by Brad Taylor
The elevator stopped on the fourth floor and she heard, “I know, I know. Just find that girl.”
Room 404 was two rooms off of the elevator foyer. She approached the door and said, “About to make contact. Can’t talk anymore.”
“Roger all. In the parking lot.”
She hesitated, then knocked. She heard a shuffling and could feel the man behind the door looking at her through the peephole.
She heard, “What do you want?”
“Mr. McBride, I’m with the hotel staff and we have an indication your carbon monoxide monitor is out. I just need to come in and check it.”
“Do it later. After I’ve gone to work tomorrow. I have to go to bed.”
“Sir, I must insist.”
“Get out of here.”
She heard the shuffling go away and pulled out her key card, sliding it into the slot. The light went green and she pushed the door open, entering a small suite complete with a kitchenette, sofa, and a king-sized bed to the left. She turned and saw Lannister with his mouth open at her entrance. He was bigger than he looked in the car, probably topping out at six-foot-two, with a healthy gut.
He said, “What the fuck are you doing? I said come back tomorrow, when I’m at work.”
She held up her hands and said, “Lannister, my name is Jennifer Cahill, and I’m here trying to find the woman you were with earlier. I don’t care who you are, and I don’t care who she is, but she could be a link to a missing girl.”
His eyes went wide and he said, “Who the fuck are you people? I don’t know about any girl. Get out of my room!”
“We know you were with a woman today. That’s who we want to talk to, not you. Just tell us how to find her.”
On her earpiece she heard Pike say, “What’s the room number? Get me up there.”
She imagined Pike was frothing at the mouth, but ignored him, focusing on Lannister, knowing that if Pike entered the room, this guy would more than likely go to the hospital. Violence wouldn’t solve this problem.
Lannister advanced on her with his fists balled, the veins on his neck jutting out. Through clenched teeth he snarled, “Get out of my room, now.”
He entered into her personal space and, unbidden, she reacted, snapping two palm strikes to his nose, popping his head back like he’d been hit with a bat, then spearing his groin with a knee.
She bounced back, fists raised, and he dropped to the floor, moaning. He writhed around for a second clutching his privates, then moaned, “Jesus Christ! I wasn’t going to attack you.”
He spit out a wad of vomit, and she thought, Oops.
He continued flopping like a worm on hot pavement and she said, “I’m sorry. I thought you were going to hit me.”
From Pike, she heard, “I’m in the lobby What the fuck is going on? What room?”
She said, “It’s a 1202 emergency. I’m good.”
She heard him laugh, calming down. He said, “Let me know. I’m here.”
A month before, they’d both watched a documentary about the Apollo 11 moon landing, and had marveled at how calm Neil Armstrong and his crew were on the mission. Ten seconds before the lunar lander was supposed to touch down on the moon, the computer had started bleating out something called a “1202 emergency,” which was an overload of the computers designed to facilitate his landing and an immediate abort. Armstrong had chosen to ignore the warning and had landed anyway. It turned out, the computer was bleating for no reason, and it hadn’t been an emergency.
She used the term because she knew it would turn off Pike’s Neanderthal instincts. If she could come up with that in the spur of the moment, he would know she was good.
Lannister’s panting slowed and he wiped the vomit from the corner of his mouth, then the blood off his nose, but didn’t get off the floor. He said, “What do you want?”
“The girl. We want to talk to the girl.”
He said, “I didn’t know she was a prostitute. It was supposed to be a date.”
Yeah, right.
“That’s fine. We don’t care about what you did. We want to talk to her. How do we find her?”
He said, “Can I go to my computer?”
She said, “Yeah, sure. Just do it slowly.”
He went to it, pulled up a website, and she saw a bunch of half-naked women all advertising services here in Charleston. He pulled up one of the ads and she recognized the woman from the fountain.
Ten minutes later, she left the room, calling Pike. “I have her.”
“Where? Where is she?”
“I don’t know right now, but you’ve got a date with her in an hour.”
Chapter 10
Lannister McBride sat on his bed holding his head in his hands, wondering how much this was going to affect his life. Wishing he hadn’t been so stupid.
He’d never had trouble before, with each woman he’d slept with seeming to like his overt attempt to turn the contract arrangement into a full-on date night. In his heart, he knew it was a chimera, but it helped him sleep at night. He wasn’t hiring whores. He was just going on a date. Or so he told himself.
And now this had happened.
He had no earthly idea what the story was with the girl the woman was seeking, but knew it couldn’t be good. First, the man had called at his private love nest, and now the woman had showed up here. That wasn’t because they were lucky. It was because they knew. They had somehow found him based on his contact with Beth, and Beth had some contact with the girl. They weren’t fucking around, and he feared for his future.
He was the quality control for some of the most classified instructions of the United States Navy. He was entrusted with the deepest secrets the navy held. Being exposed as sleeping with a whore at every port—because he’d slept with Beth in Norfolk once before—would end his life. He would lose his security clearance, and with it his ability to make a living.
And then he thought of his wife. She would leave him for sure, taking their kids with her. He’d been caught sleeping around twice before, and she’d left him on the last one. It had taken months to rebuild the relationship, and if this got out, she would leave for sure, ripping apart his navy pension and crushing him into oblivion. Because there was no doubt she would win.
