Chapter Thirteen
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
O n Thursday morning, Haisley made her way to her desk, only to find a steaming cup of coffee in an insulated mug and a blueberry muffin on her desk. She glanced around the big, open office space, but other than a few of the accounting folks, she saw no one who might have left her breakfast. She lifted the delicious-looking muffin, complete with streusel, and nearly moaned. This had to be from her favorite bakery—the one that had contributed to her carrying an extra ten pounds when she’d lived here before.
Then she saw a note under the pastry.
I came by early, hoping to catch you. Sorry I couldn’t stay. I’m heading out to meet Ethan at the mall to interview the janitor and some other food court employees. This afternoon, I’ll be talking to the final target who escaped. Ethan has been focusing on the mall manager and says he has a new development. I’m hoping you’re able to make some progress on your end, especially in talking to Benedict.
I know you used to enjoy these muffins. Have a good day.
-N
Against her better judgment, Haisley was touched. Leaving her coffee and her favorite muffin was sweet. Considerate. Almost…boyfriend-like. Not something a mere hookup would do. Not strictly professional but not pushy or flirty, either.
Damn it, that man confused her, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him. What was he up to?
Being with him the last couple of days had felt…different. He acted as if he liked her as a person. Respected her. Cared about her opinion, even. He hadn’t tried to push her into bed again or even kiss her. Her head told her that was a good thing. Her heart wasn’t sure. And her body was calling her twenty kinds of stupid because it only wanted Nash.
Maybe that’s why the dam of feeling she’d been desperately trying to contain behind her walls had begun to break free. Somehow, Nash had worked his way under her skin again and seeped into the carefully guarded corners of her heart. With every heated look, every teasingly suggestive remark, and every compliment that rolled off his tongue, he’d chipped away at her resistance.
Two years ago, she’d sputtered a halfhearted BS excuse, cut off all contact, and fled halfway across the country. She’d felt horrible that she’d lied to him, but she’d spared him the worst of the pain, right? Yes. And she’d stayed far away until she’d convinced herself she was over him. But nothing had loosened Nash’s death-grip on her heart.
Now, Haisley had to admit that she was falling for him all over again. Maybe it was time to face the fact she was always going to be in love with him.
Where did that leave her?
The prospect of confiding in him was utterly terrifying. If she told him the truth, would she lose him again? Maybe. Probably. But if she didn’t…wouldn’t she lose him again anyway? How could their relationship deepen if she wasn’t honest?
Besides, not coming clean also meant resigning herself to this frustrating limbo of unresolved feelings and unfulfilled yearning. She’d done that with him once. Did she truly want to do it again?
Haisley didn’t have answers, just a jumbled mix of hopes, fears, and aching needs making endless waves of confusion.
The only thing she knew for certain was that she needed to figure out how to balance her growing feelings with the job at hand. Neither of them could afford distraction when innocent lives were at stake. And Nash inevitably turned her thoughts to mush simply by smoldering at her from across a room.
The rest of the day passed without any peep from him except a frustratingly impersonal text message about needing more time with potential witnesses and Ethan’s lead blowing up, but he’d fill her in later.
Later turned into complete radio silence for over twenty-four hours, leaving Haisley feeling unmoored and unsettlingly dismayed. Clearly, she was in deeper than she’d thought if his one-day absence left her feeling this unbalanced.
Finally, he waltzed into her office on Friday afternoon with a cocky grin that both annoyed and relieved her. She scrambled to tamp down the flutter of relief and giddiness that spread through her at simply laying eyes on him again.
Of course, her facade shattered the second Nash gave her a nakedly admiring once-over. He dumped his messenger bag on her desk and trashed his empty energy drink with a wink. “Miss me?”
Way too much. But she couldn’t blurt that, especially in the office with prying eyes and ears all around. Not when lives were at stake. Their twisted whatever-this-was had to take a back seat.
She scoffed. “You wish.”
His grin widened, and he bent close, under the guise of pulling something from his tote. “Liar. You forget how well I know you.”
Haisley looked down as a flush swept up her face. No, she didn’t forget. She could never forget.
