Anybody's Daughter (Angela Evans Series No. 2) by Pamela Samuels Young Read Free Book Online Page A

his home.
    Cooper “Coop” Ford had been his unofficial mentor in the drug trade. Dre had modeled himself after this simple man who ran his operation like a business and had the smarts to get out when he’d collected enough cash to invest in legal operations. Coop now owned a chain of laundromats, several apartment buildings and two neighborhood bars, all in the hood. He treated his workers fairly and kept his businesses legit.
    Greeting him at the door in a T-shirt, sweat pants and bare feet, Coop led Dre into his office, walking him down a marbled hallway lined with expensive African art. Coop had wooly salt-and-pepper hair. His penetrating eyes and the deep folds in his face conveyed a hard edge that seemed out of place in such posh surroundings.
    After closing the double doors of his office, Coop perched himself on the edge of an antique desk. The impressive space had two walls of books that Coop had actually read. He was partially responsible for Dre’s keen interest in biographies. Coop lived with a wife he’d never married and their two teenage girls.
    Dre sat across from him on a cream-colored leather couch.
    “What’s up, youngster? You’ve got me a little concerned with this late-night visit.”
    “My niece is missing.” Dre looked down at his hands. “She’s only thirteen.”
    Dre quickly recounted everything they’d learned from Sydney. “I’m thinking this Jaden dude she went to meet was probably some sexual predator. Since he’s operating in Compton, he’s gotta be a brother.”
    “That’s a crazy situation. I can’t keep my girls off Facebook. I’ll never understand why everybody needs to put all their business in the street.”
    “I gotta get her back,” Dre said. “I’m trying to figure out where to start. I was hoping you might have a connection to some dudes who might know something.”
    “Man, I don’t associate with perverts.” He stood, grabbed a bottle of Brandy from a shelf and poured himself a drink. He raised the bottle in Dre’s direction.
    “You still a teetotaler?”
    Dre nodded.
    Coop took a long sip of his drink and returned to the same position on the edge of the desk. “Man, I’m truly feelin’ your pain. I hate to do this, but I gotta put something on your mind.”
    Dre tensed. “I’m listening.”
    “The drug biz we knew is no more. These fools out here have no integrity. They ain’t trafficking crack or meth. They’re trafficking girls. Young girls.”
    Angela’s comment about Brianna possibly being a victim of sex trafficking came back to him with the force of a solid punch in the stomach.
    “I thought that shit only happened to women from Mexico or the Philippines.”
    Coop shook his head. “Not anymore. Girls are the new crack, my brother. The Crips, the Bloods and even the Sureños, a Mexican gang, are in on it. They call themselves guerilla pimps. They’re literally snatching girls off the street, breaking ’em down and forcing ’em into prostitution. Having ’em turn ten, twenty tricks a day. The younger the better. Pimping girls is easier, cheaper and less likely to get you shot or land you in jail for any serious time. And unlike a kilo, one girl can be sold over and over and over again. There’s a ready supply and an endless demand.”
    Dre locked his arms across his chest. He didn’t even notice that his leg was bouncing up and down. It had been hard enough for him to imagine Brianna in the hands of some pedophile. To think of her being turned out by a pimp was more than he could handle.
    “There’s only one dude I know of with the time or the brains to run a scam on Facebook like the one you just described,” Coop continued. “You need to start with The Shepherd.”
    Dre squinted up at him. “Who the hell is that?”
    “His real name is Rodney Merriweather. Smart young cat, barely thirty, if that. I heard he took a lot of flack from the roughnecks in his neighborhood growing up. So he hooked up with the Stoneside gang when he