Chapter 7 Lucien
Lucien
I put my phone firmly down on the table and turn to the kid in the corner, his head ducked down over a laptop and his back curved.
“Hunter, where are we?” I snap.
He looks up, all enormous green eyes and thick-rimmed glasses, and I wonder again where the fuck this city found him.
The kid is evidently the best hacker in town, according to some measurement I never knew existed, and when I told my men I needed someone who could get into Dom’s files and get me information, Daniel immediately said “Hunter Roman,’ like this was a name everyone knew and I didh’t.
Though of course I did. No one got as good at his job as Hunter without me knowing who they were and what they did. Where they lived and who their family was.
What they wanted most in the world—and where I could find their pain point.
Hunter had been easy, luckily. He might be the best tech genius in the city but he was also only nineteen, and didn’t come from a crime family, so didn’t have much experience with men like me and certainly didn’t have a mafioso father pulling his threads in the background.
His family weren’t smugglers or drug runners who somehow managed to produce a kid that could handle computers.
Hell, I didn’t even think they’d been here during the years of the Civil War, when everything in New Orleans shifted and went underground.
No, they’re transplants from California. And they’re artists. Glass blowers, to be exact, who own a shop down in the French Quarter where they make custom pieces for residents and tourists alike.
I don’t know how they ended up here or what they did to get a kid like Hunter, but it was easy enough to convince him to come work for me. And so far, I haven’t been disappointed.
“Well?” I ask, when he’s still staring at me with that mossy green gaze.
He jerks like I’ve hit him—which I would never do, of course, but he doesn’t know that—and then glances back at the thing he calls a laptop in front of him.
When I told him we were coming to this cafe, he insisted on bringing that along with him, and I didn’t forbid it.
The thing looks like it belongs on a fucking battlefield, but I’m not a hacker.
Maybe that’s what hacking computers looks like.
“We’re close enough that I’ve got the network,” he says finally. “I’m working on getting into it, though. Once I’m in, I’ll find who else is on it, locate the right computers, and enter them.”
I allow myself the ghost of a smile. “Locate them an enter them? I hope you don’t speak to women like that.”
When he turns his gaze to me, it’s dead serious. “I never talk to women about hacking. They don’t follow the same rules we do.”
I stare at him, trying to figure out whether he’s serious, and then seal my lips shut, exchanging on loaded glance with Daniel before I turn away.
I have so many potential answers to Hunter’s question that I don’t know where I’d start, and something tells me he wouldn’t understand any of them, anyhow.
Hell, I’m not even sure if I’m breaking some rule by talking to him while he’s hacking.
But he’s right about one thing: Women don’t follow the same rules as us.
Starting with Brooks.
I make my way to Daniel and the stack of papers he has on the table in front of him. I tasked him with going through everything we’ve collected in the last week and finding my fucking sister—plus Aislyn, if he sees anything of her—but so far, he’s been quiet.
“Anything?”
He doesn’t even look up, and I see that he’s going through grainy photographs right now. Shots from security cameras on parking lots, then. Looking for girls getting picked up by that fucking van.
“Nothing. You get eyes on Brooks?”
It’s a loaded question, but I don’t give him what he’s truly asking.
“Her father has her. They came out of the brothel, got into a van, and left.”
Now he does look up, his eyes full of questions. “And you just let them go?”
I pause, trying to marshal my thoughts into a package that might actually make sense to someone else. Because of course I did. I need Brooks whole and working, and I wasn’t going to be able to get her out on my own—or get my men quickly enough to be able to put a tail on them.
And whatever she’s doing, I’m guessing she has a plan. One that I almost certainly won’t like, but will have to grudgingly accept when she refuses to end it.
I’m saved from answering by a sudden shout behind me, and I whirl in the empty cafe to find Hunter grinning at me, all glowing triumph.
“I’m in,” he says simply.
Then he goes back to work like we’re not standing here on eggshells, waiting for him to complete his thought.