“Did you make progress on the case?” She pretended to schlep papers across her desk.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry it’s been a hot minute since I checked in and updated you. We’re definitely getting somewhere.” He leaned even closer. “But I missed your…skills in action.”
Her heart rate surged. Did he mean that as suggestively as it sounded? “Oh?”
“Yep. More than you know,” he murmured in her ear before he pulled a nearby chair close to hers and sank into it, suddenly business as usual.
Haisley tried to deal with the sudden whiplash. Of course they needed to focus on solving this case, but she’d be lying if she said a reckless part of her didn’t love the idea of unleashing her “skills” for Nash at every intoxicating step. “What did I miss in the investigation?”
“Let’s take this somewhere…private.”
At his insinuation, her pulse leapt. An ache settled between her legs, insistent and throbbing. It had been so long since he’d touched her—since anyone had. Her trusty battery-operated boyfriend wasn’t doing it. Her picky pussy only wanted Nash.
But she didn’t dare invite him closer. As weak as she felt, she’d drop her clothes for him in thirty seconds or less. “The conference room? I don’t think anyone is using it.”
He grabbed his things. “Lead the way.”
She plucked up a few file folders, along with her laptop, and guided him to the executive wing, then inside the small room at the opposite end of the hallway from Mr. Benedict’s office. Together, they sat at the wood laminate table.
As she spread her stuff out, Nash texted someone, then tucked away his phone. “Where were we? Oh, the mall’s general manager. He suddenly resigned yesterday. Benjamin…” He dug through his papers.
“Yuslav,” she provided. “He just quit?”
“Ten minutes before we were set to meet. He apparently tendered his resignation to Mr. Benedict, giving no notice, and hauled ass off the premises. At least according to what the folks in the mall offices told Ethan.”
She winced. “Well, that explains why Mr. Benedict was in such a shitty mood yesterday and why he was shouting at Mila to ‘do something’ ASAP. The poor woman was nearly in tears and started calling everyone she knew…”
“Yep. The timing is awfully shady. Especially since, rumor is, he didn’t leave a forwarding address for his final check.”
“Seriously? I’ll see what I can find out. At the very least, his personnel records should have some contact information.”
“That would be great. Unless he left home like he did his job, I’d like to chat with him. And that’s one interview I don’t want you coming along for. I’ve never met the guy, but based on what I’ve heard, I have a bad feeling.”
“What about the janitor? How was his interview?”
“He was mysteriously sick. Just couldn’t make it in today. He didn’t know when he’d be well enough to talk. I offered to ask my questions over the phone, even though I prefer in-person sit- downs so I can read body language. But he told his boss that he’d lost his voice, so it would be a while before he was available.”
“Well, that’s awfully convenient.”
“Absolutely. The third target who escaped, Caitlyn Gale, was really helpful. She described her incident. It was close to closing, and she decided to hit the restroom after meeting a girlfriend for an evening of shopping and some dinner at the food court. The friend had just left, and she made a pit stop before heading to her car.”
“I’ll bet she wishes she hadn’t.”
Nash nodded. “She says she still has nightmares, and she’s in therapy. But she also added some very interesting details no one else provided. She’s convinced there are multiple people involved because someone grabbed her from behind, the way the others described, but she claims another man held the door open for him as he dragged her out.”
Shock seared Haisley. “We’ve suspected it was an organized ring, but I didn’t think we’d get confirmation that quickly. Did she tell the police?”
“When Detective Haskins found out she had only been dragged as far as the curb before she managed to escape and that she couldn’t describe her assailant, he declined to interview her. Said she didn’t have any information he’d need.” Nash shot her a cynical stare.
“Is this guy lazy or crooked?”
“That’s my question. Could be either. Or both. But we’ll put a pin in that and come back later.”
“How did Caitlyn get away?”
“Clear thinking under pressure and luck. Before the guy could take her purse, she yanked a can of pepper spray from inside and shot both him and the guy holding the door. While they were howling, she darted back inside and found one of the security guards, who waited with her while the police showed up. Of course, by the time they arrived, the assailants were long gone. So was any evidence of the scuffle.”
“Did Caitlyn mention seeing the janitor that night?”
“She did. When she came out of the bathroom, the hallway was roped off to traffic from the stragglers in the food court. As soon as she walked out, he disappeared inside the ladies’ room, leaving her alone in the hall.”
