Cease and Desist (The IMA Book 4)

by Campbell, Nenia

  A man I had never seen before dropped me off at the curb, assuring me that I would be watched.

  “Don't try anything,” he suggested, before driving away, lest I mistake their protection of their assets for any real sense of concern.

  The first 'client' came not ten minutes after that unmarked car pulled away from the curb. It was as though someone had alerted him to my presence. Someone probably had. He cried afterwards and tried to insist that he wasn't a bad person as he slipped a few crumpled twenties from the pockets of his counterfeit jeans. I said nothing. How to tell someone that they're even more horrible than they're afraid of being, because sometimes compliance can be one of the greatest evils of mankind? It's easy to ignore evil acts — until they happen to you. It was almost easier to excuse the bigots than the ones who truly believed that they were good people at heart.

  The unmarked car pulled up to the curb and I slid inside, mindful of my heels as I stepped over the muck stagnating in the gutter. There were two men in the car: one in the front seat, and one in the back, with me. I handed the man in back the cash, unsurprised when he patted me down to make sure I wasn't holding anything — drugs, money — back.

  He shifted through the money quickly; men who deal exclusively in cash get a feel for it, the same way dealers do with cards. Any girl who tried to cheat these men in that way would be in for an unpleasant surprise. But I wasn't that stupid.

  He finished his shuffling and seemed pleased. “This is good,” he said, and opened a compartment in the car, gesturing for me to help myself to one of the soft drinks. As if I were a child receiving a reward.

  What do I do?

  I selected a can of Coke. Those were safer, if you were afraid of being drugged. Easy to fix a bottle so that the cap looked as if it had been sealed all along.

  I popped the top and took a long swallow of the sugary fluid, grateful for the way it washed the taste of sex out of my mouth, even though the bubbles burned the bruised parts of my throat.

  The back windows of the car were pitch-black. I couldn't see where we were going, but the drive wasn't too long, so wherever they were based wasn't a great distance from where they had their girls turn tricks. I sipped my drink, trying not to look too curious or alert. It must have worked. The man laughed when I was startled by the car stopping and spilled Coke on myself.

  “Get inside,” he said, herding me towards the door. He started to come with me, and then his phone started ringing — a foreign pop song I didn't recognize, although the syrupy lyrics piping from it suggested it was a love song.

  How sweet. The pimp had a girlfriend.

  But I had a role to play, so I said hesitantly, darting my eyes around for effect, “…alone?”

  The man was already looking away from me, focused on his phone and whoever was on the other line. I wasn't sure which scenario would be worse — that the girlfriend was kept in the dark about her lover's secret life, or that she was complicit.

  “You know the way to your room.”

  The door locked behind me before I could say that no, I didn't, exactly. Not this way.

  This whole situation — it reeked of a trap.

  Fuck.

  Complicit was worse, I decided. Any woman who was accepting of a man who treated other members of her sex this way was pathetic. It suggested an implicit belief that women were objects and, at some basic level, deserved to be treated this way.

  I looked around, and bent down to take off my heels. They were making far too much noise. I looped them around my wrist and headed down the corridor that led to the bedrooms, breathing as quietly as possible, hoping to hear any sign of movement or life. This place was as lifeless as a graveyard.

  And then I heard something — the low rumble of voices speaking so as not to be heard.

  Corridors can play tricks with echoes; they can make a voice seem as though it's coming from one direction when it's really coming from another. Through trial and error I was able to locate the source of the voices, and I was pleased that by some act of providence, they were having their conversation in the room where I'd laid the bug — if it was still there.

  If something is too good to be true, it almost always is. These men had engineered every bar of my cage, and this sudden lapse in security and caution on their part made me wonder if they were trying to flush me out. Did they suspect something? What?

  There's nowhere to run now. I tightened my grip on my shoes and waited, breathing as shallowly as I was able. I might as well stand here and listen.

