Nightfire: A Protectors Novel: Marine Force Recon

  But no soldier goes into battle blind.

  Intel on Chloe Mason, owner of a property in the same building.

  While he waited for Pirat to search his databases, Nikitin lifted the binoculars to his eyes once more. The couple were straining, clearly at the end of sex. Did people not realize how ridiculous they looked in the throes of sex? The woman’s mouth was open, eyes closed. Both their bodies were bathed in sweat, visible from here.

  It was disgusting.

  The display changed and he put down the binoculars and looked at the screen.

  Chloe Mason, age 28, adopted at age of 5 by Rebecca and George Mason of Boston. Attended Catholic boarding school in London from the age of 15 to 18. Degree in English literature from University College London. Sister of Harry Bolt, partner in RBK Security Inc.

  Once was coincidence, twice was a pattern.

  RBK Security.

  He reached into his pocket to write down the address and froze.

  Nyet!

  He scrabbled in his leather jacket, desperately trying to find a hole in the lining because . . . because this was impossible. Maybe in the other pocket. No.

  He ripped off his jacket as if it were on fire, ran his hands through the two outside pockets again, the inside pocket, over and over again. Carefully inching his fingers along the lining just in case, all the while knowing that it wasn’t there.

  The thumb drive. The thumb drive with the entire auction data—photos, statistics, measurements. Doctors’ certificates. And above all, the names of those admitted to auction. Doctors, lawyers, CEOs, all in a blind auction bidding to buy prepubescent girls.

  That thumb drive contained dynamite, and if he lost it, his life was over. And the ending would not be pretty. The vory were not known for their mercy.

  He kept that drive on him at all times. Where—

  And suddenly, he knew. The whore Consuelo had it. He’d taken his jacket off for the interrogation, no use getting the leather wet. Somehow the thumb drive had fallen and she undoubtedly had it. He’d left her lying on the floor in her own vomit. She’d have seen it, picked it up.

  All the information in the drive was encrypted but there was no way he could be without it when the ship landed with the girls. The data was necessary to set up the auction. There was at least five million dollars’ worth of intel on that drive, maybe more, depending on how the auction went. It was to be an anonymous online auction, but they couldn’t organize it without the data on that fucking thumb drive.

  The girls at the Meteor, at his insistence, had been injected with a tiny RFID transmitter, under the guise of vaccinations against STDs. There was a way he could track them all on his cell phone but it would be time-consuming to download the data and then scroll through to find Consuelo.

  Pirat charged in quarter-hour segments. Nikitin still had seven minutes. He uploaded the code for the RFIDs, the login and passwords and asked for him to check for Consuelo.

  Pirat was fast. Inside a minute, he had an answer.

  He was expecting her to be at the Meteor but instead he got the message:

  RFID tag #3701 at 1147 Birch Street. Morrison Building.

  Where in building? he typed.

  He stared at the answer in shock.

  Company called RBK Security.

  It all went smoothly, much more than she expected. Consuelo had stared at the blank wall in front of her with the plaque stating RBK Security next to it for long moments, starting to panic, when it whooshed open and a smiling, kindly woman in an elegant suit and cropped gray hair stood on the other side.

  “Call me Marisa,” she said in a slightly accented voice, and Consuelo felt immediately better.

  It was a busy place, a rich place, where rich successful people did whatever it is they did. Consuelo had no concept of the outside world. She’d been an abandoned child and then a whore all her life.

  She’d never seen much of the outside world. When she walked in, it was as if walking into another universe, a better one.

  One where women weren’t half-naked and on display like meat at a butcher’s shop. And where the men weren’t glassy-eyed with alcohol and lust, almost subhuman in their desires, like animals with money.

  That was her daily life and she realized how impossibly deficient of everything that made life meaningful it was. The only saving grace was solidarity with the other girls, but since the Russians had come with their harsh new regime, they avoided one another. They couldn’t help one another. Nobody could help them now.

  Everyone knew what had happened to Consuelo. No one could have helped her, so they avoided her. She’d walked out of the Meteor this morning without meeting anyone’s eyes.

