by HELEN HARDT
Yes, I’m not an idiot. “Yes.”
“All right. I have here the visitors log from the prison.” He went on to list the few times I’d been to the prison to see Larry Wade. He asked me about the visits, and I answered as best I could remember.
The detective was a middle-aged man who was graying and balding. He most likely knew Ruby, though I wasn’t going to bring her up.
He, however, did. “The last time you saw Mr. Wade you were accompanied by Detective Ruby Lee.”
“I was.”
“Why did Detective Lee accompany you? This isn’t her case.”
“She’s my”—I cleared my throat—“fiancée.”
“Oh? That’s news to us.”
“It just happened.” And she hadn’t yet said yes, but that was a minor detail I planned to fix as soon as possible.
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” I wasn’t going to tell him that Ruby had a personal interest in the case. He probably already knew anyway.
“Mr. Steel, I don’t think I have any more questions. Thank you for your honesty. You’re free to go.”
I stood. He hadn’t said anything about not leaving town. I turned to Catherine. “We need to go on a trip. Soon.”
She addressed Detective Benjamin. “I assume you’re fine with Ryan and Talon Steel leaving town?”
He nodded. “That’s fine. Only Jonah Steel needs to remain available. I don’t anticipate having any more questions for either Ryan or Talon.”
I let out a sigh of relief. Joe might be stuck here—and with Melanie pregnant, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing—but Talon and I could get moving.
Together, we’d find our father and bring Theodore Mathias down.
Chapter Two
Ruby
“Don’t pull that trigger, Ruby,” he said, a bead of sweat dripping from his hairline. “If you do, you’ll never find Brad Steel. You’ll never find Gina.”
“They could be dead for all I know.”
“They aren’t. They’re both alive, and I can take you to them.”
“I don’t believe anything you say. You’re history.” I steadied my hand, itching to turn my head and survey my surroundings. I didn’t think my father was working with anyone—Simpson was dead and Wade was incarcerated, after all—but something niggled at the back of my neck. I began moving slowly backward toward the nearest wall.
“You won’t kill me,” he said, “because you need me. Now that Larry Wade is dead, I’m the only—”
“What? Wade is dead?” I tightened my hold on my weapon to keep my hand from shaking. If Larry was dead, Ryan and his brothers would never get the information they needed. My father was their only chance.
“That’s right. So you need me alive. We’re leaving here together. Right now.”
“Like hell we are. I’m not going anywhere with y—”
A moist handkerchief covered my mouth and nose, and I inhaled instinctively. Red wine, rum, and chemicals. Sweet and rotten at the same time.
Chloroform.
If only I’d turned my head when I’d had the urge.
I dropped my gun and grabbed at the person—who was it?—behind me.
In front of me, my father’s image blurred.
Don’t breathe in. Don’t breathe in.
The sickly sweet aroma permeated the cotton fabric.
Don’t breathe in. Don’t breathe—
But I had to. I inhaled, and my feet fell from under me. I crumpled onto the floor. My father and another fuzzy figure—I squinted but couldn’t make out any features—loomed over me.
Then, blackness.
* * *
Ryan was thrusting into me in a primitive rhythm. “I love you, Ruby. I love you, baby.” His words beat in time with his thrusts.
I love you. I love you.
Then—
A pounding headache, like a bass drum with each beat of my pulse. Something cold and hard pressed against my cheek. My eyes were open in slits, but I couldn’t see anything but gray. My tongue was pasted to the roof of my mouth. I tried to move but couldn’t. Slowly I detached my tongue, feeling like I’d torn off a layer of skin along with it.
Water. Needed water.
I opened my eyes wider. Still gray, but something sat a few feet in front of me. A white blob. A scent of decay hung in the air, as if we were next to a compost pile.
I closed my eyes, trying to orient myself. Where was I? I’d been making love with Ryan…
No. That had been a dream. The last thing I remembered was—
“Hey,” a soft voice said. “Are you awake?”
The voice was female. I tried to reach forward to the white thing… I squinted. It was a…pitcher. Yes! Maybe it held water! My dry mouth rejoiced. I reached again—why was it sideways?—but my arm didn’t want to work. Signals weren’t getting from my brain to my limb. Then my hand twitched, and my arm moved an inch. Then another.
“I’d help if I could,” the voice said.
I didn’t need help. I just needed everything to be right side up. What was happening?
My body hurt. Not a bruising, achy hurt but an allover malaise—like I was getting over the flu. Something wasn’t right.
“It’ll be all right.” The voice again. “I’m so glad you’re here, Ruby.”
Ruby? That was me. Ruby. This person knew me?
As my eyes adjusted to the dark grayness, I noticed a figure, also sitting sideways. Why was everything all convoluted? I tried again to move, and something scratched my cheek. I tried to swat it away, but my other arm wouldn’t move. In fact, I couldn’t even feel my other arm.
What the—
Then it dawned on me. I was lying down. On gray concrete. My cheek was scratching against the roughness of the concrete floor, and my other arm was trapped under my body. That’s why everything was sideways.
“Go slowly. You’ll be all right. The drugs are wearing off.”
Drugs?
