Deadly Traffic (Will Harper Mystery, #5)

They came to America for safety.
They found themselves enslaved...

David Crosby’s fifth hardboiled thriller kicks off with a heartrending discovery : a gritty underbelly of modern-day slavery that’s been operating in reporter Will Harper’s backyard. Will’s informant’s a terrified teenager-- a young Guatemalan immigrant who’s just escaped the elegant compound where she was enslaved as a maid. She’s on the run from hired goons who work for the sugar tycoon who held her captive, at the same time searching for her brother and sister, who’ve been sold as well.

All she knows is this—she and her siblings were enslaved by the smugglers they paid to help them enter the country. But Will soon finds that the network includes corrupt farmers, ruthless coyotes, scheming Russian mobsters, and countless henchmen, all of whom sell innocent refugees for back-breaking labor and forced sex work.

The timing’s good for a searing expose about slavery in Florida--a local paper’s put Will and his live-in girlfriend Callie on the payroll, allowing them to investigate anything they choose. The new job is just Will’s style: he and Callie can write as much or as little as they want, all while conducting research from Will’s beloved yacht, The WanderLust.

But suddenly Will’s mission turns urgent. As he starts to investigate, he stumbles upon the topic of waterborne sex trafficking--and quickly discovers a new meaning for the term “party boat." Soon, he learns that one of the missing siblings is being trafficked aboard a particularly notorious boat--which means that Will has an abrupt, action-packed rescue mission on his hands.