But in order not to blow their cover and to stay in this vital life-or-death game, Tiana couldn’t allow herself to dwell on any of that.
Instead, Tiana told the man she regarded as a reptilian creature in a suit what she felt a woman her age, and of the mind-set she’d put forth, would say in her situation.
“They sound good on paper, but I still have to see them in person, or there’s no deal.”
Roland sighed, an emperor struggling not to bring his fist down on a pesky insect. “All right, fair enough. I’ve got a couple of days’ leeway yet,” he said, which was the closest he’d alluded to having to transfer the girls from their present location. “You make your choices and we’ll see about arranging some sort of viewing for you. Although I guarantee that any girl you pick is going to more than live up to whatever standards you’ve set for these lost souls.”
It took everything she had not to throw up right then and there. “And you’re what? The Good Shepherd?” she challenged, unable to restrain herself.
“The Good Shepherd,” Roland repeated, as if trying the identity on for size. “I rather like that,” he told her with a nod of approval. “I hadn’t thought of it as that before you said it, but yes, I suppose I am these girls’ Good Shepherd at that.” He watched her intently, a leer taking command over his features. Then, to both her and Brennan’s surprise, Roland’s eyes narrowed to slits and he roughly took hold of her chin in his hand, his eyes taunting hers. “You want to come worship at my feet?” he proposed with a laugh that was borderline maniacal.
That cinched it for her, Tiana thought. The man was certifiably crazy.
Because Roland was apparently waiting for an answer to his absurd question, she told him, “Later, once I have the girls I need for my business, then we’ll see,” doing what she could to play up the attraction angle between them even as the very hint of the idea turned her stomach and threatened to have her purging every last ounce of breakfast.
Roland gestured toward the portfolio that was currently in Brennan’s possession. “Keep looking,” he all but ordered her. “They’re not in any particular order, yet there should be several in that batch that’ll get your clock ticking,” he promised.
“You have the girls’ ages entered on the back of the photograph?” she asked as she settled on the sofa with the portfolio across her knee.
It was obvious that Roland saw no point to asking for the information.
“What for? Half of them would lie about it. Usually can’t get a straight answer out of a broad about her birthday, anyway.” He laughed harshly. “But just try forgetting it,” he murmured under his breath, and it seemed apparent that what the trafficker was referring to had transpired relatively recently.
Was the man actually married? Did he have children? The concept seemed too absurd to contemplate, given his chosen vocation. But then, it had been known to happen more than once. A family could provide the kind of cover a man in his line of “work” might very well need.
“All right, sit down and start looking before I change my mind and have you out on your asses. Both of you,” he stressed. “That means you, too, pretty boy,” Roland said mockingly. He was clearly jealous of the fact that the man who had brought her to him was far handsomer than he was or had ever been.
Before she and Brennan got back to looking through the portfolio, Tiana raised her voice—so he could hear her—and asked, “Are there any more portfolios?”
Roland turned around and eyed her incredulously. “Why?” he asked. “You finish looking through those already?” He jeered. They all knew it was physically impossible to have gone through a quarter of the photographs in such a short space of time, much less all of them.
She forced herself to treat what he’d just said as a legitimate question. It was far harder than it might seem, given that she wanted desperately to smash something into his sneering face.
“No, I was just wondering if this was the only one or if there were more—in case I wanted to expand my operation even further.”
“There’s always more,” Roland told her cryptically. “Get through that one and we’ll see what’s available to you. When did someone in your line of work get so damn picky?” he asked.
“I don’t know about someone else,” she replied evenly, “but as for me, I’ve always been picky. You and I haven’t done business before, so you would really have no reason to know how I feel about anything, especially my girls.”
Roland nodded, as if he agreed with what she was telling him. “Fair enough.”
But even as he said it, she sensed that the living embodiment of an egomaniac did not like being talked to as if he were an ordinary person, capable of making mistakes.
She’d just made a tactical error.
Somewhere, on some imaginary chalkboard, there was a black mark beside her name.
Roland went into another room busying himself with his affairs, and she and Brennan got down to work.
Tiana found it almost physically challenging to keep her hand from trembling as she looked at each photograph, then turned it facedown on a pile.
This wasn’t a pile of photographs; these were people. Frightened, damaged and emotionally scarred children even if they had the bodies of women. Her heart ached for each and every one of them.
They had to find out where those girls were being kept—they had to. If they didn’t free them, she wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink for the rest of her life.
Inwardly, all of her was shaking. That made it difficult for her not to keep a cool head. If she let slip her horror, if even one hint of what she and Brennan were up to got out, it would jeopardize the entire operation—not to mention it would kill any chances she had of rescuing Janie.
Possibly kill them, as well.
So willing herself to be calm for Janie’s sake, Tiana slowly turned the pages of the portfolio Roland had provided, doing her best not to allow her stomach to rise to her throat as she looked at the faces of desolation and hopelessness in fancy, revealing dresses.