  Here it was so different. Everyone was busy with something that mattered, valued for what they were, what they knew. She eyed everything greedily, simply absorbed into her pores the cool, calm atmosphere where no one was buying anyone else.

  This was going to be her new world. It was either that or die.

  Marisa walked her across this enormous lobby that smelled fresh and clean, and not of perfume and alcohol, down a corridor, and stopped in front of another blank wall.

  A green light flashed on a camera above the door and it whooshed open. “Come in,” a deep voice said.

  Consuelo froze for a moment. This was it. This was her last refuge and her last hope.

  She looked across another large space at two very large men, standing. For a second, she wondered why they were standing and then it hit her like a blow.

  They were standing for her.

  As if she were a lady.

  She stopped, heart pounding, knees suddenly weak, fighting back tears.

  Everyone waited patiently. Marisa by her side, the two large men in front of her. She drew in a deep breath and continued walking until she stopped right in front of the big shiny desk.

  Both men watched her, faces blank, eyes on hers. Neither of them eyed her breasts or her legs, they looked her straight in the eyes. It gave her permission to look right back.

  One of the men looked familiar, though she knew she’d never seen him before. Dark blond hair, light brown eyes, almost golden in color, skin a light gold.

  “You’re Chloe’s brother.” It wasn’t a question. It was there, in his face.

  He dipped his head. “Yes, I am. My name is Harry Bolt and I am Chloe’s brother though we don’t share a name.” He tilted his head to his right. “And this is Barney Carter. Happy to meet you.”

  And then he did something so unusual Consuelo didn’t recognize it. He offered his hand. For a second, she thought maybe he was showing her something and looked at his hand to see what it was. But the hand wasn’t palm up, it was simply outstretched. Outstretched for her.

  She looked at it for a moment, then up at him. His face was so like Chloe’s, yet utterly male while hers was so feminine. It puzzled her. She had no family and none of the other girls at the Meteor had families. She’d never seen family resemblances before.

  Hesitantly, because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d shaken anyone’s hand, she reached out. His grip was warm, strong, brief.

  “Ma’am,” a bass voice said, and she turned to the other man. Where Harry Bolt looked like a successful businessman who worked outdoors sometimes—as opposed to the lawyers and CEOs she had sex with—this man looked dangerous. Someone you’d cross the road to avoid. Even taller and broader than Harry Bolt, he was huge, rough, biceps bulging out of a T-shirt.

  He, too, took her hand and squeezed it even more briefly than Harry Bolt had, but with great gentleness. He could crush her hand on a whim, but everything about him spoke of enormous strength under enormous control.

  Harry Bolt nodded. “Sit down, please, Ms. . . .”

  “Just Consuelo,” she said. She’d almost forgotten her last name, she said it so seldom.

  “Consuelo, please take a seat.” Harry Bolt indicated a comfortable chair, walked back around his big desk and sat down. The dangerous one, Barney, sat in a c
hair next to her.

  Both men looked at her with expressions she couldn’t figure out until it hit her. They didn’t know she was a prostitute. She was dressed in jeans and a white blouse, with no makeup. They didn’t know.

  Oh God.

  For a second, she just sat there with two men she didn’t know and who didn’t know what she was. Who looked at her and treated her as if she was a normal woman.

  She had spent most of her life inside the Meteor. She couldn’t remember the last time a man didn’t treat her like a whore.

  She breathed this in and breathed this out. If everything went well, there was a possibility of a life where this would happen every day. Leave it all behind.

  Please.

  “So.” Harry Bolt folded his hands on his desk. He wanted her to say why she was here but there was no pressure on her, none. It was a busy, successful company, that was clear from everything she’d seen, but he was giving her his time. “You’re a friend of my sister’s?”

  Another breath. Just one more second of being normal.

  She lowered her eyes, raised them. “Yes. It’s my fault Chloe was hurt. My fault and the fault of a few of my—my friends.”

  Nothing changed in his expression. Consuelo turned her head slightly to look at the other man. Barney. No expression there, either.

