“You looking for somebody specific?” The guy wasn’t stupid. He was getting suspicious and she wasn’t police.
She shrugged. It’d be a waste of time to try to look harmless. Instead, she tried for nonchalant. “A friend of a friend. We’ve got a mutual new acquaintance in town and I wanted to reach out and make sure he knew. No one checks their voice mail these days.”
“Huh.” The man glanced at King and back at her. “No new guys recently but we do have a pretty high turnover rate. No one wants to work this job forever.”
It’d be too easy if there were new hires. Of course it would be. So the person they were looking for had been established here under the old management of the trafficking ring and must be continuing to work under the new boss. “My friend has trouble sleeping. Any chance you have a person on payroll for a while who started asking for shift changes? Maybe not officially, just swapping with other guys a lot?”
Any movement of human captives would have to be in the dead of the night, during the graveyard shift, when there’d be the lowest possibility of witnesses. It’d be obvious if a person regularly worked the graveyard shift, but less likely to be documented if someone was just swapping shifts with a coworker here and there when shipments were due into port.
The man nodded. “A couple of guys swap shifts every once in a while. They have lives and sometimes they have things they can’t get out of, like their wife or kid’s birthday.”
“Maybe he used to ask for overtime, but he gave up on that and just started switching shifts so he could work a different part-time job? It’d be more often than a birthday or anniversary.” Asking for extra shifts would’ve happened when their guy couldn’t find someone to swap with or when he got caught by surprise and a shipment was coming in before he could make arrangements. It was more noticeable, but he might not have done it often.
Arin was hoping for a hit. Nothing she was asking was too specific when taken separately, but her questions could give them a good lead when taken all together.
“I got a couple of guys who have other part-time jobs.” He scratched the stubble on his chin. “Yeah, one used to always bug me for more hours. He doesn’t anymore so long as he can find people to switch shifts. His whining used to be a pain in the ass so I don’t have a problem with him swapping as long as they all take care of it among themselves and no one misses a shift.”
Now this was a promising lead. She didn’t ask for a name, though; after all, she was looking for a friend of a friend. “Any idea when he’ll be in next?”
She and Jason had timed their arrival to be right around shift change. She was hoping they’d catch a lead coming off shift or coming in for the next one.
“Yeah. He just finished. Should be in the locker room getting changed.” The man waved her and Jason back out the front door and came outside with them. Then he pointed at a door farther down the side of the building.
“I don’t want to go lurking by the door. That’d be creepy.” Arin bit her lower lip.
The man laughed. “Aw nah, but you ain’t going to want to see any of those guys with no clothes on. They’ve got some hairy-ass sausages.”
She was not even going to parse his warning. No. She didn’t want a visual.
“I’ll go call him out for you.” The man waved for them to follow him.
The door to the locker room was at the other end of the building. One or two men came out as they approached but the manager didn’t do more than nod or wave at them. When he reached the locker room, he didn’t bother walking in. Instead he just opened the door and shouted, “Hey, Nick!”
There was a pause followed by various masculine comments Arin couldn’t make out from where she stood.
The manager waited for her, King, and Jason to walk up to him. He scratched his head. “Nick was here and got changed, then said he forgot something out in the terminal. He left to go find whatever it was a couple of minutes ago.”
“Oh.” Arin kept her face sweetly confused as she considered the possibilities. He might’ve spooked if he’d heard them asking questions in the office. Or this man could’ve really forgotten something. Another option, which she would very much like to investigate, was that he could be checking on a shipment that had already arrived.
The question was, in broad daylight and with workers at this harbor around the clock, how would they investigate further?
“Why don’t you leave a note in his locker?” Jason asked, waving a sticky note. “I’ll ask the rest of the guys in there to step out for a minute.”
He was proving to be a good human partner. He gave her and King enough room to work if they needed to, didn’t make her feel as if she needed to manage him or get into a pissing contest every other moment over who was taking the lead. Pride or arrogance wasn’t a thing with him, and he had no problems following someone else’s lead, then stepping up when his skill set became the more urgent solution. Arin suspected he wouldn’t have any problems finding a position with future private contract companies.
She gave him a look of honest relief. “Thank you.”
Jason nodded to the manager and stepped into the locker room. As he did, she squelched an unexpected pang in her chest. Thinking about him finding a new position led to thinking of him leaving.
A few casual words were exchanged and a handful of men came out of the locker room, mostly dressed. One or two gave her a mildly interested look, but they generally didn’t seem too curious. Jason popped his head out and motioned for her to enter.
The manager held the door for her but remained outside. “Gotta keep an eye on the office.”
Jason was leaning next to a locker. When she approached, he pointed to the inside and murmured, “I asked a few of the guys which locker belongs to Nick. It’s clean, as in no potentially explosive surprises, but not by any other definition. You and King need a scent, right?”
Arin glanced at the pile of discarded T-shirts at the bottom of the locker. “One of those’ll do.”
After a few minutes in the locker room they were free to start looking for “Nick,” and Jason was eager to get moving. Finally, they headed toward the small parking lot as the manager returned to his office. Then they circled back around the building to use the locker room door as a starting point.
