Cold Secrets
by Toni Anderson
Complete Booklist
COLD JUSTICE SERIES
Cold Secrets (Book #7)
Cold Hearted (Book #6)
Cold In The Shadows (Book #5)
Cold Fear (Book #4)
Cold Light of Day (Book #3)
Cold Pursuit (Book #2)
A Cold Dark Place (Book #1)
THE BARKLEY SOUND SERIES
Dark Waters (Book #2)
Dangerous Waters (Book #1)
STAND-ALONE TITLES
The Killing Game
Edge of Survival
Storm Warning
Sea of Suspicion
‘HER’ ROMANTIC SUSPENSE SERIES
Her Risk To Take (Novella ~ Book #3)
Her Last Chance (Book #2)
Her Sanctuary (Book #1)
AVAILABLE AS BOX SET COLLECTIONS
Cold Justice Series 6 Book Box Set, (Books 1-6)
Cold Justice Series Box Set, Volume 2 (Books 4-6)
Cold Justice Series Box Set, Volume 1 (Books 1-3)
Her ~ Romantic Suspense Box Set (Books 1-3)
When an international ring of sex traffickers kidnaps an eight-year-old girl in Boston, FBI Agent Lucas Randall heads undercover. But his rescue operation goes disastrously wrong and Lucas barely escapes with his life. Now the ruthless traffickers are hunting him down, along with everyone else who threatens their operation.
Computer expert Ashley Chen joined the FBI to fight against evil in the world—evil she experienced firsthand. She has mad skills, and deadly secrets, and once she starts working with Lucas, she also has big trouble, because after years of pushing people away, she’s falling for the guy. The feeling is more than mutual, but as Ashley intensifies her online pursuit of the trafficking ring, her traumatic past collides with her present and suddenly Lucas can’t tell which side she’s on. And as the case escalates into a high-stakes game of cat and mouse, it turns out Ashley isn’t the only one with something to hide.
If neither can trust the other with their secrets, how can they trust each other with their hearts?
Begin Reading
Table of Contents
Reader Letter
Cold Justice Series Overview
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2017 Toni Anderson
Kindle Edition
Cover design by Syd Gill / Syd Gill Designs
Print ISBN-13: 9780994870124
Digital ISBN-13: 9780994870131
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places, and events portrayed in this book are products of the writer’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For more information on Toni Anderson’s books, sign up for her newsletter, or check out her website (www.toniandersonauthor.com).
For Deb,
From Broseley to Tokyo,
Tokyo to “The Broseley.”
Thanks for a lifetime of friendship.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Complete Booklist
About the Book
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
Dear Reader
Cold Justice Series Overview
About Cate Beauman’s The Bodyguards of L.A. County
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter One
If anyone recognized Lucas Randall, he was a dead man. He knocked on the plain black door and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The start of a beard sprouted from his grimy cheeks. Motor oil rimmed his fingernails, and the smell of it radiated from his clothes in subtle waves. Even his old scuffed trainers were smeared with grease. He hunched his shoulders and stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of a stained nylon jacket, shivering from the cold.
The woman who opened the door looked him up and down with eyes as pitiless as a great white’s.
“What you want?” she asked.
“Poodle.” He repeated the password he’d been given, feeling like a damned fool.
She hastened him inside with a short, jerky motion of her hand, and quickly closed the door behind him. She kept her fingers on the latch as if she wasn’t sure whether or not he was staying.
The door behind her was open and gave him a limited view of an office.
“ID?” she demanded.
He pulled out a fake driver’s license and she took a picture of it with her cell and handed it back. No way in hell was he leaving this building without that cell phone. “How much?”
“Twenty minutes. One hundred dollars.” Her voice was high-pitched, and sharp as a razor-blade. She held out her hand.
The old crone might not be armed, but the look in her eyes was definitely dangerous. He hesitated. “I want an hour, and I want someone young. As young as possible,” he muttered gruffly.
“Five hundred dollars.” The expression in her eyes didn’t flicker. Her hand remained extended.
He dug out some bills. Palmed off five notes and slid the rest back into his pocket. Now she knew he was carrying plenty of cash.
She led him down the featureless corridor, past four doors on the left and two on the right. A white-painted banister led up a honey-colored wooden staircase to the second floor, but they walked past it and hooked a right. The place was nicer than most. A kitchen lay off to one side where two men with Asian features sat at a wide oak table drinking tea. A reinforced steel door with badass locks secured the rear exit. The extra locks wouldn’t keep the cops out indefinitely, but they would hold them off for a few extra seconds.
One guy stood at their approach—big, with a face that looked like he’d been dropped on it as a baby. The way his jacket hung lopsided from his burly shoulders signaled a weapon in his right pocket. He gave Lucas a hard stare, then shut the door in his face.
