The Trade Off Read online

Shit. He could definitely get kids.

  This was getting deeper and deeper.

  After almost a full minute, Anton lifted his hands from the table, crossed his arms, and gave me a short nod. “I’ll see what I can do. Maybe get you a sample to go with our next deal?”

  “Perfect.” I put the money back into the envelope and handed it to him. “Next week?”

  He took the money and slid it into his front pocket. “Might be. Or the next. Gotta work the phone a bit.”

  “Sounds good.” I held out my hand.

  This time, Anton shook it without hesitating. Then he turned and walked out.

  The fucking worm.

  The three women gave me some attitude at first, but over the last three months, I’d learned how to take control. This was the most dangerous time, though. If they were going to run, it would be now.

  I kept cigarettes, soda and snacks in the waiting room. Both Russians had already raided the goodies, but Sylvia sat at the table, her head down. I couldn’t tell if she was sleeping or praying.

  “Listen to me, ladies,” I said, my voice firm. “We’re on a schedule here. Finish your cigarettes, because in two minutes, we are leaving. There’s a blue mini-van parked just outside the front door. We are all four going to get into that van and start driving.”

  “Where to?” asked one, her accent thick and dull.

  “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Katya.”

  “Well, Katya, here’s the thing. We’ll talk about where when we get there.”

  “Maybe we not go.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, you could try that.” I pulled a Taser out of my purse. Katya’s eyes widened. “And then I’ll tase you repeatedly while I call for my muscle to come in here and carry you down to the van.”

  Katya scowled but said nothing.

  I put the Taser away. “Or we can have a nice trip. Eat at nice restaurants, all of that. It’s up to you. But we’re leaving in…well, you know what? We’re leaving now.”

  With that, all four of us walked out of the office and down to the van.

  Not a problem.

  I got on the freeway and headed west. After about three exits, I got off the freeway, cut across a Jackpot gas and convenience store lot, and jumped back on the freeway, heading east. The whole time, I kept my eyes in the rear view mirror, watching carefully.

  No one was following us, as best as I could tell.

  Sylvia kept her head down, and the other Russian seemed in a daze, but Katya’s eyes darted around, taking in everything.

  “Not go Seattle?” she asked.

  “No.”

  To her credit, she didn’t ask me again where we were going. She just settled back into her seat and chewed on her thumb, her eyes suspicious. They grew darker and more suspicious when we crossed the border into Idaho about ten minutes later.

  After another twenty minutes or so, I took an exit at Coeur d’Alene. I drove unerringly from memory until I reached an unmarked building on the fringe of town. I used a plain white plastic card to activate the roll up entrance door.

  All three women had sat up in their seats. Their fear was palpable, filling the interior of the van with a sour odor. None of them made a move, though, not even Katya. They just sat rigidly, awaiting their fate.

  I cursed silently, and waited.

  When the door was up, I drove inside. I had a reserved spot right near the security elevator. I parked and turned off the van.

  And still they sat, like deer staring at a predator, transfixed, unable to bolt.

  I got out of the van, and slid the side door open.

  None of them moved.

  “Listen to me,” I said slowly. “I want you to listen carefully, because you’re not going to expect to hear what I have to say.”

  They stared at me. Even Sylvia raised her head slightly and looked at me carefully.

  “Your life’s about to change,” I said.

  And then I told them.

  THREE

  Bull

  “Son of a bitch! Move your ass.” If I ever drive like an old person, I hope someone puts me out of my misery. Jeesh, twenty-five in a thirty-five?

  Holding my anger in check took everything I had. My breathing hadn’t deepened since Rick left the office. All I could think about was getting home. I needed a few minutes to myself… to think… to plan. I wouldn’t let my family down. I’d never hunted human before, but it would be the ultimate test.

  Elbow on the windowsill, I tapped my chin and watched the slow-as-shit Buick in front of me struggle to stay between the lines. Seriously, the driver’s head barely reached above the steering wheel. I backed off a few feet. Causing Grandma to have a heart attack wouldn’t help my focus.

