Fractured, page 16
Karl entered the information on the touch screen before he sent the return text:
Same location. Room 1612
Giger responded:
What time do you want your purchases delivered?
Karl smiled.
Now.
Chapter 19
Switch, and delivery
* * *
“These girls will be leaving tomorrow?” I said as a sense of panic seized me when Stalder delivered the news.
Not now. I had hoped it wouldn’t be this soon, even though Takamoto had informed me of the group of Chinese girls who had been ushered into the side door of the Elite earlier today. I thought I’d have at least two days. Or rather. I’d hoped I had that long.
“I do not need to repeat myself,” Stalder said with his cool expression.
My brief feeling of panic turned into anger at his information. Not only because we could lose the girls here that we were trying to save, but also because we’d found no clues to Jenika’s disappearance.
“Ms. Chandra and I haven’t had a chance to fully train these girls.” It sounded lame, but it was all I’d been able to come up with. “This is only our third day here.”
“We have hired a group of young women from China who joined us this afternoon before you arrived, Stalder said. “They are currently upstairs. Resting.”
Hired, my ass, I thought and tried not to scowl. And rather than resting, they were probably being “broken” so that they wouldn’t try to escape in any way.
“Our customers like change,” Stalder continued speaking in his precise English and looked as glacial as always as he added, “The Russian girls will work tonight then the Chinese group starts tomorrow.”
“Where are the Russian girls being taken?” I asked, trying to keep my tone calm.
Stalder studied me with his icy eyes. “To another club.”
I braved the cold. “Which one?”
From his expression I think I would have gotten frostbite if I touched him. Or maybe he was even cold enough that my tongue would have frozen to his jacket sleeve like a kid licking a metal pole during the coldest winter on record.
“It is none of your business,” he said. “Your business will be strictly with the Chinese girls when they are brought to you.” He tipped his head slightly. “If you are truly up to that task. I am not so sure of it.”
I chose to ignore his comment because I had something more important to be thinking about. I hadn’t expected Stalder to tell me where he was taking the Russian girls, but I had to try to figure it out. How could we help these poor girls, too, if we didn’t know where they went next?
My agents would make sure they found out. No worries, Steele.
“I’m sorry.” I tried to look innocent. “I did not know that where you are moving them to is a secret.”
“The handlers will prepare the Russian girls for the move,” Stalder said, his expression bland. “Your job is to concentrate on the new group.”
My heart was beating like crazy as I thought about Jenika. If she hadn’t already been moved, would they take her away, along with these girls? My entire Little Red team was on the job, trying to locate Jenika, but so far not a clue.
Yesterday Kerrison and I had slipped away, at different times, for “restroom breaks.” We both did some fast searching when we were on our own, but no luck finding Jenika. We tried talking to the girls, but the handlers wouldn’t let us anywhere near them, much less speak to them.
During last night’s show, after her first turn to dance, the girl named Dasha passed by as we gave her handler her assignment. She looked at us with pleading eyes. There was nothing I could do but try to communicate back to her with my own gaze and hope she saw what I wanted her to see.
We’ll help you. I promise.
She’d turned away and her expression went blank before she passed through the gap in the curtain that revealed the lap dance booths. I’d taken a deep breath and looked away, feeling impotent again. For that moment. Last night Kerrison and I had decent opportunities to plant a couple of bugs we’d kept hidden in our clothing. I put one bug by the doorframe in the girls’ common room on the fifth floor, and Kerrison placed one in the men’s restroom.
With the bug I had planted the day before, three were all we had right now. We needed more, including one in the offices in the hall off the main floor. That’s where Giger and his men seemed to spend their time when they weren’t out on the floor.
Everything was going to hell. With Jenika gone, the Russian girls being taken away, plus the fact we had no definitive time and date when Anders Hagstedt would be arriving, we could be seriously screwed if we didn’t make something happen. And make it happen fast.
