Chapter 20
PATRICK
The ride back to the hotel was oddly quiet.
Randall somehow tapped into the Sphere CCTV.
Maybe he was an Oz fan. Who knows? We didn’t ask those types of questions.
When a camera with automatic facial recognition spotted Tinley, Rayna, and Kylie together, an alert beeped on his screen.
Nothing suspicious occurred until the three disappeared into the bathroom.
No cameras in there, but Kylie’s earpiece, even muffled, created a perfect CC report of their conversation that Randall happened to listen in on.
We already knew her suspicions, but hearing her use them to drive a wedge between Kyler, Josh, and their littles was still a blow. It broke my heart.
Kyler was furious because Kylie’s words had crushed Rayna. She didn’t say a word the whole ride home, and when Kyler suggested a nap, she didn’t argue—a silence so uncharacteristic I nearly called Doc for a CT scan. Rayna always talked, and naps were the bane of her existence.
Tinley either didn’t understand what Kylie was doing or chose blissful ignorance to protect her little side. Whenever Rayna was upset, Tinley mirrored her pain.
I left them to take care of their little girls. I went to find a little girl of my own who was in way over her head and about to find out exactly why.
“Kylie, will you follow me to my office?” My crossed arms weren't an attempt at intimidation; they were to keep myself from opening my arms and pulling the scared woman into me.
“Okay.” Her soft voice hit me in the gut.
“After you.”
She held her head high and walked through the back employee hallways. We rode up to the third floor in silence. She knew her way around now.
We stepped into the nearly empty hallway.
Most employees had already left for the weekend.
Kylie stepped to the side while I unlocked and entered my office.
“Let’s have a seat.” I made my way over to the small sitting area near the window.
The Sphere, the scene of the crime, flashed in the distance. The sight of it turned my stomach.
“Did something happen?” she asked.
“I’m going to ask you a question, and I hope you will be honest with me. Because honesty moving forward is the only thing you have going for you.”
“Okay.”
“The earpiece.”
She reached for her ear, even though she had already turned it in.
“It can be muffled live in the field.” Her eyes narrowed. I continued. “However, it still records everything, and we can clean up even the muffled audio to make it as clear as if we were in that bathroom stall with you.”
Kylie's mouth fell open.
“We also know about your posts on dark web group chats inquiring about purchasing Tinley.” It sounded so fucking ridiculous.
Kylie shrunk in front of me. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
“We actually knew that information prior to hiring you.” I rubbed my chest, my hands needed a distraction. “I know what you’re thinking.”
Her nostrils flared as she cast a severe glance in my direction.
“Why would we hire you knowing that information?”
Her eyes grew wide. She sat up and, with all the indignation she could muster, said, “You were trying to trap me?”
Despite the agenda Kylie had walking in here, she’d just given herself away with that voice. I covered my mouth. It was the brattiest little girl thing I had ever heard.
“Maybe you don’t know what your bosses have been up to. I did nothing wrong, and I’d do it again,” she said. “There are women the Grant family has rescued who miraculously disappear again, only for my research to show that they pop up working at Grant businesses and properties all over the world.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“It wasn’t a huge leap to see what was really happening in this organization. I will not let what happened to my sister happen to Tinley or Rayna.” Her indignation faded a bit at the end. She sat back down, flexing and unflexing her fingers.
The silence grew. She tilted her head and looked up at me through sorrowful eyes, as if she didn’t fully believe her own argument anymore.
I couldn’t imagine believing it after spending a day in Rayna and Tinley’s world–let alone a month–and not understanding that those two are living their best life by choice with men who love them.
“What are you going to do to me?” she asked.
“We’ll get to that, but lay it out for me.” I sat back on the couch. “Explain to me why you think Grant Enterprises is a criminal organization trafficking women.”
“Well, a lot of the raids the task force initiated happened in Quadrangle Hotels.” She wrung her hands together. “Spain, Costa Rica, Paris, where Tinley was found.”
“True.” I nodded.
“Tips on other raids came directly from sources you brought us.” She looked out the window.
I stayed silent.