He put his head in his hands and sobbed, then, after a moment, he began to rationalize. Both the man on the phone and the woman had said they didn’t care what he was doing. They only wanted to talk to the girl. He’d deleted his profile on the sex site and was due to go to work tomorrow like a normal day. Maybe it would just go away. He’d given them what they wanted.
He sniffled, thinking that the worst may have already happened. He wasn’t the target, his date was. Let them do their work. It didn’t involve him.
But it did. He didn’t realize his world was about to get exponentially worse until his phone pinged with a text.
He pulled it up and saw:
Lannister McBride, you had a date with a female today, and we need to talk. We have pictures. I will call. You will answer.
He felt his heart about to explode as it pumped adrenaline into his system. He sat catatonic for a moment, and then his cell phone rang.
He watched the buzzing phone, not wanting to touch it. Finally, he swiped right and brought the cell to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Lannister McBride. My name is Slaven, and you ditched a girl of mine tonight. I need payment.”
Trying to bluster, Lannister said, “Hey, wait a minute, we didn’t do anything. She said she had to leave.”
“No, she didn’t.”
Lannister paused, then said, “Okay, okay, I’ll pay. I’ll pay for the entire night.”
“Thank you for being amenable. That is good news. I hate to fight for payment.”
Sweating, Lannister said, “How do we do this? How much do you want?”
“Well, there we’re in a bit of a sticky wicket. I don’t want money. I want what you can get from the nuclear propulsion school.”
Shocked, Lannister said nothing. Slaven said, “You still there?”
“I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. You shouldn’t have had so much pillow talk with my girl in Norfolk. She told me why you’re here. You’re a contractor for the nuclear school, responsible for the safety of the two test submarines they use for training. You have access to a lot of valuable data. I’m not asking for anything super-secret. Just the maintenance records.”
Lannister knew that those records were in fact top secret and could expose vulnerabilities in the United States nuclear fleet. He said, “I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can. In fact, you’re the only one who can. And you can learn a lesson about bragging to a whore.”
Instead of reverting to a sense of patriotism, Lannister deflected to pragmatism. “No, I mean I can’t do it because it’s all locked down. I can’t get access without them knowing I did so. I can’t remove anything.”
Slaven said, “Well, unless you want your world destroyed, you’ll find a way. Do you understand?”
Lannister stalled for a moment, then said, “I can’t do that. Don’t ask me for that. I can pay. I’ll pay you for the girl.”
His voice soothing over the phone, Slaven said, “It’s too late for that now. Pay attention to what I’m saying. Get me something from the maintenance records. Do as I ask, or I’ll crush your life with the information I have.”
Lannister dropped the phone like it was molten rock, then began pulling out his thinning hair and rocking back and forth. He heard something from the speaker and ignored it. He heard it again, and picked the phone back up, hearing, “. . . you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Good. Listen, this is just a one-time thing. For a one-time payment. You do this and I’ll go my way, and you go yours. Understand?”
Lannister heard the words and began to rationalize again, seeing a way out of his predicament. It would be damn near impossible to get the data this man wanted, as all of the computers were tracked by login and extraction, but it might be able to be done. Just last year there had been a teacher/student scandal at this very post where the instructors were selling the tests to the students for a passing grade—and those tests were under the same top secret classification he was going to have to penetrate. If they could do it, more than likely, so could he.
He said, “You’ll never mention the girl? You’ll leave me alone?”
“Yes. I promise.”
Lannister squeezed his eyes shut, thinking. Begging for a solution. He heard, “Are we agreed?”
And he committed, like so many traitors before him. “Yes. Just this one time.”
“Good. I’ll text you the link-up information. Expect it to be tomorrow.”
“Wait! That can’t happen. I have to go to work tomorrow, and it’s going to take me some time to figure out how to extract the data. I can’t do it in a day.”
He heard a breath, then, “Okay, two days. Look for a text from the same number you got before.”
The phone went dead and Lannister dropped his hand, then sagged back onto his bed, wondering how his life had turned into a quagmire.
Chapter 11
Inside the cheap motel cottage on Folly Beach that Slaven had found, Beth sat on the squeaky bed, fidgeting enough to make noise, wondering who would enter through the door. Would it be another john? Or Amena’s father?
She prayed it was just another customer, because if it was the father, things were going to get exponentially more complicated. She could live with sleeping with a stranger—that had been beaten into her—but she didn’t know what she would do if she were offered the chance to escape.
If it was the father, he was searching for his daughter, and in that search, she could be free. He wouldn’t want to sleep with her, and she could use that to escape.
The second that thought entered her head, she banished it. Her life wasn’t worth ending Tess and Misty’s lives. Not to mention the girl. If she ran, Slaven had said he would kill them all.
She put her head in her hands, for the first time begging that the man who entered simply wanted to fuck her. If not, she was supposed to take him to Slaven and the girl. Where she was sure the innocent man would be killed.