Right. The chloroform. Fragmented images rushed into my mind. My father had drugged me and brought me here. Wherever here was.
I should have killed the motherfucker when I had the chance. Should have pulled that trigger. Should have…
“Where are we?” I asked. At least that was what I asked in my head. What came out of my mouth sounded more like “wheee awww weee?”
But the voice seemed to understand. “In the dorms. That’s what they call them, anyway. They’re actually more like prison cells.”
Prison cells? That got me moving. I forced my muscles out of rigidity and scraped myself off the floor and into a slumped-over sitting position.
“You’re lucky,” the voice said. “You aren’t chained up. Yet.”
I squinted at her form, my eyes still adjusting to the darkness. She was dressed in a ragged T-shirt and sweatpants. One of her hands appeared to be cuffed, attached to a chain that ended somewhere I couldn’t see.
I looked down at my own hands and then at my feet. She had spoken the truth. I wasn’t bound. I was still wearing my work clothes, and my hair was a tangled mass around my head and shoulders.
My brain still wasn’t functioning quite right, but my physical body took over. I reached for the pitcher. Thank God! It was filled with water. Could be laced with more drugs, but at the moment, I didn’t care. My thirst ruled me.
I gulped down the liquid, letting it dribble down my chin and onto my shirt. I forced myself to stop after a few seconds. I didn’t want to make myself sick. I wasn’t sure when I had last eaten.
I wiped my chin on my sleeve and looked around the dark room. A toilet and sink sat in one corner along with a few tattered blankets. The walls were concrete blocks painted gray. The ground underneath me was hard and gray, like an unfinished basement floor. Along one wall was a door, and on another, a small window with bars over it.
No light streamed in. It must be nighttime.
“Where are we?” I asked again.
“I told you. The dorms.”
I
shook my head, and the drum pounding inside my skull grew louder. “No. I mean where. Am I still in Colorado?”
She scoffed. “Colorado? Ruby, you’re far away from Colorado. I’m not exactly sure where we are, but it’s somewhere in the Caribbean.”
The Caribbean? What the—? No. Not possible. I hadn’t been gone that long. I must have misheard her.
She was still talking, but I couldn’t make out her words. The sound of her voice nagged at me. I’d heard it before somewhere. Which made sense since she had called me by name.
I rubbed my temples, trying to soothe the pounding bass. My vision still wasn’t very clear. The woman appeared to be blond. Her hair was pulled back from her face, but I couldn’t make out her features. “How do you know me?”
“We met in Jamaica, remember? I’m Juliet.”
Chapter Three
Ryan
“Ruby? Ruby!” The door to her apartment was unlocked, and I shoved it open, Talon behind me. “Where are you?”
It was nearly five p.m., and I hadn’t heard from her all day despite texting her every half hour.
She wasn’t at work. I’d called there and was told she’d quit that morning over a squabble about vacation time. Her superiors must not have wanted her to leave again so soon. Nothing except the possibility of bringing her father to justice would have convinced Ruby to quit the police force. It was a huge part of her life and her identity.
I frantically searched the small abode. “Damn it, where is she?” My nerves jumped under my skin as fear catapulted through me.
“Calm down, Ry.” Talon walked through the kitchen. “I’m sure everything is fine.”
“Everything is not fine, Tal. She would’ve texted me. For God’s sake, I proposed to her last night!”
Talon jerked around, his eyes boring into mine. “You what?”
“I proposed to her.”
“Are you serious? That’s great.”
“Well, not so great. She hasn’t exactly said yes yet.” I ransacked her living room, much like I had when I found the feminist book under her couch.
“Hell, Ryan. Don’t trash the place. You’re not a professional. You don’t want to destroy any clues the cops might be able to dig up.”
My mind was whirling with possibilities, none of them good. The best alternative traveling through my head at light speed was that Ruby had freaked out about my proposal and flown the coop.
On any other day, I’d be devastated if that was true. Today? It was the best option. Which meant I knew it wasn’t what had happened.
“Look for anything,” I said. “Mathias must have been here. He must have taken her.”
“I’m going to call the PD. Maybe they can trace her cell phone.”
“That will only help if she has it with her.” I balled my hands into fists. “She wouldn’t go anywhere without her phone or gun, but what if…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence. What if, indeed? What if so many things? Her father was a lunatic. He’d most likely just had Larry Wade taken out. He was truly on his own now, and if Ruby was correct in her assumption, he was also running out of money.
Talon ended his call. “The department is going to do what they can.”
I was sure they would. I was also sure it wouldn’t be enough.
“Damn.” I plunked my ass on her couch, looking down. The cushions separated under my weight, and something shiny peeked up at me. Something gold.
I reached down and grabbed the object. My heart sped up like a jet taking off. “Look what I found.”
He sat down next to me. “What is it?”
I handed it to him. “See for yourself.”
He examined the heavy eighteen-karat-gold ring. “I’ll be damned.”
“Her father was here. He took her. I know it. Let me have a look at that thing.”
Talon handed the ring back to me. It was identical to Tom Simpson’s ring. I looked at the inside of the band. The same etchings that I couldn’t make out were there, but also something else—something absent on Tom’s ring.
