Chapter 7 Brooks #2
This makes me laugh even harder–partially because hearing her insult anyone in that drawl of hers will never get old–and I draw back. “Seeing you for an hour when we’re being held hostage in the catacombs hardly counts.”
She raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow and shrugs. “Seems perfectly on brand for time spent with you, honestly. Now what are we doing? Tell me everything.”
Typical Camille. I learned a long time ago that the girl was no good in any active situation.
Get her into a chase or a gunfight and she’ll immediately freeze, leaving you to do all the work for yourself–and save her in the process.
I tried to get her to help me figure out what was happening to the girls in the basement, once, and it was such a fiasco that I never asked for her help in that way again.
The girl is no Sloane Brennan. Hell, these days she isn’t even a match for Penny Lane or Dante Rossi.
But when it comes to research, she’s the sharpest tool I have. She can dive into a stack of files and have them organized and memorized in half an hour.
And that’s the talent I need right now.
I turn and fan the files out on the couch, then pick up the thumb drive and lift a brow in her direction.
Camille looks from the files to the thumb drive and back, and then grins. “I’ll take the files. The laptop is on the dining room table.”
And that’s all it takes. Camille and I head for our relative workstations–conveniently close, thanks to the fact that the apartment is relatively small–and get to work.
I find a bowl of beignets on the table and lift one to my lips, inhaling the smell of fried dough, and catch Camille’s eye just before I bite into it.
The first bite is an explosion of sweetness in my mouth, and I moan in ecstasy. “God, I’ve missed these. No one in New York makes them right.”
Camille chuckles. “That’s because those heathens insist on boiling their dough rather than frying it. I don’t know how you eat anything in that God-forsaken city.” She’s silent for a beat, and when she looks at me again, her eyes are serious. “I don’t know why you stay there at all.”
I share a long look with her, thoughts flying through my head as I try to decide what to tell her. Camille is my oldest friend–even older than Sloane, who I’ve known since I was six and my mother started taking me to New York to spend time with her family–and she knows everything about my life.
Or rather, she knows everything about my life down here.
Which means she knew Brooks Landry, the girl I was up until I turned eighteen and deserted New Orleans.
Camille knows why I left. She’s the only one I told.
Her mother, my father’s sister, died when she was young, and she moved into my father’s house, so we grew up nearly sisters.
Her room was right next to mine and I’d run to it any time I needed anything.
When I first saw the girls in the basement, I ended up in Camille’s bed, whispering to her about what I’d seen.
When my father started beating me, her room was where I hid from him.
And when I learned what my father had in store for me, and that he planned to use me as a spy in the Boudreaux operation, I’d gone to her with my heart in my hands to ask for her help.
I was madly in love with Lucien by that time and couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him, but also thought he had to be involved in my father’s scheme in some way.
I’d spent too many years on the rough side of my father’s temper and didn’t trust any man, and as much as I hated it, that had included Lucien.
Camille had tried to get me to stay. She’d said that Lucien couldn’t know what was going on, and pointed out all the reasons that was true. She’d told me to go to him and ask him for help, and that it would be okay. And a part of me had agreed with her.
The bigger part, though–the part that didn’t want to let another man take advantage of me and was finished being a pawn for my father–didn’t have the patience to wait. That was the part that decided to run for New York in the middle of the night without saying goodbye to anyone.
And Camille doesn’t know who I became once I hit the streets of the Big Apple. She doesn’t know the girl who has a million and one contacts and can get you anything you need, or the girl who kills without thinking twice if it means she can protect her friends.
Though I doubt she’d be surprised about any of that.
“I stayed there because I built a life I like with people I love,” I say simply. “And I didn’t want to come home and deal with a man trying to control me.”
She nods once, looking thoughtful, and then her lips quirk. “And yet now that you’re back, you’re supposed to be a prisoner in Lucien Boudreaux’ house.”
I pop the rest of the beignet in my mouth and grin through the powdered sugar. “And you can see how well that’s going for him. Let’s get to work.”
***
An hour later I’m staring through the window at the colorful balcony across the street from us, trying to give my brain space to put the pieces together.
