by Elise Noble
Emmy always said that if they split the onion rings, they could also split a dessert afterwards. Calories shared were calories halved. They’d spent hours in this place, talking and laughing about nothing in particular, but tonight, Emmy could barely muster a smile.
“They’ve got chocolate orange cheesecake.” Alaric nodded towards the glass counter at the front. “I bet it’s the same recipe.”
It had been her favourite. If he’d ever mustered up the courage to give her the ring he’d bought all those years ago, he’d planned to hide it in a slice.
“I’m not that hungry.”
“See how you feel later. So, you want to know about Rune?” If Alaric kept talking, that meant Emmy wouldn’t feel pressured to. “It all started five years ago in Phuket. I’d been travelling more or less constantly until then, doing odd jobs, meeting people, but I figured I’d spend the winter in Thailand for a change. The past couple of years before that, I’d headed back to Europe to ski, but diving seemed like a fun alternative. I passed my IDC—Instructor Development Course—and rented an apartment near the beach.”
“At this particular moment, I’m tempted to do the same.”
“Don’t be too hasty, Cinders. Was that the first proper argument you’ve had with Black?”
She nodded.
“Then let the dust settle. It’ll blow over.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“You two were made for each other. We might both have tried to deny that once, but with time comes clarity.”
Emmy looked dubious, then turned away and began rearranging the table accoutrements. The napkin dispenser, the cutlery caddy, the ketchup, the salt and pepper—she wanted everything lined up just so. She only normally got OCD over her weapons.
“Anyhow, I spent my days either underwater or hanging out near the beach, and I hooked up with Ravi.”
“As in hooked up, hooked up?”
Alaric nodded.
“And now? You’re still together?”
“Mostly just for work, but occasionally we fool around. We agreed that as long as we’re both single, it’s preferable to sleep with each other rather than picking up strangers to satisfy a physical need.”
“Thanks. I just won fifty bucks off Dan. She said he wasn’t gay.”
“You’ll have to split it—he goes both ways.”
“Dammit.”
“He broke up with his ex-girlfriend three months before we met. They were meant to travel to Thailand together, but he decided to go alone rather than waste the ticket.”
“And what’s Ravi’s background? A gymnast with a B&E habit?”
“Close. He grew up in the circus. His parents were both acrobats, but now they’re doing life for burglary.”
“Harsh.”
“He’s always been cagey about exactly how they were caught, but I suspect he was there and got away. They’d been forcing him to help out with the family business since he was a kid.”
“And now? He’s gone straight?”
“He had until we started Sirius. When I met him, he was working as a bartender in a dive on the backstreets of Patong. I was there, waiting for him to finish his shift when it all started.”
“When what started?”
When what started? The rest of Alaric’s life.
CHAPTER 38 - ALARIC
“WE’VE TAKEN TO calling it ‘the incident,’” Alaric told Emmy. “Judd and Naz were there in the bar too, drinking. Well, Naz was hunched over his laptop. And Judd was hitting on a girl who was actually a guy. Ravi and I made a bet on how long it’d take him to notice.”
“How long did it take?”
“He never found out because that was when the incident happened. A man walked into the bar with a girl, and I was trying to work out what she was to him. Girlfriend? Daughter? She seemed too young for the former, but who would take a kid out to a shitty bar in the early hours?”
“A bad, bad parent.”
“Exactly. He sat with another man who’d been there for a while, they had a conversation that sounded more like an argument, then the girl left with guy number two instead. And she did not look happy.”
“I’m getting a bad feeling about this.”
“That’s precisely what I said to Ravi. We didn’t understand a word they said, though. My Thai was limited to diving terms, getting directions, and ordering food, so Ravi asked his boss if he knew the man, and it turned out he did. He came in once a week, once every two weeks, always with a different girl. The bar was a handover point for sales.”
“Shit.”
“I think I said that too. But you know me—I couldn’t just leave it.”
“That was one of the things I always liked about you.”
“Past tense? Ouch.”
“I still do like that about you.” Emmy managed a tentative smile. “So, what happened?”
“I followed the original guy. The seller. Cut the head off the snake, right? But after a couple of minutes, I realised I wasn’t the only one who’d had that idea.”
“Judd?” Emmy guessed.
Alaric nodded. “I didn’t know who he was or why he was there, but I recognised what he was by the way he moved.”
“An operator.”
“And surprisingly not a bad one.”
“It’s like he has two modes—James Bond and dickhead.”
Succinct, yet entirely accurate. “That about sums him up.”
The drinks arrived, and Alaric paused to take a sip. The diner had changed from plastic to paper straws, proving the place wasn’t completely stuck in a time warp.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” he told the waitress, ignoring Emmy’s eye-roll when the woman giggled.
“Food won’t be long, hun.”
She swished off in her pink dress and sensible shoes, and Alaric picked up the story.
“So I saw Judd, he saw me, and it was weird—we’d never met before that night, but we didn’t need words to know that we were both up to the same thing. He stayed one side of the street, and I stayed the other, and we followed the seller to a go-go bar. The Angels Playground. No apostrophe, and no paradise either.”
“Classy.”
