by J H Leigh
Jilly exhaled a long sigh. I opened my eyes when she joined me on the sofa. “I know we can’t stay here forever,” she admitted. “I just don’t know what to do. Nothing feels safe. I’m afraid of my shadow right now. Every time I turn around I feel like someone is going to snatch me out of thin air and I’m going to end up on a slab somewhere like Tana.”
I got it, I felt the same.“We have to do something, if only to feel like we’re not going down without a fight. If they’re going to win no matter what, I want to be the biggest pain in their ass ever. I want them to wish they never offered us the deal.”
“What do you think they do with all those bodies?” Dylan asked, frowning in thought. “I mean, think about it, assuming they only keep the ones they elevate…that means they’ve got to have a place to dump all those girls that don’t make the cut.”
“Like a mass grave?” Jilly asked, shivering. “That’s a gross thought.”
“Everything about their operation is gross,” I muttered with a glower. “I hope that place burned to the ground. At least then Tana wouldn’t be thrown in wherever the other girls ended up.”
“Like Nova?”
Sad for Dylan, I nodded. “Yeah, possibly.” Although there was still a chance Nova was alive. “You know, maybe Nova got elevated. We don’t know that she’s dead.”
“I can’t cling to a small hope that she’s alive,” Dylan said. “It’s easier for me to deal with the pain if I think she’s gone. Besides, I can’t imagine the hell of being elevated with those sadistic assholes. Better to be dead.”
I didn’t disagree. If I’d been stupid or desperate enough to take Henri’s deal there was no telling what he would’ve done to me if he thought I’d belonged to him. I stuffed down a shudder, feeling the phantom slide of his fingers across my skin. I would never let that man touch me again. I’d rather die first.
Abruptly, I said, “I think he has kids.” Both girls were confused. “My buyer,” I clarified. “I think he has a family somewhere. How does a father and a husband do that to another human being?”
“Because they’re two-faced narcissistic liars,” Dylan answered bluntly. “They don’t care about anyone or anything but themselves and they don’t feel an ounce of guilt for what they do.”
“Still, hard for me to understand.”
“Don’t try,” Dylan said. “Better to bury that shit.”
But I didn’t want to bury it. I wanted to keep it front and center so I never forgot or forgave what’d been done to me. I wanted to watch them all burn but I didn’t know how to make it happen. At the end of the day, I was still a kid without any money, resources or help. Miracles weren’t exactly something I was used to getting so I never looked for or expected them.
“I need access to a computer. A simple Google search might bring up Henri. I have to at least try,” I said.
“You could go to the library, that way the IP doesn’t route back to this place,” Jilly suggested.
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “I can’t sit around anymore. I have to do something or I might as well just put a fucking bullet in my head myself.”
“Don’t go alone,” Dylan said with a rare burst of protectiveness. “Watch your exits and keep your head on a swivel. Jilly, you should go with her.”
“I love libraries,” Jilly said. “Been a long time since I’ve been able to find a good book.”
“You’re not there to read Wuthering Heights, you’re there as a look-out,” Dylan reminded her with a scowl.
“Obviously,” Jilly retorted, rolling her eyes. “But I can multi-task. Also, I’m kinda impressed that you know the title of a book, a classic, even.”
“Why? I know how to read,” Dylan said.
“You just don’t seem the type to curl up with a book, that’s all.”
“And you don’t seem the type who would sell her cherry to a stranger but we all have secrets, right?”
Jilly stuck her tongue out at Dylan. “You’re such a mean bitch sometimes.”
“Keeps me alive,” she said.
Listening to these two fight was as enjoyable as pounding a nail in my foot. Rising with a wince as my head threatened to pop. “I’m going to shower and then we can go,” I said to Jilly. “Can you be ready when I am?”
“Of course.”
“Good.” To Dylan, I said, “Can you put some pressure on Badger about that P.I.? I’m not messing around. I need action or…”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re going to kill yourself, Drama Queen. I got it.”
I smiled sweetly, saying, “Or you” before leaving them all behind. Maybe a shower wouldn’t wash away the stain on my soul but at least I’d smell better. I was a disgrace. I think I might’ve puked a little on myself.
Dylan could play games all she wanted but I sensed that she was territorial about Badger, though God only knew why. If she thought I was eyeing Badger for anything other than a means to an end, she was nuts. For that matter, I couldn’t imagine ever trusting anyone enough to let them into my private circle for as long as I live.
Sometimes I felt the rage and fear bubbling in the pit of my stomach turning everything rancid inside me. Did that ever go away? Was I going to carry this fetid stench with me until I died? The inability to do anything to Madame Moirai ate at me. I wanted them all to pay.
Somehow.
Bearing this burden felt heavier than I could handle but what choice did I have? None. I owed it to all the dead girls crying in silence, lost and thrown away, to bring down this awful operation, even if it killed me to do so. That was the cost of surviving. The debt that was due.
I would gladly pay it if it meant Madame Moirai and The Avalon went down in flames.
But gotta start somewhere. I was tired of waiting. Tired of hoping Badger would come through somehow. I learned a long time ago, if you wanted to be saved, you had to save yourself.
This was no different.
