Chapter 10 Lucien
Lucien
Night has fallen by the time we get back to the mansion, and it’s well and truly dark out by the time I’m standing from my research, stretching, and going to stare out the window.
Technically we’re in the basement, in what I’ve built as the war room, but really it’s half of the first floor of the house.
Because I’ve always liked the idea of an underground war room. But I live in New Orleans, and this is a town that floods regularly. We don’t have the foundation for underground rooms, and if we built them anyhow, they would flood often enough to make them pointless.
I believe I know who’s buying and selling girls, now.
Simon leBanc was at Dom Landry’s club, acting suspicious enough that I’m sure he was doing something nefarious, and upon further research, we found that several of the missing girls have disappeared from Landry properties.
But that doesn’t give me much. I’m not exactly going to go to the Landry mansion, have a steak dinner with Dominick, and demand to know what he’s up to.
Even if I did, it wouldn’t solve the biggest problem.
We need to know when the next shipment of girls is leaving, so we can stop it before we lose them forever.
I would bet my whole fortune that Brooks’ friend is in that shipment, and though it doesn’t matter to me whether Brooks finds her or not—Brooks’ problems are her own—I’m honor-bound to make sure no other girl is sent away from our shores.
I can’t not. But it doesn’t have anything to do with Brooks.
Seriously.
The problem is, the girl Brooks is searching for is very hard to find.
We tracked her from New York to Atlanta, and then to New Orleans, but her trail went dead as soon as she arrived here.
They must have taken her immediately underground, because no one seems to have seen her since then.
I only know she arrived because I found a man who was working at the train station when she came in and recognized the fact that she wasn’t from New Orleans.
He was also more than willing to talk, when I paid him enough.
So she arrived in town, and then disappeared.
God, I hope she hasn’t been shipped out yet. Brooks is intent on finding her, and I can’t imagine how she’ll react if we fail.
If she fails. Because this is her problem, not mine.
“Let’s go over what we have so far,” I say, seeking to distract myself. “We have enough girls missing that it can’t be a coincidence. And we know that some are local, but others aren’t. This points to one thing: Someone in New Orleans is running girls, and they’re stealing them from other cities.”
“That just about sums it up,” Daniel says from behind me. “Boss, I have something.”
The urgency in his voice has me spinning immediately, excited at the thought that he might have found something new. I’m at the table in seconds flat, and leaning over the shipping manifest he’s looking at.
“What is it?”
“The manifest for the Destiny,” he says quietly. “It comes in and out of port once a month, on a schedule. Always arrives empty. Always leaves full.”
Well that’s suspicious. Shipping companies make their money by hauling shipments from one port to another. They might arrive carrying food and leave carrying textiles, and pick up additional loads as they go. They never sail empty unless they have to. No load means no money.
“They’d arrive empty so they didn’t have to record their arrival,” I say quietly. “No registration with the authorities if there’s nothing to register.”
“Exactly. And she’s here now. Just… waiting.”
My stomach does an excited flip. “When is she due to leave again?”
Daniel looks up and meets my gaze. “Three days from now.”
Three days.
Exactly the timeline we’ve guessed at for the next load of girls, if we use Aislyn’s kidnapping as the starting point. A week to get enough girls to fill a load. Long enough to have plenty of captives, but quick enough to guarantee they don’t have to hold the girls for long.
I don’t trade in flesh, but even I can see that it isn’t the sort of cargo you want to hold for long. Too many things might go wrong. Girls getting sick or dying, other people stealing them, or worst of all, one of them escaping and telling the authorities.
If they’re working with a one-week timeline…
Well, it’s confirmation we didn’t have before.
“How are they listing the cargo they’re shipping out?” I ask, morbid curiosity getting the better of me.
“They don’t have it specified,” Daniel says quietly. “They’ve listed it as though they don’t know what the cargo is, yet. Like they’re shopping for a load.”
I laugh softly. “And I bet they never correct that. Because without a cargo, they don’t have to take the chance of someone coming on board to investigate.”
“Or paying taxes on it.”
