“What do you mean sold, Derek?” God, please let him know something that could help her.
“There’s only one kind of sold, girl. Sold like you’re a piece of meat to the highest bidder. And once he’s bought you, he owns you—body and soul.”
“So these bad guys, the ones I’m pissing off by asking about the escort service, they have their fingers in the slave trade?” She thought of all those young, missing girls. Stolen girls. Thought about them being drugged and raped and beaten until they had no more will to fight. Until prostitution and drug running and everything else seemed the lesser of the evils inflicted on them.
“Hey, whoa.” Derek started backing up. “I didn’t say that.”
“Sure you did. You said bad news, like I’d be sold to some weird pervert guy. That sounds like human trafficking—sex trafficking—to me.”
“Give me a break.” He nodded a little down the street, to where a john was hooking up with a girl for twenty bucks. “That’s sex trafficking right there. Same thing that happens at the escort service, just cheaper. Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“That’s not what you were talking about, Derek, and we both know it. Don’t insult my intelligence.”
“Look, Lacey.” He cast a nervous look behind him. “You can’t be saying things like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like fucking sex slavery. You’re not listening to me. They’ll get you.”
“Who’ll get me?”
“The fucking Russians. They moved in here after Katrina, took over half the city. You know what they do to people who fuck with them?”
A sliver of unease worked its way through the calm reserve Lacey was trying so hard to project. She did know what the Russians were like; at one point she’d considered doing a book on the Russian Mafia’s takeover of Brighton Beach in New York, but she’d scrapped it when she realized just how dangerous the project was.
Nice to know she’d run from the organized crime up there, and had ended up down here in something much more dangerous, much more disgusting.
Didn’t it just figure?
Despite her nervousness, she kept poking at Derek, hoping to make him slip. “That’s a lot of power you’re giving these guys credit for. You really think they can do everything you said?”
“Damn right they can. And more. These guys will fuck you up, Lacey. And laugh while they’re doing it.”
“You seem pretty sure of that. What kind of run-ins have you had with them?”
“Me? I haven’t had any run-ins at all. I’m obviously a lot smarter than you are—I keep my head down and mind my own damn business. You go looking for the shit like it’s a goddamn prize.”
“Are you telling me, seriously, that you’ve never had a problem with these men? And you’re still scared to death of them? That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“I’ve never seen a nuclear warhead either, but that shit scares me too. Some things you don’t have to experience firsthand to know they’ll fuck you up—and fuck you up good.”
Lacey schooled her voice to remain calm as she said, “Yes, but we’ve all heard about what a nuclear bomb can do. What have you heard about these guys?”
He shook his head. “I’ve heard enough.”
“Like what? Do you know who they are? What they do?”
“I know they kill anyone who gets in their way, and that’s been more than enough reason for me to fly under the radar. They hurt girls, Lacey. They sell them, and if the girls don’t do what they want, they drug them. Beat them. Sometimes kill them, if they don’t fall in line.”
“Do they kidnap them?”
The look he shot her was completely incredulous. “Well, you know a bunch of girls who up and volunteer to be the love slave of some sick old fuck?”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot of women who marry men much older than they are.”
He snorted, shaking his head as if he was totally disgusted with her. “This isn’t marriage. This is ownership, pure and simple. Those girls don’t have any rights. It’s like they’re pets and the second they step out of line, they get beat with the newspaper. Or the belt. Or a fucking gun.”
“And the escort service?” she whispered. “What about those girls?”
Derek started, as if he suddenly remembered who he was talking to. And what he was talking about. He started backpedaling as fast as he could. “I’m not talking about them, Lacey. I was just speaking in general. I mean—”
“Don’t bullshit me, Derek. Don’t start lying to me now—not after you put all those horrific pictures in my head.”
“I was trying to warn you. I don’t want you to end up like those other girls.”
“What other girls? Girls like Anne Marie Winston?” She leaned forward, put a hand on his arm. “What happened to Anne Marie, Derek? How did she really die?”
“I don’t know.” He pulled away from her hand, shook his head as if dazed. “I haven’t worked for the service since Veronique and the other girls got busted.”
Derek sighed, then thrust a frustrated hand through his close-cropped hair. “Lacey, you don’t know what you’re asking. You don’t know—”
“Sure I do. I need to know what happened to those dead girls.”
“No, you don’t. All these questions ain’t gonna bring those girls back. All they’re going to do is get you in hot water.” He paused, cleared his throat. “I don’t want to see that happen to you. I like you, Lacey.”
“Come on, Derek.” She was close; she could feel it. He wanted to tell her, wanted to help her out, but was too afraid. She needed to know what he was afraid of—who he was afraid of. “Point me in the right direction. Give me a name.”
“I’m not going there.”
“Derek.” She reached out a hand, closed it over his own. “Please. I won’t tell anyone where I got the information. I won’t—”
His laugh, when it came, was so low and harsh, she wasn’t sure that it wasn’t a sob. “I keep telling you, you don’t know what you’re asking for. If these guys set their sights on you, you’ll spill everything you know in thirty seconds flat. And if that ain’t good enough, you’ll make shit up just so that the pain will stop. And then—more than likely—they’ll kill you anyway.”