She was certain that at least half the girls she was looking at had given up hope of going back to their homes again.
A closer examination of the faces allowed her to see that a great many of the girls appeared oddly complacent, wearing the same vacant expressions of girls who had been deliberately drugged and couldn’t quite fathom what was happening around them and to them.
Until they were raped.
Or worse.
After fifteen agonizing minutes of looking very closely at every single photograph in the portfolio, Tiana closed it.
Janie wasn’t among the faces.
Chapter 12
“Well?” Roland asked expectantly the moment he saw that she had closed the portfolio.
Brennan took over. “Not a bad selection,” he said, speaking for both of them. “But I’d like to see more before I make up my mind.”
“A discerning man.” Roland’s tone had more than just a touch of mocking in it. “Sure, why not?”
Turning to the bodyguard who had brought out the first collection of photographs, Roland snapped his fingers, indicating he wanted the man to fetch another portfolio.
Tiana could see that Roland enjoyed playing dictator as much as the bodyguard hated having to go along with playing the man’s servant.
“You know,” Tiana once again pointed out to Roland, “this could go a whole lot quicker if we could see the girls in person.”
“I’m sure it would,” Roland replied coolly. The moment the bodyguard reappeared, he took the new portfolio from him and passed the bound collection over to Brennan.
“Well, then?” Brennan asked, holding on to the portfolio but not bothering to open it yet. “Why don’t we go see them?”
Roland’s eyes narrowed into dark slits. Tiana couldn’t help thinking that it m
ade him look every inch of the snake that he reminded her of.
“We’ll go see the merchandise when I say we see them, not when you say so.” Roland paused for a moment, then added dramatically, “Understand?”
Brennan decided to push the man a little further toward the edge. He did not look like someone who held on to his temper well. Losing his cool just might get Roland to say something he hadn’t intended to let slip.
“What’s the matter, boss man won’t let you make an independent decision without consulting him first?” he guessed.
Brennan had pushed the right buttons—or the wrong ones, depending on which point of view was being taken.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Roland demanded hotly. He jerked a thumb at his own chest. “I’m the boss man.”
“In this room, yes, I agree,” Brennan continued, speaking so amiably, he might as well have been talking about something as innocuous as a new kind of salad dressing. “But in the organization, there’s someone else running the show, isn’t there?”
Roland clearly had his back up. “You asking me or telling me?” the older man asked malevolently.
“Telling,” Brennan responded mildly. “Hey, no offense intended, but something that large, with connections in other states, not to mention maybe even other countries, that takes someone who moves around in larger circles than this. You might very well be in charge of this area, but someone else calls the shots,” Brennan maintained.
She could see that Brennan was getting to the other man. For the most part, she’d let the scenario play itself out in front of her while she observed both participants closely as well as the two men in the background. She could tell by the veiled expressions on the two bodyguards’ faces that Roland might be the one they interacted with directly and he was the one they guarded, the one who paid their salaries. But it was also obvious—at least to her—that they were rooting for Brennan all the way.
Tiana couldn’t help wondering what it would take to turn the men. She had a hunch that something as simple as the promise of immunity in exchange for useful information against Roland would be the way to get the two giants to sing like overweight canaries.
“There’s no shame in taking orders from someone higher up,” Brennan was saying as Roland’s face began to turn a bright shade of red. There was definitely nothing suppressed about the man’s anger, Tiana thought. “We all do it. I know that I do. Even our little high and mighty madam here—” he gestured toward her “—answers to someone. Don’t you, sweetheart?”
“I might,” she agreed, taking her cue from Brennan and being deliberately vague. “But one thing’s for damn sure. I’m not your ‘sweetheart.’”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Roland liked her putting “Wayne” down—just as she thought he might. She was about to comment further when something in her peripheral vision caused her heart to suddenly lodge itself in her throat. She’d been paging through the second portfolio, only half glancing at each photograph she turned to when she saw her.
Saw her sister.
Saw Janie.
Suddenly, the room darkened just for a moment while her head felt as if it was pulsating wildly.
She looked down at the photograph. They had her sister dressed in some outlandish, incredibly tight dress that was cut too low on top and cut way too high at the bottom. What her sister had been forced to wear was hardly little more than a tight, hot-pink Band-Aid.
Janie had always hated the color pink.
Strange the thoughts that went through your head when you were coming unglued.
Roland laughed, pleased with the fact that the madam was obviously turning on the other man. “Looks like you’re on your own here, Wayne.”
She looked up at Roland, secretly marveling at the fact that she could still keep a civil tongue in her head. She would have thought that by now she would have thrown a noose around the smug man’s neck and threatened him with extreme bodily harm unless he gave her the exact location where the girls were being kept prisoner. Tiana struggled to get herself under control. Losing her temper like that would only put her—and Cavanaugh—in danger.