Badger was right about one thing — I wasn’t a kid…and I haven’t been for a very long time.
11
The library was a bust. A search revealed no record of a Henri Benoit, which meant that wasn’t his real name. I tried not to let my disappointment show but I hadn’t realized how much I wanted my search to reveal something substantial until it came up a big, fat zero.
Jilly rubbed my shoulders as we rode the subway back to the apartment. “It was worth a shot,” she said, trying to make me feel better. “At least you can say you tried.”
“I thought for sure that was his real name but I guess it makes sense that he wouldn’t just share that information with an auction girl. What kind of fucking game are these people playing?”
“A dangerous one,” Jilly answered, leaning her head on my shoulder. “Something will come up.”
Her attempt at softening the blow only made me want to cry harder. We had less than nothing now. I’d tricked myself into thinking that at least having my buyer’s name would mean something, that it gave us a leg up, an advantage in a rigged game but I was wrong.
We had nothing.
Madame Moirai always won in every scenario.
“I also did a search for any mention of the fire and there’s still nothing. How would they keep that quiet?” I asked. “I set the mansion on fire. There should’ve been some mention of it somewhere. I don’t understand.”
“Money talks. Maybe they greased the palm of the local first responders,” Jilly answered. “Doesn’t seem too far-fetched that they probably paid off anyone who might’ve asked questions. Plus, we don’t know how bad the fire got.”
“I know the guards bailed. We saw them drive past us like they were on fire, too. For all we know that house burned to the ground. There were enough chemicals in that place to burn for days. They would’ve had to have help to put it out.”
Jilly didn’t have an answer but we knew the score. Madame Moirai had made sure that no mention of the fire would be found anywhere. They knew how to cover their tracks.
We were silent for the
rest of the ride. By the time we got back to the apartment, we were hungry and grumpy but Badger had a surprise waiting for us when we walked through the door. I didn’t have time to share our depressing news when Badger started talking.
“It’s about time,” he said from the kitchen. An older man, possibly in the tail-end of his forties or early fifties sat, leaning forward, looking edgy and uncomfortable. I took a wild guess that this was the private investigator Badger knew. The man looked like he hadn’t shaved in weeks much less showered. There was a general sense of unkempt personal hygiene that spoke of a hard life and bad choices. Hell, he looked like exactly the kind of man my mom would date. Badger gestured grandly, saying, “Adrian Hicks, meet Nicole and Jilly.”
Since Dylan was already there, he must’ve already introduced them. Not that Dylan looked happy or excited to have an adult in the room with some kind of police experience.
The man named Hicks looked us up and down, as if trying to decide whether or not he’d take the job based on first impressions, which I thought was fucking rich. I beat him to the punch because I didn’t like being judged, saying to Badger, “This is your private investigator? He looks like a fucking drunk.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Badger said with a scowl meant for me but then he looked to Hicks and said, “But I guess we could ask him…Hicks, you drunk?”
“Not enough for a gig like this,” he growled, his voice ravaged by a lifetime of smoking and booze. To Badger, he added, “I want my fucking deposit upfront in case this turns out to be a huge waste of time.”
Badger produced a wad of cash but before Hicks could grab it, he jerked it out of range. “I don’t care if you end up drinking yourself stupid, just remember what happens when people I hire don’t hold up their end of the bargain.” He let Hicks take the cash with a smirk. “We understand each other?”
“Such a tough guy,” Hicks drawled, tucking the wad into his worn jean pocket, then lit a cigarette as Badger left us alone. After a long speculative drag, he said, “So what’s this I hear about conspiracies and shit?”
This guy didn’t fill me with a lot of confidence but like Badger said, we didn’t have the luxury of being choosy. “Have you ever heard of something called The Avalon?” When he lifted a shoulder with a blank stare, I shared, “Well, that’s who we’re up against. From what we can tell, The Avalon is the network that these assholes hide behind. They’re all rich perverts.”
“Ain’t no crime to be rich,” he said.
“It’s not that they’re rich. They’re killing girls.”
“How do you know?”
Exasperated, I said, “Didn’t Badger tell you anything about this case?”
“I like to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. Gives me a chance to look someone in the eye while they’re telling it.”
“I’m not lying,” I said, offended. “Why would I lie about this?”
He shrugged again. “People lie for all sorts of reasons in my experience.”
I was getting hot under the collar. Jilly interjected before I could say something I might regret. “Are you a good private investigator?”
“I’m the best little girl,” he said without an ounce of humility.
Dylan cut in, “Yeah, well, I guess we’ll be the judge of that,” folding her arms across her chest. “And don’t call her a little girl. We’ve seen and been through shit you couldn’t imagine.”
I nodded to Dylan, agreeing.
“Fair enough,” he said with surprisingly somber appreciation. “Tell your story.”
I shared a look with Jilly and then after drawing a deep breath, launched into our story from start to finish, leaving out nothing, even though my throat closed up a few times in the telling. I even added the small bit I knew about Nova but admittedly, my information was limited and Dylan didn’t seem ready to add her two cents just yet.
