The Naughty Nine: Where Danger and Passion Collide

by Nina Bruhns

  She picked it up. “Thirty seven.” Their room was thirty one. It was possible he’d mistaken the number.

  “Where’s your ID?” Gage said.

  “My co- coat pocket.”

  Gage nodded to Mallory. She took out the man’s wallet and found a driver’s license. “Joseph Oliver.” She recited an address in Oregon. “What are you doing here, Joseph?”

  “I’m attending a conference. I sell insurance.”

  She found a business card that confirmed his occupation.

  Gage raised a brow. “Your company didn’t spring for much in the way of accommodation.”

  The man licked his lips. “This isn’t where I’m staying. I—ah—met a girl.”

  A white line showed on his ring finger where he’d worn a wedding band until recently. The man was an adulterer, Mallory thought with disgust, but not an assassin. After this experience, she’d be surprised if he stepped out on his wife again.

  Gage released Oliver. The man’s hands went to his throat, rubbing where Gage had no doubt hurt him. Mallory returned his key.

  “Thank you. Thank you.”

  Gage eyed Oliver. “Get out.”

  Joseph Oliver ran.

  The room was now as cold inside as out. Mallory hugged herself against the chill.

  Gage closed the door. “I think we can leave here now.”

  “Think so.”

  Gage nodded. “We’d better get dressed then.”

  But she noticed his gaze went to the rumpled bed where they’d been about to make love and held. He passed a hand back through his hair and blew out a long breath before turning away.

  She knew how he felt. She was all too aware of being in that bed with him as well.

  Snowbound: Chapter Seven

  Gage hadn’t raised the subject of how close they came to making love in the motel room and Mallory hadn’t either. Might have been better if they had. Might have cleared the air. Or, maybe they would have picked up where they’d left off. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She was attracted to him. Her insides tightened now reminding her just how much.

  She’d never been swept away by attraction as she was with him. Her cooler head had always prevailed. Maybe it had been for the best that this one time when her cool head had failed her, fate had intervened in the form of Joseph Oliver. She shifted position and cut off the thought that it didn’t feel like the best.

  When they’d left the motel, they didn’t go back to the club for the truck, but left it to be towed and stored in impound. They took a cab to a car rental agency and picked out an inconspicuous compact, then when they’d arrived at Mallory’s apartment, they’d searched to make sure the place was unoccupied by anyone other than themselves.

  Now they were eating scrambled eggs in Mallory’s living room with the key they’d obtained from Billy’s office on the coffee table in front of them.

  They’d both taken showers and changed clothing. The clothes Gage had worn during the fire were spinning in her dryer and he’d changed into fresh clothes that her brother had left here on his last visit. Mallory’s brother John and Gage were the same size and the clothes fit well, but Mallory had never noticed that John was as broad in the shoulders or as solid in the chest as Gage. She recalled what those shoulders and chest had felt like when Gage had held her in his arms. She reached for the cold glass of orange juice on the table and drank deeply to cool the fire that ignited within her.

  Gage set his empty plate down. “I want to check out the key. Looks like it might fit a locker at a bus or train station. Either of those local?”

  Mallory brought her focus back to the investigation. “Both.”

  He glanced at his watch. “How about it?”

  Mallory nodded, and hoped that Billy had not rented a locker in another city.

  The train station was closest to her apartment so they went there first. Inside, travelers toted bags and pulled luggage. A woman rocked a crying infant in her arms.

  The young mother was in the center of the aisle and Mallory skirted her as she made her way to the banks of lockers at the back of the station. They were looking for locker one hundred eleven, according to the numbers on the key.

  Gage took one end of the lockers. Mallory took the other. When she found a locker with the matching number, she signaled to Gage. He stuck the key in the lock.

  “What are you doing there? That’s my locker.”

  A man came up beside Gage. Forty something with shaggy hair tied back in a ponytail.

  Gage recovered nicely. “My mistake.”