Kerrison and I had heard whisperings about two of the handlers, Jorge and Mike. Neither had returned after his night off, and none of the handlers knew what was going on with the pair.
Jorge and Mike were Nick’s hit, no doubt. Next step, he’d get in, and we’d close down these bastards a lot faster.
“Alexis.” Giger’s voice jerked my attention from Stalder to the back of the club, where Giger was standing. The dim light from a spotlight reflected on the lenses of his eyeglasses and I couldn’t see his eyes.
“Yes, Mr. G?” I said. Stalder stepped back and got out of my way as I walked toward Giger. Maybe I could find out something about the girls from him.
Sure. As if he was going to start telling me every bit of the day-to-day activities of the trafficking operation without some of RED’s special version of a truth serum.
When I reached him, I noticed again the flash of the thick gold band and the sparkle of what had to be at least a three-carat diamond ring. Guess diamonds weren’t just a woman’s best friend.
Giger motioned for me to follow him down the hall toward his office at the very end. Excellent. Maybe I could plant a bug in his office now. I started to reach into my bra where two of the bugs remained. But when Giger looked over his shoulder, I moved my hands to make it look like I was adjusting my neckline.
Now I could see his eyes behind his glasses and his gaze wandered over my breast. I held back what would have been an expression of total disgust. Alarm bells flashed in my head when his eyes met mine.
Was my cover blown—was he taking me to his office where he’d have his boys restrain me? At least he might think he could.
Getting a little paranoid, Steele.
Giger turned away again and opened the door to his office when he reached it. It swung open on well-oiled hinges. He walked through and didn’t bother to hold the door open for me. It started to close in my face, and I had to catch it with one hand while I walked the rest of the way into his office.
He remained standing in front of the door when it closed and faced me. My heart thumped and my throat grew dry, but I let my body relax to aid me in defending myself if I needed to.
“You’re going to make a special deliver.” Giger’s words were a clear demand, his expression as nasty as ever.
“What kind of delivery?” It had better be good, to take me away from the operation for any length of time.
Giger’s flattop needed a serious trim. His gray hair was starting to stick up like porcupine quills all over his head. “You’ll take three of the Chinese bitches to a special client who just got into town.”
I couldn’t help the frown. “I didn’t know you ran an escort service out of the Elite.”
“I don't run a fucking escort service.” He scowled and I went rigid and raised my chin rather than stepping back, as instinct would make any person want to. “I don’t need to explain a fucking thing to you. Your job is to do what I tell you.”
“Yes, Mr. G.” I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from saying anything else.
It took one full second to realize what Giger was saying. What he was asking me to do. And who it might involve.
Hagstedt?
This could be our break.
“When?” I asked.
“Now.” He opened his cell phone and turned his back to me as he pressed a button.
While he wasn’t looking, I stuffed my hand into my bra and jerked out the card with the two remaining bugs.
With the ease in which any person speaks this native tongue, Giger said in Swedish, “Bring the virgins to my downstairs office.”
I stiffened. Bastard. Not only was he taking innocent girls to the man, but he was taking girls who hadn’t even lost their virginity yet
I peeled one of the bugs off the card, gave a quick glance at his desk, and saw the pencil holder made to look like a pair of a woman’s breasts. What irony.
“Spray some of that expensive perfume shit on them that you put away for the client,” Giger continued in Swedish.
It took only ten seconds for me to draw the bugs out of my bra, stick one to the underside of the titty holder, activate it, and slip the one remaining bug back into my bra.
“Put the whores in those clothes the client sent over,” Giger said. “Fucking hurry and get them to my office”
The client had to be Hagstedt.
Despite the fact that I was now primed to kill Giger and Hagstedt with my bare hands, I was standing quite innocently and demurely when Giger snapped his cell phone closed and swung his gaze to look at me.
“You are Swedish. You understood what I said on the phone,” he stated.
I shrugged. “It was a personal call. I didn’t pay attention. I heard something about clothes, I think.”