She heard a knock on the door and tensed. It happened again, and she advanced, opening it to find a man who looked like he killed for a living. Over six feet tall, without an ounce of fat, he had ice blue eyes and a scar that tracked a path down through his cheek. She stumbled back and he said, “Hey, my name’s Pike. Are you Beth?”
She nodded, feeling relief. He’s not the father. Then she felt apprehension, thinking, He’s going to be rough with me.
She held open the door, subservient, and he said, “So, how does this work?”
“Well, you tell me what you like, and I tell you a price, but I have to say, I’m not into BDSM or any rough play.”
He entered and shut the door, then locked it, amping up her fear. He turned to her and said, “I won’t be rough, I promise. In fact, I’ll pay you for the entire night without even sleeping with you.”
And she saw a flicker of kindness in his eyes. Like he was a priest or something.
What is going on?
She said, “What does that mean? I’m not going to be using toys for you to watch. That’s not what I do. You saw the webpage. Straight sex. That’s what I do.”
He said, “Can we sit down?”
She nodded, and he pulled a chair away from a chipped plastic table in the makeshift kitchen, causing a roach to scurry away. He sat down and said, “This is a far cry from the French Quarter Inn.”
The words sank in, and she made the connection. “You’re the father.”
She saw his face register surprise, and he said, “Yeah, wait, what? How do you know that?”
She wanted to scream, They have her, and they’re going to kill you. Get out of here!
Instead, she began her rehearsed speech, “The girl is with my friends, and she doesn’t want anything to do with you. She wants to be free.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Where is she?”
“She’s with my friends. She wants to leave you, and she will. She said you’re an asshole and she wants a different life. That’s all.”
Pike sat up in his chair, and she felt the full potential of his violence. He snarled, “Where. Is. She?”
She recoiled, wanting to tell him everything. Wanted to let it all out, about the exit fee, the deaths she’d seen, the wanton cruelty, but she remembered Tess and Misty. There was no way this man could save them, even if he was as skilled as he looked.
She said, “She’s safe. In fact, if you want to talk to her, we’ll go meet her. She can tell you herself.”
He said, “Okay, I’d like that. Where?”
She said, “Hang on,” then dialed a cell phone, talking to Slaven. When she was done, she said, “It’s just down the street. A restaurant called Rita’s. But be careful. The people we are with may hurt you if you make a scene.”
He stood up, towering over her, and said, “I fucking doubt that.”
She saw his eyes flash, and instead of fear, she felt his pain.
She wished her own parents were like him, and felt a debilitating terror that the girl would leave and she would be forced to stay. Why hadn’t her own father done what this man was doing? Was she not worth it? What made this girl different?
The man put his hand on her arm, not in a violent way, and said, “Take me to them. Let’s have a talk.”
She looked up at him and saw a force unlike that of the men who held her. The violence was there, but not the cruelty. As instructed, thinking of Tess and Misty, she made one last attempt, saying, “Don’t do anything stupid. She doesn’t want to be with you. Let it go.”
He said, “Yeah, I’ll do that after I see her. But I’m pretty sure your idea of letting it go isn’t the same as mine.”
And for the first time, she dared to believe t
hat she might be free.
Chapter 12
Amena was shoved into the car between two other burly men. One was from the new crew out of Myrtle Beach, but the other was the Enforcer. Slaven put the car into drive, saying, “Remember what we talked about, little girl. You get this man to quit. You are a refugee, and if you mess with me, I’ll not only get you sent back to Syria, I’ll kill Beth, Tess, and Misty. Okay?”
Scared out of her mind, Amena nodded.
A lot had happened in the last three hours, to the point where she wished she were back in Syria. At least in the time before the war had started. Then, she would have her family. Her father, brother, and mother. But they were all dead, and now she was going to face the same for coming to the one land she believed would allow her to live.
When she’d unlocked the bathroom door, the Enforcer had slammed it open, then grabbed her by her hair, flinging her into the hallway next to Beth. Beth had mouthed, I’m sorry, and then Slaven had slapped Amena hard in the face, knocking her to the ground.
He’d asked her about her “father,” and she’d lied, trying to protect her new family. Trying to protect Pike and Jennifer. He’d become incensed, screaming, “Nobody works that hard to find someone they don’t care about. Who is he?”
And she’d given him her story. All of it, to include that she was an illegal refugee in the land of the free and the brave, only twisting the story to make it seem like Pike and Jennifer were some sort of international coyotes who were smuggling in people like her for pay—and that Pike hadn’t been paid yet.
Slaven had said, “So this is all about money? Your real father promised payment and this guy doesn’t have it yet?”
She’d nodded, saying, “He died before he could provide it, and I don’t have it.”
Slaven smiled, saying, “This is going to be easy. You just tell him you’re glad to be away from him. Can you do that?”
Slaven had told her what the punishment would be if she tried to go back to her “daddy”—apparently a slang term that these men used with their slaves. If she said anything wrong at the meeting, they would kill the women, and she couldn’t be responsible for that. In her mind, she thought she’d find a way to escape, just like she had in Europe, but deep inside she knew these men who held her wouldn’t let that happen. They had Beth, Misty, and that girl Tess—tied to a bed with Frankenstein stitches. If they couldn’t escape, how could she?