  They backed away and took up a position by the wall in full view of the locker. The man swung the door open, revealing an assortment of clothing on hangers, several pairs of shoes and a uniform that belonged to a cleaning store. He retrieved the uniform and headed in the direction of the rest rooms.

  Mallory shook her head. “Nothing suspicious there.”

  Gage followed the man with his eyes. When the guy was out of sight, Gage returned to the locker. “To be sure.” He stuck the key in once again and twisted. It didn’t fit. “Onto the bus station.”

  Unlike the train station, there were few people about. Ticket sellers held conversations among themselves. A man was stretched out across several seats, asleep. The aromas of coffee and fresh cinnamon buns filled the air.

  Mallory pointed the lockers out to Gage. They found the number they wanted and this time when Gage inserted the key, the door opened. Mallory reached inside and removed the single item, a sealed manila envelope.

  Gage closed the locker door. “Back to your place where we can check that out.”

  * * *

  Mallory sank down on her couch and removed a thick sheaf of papers from the envelope.

  There were several photographs of young women, each individual photo stapled to a page that listed vital statistics—height—weight—hair color—date of birth—health status. She read each in turn then passed them to Gage, seated beside her on the arm of the sofa.

  He took his time studying the pages. “Looks like a full work up was done on each woman.”

  “And then some. Look at the writing on the back of the photos.”

  “2/15 p.m.” He turned over another. “3/12 p.m.”

  Mallory tapped the photo she held. “The handwriting is definitely Wilder’s. I saw his scribble enough times when I was working at the club to recognize it, but what do the notes mean? The numbers?”

  “At a glance it looks like a notation of time. The dates the women were taken and that they were taken in the afternoons.” Gage turned the other photos around. “The numbers vary but not the letters: p.m. Why would it be noted that the girls were taken in the afternoons? Doesn’t make sense which leads me to believe the letters mean something else.”

  “Found some loose photos.” Mallory flipped through them. “These don’t have any notations.” She paused. “This photo is Cindy Mars. The woman I told you about who Wilder claimed came in for a job but was turned away because of her lack of talent.”

  Gage looked at the picture. “Wilder kept her around long enough to take a still.”

  Mallory picked up another paper. “Here’s one with Billy’s personal information. Bank account numbers. A deed to his cabin.” She moved on and came to a listing of internet websites. She passed the pages to Gage.

  While Gage bent over the papers, she left the table and went to the hall closet for her laptop. Back at the coffee table, she powered up, then keyed in one of the website addresses.

  “Hmm. A dating site.” She read the features. “There are several chat rooms.” She tried a few of the other addresses. “These are dating sites as well. All with chat rooms.” She stared at the laptop screen. “Do you think this is how they’re doing it? How they’re targeting the women?”

  “Looks like it could be,” Gage said. “This would work for the traffickers. Pictures and profiles are posted. All they have to do is make a selection, then establish contact.”

  “Billy stashed thi
s info for a reason. Makes sense he’d want to keep this part of the business away from the club. To be conducted away from the club.” Mallory paused, working through it. “No, I don’t believe that. He was not running this operation. Too slick. Too sophisticated. Obviously he knew about it, but he was subordinate, taking orders from Considine. Could be he assembled this data as insurance.”

  “Wilder may have wanted some leverage against his ‘Don’ should he need it. Would come in handy if he got busted and needed to cut a deal with law enforcement.”

  “Maybe Wilder isn’t as stupid as I thought.” She tapped the keyboard. “I want to build a profile, Gage, based on the information on these papers from Wilder’s locker. I’m going to post that profile to these sites on Billy’s list.”

  “Going to need more than one if you don’t want whoever’s trolling these sites to make you as a plant.”

  He was right. “Several profiles then. We’ll see who bites. I need to do this right. Make the descriptions irresistible to whoever is luring these women.”