“The raid at Hotel Rockwell. The one with Santorini’s crew.” Her cadence gained momentum. Grant Enterprises later bought it and tore it down.
“Santorini is currently in an Italian jail.” I smirked. “He won’t be needing it.”
“It’s not funny.” She screamed. “The women in those raids, the ones who didn’t have families missing them, disappear and reappear at various Quad hotels or Grant Enterprises offices.
” She looked out the window across the desert.
“How do you explain that? They are saved from one horrifying situation only to be put into another one, but this one comes with the guise of a debt they didn’t ask for. ”
“Who are these women?” I leaned forward.
“Their names are different, but I recognized the faces.”
“Do you have proof of this? Have you spoken to them?”
“Well, no.”
She had already decided we were guilty and was trying to find evidence to support her belief. She was working on pure emotion; logic had no place in her plan. “I assure you every one of them is safe and fully accounted for.”
“How do you know?” She gripped the couch and stared into my eyes. The FBI would have taught her how to detect if someone was lying.
I knew the tricks, too. But in this case, I didn’t have to lie. “Because we are the ones who help them get on with their lives.”
She blinked and her pale skin turned green.
“What do you mean?” Anger radiated out of her pores, but her rigid posture clued me in. She never expected me to tell her the truth.
“Give me a name.” I grabbed my laptop off my desk and sat back down next to her.
Kylie's eyes narrowed.
I typed my password into the secured files. The ones where I kept a folder on each person we saved. Each labeled with a number, not a name.
“I don’t understand.”
“Kylie, I assure you every man and woman rescued from any of our hotels and any leads we produce are present and accounted for. Kyler made sure of it.” I pulled up the folder from the Santorini raid and turned the computer to face her.
She stared at the screen, eyes darting back and forth down the illuminated monitor. Worry etched into her cheeks. She leaned in, squinting at the photographs. Recognition hit her. She saw lives marked by tragedy, now on the road to recovery.
“They’re safe?” The question slipped from her lips, but she knew the answer. It was in black and white.
“All safe.” I reassured her. Taking the computer from her lap and sending her the secure file. “I sent the file to you so you can study it yourself. If you contact them, I hope you will be discreet and sensitive to their situation. Some of them may still be in danger.”
“We are protecting them?”
Her use of the pronoun we struck me.
From her expression, she noticed it, too. I let it slide.
“Included in those files is a folder from a raid executed last night in LA at a party thrown by Cecil Dandridge.”
“Cecil Dandridge.” She looked at me. “The guy connected to the Latin Kings in my report last week. The one with chatter about an auction. It was last night. You got him?”
“Yep, we got him. There were fifteen women and three men at that party, and they are all safe.” I patted her shoulder. “All because of you.”
“Because of me.” She shifted in her seat. “Oh, my goodness. That’s amazing.”
“You did well, Kylie.” I nodded. “I’m proud of you. Focused on the right thing, you can really do some good with us. Kyler and the Grants are not the enemy. I hope you can see that now.”
Her entire demeanor dropped as if the air had been removed from a balloon.
“You’re going to fire me?”
“As your boss, I should fire you.” Saying it out loud caused tightness in my chest I couldn’t explain. But it was the logical thing to do.
“And, if you knew why I was coming here before, why even hire me?“
That was the question. Why did Kyler and Josh allow me to hire her? Of course, Kyler intimated to knowing the real reason, but it didn’t seem smart to jeopardize our whole operation because of my crush on a girl. Fuck, I’m charming, but not that charming.
My first instinct was to make up an excuse.
Boil it all down to having sympathy for what she went through with her sister.
We could relate to and understand that her true purpose was to protect the girls.
And because from a computer screen, she was able to save eighteen people in less than thirty days.
My big speech about honesty would make me a hypocrite in five minutes flat.
The truth was more unbelievable than the lie, but I owed it to her.
“I hired you because I was drawn to you.”
Kylie’s eyes blinked a million times as she contemplated my answer.
“I liked you from the first moment I saw you at FBI HQ in a task force meeting regarding the operation in Spain. I watched you during those meetings and admired how engaged you were. Taking notes, chiming in with relevant information, and asking tons and tons of questions. The one time we met in person, I thought I felt a connection.”
