Chapter 28
Tyler
In the warehouse’s main ground-floor corridor, the clubs had closed, dancers leaving for home and the cleaning crew moving in.
Half of my team had returned, with Ash and Convict immediately heading out on a run to get female staff home safely, and Heretic and Kane finalising the drop-off that Lovelyn had organised.
They’d be back soon, which gave me time to put in place part of my plan.
I found Arran finishing up in his office. He straightened on my approach.
“I’ll be on a personal mission for the next few days, possibly a week. I’ll be splitting my team. I’d appreciate Shade’s and Riot’s help if ye can swing it.”
His expression gave nothing up. “What are you doing?”
“Bringing in some people. Two could be well protected.”
“Alive?”
“For now.”
Arran queried, “Who?”
I gave him the names. Denise Harford and her rapist husband. Sullivan’s two men. “I won’t be neglecting my duties. I’ll ask Kane and Heretic to step up alongside the other work they have on. Then Convict and Ash will join in. I’ll brief them all now.”
He held that heavy focus on me then inclined his head. “Find me after that conversation.”
I rapped on the doorframe then walked away.
In the ops centre, Ash and Convict heard me out and agreed to the tasks, selecting one of Sullivan’s cronies as their pickup.
Ash rubbed his hands together. “Tomorrow night is going to be educational.”
Convict wore an identical grin. “I love a themed evening.”
A notification landed on my phone, Kane telling me they were back. I swapped one pair out for another, Heretic and Kane taking a turn in my spotlight.
Kane walked me through the handover of the Marchant-Smythes to the cops. “Lovelyn planned the drop with the detective. Fucker sent one of his minions with an unmarked van. Coward. But they took them in.”
Lovelyn’s connection with the police went deeper than just her father being top brass. She’d also dated the detective in charge of the investigation into Marchant Haulage, but Lyle Francis turned into a stalker. Which meant she now had leverage over him.
I shook my head at Kane. “Too scared to face ye.”
He shrugged one hefty shoulder. “Either that or he wanted plausible deniability for how they came into police custody. Saved his face from my fist. Generous of me.”
Heretic watched on, one boot planted against the wall and his arms folded. “Before we handed them over, I completed the cloning of their phones. With that, we can lay a trap for their son. See if we can get the little shit to deliver himself to us.”
I tipped up my chin. “Keep me in the loop, as well as Cassie. She’ll have ideas, and I want to be there when we bring him in.”
The skeleton girls were better placed to know what levers to pull with Presley and what to do with him after.
I hesitated, comparing that one last name with the empty slot on Dixie’s list. The man who’d attacked and left her for dead was still nameless, but my gut feel was that it had to be related to her family.
I’d looked up the timing, and the grandfather was alive but presumably on his way out when her throat attack happened.
If we brought Presley Marchant-Smythe in, we might finally understand what linked them all.
“I have further work for ye.” I allocated one of the captures to the two men, then got into the bare bones of work I carried out. The monitoring of contacts and access channels where I heard about trafficking into the region. I couldn’t afford to look away for long.
“For several years, I’ve intercepted a steady flow of young women and girls into Deadwater.
Sometimes boys, too.” I hid a sudden tightening of my voice.
“I’ve been able to safeguard a number of victims and take out the traffickers each time.
But they don’t talk, and more immediately spring up, which tells me the demand doesn’t go away. ”
“Any clues on the consumers?” Heretic said the last word with distaste.
The men who bought the victims. The rapist pieces of scum who enabled the trade in the first place.
“I’m working on that. To this point, I’ve had no contacts in big business, which is where I believe this is happening.”
Heretic raised his dark eyebrows. “Follow the money, right?”
Rich men funded it. Always the way, along with most other evils in the world.
But no trafficker had ever given up the name of a buyer, and with my predisposition to talk with deadly force, I hadn’t advanced that cause. It had been something I’d discussed with Cassie. With the Marchant trafficking case underway, there was opportunity to go deeper.
By getting involved, we’d also inadvertently caused a pause point.
As Kane and Heretic got to grips with my system, I explained why things were quiet.
“Mila gave us a man named Salter. He and another individual, Rhys Jacobs, ran flesh auctions, some women volunteered in, others trafficked. We know that businessmen used them. Without that mechanism in place, the system has broken down, and there’s infighting amongst the low-level underlings who were left.
I don’t doubt it’s still happening, but to a much lesser extent.
Salter was the type to defend his territory. ”
“He’s dead?” Heretic asked.
“Not yet. We’ve kept him on ice for a while, but no one has got a name out of him.”
With everything else that had gone on, Salter had been lower down the list of priorities.