  Mallory put on a pot of coffee for Gage and brewed tea for herself. She needed ideas and needed to think. When the beverages were ready, she poured cups for herself and Gage and returned to the living room with them.

  She hunched over her laptop. “The women in Billy’s photos are all brunettes. Between eighteen and twenty one.” She selected nineteen as the age for her profile and added that to the physical description. “Now for variety, I’ll play around with ethnicity and interests.” After she was done, she turned the laptop toward Gage. “What do you think?”

  He read the profiles carefully. “Nice job.”

  Mallory took a sip of her tea. Stone cold. She winced and set the cup back on the table. “Next for the photographs. Can’t use mine since they know me.” She opened a software program.

  Night had fallen by the time they’d finished. Her apartment window showed stars and a view of the skyline. Mallory left the sofa to turn on lights then uploaded the profiles through a secure account at the Bureau so an IP address would not be traced back to her.

  She leaned back against the couch. “I’m starved. I have some take out menus in the drawer by the stove.” She left the sofa and returned with them. “What’ll it be?”

  They decided on pizza with the works from a mom and pop restaurant where Mallory often ate.

  “While we’re waiting, we can cross reference the loose photos with the Bureau’s missing person’s data base.” She keyed in her password, then scanned the photos one by one. “Well, this is curious.”

  “What?”

  “Only Cindy Mars is listed as missing.”

  Gage leaned over her shoulder for a look. “I don’t know squat about hair styles and make-up, but I’d say those looks aren’t current. How far back did you search?”

  “I thought of those things too and went back ten years, well before any of these shots were taken. Still, no one was flagged.”

  Gage rubbed his index finger back and forth beneath his chin in thought. “Try something else. Upload those photos onto the internet. See if you get any matches.”

  Mallory did as Gage suggested. “Here’s an obit for Molly Combs.”

  “Cause of death mentioned?”

  Mallory scanned the entry. “. . . after a brief battle with cancer. We got an entry for Rita Castile. It’s an advertisement for a club where she was listed as a dancer.” Mallory clicked on the link. “The entry goes back six years.”

  “A long time in a dancer’s life. Rita may have moved on.”

  “Yeah.” Mallory’s intercom buzzed. “That’ll be Ernie from the restaurant.”

  A few minutes later, Mallory took the box from the gangly son of the restaurant owners. “Thanks, Ernie.”

  “No prob, Mallory.”

  She set out plates and a couple of bottles of beer. Again, they ate at the coffee table. Gage resumed his seat on the arm of the couch. Mallory sat cross-legged on the carpeting.

  She bit into a slice of the pizza. “We got another hit. This one, Sherry Herron, is listed as a dancer here in Bradley. Since they’re all dancers, I’m wondering if they have any connection to the trafficking operation at all or if Wilder just liked the way they looked and downloaded their photos for himself.”

  Gage reached into the pizza box. “Did Wilder bring in any new dancers that resemble these women in hair color or skin tone?”

  “Not that I saw. You thinking these girls worked for Billy at some point?”

  Gage folded his slice in half and brought it to his mouth. “It would be a connection. We won’t know unless we ask them.”

  “Even if they did work for Billy, I don’t see how that would tie in with the trafficking ring.” Mallory wiped her hands with a napkin. “I don’t want to waste time going off in a direction that won’t help us find the women.”

  Gage took another slice from the box. “I agree but we won’t know if there’s a connection if we don’t look into it. Your call.”

  They had no leads. She wasn’t in a position to discount anything. “One of the women is local. There’s still time to see her tonight.”

  * * *

  Gage pushed open the door to the Arctic Club. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and from a blue fog that floated off the stage as part of the current dancer’s routine.

  The patrons were three deep and he pushed his way through, making a path for himself and Mallory to the bar. Once there, he made space for Mallory to stand in front of him, then signaled the bartender and ordered two bottles of beer.