This part was Arin and King’s specialty, so Jason was fine with taking a support role. He had fallen into a comfortable working rapport with the pair, and he’d even considered what it would be like long term. But this was temporary. He’d inevitably start to itch for opportunities to take the lead himself. Arin was a natural leader with the ability to analyze a situation and make split second decisions, executing them before too many variables changed. He had enough experience to stay out of her way, but he wasn’t the type of operative to be happy in a supporting position for too long.
The way Search and Protect was structured, from what he’d gathered to date, each human/dog combination worked as a stand-alone team, but the teams could come together for a bigger operation under the command of Zu Anyanwu. Since it’d been Arin to break off and work solo on Big Island, Jason wouldn’t be surprised if Arin might be another lead if multiple human and dog pairs were brought together in secondary fire team. She seemed to have an instinctive ability to monitor the state of the dogs around her in addition to the humans. Jason was fine around King, but he didn’t know what the dog was communicating in the same way Arin or Raul seemed to understand their respective canine partners.
Arin rose from giving King a good, long sniff of the T-shirt she’d bagged and squirreled into her small backpack earlier. “We have to be fast. It’s only a matter of time before security notices us in the terminal area. A dog with two people who aren’t in uniform or work clothes will definitely look out of place.”
“So let’s be quick.” Jason held out his arm to indicate she should lead the way.
Arin and King treated this search differently from the one back at Kawaihae Harbor. This time, King hit on a trail right at the locker roo
m door. Jason supposed it was to be expected since they knew the man they were trying to find had recently been in the locker room, but there’d been a lot of guys in there and Jason was amazed the dog could sift through the scents to find the single one he’d been tasked to identify.
Jason followed a short distance behind as Arin and King followed the scent trail. Their target hadn’t been trying to hide so it was a straightforward walk through the shipping container area. In the meantime, Jason kept an eye out for movement around and ahead of them. There weren’t likely to be multiple hostiles, but remaining vigilant was always a good idea.
In the end, there was no need to wait for King to signal his find, because they were still yards away when a man came out from between container stacks and froze when he saw them. King’s head came up as he sniffed at the breeze coming toward them, ostensibly carrying the man’s scent. Arin saw him, too.
Then the man erased any doubt by bolting.
Jason ran after him, pouring on the speed to catch up before their target took too many sharp turns and lost them. Before the man could do more than dart between container stacks, Jason had him and took his feet out from under him.
A moment later, Arin and King joined them.
Jason looked up as they approached. “Why didn’t you send the dog?”
He’d seen plenty of videos and even real life working dogs take down a running adult. King might be a search dog, but Jason was sure he’d seen evidence of bite and attack training, too, in the way Arin sometimes ordered King to stand guard. Generally, a dog trained to keep watch could follow up with a more aggressive action if the subject moved or tried to flee. He knew King also helped her clear rooms or spaces for unknown assailants, a more tactical behavior and not a task a search dog would normally conduct. Again, if they encountered a potential adversary, a dog helping to clear the room could respond with action more aggressive than just alerting Arin to the person’s presence.
Arin shook her head. “We’re not here on official police search. There could be legal action against King and it’s my responsibility to protect him from humans, the ways they can twist a situation. You had it covered, so there was no reason to expose King to the consequences.”
Her rationale made sense and he’d enjoyed the burst of adrenaline. She was so capable, he’d been mostly on standby. This’d been a nice change of pace.
Jason yanked the man to his feet. He had a few days’ growth to his beard and was overdue for a haircut. His clothes were worn but reasonably clean, like he’d worn them repeatedly but at least had washed them between wears. “Look, tell us what we need to know and we all can go home.”
“I don’t know anything.” The man’s eyes were wide and he was shaking his head.
“You don’t even know what we—” Arin started at the same time as Jason.
“Sure you do—”
They both paused and Jason looked at Arin. She nodded for him to continue. “Or you wouldn’t need to run.”
The man remained silent.
Jason got into the man’s face, giving him nowhere to look but Jason. “Three questions. That’s all. Answer them and you can go.”
They’d agreed on the line of questioning on the car ride here. It’d been up for grabs as to which one of them got to ask but since Arin had been doing most of the heavy work, Jason figured he could step in.
The man’s gaze darted left and right, anything to avoid direct eye contact. “Just three?”
“Three,” Jason agreed. “You’re not going anywhere until you answer them.”
After another moment’s hesitation, the man nodded.
“When was the last time you saw Gigi?” Arin’s voice was flat, devoid of any heat.
The blood drained from the man’s face.
“We’ll know if you lie.” Jason warned him. Technically, they might not but this guy was completely open and readable. He probably lost all the time in poker.
“It was an accident,” he whispered. “The new boss, he sent her to me. She was supposed to do what I wanted. She said she was going to leave, go get a new job, talk to the police about me.”
Jason tightened his grip on the man until he gasped for breath. Yeah, they planned to let the man go, but the police would know exactly where to find him, and they’d have the video from King’s harness camera to prompt a formal confession.
Arin leaned close. “Are there any human captives hidden here now?”
The man’s eyes widened.