“You sound like you know that from personal experience.” She kept the statement brief, casual, though her heart beat like a metronome as she waited for his answer.
But she must have gone too far, because he pulled his hand back so fast he nearly stumbled. “Don’t do that. Don’t play me like that. Not when I’m being as honest as I can be with you.”
“I’m not playing you.”
“Sure you are.” He backed away, his eyes as angry as they were frightened. “Acting all nice and concerned and desperate when all you really want is a story. A story that’ll get both of us killed.”
“I won’t tell anyone—”
“Bullshit.” He spat the word at her right before his hands closed over her upper arms, hard. “You won’t need to tell. You’ll just go snooping around and they’ll come looking for whoever pointed you in their direction.”
Convinced he’d done his best on the table and eager to get home and see Lacey again, Byron locked up his workshop in a hurry. It had been a long day, but a good one. He’d managed to salvage his piece for the governor’s mansion, without having to replace the ornately carved tabletop, and had also done some preliminary sketches for the trunk Cavanaugh had commissioned that morning. Tomorrow, he’d fax them over to the guy and see if he liked the concept Byron had come up with.
As he stepped away from the building and into the street, the heat blasted him like a furnace working overtime. Wet, sticky and hotter than the proverbial frying pan or fire, it sucked the air from his lungs and had him cursing under his breath.
He started toward the truck he’d parked in a little alley a block away, doing his best to ignore the drug deals and prostitutes that lined every corner. Normally he made a point of getting out of here earlier, before
the sun went down and all this crap started, but he’d worked late today in an effort to make up for the many and varied screwups that had happened as the week progressed.
He snorted. Like that was possible. Lacey was taking him on one hell of a chase, and the fact that he’d spent the last few nights in her bed didn’t mean that the game was over. Not by a long shot—she wasn’t ready for a commitment yet, and he didn’t want a relationship with her without one. So where did that leave them but shit out of luck?
He tried to shake off the melancholy mood, but it had been with him ever since he’d seen her blog today. And since it was driving him crazy, he knew he was going to have to confront her about it and tell her he knew. He sure as shit wasn’t looking forward to that discussion.
Sidestepping an addict on the make, he continued down the dirty, pitted street, avoiding potholes and prostitutes alike. As he did, an overwhelming sadness filled him. He’d thought he’d left all this behind when he’d left New York and his high-paying job on Wall Street, had thought seeing the hookers and the drugs on a daily basis was over. But if he’d learned anything from his move to this city, it was that misery and degradation were everywhere. On these streets, women sold themselves for twenty or fifty bucks, whereas the women he’d known in his other life had held out for diamonds and expensive clothes.
And the addictions—they were just different faces of the same old poison. The drugs might differ—crack instead of pure cocaine, beer instead of hundred-year-old Scotch, but the results were all the same.
It was one of the reasons he’d left, one of the reasons he’d “thrown it all away” according to his father. One morning he’d woken up and realized that alcohol had become a crutch he used to deal with the high-stress stakes of his job, a crutch that was becoming more and more necessary for him to function.
Since he’d watched his father spend his life in the first stages of a drunken haze—had seen him drive and prescribe meds and treat patients with a steady stream of alcohol in his blood—his own growing reliance on the stuff had scared the shit out of him.
So he’d said “Fuck it,” and had walked away—to something different, something better. Or so he’d thought at the time.
Byron shook his head as he skirted a drug deal neither party even bothered to try to hide. New Orleans was different, all right. But better? Only sometimes. Especially now that he knew about all those dead girls. He couldn’t help looking at the prostitutes and wondering what their stories were. Wondering if the same thing had happened to them that had happened to Anne Marie Winston and the others.
Still, the closer he got to his truck, the more relieved he became. Another minute and he’d be able to hop in, drive a couple blocks north and spend a few minutes thinking about something besides how much trouble these young girls were in.
Sweat slid from his forehead onto his left cheek and he reached up, wiped it away. And in doing so, broke his first rule. He actually looked at the people around him, and as he did, he couldn’t help noticing a huge ape of a man hassling a woman half his size.
Anger exploded in his gut, a by-product of heat and frustration and his bone-deep disgust with any man who needed to pick on someone smaller and weaker than he was just to feel powerful. Just because he could. These girls suffered enough—more than enough—and the idea that they had to put up with some john beating on them hit him where he lived.
His older sister’s husband had beat the crap out of her when Byron had been just a kid, and he still remembered what she’d looked like all busted up. She’d barely been able to walk without flinching for weeks.
He was crossing the street before his conscious mind could catch up with his feet. “Hey,” he shouted, “Leave her alone.” Even as he said the words, he prayed he wasn’t doing the girl a disservice. Hoped that she wouldn’t get beat on later because he’d tried to be her fucking savior now.
But as he got closer, the guy dragged the woman back a few feet, until they were under the dingy streetlight, and for the first time he caught a glimpse of red hair. Bright red, like a living flame.