My blood ran cold.
A name was engraved in elegant script.
Bradford Steel.
* * *
Twenty-four hours later, Talon and I arrived in Kingston, Jamaica.
I inhaled the moist tropical air laced with the sweet fragrance of jasmine and mango, and an overwhelming calmness enveloped me.
I was frantic about Ruby. She hadn’t left my thoughts in the last day and a half, but something peaceful flowed through me.
It was truth. I wasn’t sure how I knew, but I knew.
We’d find the truth here.
Two men met us—a limo driver, who took our luggage, and the private investigator we had hired.
The investigator was a large man with dark-brown skin and a wide smile. He stuck out his hand. “Mr. Steel times two. I’m Rajae Williams.”
Talon took his hand. “I’m Talon Steel. Thank you for meeting us, Mr. Williams. We hear you’re the best.”
“Call me Raj,” he said in his Jamaican accent. “And you hear correctly. From what I understand, we have a lot of work ahead of us, but if money is no issue—”
“It’s not,” I interjected.
“Good,” Raj said. “I’ve booked a cruising yacht for the next two weeks. The captain is notoriously discreet. We leave tonight. You’ll just be two American tourists and real estate developers visiting the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and I’ll be your Jamaican guide.”
“Have you done anything like this before?” I asked.
“Yes, of course. Though not with this much style. I was instrumental in bringing down a couple of smaller trafficking rings. From what you’ve described though, we’re looking for something bigger. I heard about the two girls who went missing from the Destination Desire resort when you two were here a few weeks ago. Since then, four other young women have disappeared from three other resorts. These things tend to happen in waves.”
“The other two rings you brought down,” I said. “Were they on a separate island?”
Raj shook his head. “One was here in Jamaica, and the other had its headquarters in the Dominican Republic. They’re everywhere. Even in your own country.”
I swallowed. Even though I knew what he said was true, the thought of humans being bought and sold in the US made my flesh crawl. But it had been happening under our noses.
Raj continued, “Because you’ve assured me that money is not an issue, we’ll have access to more information. I have informants who aren’t above taking bribes.”
“Let’s see what they’ll tell us before we start handing out cash,” I said.
“We will,” Raj said. “But it’s amazing how the sight of American green stuff makes people start remembering. The people we’ll be dealing with aren’t the best of society.”
Really? Of course anyone who knew about this wasn’t the best of society. This was no surprise. And damn it, it would be worth every penny we had if we could ferret out Theodore Mathias and get rid of him for good. Now that Tom Simpson and Larry Wade had both met their maker, once Mathias was behind bars, Talon could truly heal.
We all could.
Including Ruby.
Where the hell was she? I closed my eyes for a split second. Her beautiful face appeared, her eyes sparkling…but then they morphed into something else. Cold blue. Fear. Ruby was frightened. I’ll find you, baby. I’ll find you and bring you home.
As I suspected, the PD hadn’t been able to uncover anything on Ruby’s phone. I was tempted to have Raj try to find her, but she could be anywhere. Wouldn’t hurt to ask though.
I quickly filled Raj in on Ruby’s disappearance, and he began punching stuff into his phone. “I’ll do what I can, mon. Let’s get you two to the yacht and get settled in. We’ll be cruising all night.”
Chapter Four
Ruby
“Juliet?” I tried to stand but stumbled onto my hands and knees. “Fuck!” The concrete scraped against my palms, shooting pa
in into them.
“Easy,” she said. Her voice was gravelly, as if she’d been screaming a lot. Maybe not getting enough to drink.
My vision was still a little fuzzy, but I could see that her baggy T-shirt and sweats were grayish and soiled. I squinted again, and this time her face became clearer. Her cheeks had hollowed out in the few weeks since I’d seen her, and lacerations were scabbing on her chin and forehead. The skin around her right eye was tinged yellow, as if a black eye was healing.
“It takes a while for the drugs to completely leave your system.”
“Drugs? It was just chloro— Oh, shit.”
I crawled as quickly as I could to the toilet in the corner and heaved. Nothing but stomach acid. It coated my tongue with bitterness and made me gag again.
When had I last eaten? I’d scrambled some eggs at Ryan’s house—God, I wanted Ryan—and drunk a cup of coffee. Right? I willed my mind to churn. Yes, and then I had gone to work. I hadn’t been able to get the vacation time I requested, so I had quit. I went home to pack and—
My father.
My father had brought me here.
He intended to sell me into human slavery after all.
I couldn’t say I was surprised.
An image crept into my mind—of two blurry figures standing over me.
Someone else… Someone had helped my father drug and take me.
“Juliet…” My voice was nearly as gravelly as hers.
“The drugs make you sick. Coming out of it really sucks. I’m afraid you’ll have another couple hours of it.”
“Great.” I spewed into the toilet again.
“I wish I could help you. But I can’t move to where you are.”
I didn’t really need any help vomiting, but the thought was nice. I retched once more and then leaned back, gravity taking over until I was flat on my back. Sweat poured from my forehead. I tried to lift my arm to wipe it off on my sleeve, but I couldn’t find the strength.