“Answer the question,” Arin snapped. Beside her, King growled on the tail end of his mistress’ demand.
“No.” The man stuttered out the response. “Not yet. Soon. I was checking to make sure I knew where to put the container. Preparing. I swear.”
He turned his head from Jason to look at Arin, then King, then Arin again. “It’s the truth.”
Jason gave the man a shake to bring his focus back. “Where can we find this new boss of yours? Not the man you talk to. The real boss. The man who’s going to own these people.”
Arin was staring at the man with hardcore intensity. King was in the lower edge of Jason’s peripheral vision and the dog was staring at their target, too. Arin and King in tandem were intimidating as hell, and they weren’t even focused on him.
The man shook his head again. “I don’t know.”
Jason laughed in his face, making the sound of it deliberately ugly. “I think you’re lying.”
“No, no! I’m telling the truth!” Their man was all eyes on Jason now as the nearer threat. “The new boss, he likes the hostess clubs. You know, the private clubs where the ladies all stay with you as long as you want. Talk, laugh, treat you good. You want boys? They’ve got boys host clubs, too. He schmoozes and meets with important clients at the hostess clubs.”
“You don’t say?” Jason eased back and gave the man a look of mild interest.
The man nodded eagerly. “Yeah, yeah. He makes some of his girls work at one or two of the hostess clubs, too, as training, before they get into more serious work or he sells them.”
So the new boss started the women he had light, with hosting and entertaining. Once they’d caught the eye of a few patrons, he sold the women into prostitution or worse. Jason was glad he wasn’t working for a man like this new boss, however indirectly, and he was certain Arin and Raul would enjoy taking the boss out of his newly acquired position of power. He would be happy to help them.
“Bonus question.” Actually, Jason had stopped counting because obviously their man was ready to answer anything to walk away from this. “Which club is his favorite?”
They were going to need to bump into the new boss, maybe set up a little conversation with him. As satisfying as it would be to make the man disappear, Arin and Raul were on the side of the lawful so they’d have to gather enough evidence to take him down legally.
“It’s right in Honolulu.” Nick screwed up his face as he thought about it. “Club’s name is One in a Million.”
“You stay right where you are. Don’t move and my friend here won’t have any reason to start barking.” She turned to King and gave him a quiet command.
King moved to sit, staring hard at Nick. There was nothing friendly in the canine’s demeanor.
Jason appreciated that Arin had said out loud that King would bark, but he was guessing King would bark then do more if Nick tried to make a break for it. The expression on Nick’s face showed a healthy fear that the big GSD might do a lot more, too.
Arin moved several yards away, out of earshot but still maintaining line of sight as Jason joined her.
Arin scowled. “If we confront this new boss, get him talking, we could get him to give up the information we’re looking for.” She paused. “Interrogation wouldn’t work as well as tempting him with a distraction.”
Jason considered where she might be going with that. While the idea of her dressing to tease the information out of a target had its allure, he didn’t think it was going to work. Not that she couldn’t do it wel
l. There were women in their line of work who loved the mind games, did what they set out to do well, and Jason had utmost respect for their skill. Maybe Arin was one of them. But he had a different approach in mind.
Jason shook his head. “I don’t think we need a woman to tempt him. He’s a predator and he’s got all the victims he needs. We need something else.”
Arin stared at him. “What did you have in mind?”
“What’s he looking for?” Jason grinned at her. “This guy supplies women and even boys as entertainment for all the high-paying clients, right? He’s looking for the real players on the island and the high rollers. We need a whale.”
Chapter Eighteen
Charlie here,” Arin murmured the call sign into her comm as she kept an eye on Jason through her scope. She’d chosen her vantage point hours ago and settled in with her rifle. Happily, this particular host club was an open air lounge on top of a high-rise. She’d chosen a neighboring office building with a few of those rooftop decks for office workers to get some fresh air or take their lunch. She hadn’t been able to access the topmost roof, but she’d found a good public conference room with a balcony to suit her purposes. It was a slightly higher elevation than the club and she had a clear line of sight to everything but the private rooms. “Juliett, I can provide cover as long as you don’t go into a restroom or private area deeper in the club.”
“Copy,” Jason growled.
She allowed herself a smile. He didn’t have a permanent call sign the way the members of Search and Protect had. For the purposes of tonight’s activity, they’d simply taken the first letter of his name and used the phonetic alphabet, so J for Jason had become Juliett to the Search and Protect team on site, mainly her and Raul. Jason hadn’t argued but he also hadn’t accepted it cheerfully.
“I’m entering now. How do I look?” He emerged from the elevator out to the lounge area sharply dressed in a white dress shirt and black suit pants. Even though his outfit was simple, the way he wore it was breathtaking. He’d left the collar open to expose the hollow at the base of his neck and a hint of the definition across his collarbones. His broad chest filled out the shirt and he’d rolled up the sleeves neatly, exposing his sculpted forearms. His biceps bulged against the fabric of his sleeves. He’d slicked back his dark hair and his tan provided a contrast against the white of his shirt. There were black lights around the DJ booth and bar, so his shirt literally glowed. So did his teeth, when he smiled.
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