  So I heard it quite clearly when one of the men —my captor, I believed it was — said, “The boss says that the women aren't working hard enough.”

  The Albanian — the one who seemed to be in charge in this place — scoffed. “He wants to come down here and do it better?”

  The first man made a shushing sound, urgent and, yes, rather nervous. Interesting.

  But the Albanian was not finished. “The women here make good money. We have a good thing here, a system. If we push too hard, it may dry up.”

  He laughed at his filthy joke. The other man did not. When he spoke again, he sounded fearful. “They say he brings death wherever he goes.”

  Were they talking about Adrian Callaghan? It certainly sounded like it.

  “Fairytales.” He spat noisily. “The kind mothers tell little children to bring them back before dark. I hadn't realized you were so attached to the tit, Aleks. Perhaps I should send you back to your mother in Vlora.”

  These men were from Vlora? That was an area notorious for human trafficking. Now I had an idea of where Callaghan had found them. The BN had connections to Eastern Europe; when Callaghan forced the merger, he undoubtedly took advantage of those contacts to advance his own private agenda.

  Now I also had something to tell Mr. Boutilier.

  The door opened, catching me off-guard, and I stumbled to the floor. My skirt rode up past my thighs and I brought it down with a curse in Hindi. The two Albanian were standing in the doorway looking at me with a thunderous expression of commingled shock and rage.

  “What is this?” the Albanian said. “What are you doing here?”

  “My room,” I said, “I couldn't find my room.”

  “How did you get out?” He seemed a step away from violence.

  I talked fast, stumbling in my haste. I was not worried about sounding unintelligible. I had fallen on his radar and earned his suspicion. He would be looking for flaws. “I worked the streets tonight.”

  “Hmm,” said the second man—Aleks. “She is dressed like it.”

  “How much money did you make?” The Albanian asked bluntly. He did the book keeping. He would know what the average amount was. Anything too high or low would brand me as a liar. Luckily, I'd kept count. I rattled off the value of the bills I'd given to the pimp with the phone fetish.

  “That is not bad,” the Albanian muttered, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Why are you alone?”

  “The man in the car — he had to go.”

  Aleks made a snide-sounding remark in his native language. It must not have been flattering; the Albanian man laughed nastily. “Not so,” he said. “He goes on my terms only.”

  “Probably courting that whore of his.”

  “We will make examples out of them both,” the Albanian decided, clapping his hands together. The sound it produced was like a single gunshot. A mercy the man with the phone will probably never know.

  I bowed my head and took a step backwards. “My room…? Please — ”

  “He will take you,” the Albanian said, nodding at Aleks. “But first — little girl.”

  When I looked at him, a bright light flashed. The Albanian man looked at his phone and nodded, rotating it slowly so I could see my own surprised face looking back at me.

  “I have your face,” he said, “I have your face right here, so I will know it.” He stuck his phone in his pocket. “If I see it again around this place, it will not look so pretty next time.” All emotion disapp
eared from his face as he looked at me, his face terrifyingly blank. “Is that clear?”

  I nodded quickly, and my fear was not feigned.

  “Good.”

  He snapped his fingers dismissively at his underling.

  “Take Big Nose to her room—and figure out who should have done that from the start so that I may deal with him presently.”

  Everything I had worked for was crumbling through my outstretched fingers.

  I had compromised everything.

  Michael

  I'd gotten business class seats. They allowed a sense of privacy that was not available in coach, and I was large enough that squeezing into a compact seat between two other people could be uncomfortable. We were lucky to get them at such last minute — but in this economy, the more expensive seats could be slower to fill. So no real surprise there.

  I put my duffle in the overhead compartment. Christina sat with her bag resting under her feet, looking around at the other, mostly male passengers. Her face was so composed now, it pleased me to remember what that face had looked like when she was struggling not to lose control. How her head had tilted back as she struggled not to make a sound. How wet she'd been, even through her sweatpants. How much I'd wanted to fuck her while the driver watched.