Taking a deep breath, she set Roland straight. “Actually, I’m with the pretty boy on this one. Like I already said before, making our selections in person would be a lot easier than looking at eight-by-ten glossies that might have been retouched.”
“Why the hell do you keep harping on that? Nobody retouched anything,” Roland retorted angrily. “As for going on that little field trip you keep obsessing about—when the time’s right, you’ll be notified where the girls are staying. Right now, if you see anything you like, let me know. I’ll see to it that those girls aren’t shipped off until you get to see them, in the flesh.” Then, because he realized what he’d said, Roland laughed. Coming from him, the sound came across as sardonic.
God help her, she didn’t trust a single thing coming out of the smarmy man’s mouth. She had the feeling that he was just saying anything that came to mind in order to get her to play along.
“Fair enough,” she replied, grinding out the words through gritted teeth. She quickly pulled the so-called candidates on her “wish list.” There were ten photographs in all and she handed them over to Roland.
The man didn’t really look through the batch. He counted the number. It was obvious that he thought the total was too low.
“Just ten?” he demanded. “Out of two portfolios, that’s all you can come up with?”
“I might want more once I see them in person,” she allowed, “but right now those are the only ones who make the grade.”
“You haven’t looked through the third portfolio,” the older man pointed out, sparing a glance toward “Wayne,” as well.
“Then let me see it,” she told him. But when Roland went to take the portfolio from her, she cried, “Wait,” then turned toward Brennan and asked, “You want to look through these again?”
“I’m done. I’ve got to say,” he said loftily to Roland, “I’m not all that impressed. I hope the ones in the next batch have something more going for them than the ones I’ve seen so far.”
“What’s wrong with them?” Roland retorted angrily.
“It’s not a matter of there being anything ‘wrong’ with them so much as there’s nothing special about these girls. There’s no spark. They certainly don’t look as if they would light up a room—or that they’re worth your asking price.”
That goaded Roland. It was obvious that he took any derogatory remarks made about his inventory personally. “Get the third portfolio,” he ordered his man.
“You’ll want to put these back,” Tiana said, referring to the two giant folders that were beside her on the sofa.
Getting up, she took a few steps toward Roland in order to hand over both collections. She suddenly stumbled, her heel appearing to have gotten caught on the edge of the decorative Persian rug that ran the length of the sofa. It looked as if she was going to fall right in front of him had Roland not automatically reached out to catch her.
Tiana cried out as she dropped the folders but managed to catch hold of Roland’s thin shoulders to steady herself.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to drop them,” she said. Photographs were scattered in every direction. She went through the motions of sinking down to gather together the portfolio’s spilled contents, but Roland grabbed her hand and yanked her back up to her feet.
“Well, don’t just stand there, pick them up,” he barked the order at the two bodyguards.
The two lumbered over, gracelessly bending over to retrieve the photographs. It was impossible to tell which belonged to what portfolio.
“I’m so sorry,” Tiana apologized again.
Roland was quick to dismiss the need for an apology. “No harm done. Are you okay?” he asked solicitously. “You di
dn’t pull anything, did you? I could check you over to make sure,” he offered with an unabashed leer.
Brennan noticed that she still had one hand on the other man’s shoulder as she appeared to steady herself. “No, no, I’m fine. My heel just got caught on the edge of that rug. Lucky for me, you were there to break my fall, otherwise I’d be covered with bruises by tomorrow morning.” She smiled warmly at him. “Thanks for being my guardian angel.”
“No problem,” Roland assured her magnanimously. “Do you feel up to going through the last batch of photographs?”
She couldn’t help wondering what sort of fragile women he encountered in his world. Maybe they used anything as an excuse to appear incapacitated. Dealing with the man, she didn’t wonder at their motivation.
“Of course,” she answered, smiling brightly. “That’s why I’m here.”
Viewing the last batch of photographs went rather quickly. She already had what she wanted, confirmation that Janie was here. Part of her wanted to cut through the pretense and put a gun to Roland’s head, demanding to know where Janie was being kept right now.
But doing that wouldn’t give them what Brennan was after, and if the man in charge of the organization wounded up escaping, all this would wind up happening again in other towns and cities to other unsuspecting girls, turning their existence into a hell on earth and bringing agony to their families.
So she went through the motions and prayed this would all be over with soon. She was doing her part in all this to make that happen.
Between Brennan and her, they had “preselected” thirty-five girls. Girls, they made it clear, they expected to see in person. They both remained adamant on that salient point. They wanted to “see the merchandise” before paying for it.
Roland promised to make some calls to put things in motion once they had left and then said he would get back to them. He might have said “them,” but he was only looking at Tiana when he made the promise.
Cavanaugh Undercover Page 14