  “How so, Consuelo?” Bolt asked gently.

  “She talked to us, encouraged us. Gave us a little courage. Some of us started to talk back. Rebel a little. They couldn’t stand it and they sent the Russians.”

  He straightened suddenly, shooting a glance at the other man.

  “The Russians? What Russians?”

  Another deep breath. It had been such a brief moment.

  She lowered her eyes again, spoke to her knees. “The Russians at the Meteor Club, where I work. Three men and their leader. A man called Nikitin. They’ve been there for about a year. They’ve put money into the club, a lot of it. There’s something coming, they’re preparing for something. Something big is about to happen.”

  She finally raised her eyes, expecting to see scorn and disgust. Instead Harry Bolt looked thoughtful. He met the other man’s eyes again, tapping the desk with a pen. Both of them turned to her again but she saw absolutely nothing in their gaze to show they’d understood her. Nothing.

  How could that be?

  “Do you know what the Meteor Club is?” she blurted out.

  “Yes, of course,” Bolt answered, mind obviously elsewhere. “So two of those Russians were the ones who attacked Chloe?”

  Amazing. She had just told these two men she was a prostitute and they simply ignored it. She’d stoically thrown away her pleasure at being treated like a lady when she told them where she worked. Her chest had become tight, her breath shallow, but at their reactions, the tightness eased.

  “Yes. Their names are Lyov and Ivan. They are thugs. Violent men. They beat up two of my friends at the Meteor. One had to be hospitalized. She was taken across the border for medical care. We never saw her again.”

  “Hold on.” Harry Bolt never took his eyes off her as he picked up a cell phone and pressed just a couple of buttons. “Yeah,” he said suddenly as someone picked up at the other end. “Something has happened. We’ve got a lead on the men who attacked Chloe. Russians, she was right.” He listened. “Uh-huh. As soon as you can. Hurry.”

  He switched off. “So why is it that they attacked my sister?”

  “These Russians. They’re making some big investment, as I said. Something big is coming. The owner of the Meteor, Franklin Sands, is always trying to make a good impression on the Russians, wanting everything to be perfect. Chloe—she talked to us. Listened to us. Made us feel better. She has a special way, you know?”

  Bolt nodded grimly. “Yes, she does.”

  Consuelo wanted to rub her damp palms together, wanted to look at the floor again, but she did neither. She straightened her shoulders and looked Chloe’s brother right in the eyes.

  “Chloe held group sessions. I don’t think it was really therapy, but I wouldn’t know. She listened, mostly. But all of us felt better afterwards. Felt better, felt cleaner. And then we had to go back. Back to the Meteor.” Her voice became hoarse. She coughed to clear it. “Each time, it was harder. And I guess we started rebelling a little. It wasn’t Chloe’s fault. She didn’t say anything to us about what we should do, how we should behave, but it was just—some of us couldn’t go on. Our boss, he was furious with us. He’s trying to make a good impression on the Russians. He doesn’t want any problems at all. Susie—one of us—said she was going to quit, that Chloe wanted her to quit. It wasn’t true. Chloe never said anything like that at all. She never gave us advice, never pushed in any direction, she just listened. But what Susie said was enough to make the Russians mad.”

  “So that was it?” Bolt asked. “The reason why they attacked her?”

  Consuelo nodded. “To get her to back off. Stop making waves.”

  “Son of a bitch.” The man’s face grew even grimmer, white brackets appearing around his mouth. He looked briefly at the other man, who looked as if he wanted to hit someone, too. “Those men are going down. The top Russian, too.”

  Her moment!

  “This might help.” Consuelo dug the thumb drive out of her purse and slid it across the large, shiny desk. “I took it off the head Russian, this Nikitin. I don’t know his first name. It must contain something valuable. He kept it in his jacket pocket.”

  “Intel, eh?” Bolt carefully examined the device. “Russian manufacture. I guess that’s not surprising.” He turned, plugged the thumb drive into his computer and watched the screen carefully. He manipulated some keys. Consuelo knew nothing about computers. It was forbidden for the girls to have computers.