  “I have something for you,” I said.

  My expression must have been telling. Her eyes widened slightly as she looked at me. Her full mouth tilted into a wary, self-conscious smile as she tried to mask her apprehension through humor.

  “Is it like what you gave me in the car?”

  “No.” I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the brown package. “Nothing like that.”

  Now that she mentioned it, though, that was a possibility I might want to explore.

  I knew she'd seen me conceal the package earlier, although she hadn't asked me about it once. That was progress. There had been a time when she was far too inquisitive for her own good, questioning everything. I was relieved to know that she was learning to keep secrets, including her own.

  She held the package in her hands awkwardly. I watched her bite her lip, the thoughts on her face as clouded as an overcast day in San Francisco.

  “What's the occasion?”

  “It's your birthday,” I said. “Isn't it?”

  Christina sucked in a breath as she did the math. “Oh my God, today is October twenty-eighth? It is, isn't it?” She shook her head slowly. “I'd completely forgotten — ”

  I hadn't.

  I knew everything about her. Her birthday. Her middle name. Her social security number. I'd learned her history from a file, but it hadn't prepared me for what wasn't in it — her intelligence, her sense of humor, her inherent belief that the world was good.

  That I was good.

  The flight attendant stopped by with her cart, and asked us if we wanted anything.

  “A scotch,” I said. “Make it a double.” I glanced at Christina, eyebrow raised.

  “Some orange juice,” she said, “and champagne, if you have it.” When she saw my expression, she said, “Might as well celebrate.”

  “You mean you're cutting loose for once?” I laughed, attempted a smile to soften it. Glanced at her face to see if it worked. “I think hell just froze over.”

  It did. The corners of her mouth lifted as she lowered her eyes from mine, no longer able — or willing — to look me in the face.

  “I can't believe you got me something.”

  “You haven't even seen what it is yet.”

  The flight attendant came back with my scotch, and Christina's champagne and OJ. I assumed she was going to mix them, to make a mimosa, but she knocked the glass back and set it in an empty cup holder before carefully peeling open the brown wrapping.

  She bit her lip. “It's a gun, isn't it?”

  “Don't say things like that on the plane.”

  She flinched, looking around before quickly ducking her head. “Sorry.” The moment she glimpsed her gift, the embarrassment washed clean of her face.

  I had purchased a fire opal from one of those last-minute gift stores designed for men with too much money and too few fucks to give. The opal had been formed into a glowing planet with rings of platinum that had smaller spheres of opal threaded onto the wires.

  From an aesthetic view, it was beautiful — it had been the least tacky thing in the shop by far — but it was unconventional, as well. I rarely had occasion to buy gifts but even I knew it suited Christina; she seemed like the kind of woman who would fall in love with the sky. But watching her face light up as her eyes glittered with the tears that I knew she would be unwilling to let fall, I felt something in my chest tighten, something that I hadn't expected.

  Happiness.

  This was what 'normal' felt like. A man buying jewelry for a woman he cared about, watching her take pleasure in the materialist symbol of his supposed affection for her.

  It was like a fucking jewelry commercial — I could almost hear those goddamn cellos — and yet, her reaction made me happier than I could remember being in a long, long time. In fact, I couldn't remember the last time. Only with a sense of certainty that whenever it was, it had involved the woman across from me. And that was fucking terrifying.

  She was having trouble with the clasp. “Here.” I stood up. “Let me.”

  She gathered her hair in a ponytail and lifted it so I could close the chain around her throat. I fastened the clasp, running my finger along the gold links to brush the side of her neck. My fingers burned upon contact with her warm skin. I could feel her pulse — it was fast, faster than it should have been. I watched the muscles in her neck contract.

  I bent slightly, and saw her lips part, her shoulders tense. My stomach tightened, sending corkscrewing waves of lust spearing through to my swelling cock. My chest was so tight I could hardly breathe. Slowly, I relaxed the tautly pulled chain, and the pendant settled at the base of her throat.