“We barely spoke three sentences.”
It was more than three sentences. At least fifteen.
“When something didn’t sound right to you, it was written all over your face. You hadn’t quite perfected the poker face you’ve worn for us most of the time.”
“Most of the time.”
“Yeah, it slips when your little comes out.” I shrugged to show her it was no big deal.
“I . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“The way you blinked back tears of joy when the raid of the hotel in Spain was complete and it was announced we saved fourteen girls gave me some insight into your character, but when you broke down once we discovered two other girls had been murdered by the men holding them captive, it took everything in me not to go to you and hold you until your tears stopped.”
“Patrick.” She whispered my name.
“I think your little spoke to me in a way that made me feel you needed rescuing yourself. I was disappointed when I heard you left the FBI, but then you showed up on our doorstep. It felt like fate.” The explanation sounded ridiculous in my head as I said it.
“I saw you and wanted you, and I hoped you might have wanted me, too.”
“I didn’t come here for you.”
“Yeah, I get that now.” A bit of a blow to my ego, but all wasn’t lost. “But I still feel a need to take care of you. To protect you, even from yourself.”
“I can take care of myself.” Her voice rose another octave.
“Can you? Let’s recap the trouble you have gotten yourself into in the last few weeks.
You have infiltrated a multibillion-dollar company by getting close to the sixth, maybe seventh most powerful person in said company to gather evidence of all the company’s wrongdoing, of which you have found none.
You attempted to convince Rayna and Tinley that they were being held captive despite all the evidence to the contrary.
And you have been insubordinate to all your superiors with no justification. Did I forget anything?”
She remained silent.
“From what I understand, you had this workable theory prior to your exit from the FBI; why didn’t you share it with them?”
“I didn’t want to be right.”
And there it was.
Kylie’s arms dropped to her side. She leaned forward, studying the floor, and tapped the wooden coffee table with her toe.
“Are they okay?” She peeked at me but looked away when I caught her eye.
“Rayna and Tinley?”
She nodded.
“They will be.”
“They hate me.” A tear fell from her eye and slid down her cheek before she hung her head again.
“They don’t hate you.” I sat next to her. “They don’t understand.”
Her head whipped up. “They aren’t actually children, you know.”
“Exactly.” I nodded. “And they have made informed and uncoerced decisions to live a lifestyle they love with men who would and have the means to do anything for them and to make them feel safe about their choice. If you had asked them that, you might have gotten the answers you’re looking for faster.
I think that’s what they’re more upset about. ”
Kylie was doing it again—pulling back, shutting down, the warmth draining from her face the way light leaves a room. I recognized the retreat. I had seen it before, in her and in others, and it never got easier to watch. Something tightened in my chest.
“But you can make it right.”
“How?” Tears streamed down her face. She hugged herself.
“Kylie.” I turned and faced her. I left her chin and stared into her eyes. “You’re killing me. Let me hold you, please.”
“That will–make everything okay?” She hiccuped, speaking between sobs.
“Not even close, but this isn’t about making everything okay.” I wiped a tear from her cheek. “I just want you to know you’re not alone.”
She searched my face, looking for something.
I didn’t know what, but she must have found it.
The next second Kylie crawled into my lap and wrapped herself around me, practically knocking the wind right out of my lungs.
She pulled back, but before she could get away, I lifted her and adjusted her sideways across my thighs.
I slid my hand up her back and laced one hand into her hair.
Her tears soaked my neck and the collar of my shirt.
It wasn’t deep, sad sobs of a naughty little, but the quiet and continuous tears of an adult who hadn’t let herself go in a long time.
“That’s okay, little girl,” I whispered in her hair and kissed the top of her head. “I’ve got you.”
We sat there for a while. The sun had fully set, and the lights flashed across the Vegas strip. She had stopped crying, but continued to cling to me. At one point I thought she was asleep, but when I adjusted, she squeezed me tighter.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I murmured in her ear. Having her in my arms felt so right, like she belonged there. “Take all the time you need.”