  Taylor. I couldn’t believe my beautiful niece had been taken. Spunky as hell, she would survive, her captors hard pressed to break her. The fight in her might even land her in a worse situation – one I couldn’t rescue her from.

  I couldn’t picture her in danger. Images of her as a toddler ran through my mind, chased by more memories of her as a pre-teen all the way into her sixteenth year. She’d just gotten her driver’s license. I’d promised to stay off the damn road.

  Rather than garner any tears, the memories combined with Rick’s revelation stirred up more anger. How much did I have in me? Repressed, new, it didn’t matter.

  And if Granny up front didn’t get a move on, I was about to go Northern-Idaho-Road-Rage up her ass!

  She turned off into the grocery store and I sped up Ramsey Road, turning right, then left to get onto the main highway. My land wouldn’t make me rich with lake views or majestic heights in the mountains, but I had plenty of acreage to keep my privacy, well, private.

  The long driveway to my house hid the ranch-style home I’d built in spite of my ex-wife’s desire for a three-story eyesore. I pulled around behind the large shop and parked my older F350 under the overhang.

  My boots crunched on the gravel as I strode to the backdoor.

  Focus, Bull, come on. You can make it. You just need to think. Plan.

  I plopped into the easy chair beside my wood stove and grabbed up my knitting needles and two skeins of yarn. My current project didn’t help or hinder me so much as keep me focused on Taylor and what I needed to do. She’d requested a pair of blue and purple gauntlets – fingerless gloves – for a back-to-school present and I’d been happy to work on it.

  Watching my large fingers maneuver the knitting needles around a tight gauge never failed to calm me down. My late grandmother had taught me to knit as a joke to piss off my old man, but I found a true talent for it. Beat the shit out of a few kids who discovered my secret as I grew up, but overall, it remained between me and few loved ones.

  The soft click of the plastic needles soothed me, pushing the anger into a more malleable form.

  My breathing slowed and calm reason returned. I spoke into the empty room to talk out my ideas, brainstorm with the pile of kindling and logs against the wall and the stack of knitted blankets on the couch.

  “Taylor, Taylor, Taylor… where’d you go, girl? Where do I start?”

  Click, click, click.

  “Who has you?”

  After a while, it became clear I’d have to start with a green Impala. And knowing Spokane, a low-rider Chevy like that riding around was most likely a ’75 or older.

  The clicking grew feverish as I finalized my initial steps. I’d have to check in with a few hunting buddies who also frequented the local car clubs. Nothing screamed punk-ass louder than a low-riding-Impala. Teenager or young kid in his early twenties. I’d bet my best skein of Angora yarn on it.

  “Pauly, man, you got this? I didn’t ask too hard of a question, did I?” The older man had a habit of ignoring the second half of whatever anyone said, making a discussion with him extremely confusing.

  He nodded, the frames of his glasses slipping backward on the slippery dome of his bald head. “Yeah, Bull. A green Nova. I got it.”

  “NO. I
mpala. Low-rider-style.” I tensed my jaw. Come on. Tapping my finger on the glass countertop of his burger joint, I ignored the booth full of older women staring at me and giggling. Damn cougars. No way in hell would I go for a woman whose tits hung past her knees. The ladies in my age bracket at least still had above-belt assets.

  But Pauly on the other hand…

  “Hey, you get any of that tail?” I jerked my head in the direction of the age-confused group of women.

  He rolled his eyes and flipped another page in the membership docket of the Chevy Collectors Club he’d founded ten years before. “Stay away from them, if you don’t want your dick claimed as the group toy.”

  “You talking from experience?” I couldn’t hold back the grin breaking across my face. Only Pauly would’ve experimented with women who wore polyester like the ‘70s had never run its course. “How many did you screw?”

  “More than you see there. Some of them are missing today.” He shrugged. “I was bored. Whatever.”