  This feeling was deadly.

  Close to her ear, close enough to smell her scent, to taste her skin, I whispered, “Do you like it?”

  “It's the most beautiful thing anyone's ever given me. I hope you didn't spend too much on it.”

  She closed her fingers around the stone, casting the fiery motes in shadow, her eyes widening as she turned to face me and realized how close I'd gotten. I waited for her to ask how much it cost — I would have told her — but instead she said, “Why a planet?”

  “Because you mean the world to me. And because I would let it all fucking burn to ash if it only meant sparing you.”

  She released her grip on the pendant as if its hidden flames had burned her. “That's not healthy.”

  “What isn't?”

  “Loving someone like that — that all or nothing — that's no way to live your life.”

  “My life has always been ruled by extremes.”

  She shook her head, shaking her hair. “And look where it got you,” she said sadly. “You're so used to living on the edge, you wouldn't know stable ground if it was under your own two feet.”

  If only she knew.

  “It's easier when reduced to binary. Less hassle when it comes down to making a choice.” Why was she looking at me as if she pitied me? “Left or right, yes or no, love or hate. It's as simple as that. I love you, my stubborn, beautiful girl. You are the best thing about me, and I would die for you because without you, I wouldn't be the me I've grown to like.”

  I started to say more, but then my phone buzzed and I had to take it. The only people who had this number were all members of AMI and they were all under clear instruction to avoid using it unless necessary. God damn their shitty sense of timing.

  Christina had an odd expression on her face — torn, vulnerable. “I wouldn't ask you to die for me.”

  And that's exactly why I would. I didn't say that, though. She looked frightened enough. Like I might whip out a knife on the spot and shear it into my stomach like a 14th century Samurai.

  I shook my head. She didn
't understand. My life was a resource, the most valuable I possessed. I wouldn't throw it away, carelessly, on a whim. Just as a man might sell his assets to feed his family, so would I lay down my life to save the woman I loved.

  I took a sip of the scotch, relishing the cold, hard burn as it went down, and opened up the text message from Suraya — and nearly choked in my haste to swallow.

  May have been compromised. Proceeding cautiously.

  The scotch burning down my throat suddenly tasted a whole lot like dread.

  Chapter Twelve

  Leniency

  Suraya

  Apprehension made my skin buzz as though a whole hive of wasps resided beneath the surface. The implications of my error pressed down on me like a lead weight, squeezing me, suffocating me, making it difficult to breathe: I had been caught in the act.

  I could not believe my mistake. It was the move of a rank amateur listening at doors. The fact that I had been doing exactly that rankled even more.

  I deserve whatever I get, I told myself, in one of my darker moments of self-loathing. But that was selfish; I would not be the only one to suffer for my mistake. AMI couldn't afford the consequences that this group would mete out — and neither could my sister. If it were just Michael and Christina at stake, I might have considered cutting loose and letting them all hang. But not Jatinder. I couldn't do that to Jatinder.

  As I worked with my “clients” I found myself replaying every misstep, from the moment I had stumbled out of that car in my tacky four-inch heels to the moment that the Albanian had snapped my photo with his mobile. Why hadn't I worn more makeup that day? It might have disguised my face, made me more difficult to place. Why hadn't I waited for one of the other men to receive me? Why had I, in my hubris, decided to go it alone?

  I shook my head in frustration, and the “client” grew irate and repeated his order not to move. He was a disturbed one. Most of my clients were, to some degree, but he was worse than most. He could only get off if he pretended the sex was nonconsensual. Rape fantasies are normal in psychologically healthy individuals, but this particular “client” expressed a genuine desire to participate in a rape, and the point of these exercises seemed to be to work himself up to an enthusiastic frenzy. I didn't think about what he did, or where he went, afterwards. Who he might be hurting. I couldn't afford that kind of responsibility.