  Bolt made a sound of frustration. “It’s encrypted. Looks like a 216-bit encryption, too. That’s a pretty strong degree of protection. Take some doing to crack.”

  Consuelo barely understood him. All she really grasped was that maybe what she’d brought wasn’t useful. She’d paid such a steep price for it. She blinked back tears. “You can’t read it?”

  Oh God, she’d been counting on this. Counting that because of the thumb drive, they’d help her disappear. She’d left the Meteor forever, there was no going back. But if there was no going forward, either, what was going to happen to her?

  “No, not without some work. And we’d need to find a cracker who speaks Russian.” Bolt spoke absently, then looked at her. Though Consuelo was used to hiding her emotions—all whores learned that or they couldn’t work—she found she couldn’t right now. What she was feeling was right there on her face.

  She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think.

  “What’s wrong?” That deep voice was suddenly gentle.

  She twisted her hands, then stilled them. She looked down at herself and was horrified to see that the modest white cotton blouse was fluttering over her left breast as her heart pounded with panic.

  She looked at Bolt and at the rough-looking man, Barney.

  “I can’t go back,” she whispered. “I brought that to you as—as payment, because they say you help women disappear. I thought that if the Russian had information, it must be valuable. I can’t go back. I can’t—” Her voice broke and she stopped talking, breathing shallowly in her panic. “I can’t go back. I can’t go through that again. The Russian—he put a cloth over my face, poured water over the cloth and—”

  The other man, Barney, all of a sudden stood up. “You were fucking waterboarded?” he roared, and Consuelo shrank back.

  She’d long learned to recognize men’s moods, she had an animal instinct for it. And this man had turned dangerous.

  She stiffened, turned her face blank.

  “Can it, Barney,” Bolt said. “You’re not helping. You’re scaring the lady.” He nodded at her. “Sorry about that. Barney’s not angry at you, he’s angry at a man who could waterboard a woman. So you’ll have to excuse him, ma’am.”

/>   She kept her back straight, turned to Bolt, then to the other man, this Barney, then back to Bolt. It had been nice being called a lady and addressed as “ma’am,” but though it made her feel dead inside, it had to be said.

  “I’m not a lady, Mr. Bolt. If you know what the Meteor is, and you know that I work—worked—there, then you know what I am.”

  “A beautiful woman,” Barney growled, and she turned back to him, startled. He’d had bad acne as a youngster. His sallow skin was pockmarked. His rough ugly face was flushed. “That’s what you are. Doing what my mom did, because she had three kids to feed and that was the only way to do it. There’s no shame. There’s plenty of shame for the motherfu—”

  “Barney!” Bolt barked.

  The man’s jaws worked back and forth. “Sorry, boss,” he said finally.

  Consuelo hung her head, letting her hair fall down around her face, hiding it. Hiding her. A tear dropped on her thigh, making a tiny wet spot on her jeans.

  Barney’s rough bass voice became soft. “The shame is not yours. It’s all on men who would do that to a woman.”

  Consuelo continued staring at her knees. She couldn’t lift her face, she couldn’t talk, she couldn’t move, she could hardly breathe.

  Bolt was talking softly into an intercom system. Nobody moved until the door opened. Consuelo didn’t turn around. It was probably someone else from the company.

  Maybe to throw her out because she’d brought something completely useless.

  It wasn’t a man, it was a woman. An extremely beautiful woman, tall, black-haired with intense blue eyes. For a moment, Consuelo thought, She’d make them a fortune at the Meteor, then was ashamed of herself.

  This was a woman who was loved. She was followed by a big man, hand held to her back because she was hugely pregnant. Hovering over her, watching her like a hawk.

  Girls at the Meteor didn’t get pregnant. Those that did were made unpregnant very fast. Consuelo hadn’t really ever experienced a couple that was expecting a child together. It was a novel thought. People had kids all the time, of course. It’s just that she hadn’t seen it. Her world and children did not mix.