Bright red, like Lacey’s.
That was when he started to run toward her.
Chapter Twenty
Hey! Let her go!”
At the familiar voice, Lacey glanced up in shock, just in time to see Byron heading for them at a dead run. Derek glanced behind him, but didn’t relinquish his hold. “You need to stop asking these questions, do you understand me?” His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her arms, hard, and she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.
“Do you understand me?” he repeated, the vise around her arm growing even tighter. “For your own good. The next time you come around here, I’m not going to be this nice. Do you feel me?”
When she didn’t answer, he dug his fingers in even tighter. “Do you feel me?” She nodded, afraid that if she spoke she’d end up crying out. She was pretty sure Derek wouldn’t hurt her—that he was just trying to make an impression—but she couldn’t be positive, especially not with Byron barreling down on them like a sinner in need of salvation.
“I said, ‘Let her go.’ ” Byron’s voice was as hard as steel, as cold as ice, and Lacey actually saw Derek recoil. But he must have been more upset than she thought, because his hand on her arm never faltered—it only got tighter at this new threat, and suddenly she wasn’t nearly as convinced of her safety.
“Hey, man. This isn’t your business.” Derek’s voice was full of bravado.
“The hell it isn’t.” He glanced at Lacey, and the fury on his face had her breath catching in her throat. “The lady doesn’t look like she’s enjoying herself.”
“I don’t give a shit what the bitch enjoys. She comes down here, dressed for the stroll and messing with my girls, she deserves whatever the fuck she gets.”
Lacey winced. Though she knew Derek was just doing his thing—protecting himself and trying to keep his role in her research quiet by looking like any other drug dealer or pimp working the street—his words took Byron from enraged to murderous in less than one second. If she didn’t do something, and quickly—
“Byron, it’s no big deal. I’m fine.” With a mighty tug, she wrenched her arm from Derek’s grip, ignoring the pain that such a movement induced. As his nails raked against the tender skin of her inner elbow, she fought hard not to wince. And thanked God she was up-to-date on all her shots—Derek might be the cleanest, most decent of the bunch, but in this area of town, that really wasn’t saying a whole hell of a lot.
“Whoa, you know this guy?” Derek blanched and he took a couple of steps back, the look he shot her full of betrayal and disgust. “I thought you weren’t telling anyone about this. Isn’t that what you just told me—no one has to know?”
“I didn’t tell anyone.” Frustration ripped through her as she saw her best chance at getting information slip right down the drain. She was going to kill Byron for this.
“Then what’s he doing—”
“Think, Derek. If my friend”—and she was using the term loosely here—“knew that we were just having a harmless little chat, do you think he would have barged in like that?”
“I don’t know.” Derek shook his head and backed up even more. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m done with this.”
“No. Please—don’t do this.”
He shot her a hard look, one filled with resolve and something even more dangerous. “Stay away from me, Lacey. I don’t want to see you again.”
“But—”
“I mean it. Don’t come around here again. Nobody will talk to you.”
“Derek.” She started after him, but Byron grabbed her wrist. Held her in place. She struggled against his hold, but it was as implacable as the look on his face. “Come on,” she pleaded.
Her source just shook his head as he turned and headed down the dirty street at a fast clip. “Someone’s going to get hurt, and I’d just as soon it not be you or me.”
“Derek!” She yelled after him as he
put more distance between them, more desperate than she would have thought possible. But he just flipped her the bird and kept walking.
She stared after him for long seconds, trying to control the disappointment and fear racing through her, as well as rein in her temper. It wouldn’t do any good to explode—not out here, where the night had ears and streets could talk. But she couldn’t remember ever being this furious, this sick. It’s not like contacts in this industry were a dime a dozen, what with every source she had clamming up on her. Derek had been her best shot, and now he was gone—thanks to Byron and his high-handed hero tactics.
Taking a few deep breaths, she really tried not to explode. Not to tell Byron off.
But it wasn’t easy. By the time Derek had disappeared into the darkness, blending into the night like the chameleon he was, she was shaking with rage. He knew something—about Anne Marie, about the whole damn operation. She could have gotten a handle on what was going on—could have gotten the goods that would help her blow this thing sky-high—if Byron hadn’t interrupted. If she’d had just a few more minutes with him.
Oh, Derek had been putting up a struggle with her, but he hadn’t walked away. He had a good heart, which is why he’d been trying to warn her. It was that good heart that would have had him spilling the goods—or at least some small part of the story—whether he’d wanted to or not. It was obvious he was no happier than she was about what had been happening with those girls.
Which meant, as long as he felt that way, that she’d still had a chance at him, still had a shot at getting him to give her something. Anything. But he’d freaked when he’d seen Byron, and she knew she didn’t have a chance in hell of getting him to talk to her again. Derek as a source was now totally blown, and she was right back to where she’d started this morning.
At the thought, fury flared inside her all over again and she turned on Byron before she could stop herself. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Me?” He grabbed her arms and pulled her against him as he gave his own anger free rein. “I think that’s my question, don’t you?”