Giger studied me for a moment as if gauging whether or not I was telling the truth. “The girls will be here in a minute or two. It shouldn’t take that fucking long for them to dress.” He pointed to one of the high-backed striped chairs on the opposite side of the desk from his large office chair. I sat.
He ignored me as he unfolded a copy of the New York Times. Having caught a glimpse of the headline earlier about an eleven-car accident in the Holland Tunnel, I knew it was today’s edition.
The tangible smell of a newspaper practically hot off the presses reached me. His wire-rimmed glasses reflected the picture of the accident, and the Jagermeister wall lamp sent an orange glow across the page.
Today my white-blonde wig was hair swept up into a French knot, which was nice because my neck didn’t feel so hot from the weight of the wig’s long, straight hair. Unfortunately, it was still hot on my head. Kerrison had poked a sprig of holly with a couple of red berries inside the French knot, and I’d just rolled my eyes.
My dress was short and sexy, this time a sapphire-blue outfit with crisscross laces up the back. It was formfitting but stretchy material. It was a good thing I was in great athletic shape, because that dress showed every single curve. I had some cute slides with heels that could poke an eye out that Georgina had picked out to go with it. I liked them because if I had to, I could kick the heels off easily.
Earlier this afternoon, Kerrison had said I looked like a high-priced hooker. I told her that in the neon-green mini-nothing dress she was wearing today, she looked like a cheap leprechaun tramp. A tall leprechaun tramp.
Of course, that wasn’t true—Kerrison carried it off with style. Like Georgina, Kerrison looked great no matter what she wore.
The leprechaun description would fit me better if I was wearing bright green, thanks to my being height-challenged as well as the fact that I’m Irish.
Note to self. Never wear Irish green. Especially near St. Paddy’s Day.
I crossed my legs at my knees and clasped my hands around one knee as I looked at the opposite side of each newspaper page Giger turned as he read them.
While I waited, with him ignoring me, it gave me time to think about the entire op.
But more than the op, I thought mostly about my mother and getting home to her soon. Why did it have to be her? Why did it have to be Mama?
I made myself switch my thoughts back to the op. If the pervert waiting for the three virgins was Hagstedt, we could take down the bastard today. Tingles spread throughout me from my toes to my head as I repeated in my mind that it could all be over today. Once we had Hagstedt, the rest would fall into place.
We’d get the Russian girls before they were taken somewhere that we might not be able to find then. We’d save these new girls from China. We’d find Jenika. We’d take down Hagstedt’s New York sex trafficking ring and bust every single club.
Giger folded another page of the newspaper when a small article’s heading caught my attention:
DRUG-RELATED KILLINGS
OR PROFESSIONAL HIT?
Cold prickles rushed over my skin. I took a slow, deep breath and hoped the article wasn’t about Donovan’s hit from last night. He was damned good at what he did. Still, mistakes could be made by anyone.
Donovan hadn’t come to the apartment in Brooklyn in the wee hours after Kerrison and I got home from the Elite. I hadn’t seen him since I’d tried to push him into talking about his past. I figured he wasn’t in the mood to be pushed again, and I can’t say that I wouldn’t have tried to get the rest out of him.
The way Donovan had left the conversation, so cryptic, and on such a horrifying note, made me want to choke him. I could almost feel Donovan’s big neck beneath my hands as I clenched my fingers.
Giger started to flip the page over and I held my breath, hoping he didn’t see the article.
A loud knock at the door. Giger dropped the newspaper onto the desk, and I slowly released my breath.
“Come.” Giger shook the paper again and closed it, hiding the potentially damning article.
The door opened. Stalder, one of the handlers, and a Chinese man herded three Chinese girls into the room. I don’t know what to call it but herded, since they were pretty much shoved inside and in front of Giger’s desk. The soft scent of lotus blossoms followed in the girls’ wake, apparently the perfume of choice for the client.