Outside, I can hear a brass band playing and the laughter of tourists, and I shake my head.
This apartment was never meant to be quiet enough for thinking.
Camille and I bought it when we were sixteen, and have never told anyone it exists.
This is where we came when we wanted to get away from my father.
Or to eat beignets.
Or have our fortunes read in the voodoo shop downstairs.
It’s tiny and cozy, and we’ve spent too many nights here, huddling under the covers in the single bed and whispering about the lives we wanted to live one day.
I never would have thought, then, that we’d be sitting here now, trying to break through a world of information to uncover a sex trafficking ring.
Though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
New Orleans doesn’t function like New York.
There’s no organization down here when it comes to the underworld.
Each family has a rough set of industries they run, and everyone mostly stays in their own lane, but that’s not always true.
Families and even individuals branch off into new territories without informing anyone else, and there’s almost never any cooperation between families.
Records are nonexistent and the truth always depends on who you’re talking to.
Even worse, I’ve been gone for so long that I no longer know who does what. I don’t know the girls we’re looking at, or which families they belong to. Where they hung out or who they were about to marry.
Camille, on the other hand, knows everything. She’s a wealth of information.
“Tell me what Adelaide said again,” I say, turning back into the apartment.
Camille looks up, her brow creased. She’s been organizing the files into groups of loosely associated girls, and trying to identify where each group spent the most time, in the hopes that it will give us... something.
“She says her father has been keeping more secrets than usual,” she says quickly. “He’s been raising her to help lead the family and has given her access to most of his records. But he’s hiding things lately, and she doesn’t know what. Something to do with the entertainment end of his business.”
I sit back, chewing my lip. I don’t know Addie Lafayette, but I know her father.
Etienne Lafayette–or the Crow–has the biggest gambling dens and dance halls in the city.
Those dance halls overlap with my father’s clubs, which has made them enemies.
I don’t know how Camille met Addie, but something about their friendship rubs me the wrong way.
The Lafayettes aren’t friends to the Landry family, and it’s odd to me that she’s fallen in with them.
But I’m brave enough to admit that it’s more than just that.
I don’t like that Camille has been here, growing up without me. She has new friends that I don’t know, and a boyfriend I’ve never met. She knows everything about what’s going on down here, whereas I’m in the dark.
I hate being in the dark.
I hate even more feeling like I’ve been left behind.
Which is rich, when I’m the one who did the leaving.
“Think she can push him for information?” I ask. “What could he possibly know? Is it related to all of this?”
Camille’s eyes drop to the papers in front of her. “Yes. If these girls are truly disappearing into a sex ring like Lucien thinks, that could border on the dance halls.”
I frown. “But would they keep the girls here? Kidnap them here and keep them here?”
“Yes. If they want to make sure the families see who has their girls. If this is a power play, not just a business deal.”
A power play.
A business deal.
“If the Crow is involved courtesy of the dance halls,” I conclude, “he might not be the only one.”
Camille doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t have to. I know she’s thinking the same thing I am. The Lafayette dance halls are the biggest in the city, so if there’s a trafficking ring that’s sending girls into entertainment, it makes sense that he’d be the biggest customer.
But there are other dance halls in New Orleans.
Owned by my father.
Which dovetails with what I’ve already been thinking: that my father is involved in this.
I drop my gaze back to the screen in front of me, trying to distract myself from that thought, but pause, frowning.
The laptop has shuffled through the pictures and is now presenting one I haven’t seen before.
The note attached to it says it’s where Lucien suspects one of the girls disappeared.
At the very least, it’s the last place where she was seen by anyone else.
And I recognize the spot.
I also recognize the logo on the wall.
Because it belongs to my father’s organization.
Camille, of course, notices when I gasp. “What?” she asks sharply.
I stare at the screen, wanting to be sure of what I’m seeing, but I know I’m not mistaken. And I know what it means.
“I think this girl disappeared when she was on a Landry property,” I finally say.
And though I already suspected that this is where I’d end up, saying it out loud makes it worlds more complicated.