Anger slow-burned in Lucas’s gut, but he couldn’t afford to show it. The madam approached a door with the number “eleven” screwed into the varnished wood. She pulled a set of keys from her pocket and slid one into the deadbolt, unlocked it, and stepped inside the room. His heart pounded in anticipation. A girl of around thirteen sat on a twin bed that was made up with plain white bedding. A big teddy bear was propped up against the pillows. The girl had long blonde hair and blue eyes, and wore a simple cotton camisole that hugged the small buds of her breasts. As he entered, the girl drew her knees up to her chin. The whites of her knuckles shone through her skin as she wrapped her arms tight around thin legs. There was a bruise on her throat and another on her upper arm.
The madam spoke to her sharply and the girl jumped off the bed, and stood awkwardly in her underwear.
Lucas scanned the kid from top to bottom, and narrowed his eyes. “Too tall. Too blonde.”
“She’s young. Very pretty. Very good at pleasing men, yes?” The madam’s teeth flashed as she aimed a glare at the child. The teen dropped her arms from where they covered her breasts and put them on her hips instead. A sickly smile formed on her naked pink lips.
Lucas backed away, feeling as if his lungs were coated in filth.
“You like.” The old bitch was implacable.
He made himself glance at the girl’s pubescent breasts and take another half-step back. He hadn’t expected it to be easy, but this felt like the fast-track to hell.
“Not her. Not for five hundred bucks.” He shook his head. “She looks too much like my wife. What else do you have?” Like he was trading cars, not people.
The madam’s lip twitched in annoyance and the girl’s eyes widened in both fear and relief. On a normal day he bet he’d just earned the kid a punishment. Considering what was “normal” around here he couldn’t imagine what might constitute punishment.
The woman hesitated, probably remembering the thick roll of Benjamins stuffed in his back pocket. “There is one more,” she conceded with a calculating gleam in her eyes. She motioned him outside with a nod of her head, carefully locking the door behind her. They continued along the corridor.
Footsteps echoed behind them, making him glance over his shoulder, but the sound moved away and disappeared. The house was a warren of rooms and narrow corridors, which probably made it easier to operate without clients bumping into one another.
Lucas came to a door at the northeast corner of the house, and his brain buzzed with excitement.
The madam paused near the entrance and hesitated. “This one new. Virgin.” Her lips vacillated between a smile and a frown, as if physically torn between the need for caution and the promise of cold, hard cash.
He held her gaze. Nodded.
God, he hoped she was still a virgin.
The madam held out her hand. “A thousand dollars. Thirty minute only. If you mark her, I will cut off your balls. If you tell anyone about her, I will slit your throat.”
Lucas forced out an incredulous laugh. “Tell anyone? Who the hell am I gonna tell?” He looked at the woman like she was stupid and jerked his chin. “Let me see her first.”
The madam harrumphed and opened the door. Inside the gloomy chamber, a small figure was curled up on the bed. The room didn’t have a window, just a bucket in the corner and a simple twin bed covered in thin sheets.
He cautiously walked over to the frightened little girl who lay shivering under the top sheet, sucking her thumb. A scrape ran across her cheek, and her bottom lip was swollen and split. Long brown hair curled at the tips in a natural wave. He smiled. Huge eyes met his, scared and defiant.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He sat on the bed and pushed her hair behind her ear. She hunched tighter into a ball, obviously smart enough to know that whatever came out of his mouth was probably a lie. Relief that she was alive was pushed aside by rage that these animals had stolen her innocence and were willing to sell her body to the first pervert who walked in the door. Luckily for her this particular pervert happened to be an undercover FBI agent.
“A thousand dollars to touch. You pay now.” The witch near the doorway snapped the words with all the compassion of a dental drill.
Lucas got slowly to his feet and started digging in his back pocket as he approached the madam. The expression on her face was pure avarice, the thought of the money keeping her off guard. Without breaking his stride, he slapped his hand over her mouth. Her eyes went wide and she struggled, muffled grunts and cries reverberating against his palm. Clamping her jaw shut over her sounds of protest, he forced her backward into the wall. He nudged the door closed with his foot.
The shifting of bedsprings told him the girl was moving. Dancing footsteps crossed the bare wooden floor.
“Have you come to rescue me?” she asked in a piping, too-loud voice.
Mia Stromberg.
The offer of a large reward in return for information on Mia’s whereabouts had led to a tipoff from someone who wanted to remain anonymous. That someone had spotted a man carrying a sleeping child into this building, a child who matched the description of an eight-year-old girl who’d been kidnapped off the street yesterday morning.
“Yeah,” he told her. “But we have to be real quiet, princess, or the bad guys will hear.”