He didn’t show a flicker of emotion the entire time but I sensed the energy change between us. The laziness in his gaze narrowed to full-alert as he listened. I ended with my discovery that my buyer had given me a false name and that we now had nothing else to go on. “I hope you have some tricks up your sleeve,” I said. “Because we’ve got no leads at this point.”
Hicks grunted, stubbing out his cigarette. “That’s one helluva story.”
“Do you believe me?”
He didn’t hesitate. “I do. Reminds me of a few cases that cropped up when I was a detective. Never were able to solve. Filed under cold cases and never touched again.”
I swallowed. “Is that what happens to dead girls when no one cares enough to keep looking for answers?”
“More times than not,” he admitted. “Trust me, it never sits well with a detective when they can’t close cases but there’s always a few that slip through the cracks.”
I thought of Tana. “We have to stop these bastards before they abduct a whole new crop of auction girls. They’re never going to stop unless we make them.”
“Hold up,” he said, raising his hands to slow me down “it’s not that easy. If it’s a bunch of rich people being shielded by this shadow organization, it will be a bitch trying to figure out where the core is.”
“But you can do it, right?” Jilly asked.
“Let me make some calls. I have a contact in the NYPD Detective Bureau. Let me see if I can’t get her to make some inquiries.”
“Be careful,” I prompted, almost out of habit. I clarified, shifting on my feet. “I mean, the people we’re dealing with are really dangerous and I wouldn’t doubt that they have dirty cops on the payroll. The last thing I need is the one person able to help us getting whacked for talking to the wrong people.”
“Don’t worry about me. You worry about you. Stay low and wait until I contact you.”
“What do you mean? I can’t sit in this apartment like a caged canary. I’m already going crazy.”
“Give me a day or two. I’ll get back to you as quick as I can,” he assured me.
That wasn’t the answer I was hoping for but it was the most logical. Hicks let himself out and then it was just Jilly, me and Dylan.
“You think he can help us?” I asked the girls.
Dylan shrugged as she picked at her cuticle. “He seems like a crusty old drunk but, I don’t know, he’s got more contacts than we do, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.” But nothing felt right and the odds were so stacked against us, I couldn’t help but choke on the despair closing my throat.
“Why do you think he knows Badger?” Jilly asked, curious. “Seems weird for a guy like him to know an ex-cop.”
“Badger collects people. He says you never know when you’re going to need to call in a favor.”
“Do you know Hicks?” I asked.
“No. Never met him before in my life but Badger doesn’t share. He’s a fucking locked box, you know? He keeps his secrets close to the vest and for good reason. Honestly, I don’t want to know too much about Badger and how he operates. Better that way. Better for all of us.”
I knew I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth but after the way I was raised, I learned to question everything. No one was purely innocent. And that included me. I never should’ve taken the deal but I had. A normal person would’ve run away from an offer as crude and dangerous as the one we were offered. I knew this because just sharing what’d happened to me with Lora had been completely horrified.
Had I been horrified when I was approached, when the pen was put to paper? Not really. Nervous, yes; horrified, no.
But I should’ve been. I should’ve run so fast that my shoes caught fire.
And what about Tana? How had she managed to scribble her name on the dotted line when she’d clearly been scared to go through with it?
I looked to Jilly and Dylan. “What were your plans if Madame Moirai hadn’t come along and dangled the promise of a new life in front of you?”
Jilly frowned, shrugging. “I dunno. I didn’t really have a plan. I just like
d to get from day-to-day. Maybe spend some time at the beach. Relax. Soak up the sunshine.” Jilly seemed to hear herself. A turbulent ocean of awareness washed over her expression. “You know, planning for a future was never an option for me. You get used to drifting, to surviving and there’s no room for long-term planning. You just want to exist somewhere.”
“Did you think the money would change that?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“It wasn’t like we were going to walk away with millions,” I said. “That’s not enough to live on forever.”
She lifted her shoulders in a quick motion, a ready smile forming. “I’m pretty good at living in the moment. I guess I just would’ve done that.”
I returned to Dylan. “And you?”
Dylan wasn’t a sharer. I half-expected her to shut me down with a rude comment. She didn’t but her dead-pan answer almost made me wish she had.
“What does it matter? We can’t change what we did or what we didn’t. I didn’t take the deal for the money. I did it for Nova. In the end, I didn’t get either.”
Somehow glimpsing a sliver of Dylan’s raw pain was like drinking bleach with a fatalistic smile because you knew the world was burning.
And that’s all I could say about that because it kinda killed me.
12
The three of us had become accustomed to sleeping in the same space. Jilly always took the middle and had no problems cuddling up to one of us like a little kid. It used to irritate me but the comforting weight of her body against mine had become soothing.
I think it was the same for Dylan, though she’d never admit it.
There was nothing sexual about it. Actually, it was more like a sisterhood. Jilly was always more than happy to wiggle in between us. Dylan routinely complained about Jilly’s cold feet and threatened to kick her to the floor. I rolled my eyes, knowing Dylan would do no such thing but I agreed with Dylan — Jilly’s feet were like ice.
It was like the girl had zero circulation running through her veins.
But without realizing it, we’d adopted each other into a dysfunctional family of three, bound by the most fucked-up of forever-binding glue.