  He turned the binder my way, bright unprofessional pictures of people standing beside cars in different stages of rebuilding created a baseball card collection effect. Stabbing at a picture on the bottom left, he grunted. “That little shit. He’s the only one dumb enough to low ride an Impala of that year. Hell, you know how hard it is to find a ’64 ragtop? And then to lime green it? When he rolled up, a few of the old dicks almost rioted. And then they shut up when this big busted lady rolled out. Fine…” He shook his head and closed his mouth.

  “What?” I tilted my head.

  “Nothing. It’s nothing.” He pulled his hand back, glancing at the quiet groupies.

  “No, what? You were going to say something else, what was it?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I don’t want to spread rumors or anything.”

  That was bullshit. The man was a professional gossip which is why I visited him first.

  “But I think she was a…” He leaned in and glanced around for eavesdroppers. “A prostitute. She halfway propositioned a few of the guys.”

  A prostitute? Who the hell drove around with a whore to a car show in a tricked out ride? I studied the picture. Baggy shorts and an oversized shirt hid the man’s true physique, but judging by the height of the top of the car compared to him, I’d squish him like a damn ant.

  “Yeah, weirdest thing, too. He paid for his contestant fee and membership dues with cash. No one hardly ever pays with cash. We had to go to the bank to get change. He gave me a hundred.” At that, Pauly lifted his eyebrows as if to say, um hmmm, that’s what I’m talking about. Pauly’s tits were showing.

  Studying the picture, I couldn’t help but notice the broad base of his nose as it narrowed into a sharper tip. On either side of the nose bridge large bushy eyebrows crawled above sharp beady eyes. “He looks Russian. What’s his name?” I glanced at the women, really taking in the other patrons of the restaurant.

  “Sergio, I think. He didn’t stay long after the awards were handed out. He wasn’t impressed that he didn’t win.” He jabbed the picture again. “But come on, who the hell does that crap to an Impala?”

  Good point. “Thanks, man. I’ll let you get back to it, slut.” And I pushed off the counter.

  Just like in the woods, I had to follow the tracks – and little by little I pulled closer to the animals, closer to my kill.

  And hell yeah, there would be killing… lots and lots of it.

  FOUR

  Gus

  Lieutenant Mark Shepard grinned at me. “Nice haul, Gus.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  He scrunched his brow. Stray strands of gray seemed to have migrated to those caterpillar streaks from his gray-streaked hair. “Why the hell not?”

  “Right now, my name is Heather Williams,” I told him. “I’ve got to stay in character, El-Tee.”

  He nodded and spread his hands. “Fair enough. Detective Fergus MacIntyre does not exist. Only Heather Williams. But I want you to know you did good.”

  “Thanks.”

  It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate it. But it was hard enough to be undercover, without switching the masks around constantly. I needed to remember who I was. Or more accurately, who I was pretending to be.

  Heather Williams. Procurement agent for a vague, upscale, under the radar and never quite identified bunny ranch in California. Or Arizona. I rarely said anything more than “down south” to Anton. We had a cover story if he ever went snooping, but part of the story included the operation being high end talent that serviced exclusive clients. That naturally came with lots of secrecy. If he ever tracked down anything about Les Amour, I’d be surprised.

  Of course, his bosses might discover it. And if they did, they’d find a shell company that had all the markings of a criminal cartel front. That’s the nice thing about illegal activities. Everyone wants to keep theirs a secret, so it’s not suspicious when someone takes great pains to do so.

  That helps, especially if you’re really not a cartel at all, but the police.

  Lieutenant Shepard turned away from me and watched the three women as they were processed. One of the Russians – I’d learned her name was Natalia – bore a dumbfounded look. She was being debriefed by a Spokane detective, Sandi Mason. I don’t think everything had sunk in yet for Natalia.

  Sylvia seemed better. She had a wary but hopeful look. One that said she wasn’t one hundred percent sure this was real yet, but she was beginning to believe it might be. Her debrief had been fast, conducted by a Coeur d’Alene detective I hadn’t met yet. I worried aloud to Shepard that he’d rushed the process.