The madam’s eyes bugged as he wrapped his arm around her throat and gently squeezed, compressing her jugular, then her carotids, reducing the blood flow to her brain. Her face reddened as he purposely restricted the venous return to the heart and she lost consciousness. He felt no remorse. For a thousand dollars the woman had been more than happy to leave a pedophile in a room with an eight-year-old for the express purpose of having sex. There wasn’t a punishment harsh enough in his book.
As soon as the woman’s body sagged, he caught her under the arms and dragged her to the bed. He pulled off the leather belt she wore and used it as a gag, uncaring that it would hurt when she woke. Tightly he cuffed her wrists and ankles with plastic zip-ties he’d attached to his own belt.
He dug into her pocket and found keys along with a small plastic vial of drugs, probably roofies, and the cell phone.
A quick and dirty stakeout had revealed that not only were there a lot of male visitors to the property at all hours of the day and night, but had also identified the owner as being the woman Lucas had come to Boston to interview. Mae Kwon—now tied to the bed—was connected to a sex trafficking case he was working in North Carolina. That salient fact had made everyone sit up and reassess the situation. Authorities had assumed Mia Stromberg had been snatched for ransom, since her parents were dot com millionaires, but the sex trafficking aspect meant it was possible she’d been taken purely as a commodity to sell.
The FBI had picked up one of the guys leaving—a high profile lawyer with a wife and kids—and, in exchange for immunity and complete anonymity, he’d fed them a password he’d sworn would get Lucas in the door.
Ideally in a sex trafficking operation they’d take time to build the case. To photograph all the people coming and going from the property and figure out who the key players were. But with this little girl’s wellbeing in jeopardy, they’d decided not to wait. Forensics would have to give them the evidence they needed to convict, and hopefully one of the players would roll on the others, sealing the deal.
Lucas tried the madam’s cell but couldn’t get a line. No surprise—the bad guys were using a signal jammer inside the building. He and his colleagues had speculated it was to stop the women who’d been forced into prostitution from being able to call for help.
He pocketed Mae Kwon’s cell and squatted down beside the child. “We’re going to walk very calmly and quietly out of here, okay, Mia?”
She stuck her thumb in her mouth.
“Don’t be scared and do exactly what I tell you. No questions, ’kay?” he whispered.
She held his gaze and nodded solemnly. Then she grabbed his hand and squeezed his fingers, making his heart clench in response.
They closed the door behind them, locking the evil woman inside. An image of scared blue eyes flashed through his mind, and his fingers tightened on Mia’s.
The average age of a teen entering the sex trade in the US was between twelve and fourteen. A lot of the kids had been sexually abused and ran away from whatever home they had. Often, no one knew or cared what became of them. Many were coerced into prostitution and then felt trapped. Escaping the downward spiral became more and more difficult for children with few options when they already believed they were on the wrong side of the law.
Heat signatures of the three adjoining properties along this backstreet suggested there were upwards of thirty individuals trapped inside. But, having seen t
he young blonde girl with the big blue eyes, he couldn’t abandon her any more than he could have left little Mia Stromberg behind.
They reached the door with the number eleven on it. It was hard to curb his impatience as he methodically tried each key on the madam’s keychain. Finally the lock turned, and he and Mia slipped inside.
The blonde girl’s pupils went huge, and she scooted backwards on the bed. “What do you want?”
“He’s come to rescue us.” Mia whispered dramatically to the other girl. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Lucas hid his grin. The kid was like a real-life Disney princess.
He looked around for anything he could use as a weapon, but there was nothing, not even a window to break. He checked the drawer of the bedside table. Condoms and lube. The older girl’s cheeks reddened and inside he stumbled a little. She looked the same age as one of his nieces—older than Payton Rooney had been when she’d been taken from her home in that first defining moment of his life, but far too young for this exploitation.
“What’s your name?” he asked, quickly closing the drawer.
The girl looked at them like it was a trick. “They call me Rosie.”
“What’s your real name?” Lucas gestured her urgently to his side.
“Becca.” The girl relented and scrambled off the bed to join them. “Are you really going to get us out of here?”
“Yes.” Or die trying. He listened intently at the door but silence pressed hard against his ears. Quietly he eased it open and let them out, then closed it softly behind them. He moved to the front of their little procession. Mia’s hand curled over his as if she was afraid he might leave her behind.
Not a chance.
They reached the main corridor with the front door in sight, and he felt a moment of lightness that they’d made it. Then the doorbell rang and they all froze. Footsteps echoed from the kitchen. He was about to make a dash for the front door when a third man came out of the office. This guy was younger than Lucas, well-dressed, slim build, Asian features. The man’s eyes widened as he took in the girls at Lucas’s back.
Cold Secrets (Cold Justice Book 7) Page 1