“So the janitor couldn’t have seen anything?” Haisley frowned. “But does that mean he didn’t know anything?”
“Great question. Since we haven’t talked to him, I don’t know, but my assumption is he must have some idea what’s going on. How much is the question. Him disappearing into the women’s room gives him plausible deniability, but with the frequency of women sighting him just before someone grabs them from behind? I’m not buying it.”
“I’m not sure I do, either. In fact, it seems to me that he could have been the one to clean up after Caitlyn’s failed abduction. Who else could it be?”
“Right. It was almost closing time, and not that many other people were around. It’s possible someone else was waiting to mop up, but Caitlyn didn’t remember seeing another mall employee in the area.”
“So what are our next steps?”
“Is Benedict here?”
Haisley sent him a reluctant nod. “He’s been holed up in his office all afternoon. But something pissed him off earlier today, because I’ve heard him shouting way more than usual. I can’t tell what he’s saying, even when I tried to loiter outside his office. But whatever’s going on, he’s furious.”
“I only know of him what I can glean from a few brief interactions. What does your gut say?”
“You mean, is he involved? We talked about this once, but I’m thinking it’s a strong maybe. I’m a little worried I’m biased because he’s such a dick to work for, but logically, I can’t rule out him being involved.”
“I’m wondering if he’s knee-deep in it, too.”
What a crazy, tangled mess. “Where do we go from here?”
“We’re only seeing part of the picture. Yesterday, Ethan said he snagged a new lead and wanted to follow— Hey!”
Haisley looked up to find Ethan Garrison in the doorway with mussed dark hair, a five o’clock shadow, and ink strategically placed to drive women wild. Oddly, she wasn’t affected, but she knew that everywhere he went, women flocked to him.
“Hey.” Ethan entered and shut the door behind him, then settled into the seat next to her, bumping her shoulder. “Hey, beautiful.”
“Back the fuck off,” Nash growled, his posture threatening to come across the table.
Was he jealous? Of Ethan? He didn’t need to be, but if he was…
Hiding a grin, she bumped his shoulder back. “Hey, yourself. What’s up?”
He looked down at his lap, then back up with a sly grin. “You wanna see?”
Nash slammed his fist on the table. “This is a fucking office building, and we’re here to do a job. Haisley asked for professionalism, and we’re going to give it to her or I’ll smash in your fucking face.”
Whoa. He wasn’t even trying to hide his pissed-off. Maybe she should downshift on the fake flirting.
“Sure you will,” Ethan tossed back with a sparkle in his eye. “But if you want professional, beautiful, I got you. Besides, we have a lot to cover.”
“Tell us,” she insisted, glad he’d backed down.
“Well, I had a gym buddy who’s also a Lafayette PD officer. He was trickling information my way…until he suddenly clammed up. Apparently top brass threatened anyone who leaked a word. So that’s interesting and noteworthy.”
Yes, and probably Mr. Benedict’s doing somehow. He had money, and he had influence. He’d proven he had no trouble using it to protect his interests.
“Damn it,” Nash muttered.
“Exactly, so I bailed to Plan B. I started chatting up the mall manager’s assistant yesterday. Well, former mall manager. Cute little thing named Julia. I flirted, and she wasn’t paying attention when I slipped her boss’s office key off her desk and into my pocket.”
“How did she miss that?” Haisley couldn’t picture a scenario in which the assistant had been flirting so hard that she’d completely failed to notice Ethan swiping something important.
Garrison grinned. “She was too busy screaming into my shirt because I had my hand in her little black panties.”
Haisley’s jaw dropped. “You got her off at her desk?”
Ethan’s grin widened. “Don’t look shocked. It worked, didn’t it?”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re worse than a fukboi.”
“I prefer man whore, thank you.” He winked. “Afterward, I got her digits and pretended to leave. Then I watched her head to lunch with a loopy smile on her face, and I slinked back into the former mall manager’s office. It had mostly been cleaned out, which he must have done overnight, because I swung by late on Tuesday and tried to ask him a few pointed questions. He was suddenly too busy—seemingly doing nothing more important than picking his nose—to talk to me. His office was a fucking catastrophe when he had security escort me out for ‘harassing’ him. Today? The place was virtually empty. His laptop was still on his desk with an order for IT to wipe it clean, so I absconded with it.”