After thirty seconds of suspense, I walk to him, grasp his shoulder, and squeeze. “Hunter,” I say quietly. “When you tell me you’re in, I expect more of an update than silence.”
He jerks but doesn’t try to pull away from me, and when he answers, his voice is steady and sure. “Right. I’m into their main computer and I’ve found their files. I’ve got lists of girls with locations and dates. That’s what you’re looking for, right?”
I rapidly revise my opinion of him, because this kid sounds like he does this sort of thing all the time, and isn’t remotely worried about breaking into the files of a sex trafficking ring. The truth is, he sounds… excited.
We got him close enough, geographically, to be able to access the network in that purple monstrosity, and while I wanted to be close enough to see Brooks in person, this was the other piece of the puzzle.
We wanted Hunter in their computers. I wish I could say I was sure he’d do it, but the way my blood is rushing through my veins right now tells me that I was doubting him at least a little bit.
I don’t answer him, though. I drop to my knees next to his chair and stare at his computer.
Because he has a list of girls, and I need to see if my sister’s on it.
When I scan the list, though, I don’t see any mention of Corinne. The one I do see, again and again, is Aislyn.
Aislyn fucking Brennan.
The girl Brooks came down here to find, and the one who should have shipped out last night, according to the last manifesto we saw.
She was at the front end of that group of girls and had already been in town—and in the ring—long enough that they were risking someone finding her.
She’d been in the same group as Brooks, but as far as I knew Brooks had never found her.
Still, she should have been at the port last night, and they should have put her on a ship.
Yes, we interrupted that particular transport process but I didn’t think that would stop anything.
The smugglers couldn’t afford to keep girls around for very long, because keeping cargo like that for any length of time increases the chances that they’ll be discovered and the ring stopped.
So they like to keep things on a schedule.
Unless they don’t.
I stare at the screen, doing quick math and trying to figure out what’s going on here. According to the columns after her name. Aislyn was at the port last night, but while some girls were put onto ships and have ‘transported’ after their names, she was taken back to a distribution center.
And then moved to another dance hall.
And then moved to another holding house.
All in the space of about fifteen hours.
What the fuck is that? They’ve had her above ground way too much to be safe, and I can’t even imagine the logistics of moving a trafficking victim so often.
A quick glance tells me that they’re only moving one other girl with her, and when I see her name, things start to come together.
Because that one has the same last name as the governor of our state.
The pieces come together so fast that I feel like I might be having a stroke.
Two very valuable girls, once attached to the Irish mob in New York and one attached—at least in theory—to the governor of Louisiana.
Two girls who should have been transported out last night with their group, but were taken back into the city.
And then moved again and again, from house to house, probably through the streets of New Orleans.
Probably in easily identifiable cars.
And I doubted they’d been wearing disguises when they were moved. They probably had their faces out in full view of the public. When Sophie del Amo’s dad has been broadcasting her face all over the new since the moment she disappeared.
My God, they’re not just transporting those girls, they’re advertising them.
But to what fucking end? What is this, bait?
Is this some sort of sting operation? Are they trying to lure us in?
And if they are, why the ever-loving fuck would they use Aislyn?
No one outside the gangs of New York will know who she is, and I’m not even sure her actual family is down here searching for her.
Only Brooks, and that’s courtesy of her friendship with—
Christ, only Brooks.
And me.
More pieces crashing together. More head-splitting conclusions. Because though we don’t know what position Dom holds with this ring, we know that he’s got a hand in it, and that he’s controlling a lot of the transportation.
And I don’t know if that man loves anything more than tormenting his daughter.
Has he found out that Brooks is here for Aislyn? Does he know about Brooks’ contacts in New York and what they’d do to get Aislyn back? Does he know that Brooks would sell her soul to make sure that girl gets home?
Gods on the fucking streets, is he using Aislyn to get to Brooks?
Or is she just bait to draw me out?
“We were complicating things,” Daniel says suddenly, unaware of the thoughts racing through my head.
“What?” I ask sharply.