  Rather than ask if Sherry Herron was working and risk alerting anyone of their interest, they took their drinks to one of the few empty tables and settled in. If Sherry was working, then eventually she’d appear on stage.

  Gage scanned the crowd, but their entrance didn’t appear to attract any attention. With Wilder still at large, Gage was concerned about Mallory being in a location he could not secure. When he’d voiced his concern to her, and told her he would follow up on this alone, he’d been shot down. So here they were. But he didn’t like it. The fire at the club was still fresh in his mind. He couldn’t be casual about her safety. He kept his eyes trained on their surroundings.

  They sat out three sets. The fog, the noise and the worry, had given Gage one hell of a headache. The music changed and another girl took center stage. The new woman was older than Billy’s photograph of her, but there was no mistaking the petite brunette. It was Sherry Herron. Beside him, Mallory gave him a look.

  Sherry had a long set, then with a wave and a smacking kiss goodbye to the audience, she left the stage.

  Gage leaned over and spoke into Mallory’s ear. “We should speak with her outside. Not in here.”

  Inside their rental, they watched the door to the parking lot. When Sherry emerged, she wasn’t alone. Another of the dancers who’d performed earlier was with her.

  “Better to catch Sherry alone,” Mallory said.

  Gage watched the women share a laugh as they linked arms and made their way over the patches of snow and ice. “I’ll follow at a distance until she’s dropped off the other woman or is dropped off somewhere herself.”

  Sherry was the driver. She got behind the wheel of a sporty red coop. They didn’t have long to wait before she turned into an apartment complex and the other dancer got out of the passenger side.

  Sherry drove on. A short while later, she pulled up to a modest house.

  Gage parked the car. “You take the lead on this. A man approaching her in her driveway at this time of night might spook her.”

  Mallory left the car. Gage got out after her, but stood against the hood of the rental, remaining close by.

  Mallory joined Sherry on the driveway. “Sherry.”

  The other woman swung around. Her hand, covered in a purple woolen glove, flew to her throat.

  “Hello.” Mallory stopped a few feet from the other woman. “I’m Agent Mallory Burke.” Mallory held up her ID. “This is Captain Broderick. We’d like
to speak with you.”

  “What’s this about?” Sherry lowered her hand. “It’s after midnight.”

  “We didn’t want to interrupt you at the club.”

  “You were at the Arctic?”

  “Yes.” Mallory pocketed her ID. “We won’t take up much of your time. Did you work at The Wild Club in town?”

  Sherry huffed out a breath that fogged in the cold air. “Why are you asking me about that job? It was a long time ago.”

  Mallory tilted her head and gave the woman a penetrating stare. “How long ago?”

  “I don’t know. Three, four years, something like that.”

  “How long did you work there?”

  “Six months, I think, give or take. Why is this important?”

  Mallory ignored the question. “Why did you leave?”

  Sherry’s heavily painted lips pursed. “I don’t see why I should tell you that. But if it will get rid of you faster, I left because I got a better offer at another club. More money, you know how it is. Listen, it’s really late and I’m working tomorrow.”

  “Just another couple of questions, Sherry. Do you remember any of the other dancers who worked there when you did?”

  “No. I was there to make a living, not to make friends. I didn’t socialize with any of the other girls.”

  “What about Billy Wilder? Did you socialize with him?”

  Sherry scoffed. “No way. I don’t mess where I eat, got that? No way I was going to be in a position to get canned if the boss got tired of having me in his bed. Like I said, I was there to dance and that’s all I did there. Now I’m done answering your questions.” She jutted out her hip and braced a hand there. “If you got any more for me, you can ask them in front of a lawyer.”

  Sherry turned and went into the house.

  * * *

  Though he was too long for Mallory’s couch with the armrest extending only to his calf, it wasn’t the sofa’s fault that Gage couldn’t sleep. That he was alert to every sound in the apartment. The heat kicking on. The hum of the refrigerator. The ticking of the kitchen clock. Alert to Mallory, one room away.