The girls were gorgeous to a one. Their eyes were red, or at least those of the two girls who had their heads raised. The third looked down at the floor, her body visibly shaking.
“Do you speak any Chinese dialects?” Giger asked me.
I shook my head. I actually did speak standard Mandarin and some Cantonese, but I wasn’t about to let him know. “Only Swedish, German, and English,” I said.
Satisfaction was clear in Giger’s eyes. He didn’t want me to be able to speak to them. “The new girls are from Beijing.” He gestured to the man in the business suit. “Jianjun will be their translator until you reach the hotel.” The Chinese man adjusted the sleeves of his obviously expensive business suit, and I wondered how far up Hagstedt’s trafficking ladder Jianjun worked.
Giger’s shirt was so tight that his buttons looked close to popping off as he breathed out a tight breath and handed Jianjun what looked like a plastic hotel key card. The Chinese guy slipped the key into an inside pocket of his blazer.
“Alexis,” Giger said, “on the way to the hotel you’ll instruct the girls on how to make the client happy, and Jianjun will translate.”
Oh, that should be fun. And awkward. Maybe I’d just off Jianjun in the limo—if there was a way to do it and not blow my cover.
“Of course,” I said in Swedish.
Giger focused on the girls. They were dressed in surprisingly conservative clothing compared with what Giger’s men forced the Russian girls to wear when they danced each night. I didn’t doubt that this was for the client’s benefit. Couldn’t very well have three girls looking like prostitutes going to his hotel room.
Jianjun focused on the first girl, whose black hair hung at least ten inches below her small breasts and straight down her back. They’d dressed her in a bright multicolored handkerchief dress and reasonable two-inch sandals.
“What is your name?” Jianjun asked her in Mandarin. The man’s voice was sharp and condescending.
The girl narrowed her eyes. “I am Ai,” she responded, also in Mandarin, her tone combative. The meaning of her name was “love.” I thought about the parents who had given her such a special name and now probably wondered where their beloved child had gone.
Giger moved with surprising swiftness. “Fucking little bitch. Watch your fucking mouth.” He slapped Ai’s face hard enough that the sound of his hand against her perfect skin echoed in his office.
Fire burned along my own neck as Ai’s head snapped back and the imprint of his fingers lingered on her fair complexion.
A touch of flame remained in Ai’s dark eyes despite the reddening that I was sure was from crying. That flame and her small show of defiance told me that Giger’s men hadn’t broken her yet. I didn’t plan to give Giger or Hagstedt the honor of taking that spirit from her.
“And you?” Jianjun said to the second girl who wore her short dark hair in a pixie haircut, her face round compared with Ai’s oval. She didn’t look even close to being combative like Ai, but I could see her strength of spirit was also still there.
The second girl’s voice wavered as she answered Jianjun. “I am Daiju.” Black jade. Such a pretty name.
Her outfit was conservative like Ai’s in that it covered her body fairly well. A halter-top dress fell to just above her knees. It was white with black polka dots, the style accenting her breasts and baring shoulders that looked tanned next to the other two girls.
With her head still bent, the third girl replied, “Ning.” Tranquility.
“Look at me, bitch,” Giger said in a snarl.
Ning raised her head, her eyes redder than the other two. Tears rolled down her pale cheeks. She wiped them away with her fingers.
Of the three, Ning looked so very sweet and innocent, so young. I wouldn’t have guessed her to be eighteen. Her features were soft, lovely, her hair long and lighter brown than the other two. Giger’s men had dressed Ning in a snug wine-red, spaghetti-strapped dress with matching low-heeled sandals.
Giger paced in front of the three girls, starting with Ai and ending at Ning as he studied them. “You’re all virgins?” he said in English.
My whole body tensed and heated at the way they were being treated and because of what Giger expected them to do. Soon.
Color rose in all three girls’ cheeks. They each tried to avoid Giger’s eyes, even Ai with all her bravado.