I frown, letting my mind run through the facts. It seems too clean. Too easy. I don’t like it. I’m used to problems I have to work to solve, and this doesn’t seem right. We just find the ship with a mystery cargo, and get the time and date it’s sailing?
Too easy.
There must be a trick in there somewhere, but what could it be?
What if it’s the wrong ship and we chase it only to find an empty container?
What if they’re setting us up? What if it’s a bait and switch, meant to draw us out into the open so they can slaughter us when we try to save girls and only find a bunch of guns in the ship? Do they even know we’re on their tails?
They will if Simon speaks to whoever he works for.
“We need proof,” I conclude. “So we can protect ourselves. We need more information.”
“More information about what?” a new voice asks.
I jump and turn in the same motion, my hand going to the knife strapped to my chest, though I already know that voice. I just didn’t expect it in my house.
This isn’t, after all, where she actually lives.
“What in devils are you doing here?” I ask.
Corinne, my little sister and the baby of the family, stands at the door to the room, looking as bratty and entitled as ever, and for a moment my heart warms. She’s six years younger than me, so by the time she was born, I was old enough to help, and I’ve loved her with my entire soul ever since.
When my mother died, four years after she was born, I took her under my wing and made sure my father couldn’t touch her.
She’s the only member of my family I would die for.
Unfortunately, she knows it, and is not opposed to taking advantage of my soft side. She tips her head back and forth, her long brown hair swinging, and I wonder if she practices that motion in the mirror just for the effect.
It would be like her.
“I heard my big brother was acting strangely. Creeping through catacombs in the middle of the night and fighting with men he shouldn’t even be associating with.
I also—” She turns large, dark eyes to me and lifts a brow.
“—Heard you have a friend in town. I figured I better come make sure she hasn’t skinned you alive yet. ”
I grit my teeth, caught between extreme anger at her butting into my affairs, uninvited, and amusement at how freaking good she’s gotten at this game.
Officially, she’s not supposed to be involved in the family business.
My father’s worked hard to keep her clean, or so he says, and he would be furious if he knew I was dragging her into things.
Except she drags herself, because she refuses to stay out of it. And she’s getting good. One of these days, she might even be a match for me in her intelligence gathering.
But right now, she’s still a kid, only twenty-two to my twenty-eight, and she does not need to be caught up in an investigation on a trafficking ring that kidnaps and sells girls her age.
She’s pretty and young and looks innocent, though she’s not, and if she’s in the wrong place at the wrong time, she’ll make herself a target.
“All of that is exactly none of your business, Corinne. And you know it.”
“And yet here I am, making it my business.” She shrugs in a way that makes her look more French than American, and now I’m annoyed.
“You’re here putting your nose into someone else’s business, as usual. That doesn’t make it okay.”
She just grins and starts walking toward me, her eyes already on the computers. “What are you going to do about it? Kick me out?”
I step into her path, grab her shoulders, turn her around, and start pushing her back toward the door. “Yes. We’re looking at something that I don’t even want you knowing about, much less helping with. And I won’t risk you.”
I don’t tell her what we’re doing, because it’s none of her business.
And because she’s still a kid, innocent and naive—despite what she’d tell you—and doesn’t need to know about the seedier things that happen in this city.
She definitely doesn’t need to see it. And there’s a voice in my head screaming that we’re lucky she hasn’t been caught up in it yet.
She’s the right age, and beautiful in a way that’s made me uncomfortable for years.
She’s from the right sort of family.
The Boudreaux haven’t lost anyone important yet. Some distant cousins. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Particularly if she starts making herself obvious to the very men who might steal her.
She jerks out of my hands, though, and dashes around me back to the computers. “That’s not your call to make, Lucien, and you know it.”
I grab her again, and am in the process of pushing her out when Daniel stops me.
“Boss.”
I look at him, my hands on Corinne’s shoulders, and see that he’s holding up another picture. Two of them.
“Two more girls who disappeared from a Landry property.”
Shit.
I drop my sister and head for Daniel, mind spinning. “What do you mean?”
“The last footage of them has them in the same parking lot. The one with the van from Under the City. Footage of them heading for the van, and then nothing. These are them.”