Chapter 4 - The Returnee
Gloria Marquez was washing a single white sock in the laundry sink, though the machines behind her were empty.
"I think you met my sister. Leah Ellis."
Gloria twisted the sock until her knuckles whitened. "I never met anyone."
"She was checking the Brightwater contract."
A door slammed at the far end. Gloria flinched and dropped the sock.
"I can help," I said.
"Nobody helps in here. They watch to see who tries."
"I came back because I broke a machine and they said I wasn't worth keeping. The other women are still there."
"At Brightwater?"
"That's what they call it on paper." Her voice cracked. "It isn't a hospital. It's a locked packing warehouse. We worked nights. If anyone fainted, a nurse signed a form saying she'd received therapy."
My stomach turned. Women couldn't consent to treatment they'd never been given; they couldn't appeal a transfer no one admitted happened.
"Did you see Leah?"
Gloria looked at the security camera above the folded uniforms. Its red light blinked.
"I saw a woman in a blue blazer arguing with the men who ran the loading dock," she said. "She kept telling them to let everyone make a phone call. One of them hit her."
I gripped the edge of a washer. "When?"
"June seventeenth. I remember because they made us write the date on every carton."
June seventeenth was four days after Leah vanished.
A buzzer sounded for end of shift. Gloria caught my hand before I could leave.
"Listen. We all had numbers for the transport list. Mine changed every week. But the same number stayed on every invoice."
"24701."
May you like
She nodded. Then she pulled a folded laundry tag from her shoe and pressed it into my palm. It listed six women's names in tiny handwriting. Beside the last was one I knew better than my own.
LEAH ELLIS — HOLD FOR DIRECTOR.
