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Semua Bab She Sold a Future Cop: Bab 1 - Bab 10

10 Bab

Chapter 1

The whole time the compound's men were dragging me back toward that room, I could not put words to what I felt.Claire had not come to save me.She was in a little white dress, arm hooked through Derek Vaughn's like the two of them were out on a date.Derek.The guy she grew up with.She'd talked about him constantly.His family had no money, she always said. He dropped out before he finished eighth grade and went to work."You made it all the way inside the compound and you're still not behaving."Guess you have to take a beating first."Derek stood over me, looking down, his voice half mockery and half amusement.I stared back at him with something bitter turning over in my chest, and all I could manage was a crooked smile.Claire looked at me and adopted a reasonable tone."Ryan, you're a smart guy. Smart people read the room."I know you've got a lot of rich friends. Just settle in, stay put, help us get their money."Then we let you walk out."I didn't buy a word of

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Chapter 2

"All right, baby, I'm starting. You're not going to feel sorry for him, are you?""Not a chance. Hurry up and make him behave so he'll start pulling in money."The baton came down across my head and split my forehead open in an instant.My skull rang. My scalp went numb all over.Something warm ran down the bridge of my nose, and with it a thick smell of iron.Blood.Drops of it the size of beans hit the floor one after another.Derek kicked me over.My hands and feet were tied. My right leg had snapped in the fall out the window, and the pain of it went straight through the middle of me."Run. You like running. You going to run now?"His face was ugly with it. The tendons stood out along the arm holding the baton.He grabbed a fistful of my hair and hauled my head up off the ground to ask me again.When I didn't answer, he hit me again.Every time the baton landed I could feel the current crawling through my nerves.I clenched my jaw until my mouth was slick with blood.

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Chapter 3

Derek walked me over to a desk.The ashtray on it was packed solid with butts.This was the fraud floor. Several dozen people sat at it, some of them sold here like me, some of them here because they wanted to be.Every monitor had scripts and playbooks taped all around the edges, line after line of them.Besides the operators there were always men loitering near the door, so nobody could slip out mid-shift.Derek dropped a script beside me and put a hand on my shoulder."Message your parents. Tell them you were in a car accident overseas and you need forty thousand for surgery, right now."Family first. That's where they start.Claire had told him I was a rich kid, that even my teachers were soft on me.She'd assumed it was because my family had money and influence, and that was why I got special treatment.The truth was that I got good grades and worked hard, and my teachers knew I was an orphan, so they looked after me.I swallowed."I'm an orphan. I don't have parents."

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Chapter 4

Following the plan, I logged into my messaging account on the desk computer and opened Director Foster's profile."Mr. Foster, are you around?"I've got a deal here. Seventy thousand in, and it pays back double by the end of the year."I had one line typed and was about to send it.Then it hit me. What if Foster's profile was set to show everything?If Derek caught something in it, I was finished.Derek knocked my hand off the keyboard."Idiot. Nobody opens with a business deal. Follow the script."It's somebody you know, so go straight at it. Say you're sick, you're in the hospital, you need seventy thousand right now, wired to a different account."I nodded and did as I was told.I retyped it the way he wanted and sent it, and my stomach would not settle.I had no idea whether Foster would turn around and send the money.But I was certain he would notice something was wrong.Because besides teaching at the academy and running admissions, Foster was the host of a well-kno

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Chapter 5

My heart went straight into my throat.Thankfully, when it loaded, Foster's profile only showed the last three days.I let out another breath, like I'd gotten right to the edge of a drop and been pulled back.It was exactly the case Foster taught his students.They steer you toward a domestic account for the transfer.They tell you the person is too sick to handle money themselves, so you believe it.But Foster was a step ahead. The second he had the account number, he wrote back."Give me a little while. I'm going to go get the cash together. Which hospital are you at, again?"Derek answered in my place."Don't ask questions. The doctors here are all over me. If I don't pay they're going to throw me out."Mr. Foster, I'm begging you. Help me."That settled it for him. I was inside a compound.And there was no chance I was there by choice.Top of the state, holding an acceptance letter from the academy, a scholarship attached to it, a clear road in front of me.Nobody wal