“Definitely at the lower end of seedy. Girls in neon costumes, waitresses dressed as schoolgirls. We went in and had a few drinks. Watched the dancers. None of them looked underage, but we both knew what we’d seen. At that point, we still hadn’t talked much—I told Judd I was a scuba instructor, and he said he was writing a screenplay. Turned out neither of us was lying, but nor were we being entirely truthful.”
“Judd’s writing a screenplay?”
“Yeah, but don’t tell anyone. Especially his mother.”
“What’s it about? Have you read it? Is it any good?”
At least Emmy seemed slightly perkier now. If Rune’s story took her mind off whatever had happened at Riverley, Alaric would talk the whole night.
“He’s written half a dozen, actually, all under a pseudonym. Sci-fi romance. One even got made into a movie.”
“What movie?”
“Stellarium.”
“I haven’t seen it.”
“It’s surprisingly good. Give it a go.”
Emmy sort of…shrivelled. Fuck. “I think I’ll be skipping movie nights for a while.”
“Even with me? I’ll bring popcorn. And M&Ms. We can make s’mores if you promise not to set fire to the marshmallows this time.”
A tiny smile. “Maybe.”
“Maybe” was better than an outright “no.” “Anyways, back to the Angels Playground… We watched the dancers, and every so often, one of the waitresses would lead a guy through a door at the side of the stage.”
“For extra services?”
“That was our assumption. But we didn’t get to find out that night because the club closed. Four a.m. was kicking-out time, so we went back to the bar. Ravi’s boss wouldn’t say much because he was scared. The men who sourced the girls were bad news, and he didn’t want any trouble.”
“So you decided to investigate yourselves?”
“We did, and by that point, Naz had come over to see what was going on. He didn’t like the look of the men either, and while they were talking, he’d checked out just who was hooked into the bar’s Wi-Fi network.”
“Naz is a hacker? You’ve never said much about him.”
“Yes, he’s a hacker, and he shies away from the limelight, probably because he’s officially dead.”
“He faked his own death?”
“Since the Bratva wanted to kill him, it seemed like a sensible idea.” The Russian Mafia didn’t mess around. “By day, he was a government guy—GRU—but at night, he poked his nose into the wrong servers. Ended up bringing down a network of corrupt politicians.”
“I see how that could be a problem.”
“Now he’s got a new name and a Norwegian passport.” Among others. “And that night, he came up with another name for us. Sunan Thungchunkoksoong. We couldn’t be certain who it belonged to, but the guy who took the girl had been busy on his phone while he waited for his ‘friend’ to arrive, so that seemed like a good possibility. And here’s the funny thing about Thai surnames—they didn’t exist until 1913. Thai law says that each family has to take a different surname, and everyone using a given surname must be related. So not many people share the same full name.”
“Bet that makes police work easier.”
“Sure, if you can find a cop who isn’t corrupt. It made our work easier too—Naz found the guy online in five minutes flat. A local businessman. He ran a catering supply store. Family man. Wife, two kids, and he’d just taken possession of a young Thai girl. So, by then there were four of us and two problems.”
“Here you go, hun.”
The waitress was back, complete with a tray of food. Had the portions always been that big? Emmy’s burger was the same size as her head. The instant the waitress set her plate down, she covered her fries in ketchup and stuffed a couple into her mouth. Thank goodness. Emmy without an appetite was unnatural.
“And?” she asked. “What happened next?”
“We decided that walking away wasn’t an option. And we had two things on our side: time and ability. Judd had just quit his job at MI6, I was freelancing, so was Naz, and Ravi didn’t much like working at the bar anyway. Judd rented us a bigger apartment, and we set about learning everything we never wanted to know about the Thai sex-trafficking industry. Starting with another visit to the Angels Playground.” Alaric closed his eyes for a moment, remembering what he didn’t want to. “That place was sick.”
“Did you go as a punter?”
“We all did. It seemed the best way to work out what was going on. Ravi drank too much and puked in the toilet, and his girl made him tea. Naz claimed he’d gotten confused and just wanted a massage. Judd couldn’t get it up. For real. Didn’t even have to pretend.”
“And you?”
“Me? I got Rune.”
Alaric would never forget that first meeting. He’d asked for a girl on the younger side, expecting a teenager. Not barely ten-year-old Rune, cowering on the far end of a dirty single bed in a negligée. When she saw him, she tried to smile, and someone had obviously schooled her in the art of acting coquettish, but not very well. It didn’t help that she was so thin he could see her ribs and obviously exhausted.
Instinct had warred with reason. Instinct told him to find the man who’d shown him into that room and break his fucking neck. But reason said they needed to play the long game, and the thugs who worked at the club were probably as replaceable as the girls.
“What you want?” Rune asked. “Massage? Suck? Love?”
“Let’s talk. I want to talk.”
He crouched down beside the bed, trying to make himself as small and unthreatening as possible.
“Talk?”
Shit, did she even speak English?
“Talk.” He pointed at his mouth. “Words.”
What was he thinking? She was half-naked. Feeling quite sick, he’d wrapped a grubby sheet around her in much the same way he’d done with Emmy earlier. That had scared Rune even more, and she’d tried to pull it off again.
