Logan (Federal Protection Agency #9)

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Logan

A disorienting atmosphere of loud music and flashing neon lights washed over me when I stepped into the club. Almost immediately, someone’s hand slid across my chest and slipped inside the lapel of my jacket.

“Hey there,” the flamboyantly dressed man said as they sidled up next to me. “Haven’t seen you here before.”

Their voice was hard to hear over the loud music, but they were slurring their words, giving the impression they were drunk, but their blown out pupils indicated they were probably on something harder.

Grasping the man’s wrist and removing his hand from my chest, I pushed past him.

“Be glad that you’ve never seen me before, and I hope I have no need to see you in the future.”

The words were a warning, considering the nature of my job, but I knew the guy would see it as a personal insult. As expected, he shoved me away, shouting “Asshole!” before storming back into the crowd.

I’d been to Dinah’s Place before on several occasions, none of them for good reasons. On the outside it looked like a typical nightclub, but the backrooms were a different story. It was typical for clubs for dancers to take customers to the back for private shows, but this particular place used it as a cover for prostitution. As a rule, we usually turned a blind eye to it so long as everyone involved was consenting, and of age, but there had been a few instances recently where the “dancers” were of questionable age or were being pressured into something they didn’t want to do.

I was barely there for more than a few minutes before the owner of the club appeared in the crowd. Dressed in a short glittery gold dress, she looked more like a patron than the owner.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she said the moment she was within earshot, which in this establishment was only a foot away.

Dinah was a tough soul, older than she looked, and with plenty of experiences dealing with the law. Rumor was that she used to be a lawyer who got sick of playing by the rules. With how good she was at skirting the law, I was inclined to believe the rumors.

There was no bull-shitting her. The only way to deal with Dinah was to be as direct as possible.

“Do you really want to have this conversation here, out on the floor where anyone can overhear us?”

She glanced suspiciously at the dozens of people around us, who were all trying and failing to hide the fact they were eavesdropping.

“Fine. Come to the back office, but this better be worth my time or I’ll have Jerome throw you out.”

Jerome was the club’s most fearsome bouncer. At six foot five and two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle, he could easily pick me up and toss me out the door. It had happened before, and I swore I could still feel the bruises hiding under my skin.

As soon as the office door closed behind us, the noise of the club instantly fell silent. Dinah must have invested in some state-of-the-art soundproofing because I couldn’t hear even a whisper of the chaos just on the other side of the door.

It also meant no one could hear anything that happened inside the office, but I tried not to think about that. I had a gun strapped to my hip, if necessary, but I hoped the situation wouldn’t dissolve into violence.

Sitting in the chair behind her desk with the air of a queen, Dinah crossed one leg over the other, so the slit of her dress fell open up to the top of her thigh.

If I’d been into women, I might have been distracted, but I found myself only mildly amused by the attempt.

Frowning when she realized her distraction technique had failed, she tapped her nails on the arm of her chair. “Right, you’re one of those .”

The smile on my face remained pleasant, though a little strained at the corners. “I hope you’re referring to the fact that I’m a detective .”

As she pulled a slim cigarette out of its box, she gave me a long, pointed stare. “Of course. What else would I be talking about?”

“Of course,” I repeated. “What else.”

Instead of smoking the cigarette directly like most people, Dinah first placed it into a long cigarette holder. She claimed it was to keep the smoke away from her face, but I suspected she just liked the aesthetic since she had at least a dozen different holders to match her favorite outfits.

She took several long drags, holding the smoke in her lungs for a moment, before breathing it out her nose.

“All right, Hollingsworth. What’d you want?”

Taking out the picture Sebastian had given me from my pocket, I slid it over to her. “His name is Clay Dahler. This is the last known picture of him, but he should be about twenty-three now. Rumor is that he may have been spotted at your club.”

She didn’t even bother looking at the picture, and I snatched it back before she could tap the ashes from her cigarette on it.

“I might recognize that name, but why should I tell you?”

Smoothing out the picture to make sure it wasn’t damaged, I carefully stored it back in my pocket. “Because if you don’t, I’ll bring the DEA down on you. That patron out there who spoke to me was obviously tweaking, and they probably weren’t the only one.”

Her fist clenched hard around her cigarette holder, and she slammed the end of the long thin stick into the surface of her desk. It was made of metal, and actually managed to splinter the wood.

“I don’t deal drugs in my club.”

“No, you just deal other people’s flesh. But you and I both know it doesn’t matter whether you do something or not. The only thing that matters is if I can make a case that you do. If there’s one person on drugs here, then there’s probably more, and if there’s enough, then I can probably make a case that you’re dealing.” I held up my phone so she could see it, with the correct number to my contact at the DEA already punched in and my finger hovering over the send button.