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Chapter 6

"If I don't take every one of them down, I've got no business calling myself a fraud expert."I had no idea how Foster was going to run a rescue.To keep Derek and Claire from noticing anything, I sat at the computer and kept pushing him to hurry up and get to the bank.The windows around the floor were sealed, but I'd been outside during my escape, so I had some sense of the ground.I've always had a good memory. I rebuilt the position of the building in my head.And I started feeding my location to the other end, buried inside the words.Where in the world I was, for instance.So I wrote: "Mr. Foster, are you at the bank yet? Seventy thousand is a lot. Don't you have to sit down with a manager for that? Please hurry. The nurses here keep handing me forms in Spanish and I can't read any of it. They keep saying the only place that can take me is four hours up the road in Guatemala City."What was north of the building, for instance.So I wrote: "Mr. Foster, my leg is killing m

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Chapter 7

"Look. I'm about to clear seventy thousand right there. The second it lands, we go."He pointed at my desk.I laughed at him on the inside.I'd have paid money to see Claire's face if she knew Derek was planning his exit with another woman, and buying property back home with her.Not that it was any of my business.All I wanted was out of this place.In that half hour, a few more of the operators got dragged into the side rooms and beaten for losing marks.The screaming carried across the whole floor, which was the point. It kept everyone else working.Claire came out in an off-the-shoulder dress with a cigarette in her teeth and sat down next to me.She was flushed from it. There were marks all down her neck.She took a long drag and blew it into my face."You heard them screaming, right?"Ryan, you're almost out of time. If that seventy thousand doesn't land, don't bother begging."I kept my head down and let her say it.Claire, you idiot. The boy you grew up with has b

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Chapter 8

"Let's just take his kidneys out."Derek turned and looked at me when he said it.Every hair on me stood up. My heart went sideways.Claire's mouth curved."I'll call Wes right now. He handles organs."He'll be here in a few minutes. He takes the kid, we make another payday."My face went stiff.This woman. Selling me into a compound to run scams wasn't enough. Now she wanted me dead.Was there still time for them to reach me?Was I about to die here?No.I had to find somewhere to hide, and fast. They could not be allowed to move me out before the authorities came through that gate.I thought it through, then clamped both hands over my stomach and let my face go to pieces."I need the bathroom."It's bad."I pulled a fistful of napkins off the desk and stood up red-faced.Derek caught my shoulder, and his eyes were vicious."Bathroom, my ass. You're thinking about running again."My heart was slamming. I kept my face calm."Run where? There's nowhere to go."I real

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Chapter 9

Claire's mouth curved. She walked up to the door and patted it."Ryan, don't be scared."It's two kidneys. It isn't going to kill you."You can't hide in there forever. You have to eat and drink sometime."Come out like a good boy, hand them over, and we'll send you home. How's that?"At that point I had nothing left worth hiding.I shouted through the door."Claire, you filthy bitch. I hope you rot."The words went into her like a blade.She had not expected me to fight back with a foot already in the grave.Her mouth twitched, and the look that came into her eyes was murderous."What are you standing around for? Get somebody over here to break it down."A crowd of big men came in from outside carrying steel pipes.Wes folded his arms."Tell your people to go easy. Don't wreck the organs. I can't get a price on damaged goods."Derek shook out a cigarette and handed it over with a smile on him."Of course, of course. You're right."Leave it to us. We know what we're do

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Chapter 10

"Finished?"Derek's eyes narrowed.Then the sirens started outside, one after another, high and hard.The men began scattering and shouting."Cops!""There's a lot of them!"Before Derek and Claire could react, a wave of authorities came into the compound in full gear.Ropes came down out of a helicopter overhead. Somebody had already cut off the way out behind them.Derek took one look and stopped thinking entirely. He turned and ran.He ran the compound, so he had an escape route of his own.Claire didn't hesitate either. She went after him.After everything, I was not about to lie there and watch the two of them disappear.I picked up one of the steel pipes and limped after them.The compound had gone to pieces so fast that the crowd was scattered and packed in at the same time.Catching up to them took no effort at all.They made it to a small room with a hidden passage that ran down to the underground garage.Derek had just pushed the cabinet aside and had his hand

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