in with the signed forms and the money.The full $1,299 a head, paid up front. My mother and I couldn't stop grinning.Departure was set for the following month, which happened to be the same day Bianca's group was leaving.Once the contracts were signed I went home and slept like the dead.Departure day came fast. I had nothing else going on, so I decided to head to the airport and see Hannah's class off.I opened my front door and found several people I hadn't invited standing on my porch."What are you doing at my house?"I looked past Mason at Bianca, my guard all the way up.They were supposed to be flying out that morning. Why were the two of them on my doorstep with half a dozen classmates?Bianca stepped up and took my h

For a few rare seconds, nobody said anything.Bianca had handled the entire itinerary. Most of them had never so much as glanced at the documents. They had no idea where they were actually going.Every head turned to her."Their tickets are nonstop. Ours has a connection, that's all. Both of us end up in Valenne."She said it without a flicker of doubt, and left out the part where the connection was on the Serevan Coast."That tracks. Ours is only five sixty-nine, so of course there's a layover.""Right? A few extra hours to save four hundred bucks. I'll take it.""I don't know what some people are so proud of. Nonstop coach isn't first class. Honestly a layover sounds better."Bianca's certainty settled them right down.Our two classes had been compared by our teachers since freshman year, and now we were at it again in the middle of an airport."Five sixty-nine. You're brave enough to book that. We're not."Hannah didn't bother arguing. She just took my arm and pulled me a

The truth was I didn't know much. I told them Bianca had found the company online and that I'd refused to have any part of it.They took her tablet and started pulling threads out of it.Once they'd worked through it, the picture was clear. What the class had signed up for was never a travel agency. It was a scam built to reel them in, and they'd been the target from the start.Their layover on the Serevan Coast ran ten hours.The traffickers used that window. They offered to show the group around outside the terminal, walked all thirty-nine of them out of secure transit, and drove them into a compound.Nobody knew yet which compound. Investigators had officers posing online as graduating seniors shopping for a cheap tour, waiting for someone to take the bait.None of it had anything to do with me. I had an empty summer ahead of me, so I started interning at Fairmont Horizon Travel to get some experience.Then one afternoon a crowd came through our front door.I looked at the p