I waited, letting my silence communicate that my next move was her choice.

“Fine,” she sighed as she pulled her cigarette holder out of the desk and brushed away the wood splinters left behind. “Someone named Clay Dahler did come to my club looking for work, but it was five years ago. I only remember him because he used his real name. Most people in this line of work go by an alias.”

Five years ago, Clay would have been eighteen. Assuming the same pedophile ring I was hunting down took him, then the timing suggested he had grown too old for them and been kicked out.

But if that was the case, why didn’t he go home?

Why was he still missing?

I almost slapped myself for asking that question, even if it was only in my head. The boy—a man now—had been held captive by traffickers for four years. There was no telling what state he was in, physically or mentally, and he probably wasn’t thinking straight.

Plus, the traffickers had probably filled his head with lies about his family, either claiming they had giving him up, or wouldn’t want him back. I’d seen it before. It was a common tactic for keeping young victims under control.

I took a deep breath to get my emotions back under control, and nearly choked when I inhaled Dinah’s secondhand smoke.

“All right. So, he was here. What happened?”

She shrugged, looking far too nonchalant for someone who had literally stabbed her cigarette holder through the table a moment ago. “Nothing happened. He wanted a job, but I turned him down. Eighteen isn’t old enough to work here legally.”

We both knew what she wasn’t saying. Whether or not her workers were of legal age didn’t matter to her. The real reason she’d turned him down was that he didn’t look old enough to pass for twenty-one.

I was starting to piece a timeline together in my mind. He’d gotten away from his captors, either by escaping or being kicked out, and gone looking for work. Out on the street with no papers or official documents, getting a proper job would have been difficult, so he’d probably turned to the only work he knew.

“So, you turned him down. Then what?”

Tapping out the last ashes from her depleted cigarette, she stored the holder back in its drawer in her desk. “Look. The kid was scared. Obviously running from something, and from the way he was acting, it seemed like the people he was afraid of weren’t far behind. I advised him to keep running and put some more distance between himself and whatever was haunting him. He used a computer here to book a bus ticket out of the state.”

She paused, obviously enjoying my frustration and impatience.

“The ticket was booked for San Francisco.”

“San Francisco,” I repeated. It was the opposite direction I’d expected Clay to go. He had been kidnapped in Maryland, and I’d hoped he’d headed in the direction of home, even if he never actually returned.

Instead, he had fled in the opposite direction as far as the continent would allow.

If he had a passport, he could even be in another country by now.

I couldn’t get ahead of myself. If he’d left the country, there was nothing I could do. My jurisdiction on this case ended at the border. Technically, because the case wasn’t on the FPA’s roster, even hunting Clay down to San Francisco was beyond my authority. I’d have to pursue him on my own time.

Luckily, I had plenty of vacation and sick days built up, so Mason shouldn’t be too mad if I suddenly took off work for a while.

“Is there anything else?”

Dinah tipped her head and gave me a teasing look. “I advised him to use an alias instead of his real name, if that helps.”

She was joking, but that info might actually help. Even if I didn’t know what name he was using, the fact that he probably wasn’t going by Clay Dahler would keep me from overlooking potential leads in the future.

Having gotten what I wanted, I stood from my chair and headed for the door. “Thanks for your help. There’s no need to see me out. I can find my own way.”

“Don’t forget our deal, Hollingsworth,” she called after me. “I told you what you wanted to know, so don’t go spreading lies about this honest business.”

“Honest.” I rolled my eyes. “Right.”

Outside her office, the music and lights assaulted me once again. I dodged a few more wandering hands and nodded to Jerome on the way out the door. Then, I was once again back in the blissful fresh air of the outside world.

Looking back at Dinah’s Place , I was overcome with a sense of ambivalence. A small part of me had hoped that the case of Clay Dahler would have a simple solution. That he had been under our noses all this time, working at a seedy strip club for money.

But no.

Clay Dahler was in the wind once again, and my search was going to be a lot harder than I’d hoped. I didn’t have any contacts in San Francisco to rely on. I’d have to make the trip myself, and I had no idea where to start when I got there.

However, there was also a small feeling of accomplishment buried under my worry. The last time anyone had seen him for certain was almost a decade ago before he was taken. Now, I’d found someone who could confirm he was still alive just five years ago. It was an improvement, at least.

Walking away from the club, I sent a text to Sebastian about my progress, then started composing an explanation in my head to my boss to explain why I needed to suddenly run off to California on short notice.

Maybe I’d just call Roland and let him explain to his brother for me. There were perks to being best friends with the Boss’s older brother.