Heretic watched me. Something old and hungry flickered in his eyes. “Can I try?”
This was why I’d hired him. That darkness I saw when Heretic was activated. It spoke to the same inside me. “I’ll find a time to take ye to him.”
Kane tapped the monitor, open on a page where I tracked various pieces of data. “What’s this alert that just came up? A car.” He rattled off a code I’d used.
I squinted to check the traffic camera report, clicking into the overhead picture that clearly showed the driver.
The thin, stressed face Mila had shown me a long time ago.
I released a hard laugh. “You’re kidding me.
Rhys Jacobs. Flesh auctioneer, on the run for months, now slinking back into Deadwater. Brave. Or stupid.”
Kane’s grin was predatorial. “Perhaps that pause point in the trade had felt like too good an opportunity. How about we welcome him home?”
I gladly let him take the lead in that task.
With my day job handled, I released the men and returned to the corridor.
Arran waited in the open doorway to his office. I hadn’t forgotten his request to find him after.
He tipped his head. “Take a walk with me.”
My friend directed me out of the warehouse and into the cool pre-dawn air. In case Dixie was still awake and watching my newly installed tracker, I shot her a text to say I was with Arran and I wouldn’t go far.
To the right, Deadwater River wound its way into town, the city sparkling against a navy-blue sky.
Arran shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Dixie shared some information with Genevieve and gave her permission to pass it on to me. She described an assault in the brothel.” He scanned the bridge ahead, unhappiness crinkling his eyes.
“I suspected as much when I worked out why Shade had taken Buck. I assume that’s why she left. ”
He didn’t ask it as a question, so I kept my mouth shut.
“I’ll talk to her, if she’s willing. I’ll apologise and ask her for input on further safety measures for the women. I know it isn’t enough, but it’s a start.”
I dipped my head, a band tightening around my chest. It did every time someone did the right thing and put Dixie first. “I’ll pass on the message.”
“I’d appreciate it. I would have spoken to her directly, but I want to handle this sensitively. She’s put you between everyone else and her, and I want to respect that choice until she changes it.”
We continued on, a slow walk in the dark. Our boots on the cobbles, the scent of the river strong.
For several minutes, Arran didn’t speak, appearing to be stuck on how to start a sentence. In equal parts, I did and didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
His words, when they came, stunned me.
“I was abused as a kid. Physically, emotionally, and to a lesser degree sexually.”
My soul recoiled in on itself. I knew Arran had demons. He’d talked about his father being violent and killing his mother who’d been a sex worker. But there had never been details. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t look at me. “Genevieve knows everything I went through. All the shitty details that kept me up at night, including my attempts to sidestep the effects of my abuse. It can’t all be handled in blood.”
I released a breath. “Though that helps, doesn’t it?”
His mouth curved in the start of a smile. “Can’t deny that. But only temporarily. You told me not to try to push therapy, and I’m not, even if I can see the point of it. If I hadn’t found the words, my behaviour would have destroyed my relationship.”
He stooped to pick up a rock. Tossed it in an arc over the water where it disappeared beneath the black waves.
“I would’ve lost her because of the shit that fucked me up.
It gave my abusers more power, and that realisation changed me.
I won’t pretend to understand what you went through.
The only thing I’m certain about is naming the beast. Saying it out loud to the person you trust to listen. ”
Every part of me rejected what he was doing. Death was easier than confession. He’d framed our conversation neatly. He’d shown me my position of trust with Dixie. How she was using me as a buffer against the world. But in exchange, I was giving her nothing but blood and obsession.
My friend finally landed his focus on me.
“I was in freefall from the minute I met Genevieve. I’m fucking lucky she puts up with me.
If she feels sorry for me, I’ll take that pity because it helps the kid version of me who suffered.
That child deserved nothing less. If I act out on her now, she puts me in my place with an understanding of where it came from.
Believe me, she pushes that back on me to handle.
If she didn’t know, she would’ve walked a long time ago. ”
I opened my mouth to say that Genevieve was a strong woman, but then I shut it. I wouldn’t imply Dixie was not. Wounded, sure. But she had strength in her I barely understood.
Dixie wouldn’t just pity me. It would take the focus off where it needed to be, on her. And I didn’t know how to survive that.
“So, advice given. Do with that what you like. Now I have a complaint.” Arran faced me, his expression losing the edge of devastation, replaced with the in-control man I knew. “What the fuck is with your revenge mission where you invite half my crew but not me?”
I blinked. “Ye want in?”
He punched my arm, hard, and turned his steps back to the warehouse. “I’m offended you had to ask.”