  “I observed part of it,” he told me. “Don’t worry.”

  “Hard not to worry when it’s my ass out there, boss.”

  “Copy that,” Shepard said. “But Dave’s a good detective. And he speaks Russian, too. That’s probably why the interview went so fast.”

  “Anton told me she was Romanian.”

  Shepard shrugged. “Well, she must speak Russian, too. Or Detective Mather has talents I’m unaware of.”

  “Do you speak Russian?” I asked.

  “Me?” Shepard shook his head. “Hell, Gus, I barely speak English.”

  I watched Sylvia as she sat next to Margaret, the case worker from Social Services. Margaret was speaking slowly and Sylvia was nodding along. “If you don’t speak Russian, then how do you know it was a good interview?”

  He opened his mouth reply.

  “And I told you not to call me Gus,” I added.

  His mouth snapped shut. Then he shook his head at me, his tone half playful, half reproach. “Do you know what would happen to any of my other detectives or sergeants that talked to me like that?”

  “Yeah. You’d probably knock them on their ass. Or send them out on every stinker that came along.” No cop liked to go out on deaths that had been there for a while. Even in the winter, the smell was terrible. And it stuck to your clothes and skin for at least three washing cycles after.

  “That’s right,” Shepard said.

  “But none of those glory boys could pull off what I’m doing here, either,” I reminded him. “So off that, I get a little rhythm.”

  “That you do,” he said. “That you do.” Then his eyes narrowed slightly. “A little rhythm.”

  Instead of pushing my luck, I turned my attention back to the processing. Katya’s face still bore a healthy dose of distrust, but I imagined she’d come around soon enough.

  We’ve had good luck with all nine of the women I’ve brought in so far. Once each victim was debriefed by one of the task force detectives, they got some immediate assistance from Social Services. A little money, medical examination, drug treatment, emotional counseling, whatever they needed. They stayed in a locked down dorm for about a week while those services were being rendered. It was a little gray where civil rights were concerned, but none of them so far had pushed the issue by wanting to leave.

  Later in the week while the social services were being provided, a detecti
ve conducted a follow up interview. After that, each woman was given a choice of several destinations, all of them well outside of our area of operations. Contacts with local services in those locations were set up in advance so that the women weren’t just dumped there and fell back into old habits but instead hopefully made some kind of a life for themselves.

  All of this was courtesy of the federal tax dollar. Uncle Sam was covering all operating expenses plus reimbursing the salaries and overtime for the involved officers back to the home agency. The money came from a fund Congress passed a year ago called the ASTRO bill, or Abort Sex Trade Racketeering Omnibus bill. When I was offered a spot on the task force, Shepard informed me that the senior senator from Texas was the one who sponsored the bill.

  “Apparently he was a baseball fan,” the lieutenant had said.

  “Apparently he’s illiterate,” I replied. Even I knew that it was the Houston Astros, as in plural.

  But illiterate senator or not, the federal money was there in droves. Spokane led the way by forming the task force and inviting several other agencies to come on board. While Immigrations & Control Enforcement (ICE) was technically the lead agency, they kept out of the initial stages of the operation to help build trust with the victims we freed. Most of them were here illegally.

  Once the chief of police was able to get the various Social Services to join the party, not only did that do a lot for the trust factor, but it became a slam dunk that the feds would fully fund the operation.

  And so they did.

  “You’ve never got three at once before,” Shepard said while we watched the women.

  “You’re right.”

  “You figure that’s a good thing?”

  “I figure it’s good and bad.”

  He smiled slightly. He always liked to play the mentor role with me. Most of the time, that kind of thing would seem patronizing and irritate the shit out of me. But I’d learned a lot from Shepard. He was the quintessential wise, old cop. So I played along.

  “It’s good because he trusts me more,” I said. “Or trusts that we can do business, at least.”