“No, not allowed.”
“You’re not allowed to cover yourself?” He mimed wrapping himself up and shook his head.
“Not allowed.”
Fuck, this was a nightmare. The kid had a bowl of condoms sitting on a table next to the bed. Alaric felt ashamed to have a dick.
“How long have you been here? Worked here?”
“Work here?” She held up a hand, all the fingers and her thumb extended. “Five year. Live here? Always.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I very good.”
Bile rose in Alaric’s throat. He might have retired from the assassination game, but he knew at that moment he’d do at least one more job.
From then on, the men who would become Sirius spent their nights in the red-light district. Daytimes were for research and planning and a few hours of restless sleep. Alaric forked out an obscene amount of Judd’s trust fund for Rune’s company each evening. He became the Angels Playground’s number-one pervert. Handing cash to a pimp was uncomfortable, but as Judd had put it, they were confident of getting a refund soon.
One thing that became evident before long was that Rune was sick. She coughed from a constant cold, she had sores on her back that wouldn’t heal, and each time Alaric saw her, she looked thinner, although he’d taken to bringing her snacks. They no longer had the luxury of planning for every eventuality. They’d have to go in sooner rather than later.
And they had. Naz jammed their communications, Ravi snatched Rune and got her the hell out of there, and the final score had been Alaric and Judd eleven, pimps and traffickers nil. Thanks to the cash they liberated, they’d even made a profit.
“Rune was a prostitute?” Emmy was as horrified as Alaric had been. “She’d have been what…? Ten?”
“Ten years old, but she’d experienced things no adult ever should.”
“You took care of them?”
There was no need to ask who “them” was. The girls and the men who sold them, taken care of in two very different ways.
Alaric nodded. “Most of the trafficked women went back to their families, but Rune had been born in that place. Her mother was a sex worker, and her father was a client.”
“What happened to her mother?”
“One of the older girls said she got beaten to death the year before. Or maybe two years before—time seemed to warp there. Rune had nobody, and she also had the beginnings of type 1 diabetes.”
“So you kept her?”
“We couldn’t just let her disappear into an orphanage. One of us had to claim her as ours. Ravi was on the young side, and she looks nothing like Naz, which left me or Judd. And can you imagine Judd taking responsibility for a child?”
Emmy’s snort told Alaric everything he needed to know.
“So we brokered a new birth certificate with me named as her father and got her a British passport. By then, she was taking insulin, and she’d been living with the four of us for two months. And we’d worked out she was smart. Seriously smart. Her English was getting better every day, and all she wanted to do was learn.”
“So where is she now?”
“At a boarding school in Hertfordshire.”
“You sent her to boarding school?”
“It was her idea—she’d managed to read Harry Potter by that point, and science is her crack. We offered her the choice of living in London and going to a local school, but she had her heart set on Ridgeview Prep.”
“And she’s happy there?”
“She loves it. We take it in turns to visit.”
Emmy reached out for Alaric’s free hand. Took it in both of hers. “You did a good thing, Prince.”
“We did the only thing we could under the circumstances. And strange though it may sound, Rune helped us as much as we helped her. Before that day in the bar, the four of us had been drifting through life, each
convinced that we’d been dealt the worst hand ever. Rune helped us to put everything into perspective. It was she who suggested we keep working together. She thought we made a good team.”
She’d also come up with their name. Sirius. The brightest star in the sky. Rune said she used to stare out between the bars on her window every night and wish upon the stars that somebody would rescue her.
“I think you make a good team too. What happened to the other girl, though? The one you saw in the bar?”
“Ravi found her hidden in a room behind Sunan’s office. You know, keep your sex slave at work so your wife doesn’t find out? Judd dropped him off a bridge.”
“Good.” Emmy managed a proper smile. “I’d have offered my services otherwise.”
She fell silent, but at least she was eating. More than just picking too—she attacked the burger with a steak knife and ate more than her fair share of the onion rings. Although the circumstances were awkward as hell, Alaric still enjoyed spending time with Emmy. A quiet dinner. Just the two of them. It was nice.
The only thing nicer would have been if Beth were sitting opposite him instead.
How was she getting on in Kentucky? He’d spoken to her earlier as he drove back from Boston. The funeral had been every bit as bad as she’d expected—trying to comfort a devastated Harriet while fending off well-wishers offering fake sympathy. Apparently, Stéphane had nearly decked a woman who got offended when Harriet wouldn’t speak with her.
“What are you thinking about?” Emmy asked, stuffing the last fry into her mouth.
“You first.”
Boy, that was a heavy sigh.
“I’m thinking that I should take a lesson from Rune too. That no matter how shit this last week has been, at least it wasn’t ten-year-old-in-a-whorehouse bad.”
This week? So whatever it was had been building while Alaric was away. It had just come to a head this evening.
“Do you want a lesson from me too?”
“Not really.”
“Well, you’re gonna get one anyway.”
Sometimes, tough love was needed.
“Hurrah.”
“Don’t run away from this one, Cinders. You’ve got a habit of that.”
“Ha! You can talk.”
