Chapter 10 Lucien #2
He lays the two photos on the table and spreads them enough to let me see. Two girls who could be twins, I think. Both pretty in a generic sort of way, blond and blue-eyed, and very young. Nothing stands out about them except their names.
Both are Masons.
They’re not attached to the mafia, then, or not that I know of.
Because I know the Mason family. They run the city, but not from the underworld.
They’re the biggest above-board businessmen in New Orleans, though.
Construction, permitting, development, and rentals, to start with.
Their girls aren’t mafia molls or wives.
They’re debutantes. Party girls. Society darlings.
They’re even less connected to crime, and should never even have contact with the sort of men who would kidnap them and sell them to slavers.
I knew girls like this were involved. Hell, I’ve told Brooks as much.
But there’s something about seeing it in full color that makes my stomach turn with even more disgust. I’ve grown up in this world and have the heart and soul of a pirate.
I’ll kill men for looking at me the wrong way, and never regret it.
And I’ll cheat you out of your entire fortune in one of our gambling dens.
But touching girls is so far out of line that not even my brain can wrap around it.
“I know those girls,” a voice says immediately to my right. “Why do you have pictures of them?”
I look down to find that Corinne has invited herself right into the conversation—no surprise—and is fingering the pictures, brushing her forefinger over the face of Victoria Mason.
Dammit. I can’t think quickly enough to come up with a story for why we’d have pictures of girls sitting in our war room, and end up making a split-second decision for the truth.
I don’t want to tell her, but she’s caught me in a bad moment, and I can’t exactly say we’re doing research on girls for no reason.
She’d be immediately suspicious.
“We’re researching some disappearances,” I say, keeping it short. “Too many girls are disappearing, and it’s not just New Orleans. New York, Boston, Atlanta…”
She nods once. “That makes sense. You suspect a smuggling ring.”
Gods, this girl is sharp. Almost as sharp as me. “We do.”
When she turns her eyes up to me, they’re just as intelligent as I feared. She already knows what’s going on. Maybe she came here knowing, and has just found confirmation for her assumptions. “Is that why Brooks is back in town? Or did she come here just for you?”
“She’s not here for me,” I snap, angrier than I should be at her insinuation.
Because Brooks should be here for me, and she’s not, and I guess I’m just not okay with that.
Corinne shuts her mouth, but her eyes are laughing at me, and I reach down and snatch the pictures out from under her nose.
“Do you have anything to add to this conversation or are you just here to annoy me?”
“That’s rich. You were just trying to kick me out and now you want me to help? My, how the tables have turned.”
I growl, about ready to kick her back out, but she suddenly decides she’s going to play nicely.
“Actually, I do. I know both those girls, to start with, but I also remember when they disappeared. You must. Their families made such a big deal of it. The news did stories, their fathers offered rewards, everyone was searching. And then it just went away. Like the tap had been turned off.”
Now that she says it, I do remember. These girls went missing on the same day, and the story was wild. Everyone in town was talking about it because their fathers were brothers, and very rich. And then it just… stopped.
“As if their families had been told to keep it down,” I murmur, finishing the thought out loud.
“Forced, probably,” Daniel responds. “By someone.”
Yes. That… actually makes a surprising amount of sense. The girls being taken are outside of what I’d expect. These are high-level families, with lots of money, but there’s evidently no ransom being asked for them. They’re not given the chance to buy them back.
So whoever is doing this has plenty of money. They’re looking for something else.
Power.
Or revenge.
“Find other patterns,” I say sharply. “Girls who are related or disappeared at the same time. And start making a list of the families who’ve been hit. Figure out what they have in common.”
“Like a common enemy?” Daniel asks.
“Exactly.”
The three of us get to work immediately, going back through all the files with new eyes and looking for families rather than kidnapping sites or girls. I want to know what connects everyone to each other, because I don’t think it’s just the fact that they had girls worth stealing.
I think this is a whole lot bigger than just a sex trafficking ring.
Within half an hour, though, I realize that no matter what we find here, it’s not going to be enough. We’re finding the same families again and again, one way or another, but that doesn’t tell us why, and it certainly doesn’t tell us who.
“This isn’t giving us enough,” I say finally. “And it’s not going to help us save the girls who ship out next.”
“What’s the timeline?” Corinne asks, picking up on the game quicker than I would have liked. There is no good reason for my baby sister to understand things like timelines for girls being shipped to other countries as sex slaves.
But I’ll deal with making new rules for her later.
“Three days, and that’s just the group we know about.”
“Based on?” she asks.
“A certain high-level kidnapping from New York,” I say. Then, in my own defense: “The one Brooks is investigating.”
This gets a sly smile from my sister, a raised eyebrow, and a nod.
“And find some shipping manifests,” I demand. “Ones that can actually tell us something.”
“Right,” she murmurs. She shuffles through the papers for a second, then looks at me again. “But we’re not going to find enough here to stop it.”
I nod, glad for once that her mind works so quickly. “Exactly. I need…” I think about it for a moment, but the answer is obvious. “I need a man on the inside.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then Corinne says, “And what are you going to do when Brooks comes to the same conclusion and puts herself in their hands?”
I close my eyes, having already thought of the possibility myself, and knowing exactly what I’ll do. “Then I burn New Orleans down to get her out.”
This brings up a realization, though, and I look around the room, suddenly concerned. Speaking of Brooks, where the hell is that girl? I’ve been home for hours now, and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her. I would have expected her to be down here forcing me to include her in the planning.
No, she doesn’t know about this room, but details like that have never stopped Brooks Landry.
“Where the fuck is Brooks?” I ask, suddenly very nervous. “Have we seen her since we got back? Where’s she been all day?”
No one answers, and I’m striding for the door before I can think, my mind on nothing but the red-haired beauty and the fact that she comes up with so-called plans so fast it makes your head spin.
And that they’re almost always dangerous or stupid. Or both.