“Anyone see you?” Nash asked.
“Nope. There are no cameras in the office. Julia told me in confidence just before her big O, and I double-checked for myself.” He pulled the computer from a crossbody briefcase hanging off his shoulder and plopped it on the table. “I called your brother as soon as I got it. It took us until three a.m. to finagle past the asshole’s login. Most of the files on there were boring as fuck, day-to-day mall business. But he had a whole section on his hard drive partitioned off from the automatic backups. Every fucking file is encrypted. Trees has been working on them all day. When he texted to say he’d gotten into that part of the drive and opened the files, I picked it up and headed over here.”
“Did my brother say what was in the encrypted files?”
“No. He said he was fucking tired after being up all night and half the day, so he was going to bed. Laila shooed me out. She’s so protective of her man.” Ethan laughed.
“He’s crazy protective of her,” Nash put in.
Haisley couldn’t argue. She’d seen that in action. “So you have no idea what Yuslav was hiding?”
“Nope. Let’s find out together. I’m really hoping it’s not his personal porn collection. He was the human equivalent of a pimple on a leper’s ass, and I really don’t want to think about his…proclivities.”
She shuddered. “Let’s hope he was hiding something more useful.”
A collective hush settled across the room as Ethan lifted the lid on the laptop, entered the password Trees had hacked for him, then started fishing around the hard drive. She and Nash huddled closer and watched him methodically search the laptop.
At first, nothing made sense. Folders had nonsensical names, but all followed a pattern of a six-digit number, followed by a single letter. Some of those were empty. Some of them had sketchy documents full of more combinations of letters and numbers that Haisley didn’t understand.
“Does any of this mean anything to you guys?”
Nash and Ethan exchanged a solemn glance, but neither responded. Instead, Ethan’s cocky disposition morphed into hard steel. And Nash tensed, looking both dangerous and so protective, she nearly scooted away from him.
“I need the list of victims.” Ethan held out his hand.
Nash rifled through his bag until he pulled out a notebook and flipped it to a page full of his chicken scratchings. “They’re listed here, in chronological order, including the ones who got away.”
Ethan grabbed the notebook and slapped it on the table next to the laptop, glancing back and forth between the page and the screen. “Fuck.”
“It matches?”
Ethan nodded. “Exactly.”
“What?” Haisley felt like they were talking over her head, and it was pissing her off. “What matches?”
Ethan dragged her closer for a better view of the screen. “Each of these six-digit numbers corresponds to a date—the one in which the victim was abducted. The letter corresponds to her first initial. So see this? Twelve, twenty-four, and two digits for the year, followed by a K. That’s Kaylee, who disappeared on Christmas Eve.” He clicked on her file, only to find another assortment of numbers and letters.
“Shit,” Nash muttered. “This spells out everything about the girl abducted. H must be height. The fifty-two must mean she’s five foot-two. The W corresponds to weight. She weighs one twenty-two. The next numbers… B? W? H? I don’t know. We did weight and height, so what would another W or H mean?”
Haisley glanced at the numbers herself and it hit her. “Bust, waist, and hips. They’re measurements.”
Ethan nodded. “So the other stats just below? Another H and an E, next to abbreviations for colors, must be?—”
“Hair and eye color,” Nash cut in. “This lists Kaylee as having brown hair and eyes…and that corresponds to the information her mother provided. Son of a bitch.” He scowled. “But what’s the V for? There’s a Y next to that.”
Haisley knew and it made her sick. “If they’re selling these girls for sex, I’m sure they’re finding out whether or not she’s a virgin.”
“That’s disgusting,” Ethan growled.
“These fucking bastards don’t deserve to live.” And Nash looked ready to kill each and every one of them himself.
A few minutes later, they had verified that all the victims had a file folder with a document outlining her stats. Those who had been missing longer had other details, but interpreting their meaning wasn’t easy.
“What do you suppose the B stands for on this file?” Haisley pointed to the file they found on the first victim, Taylor. She worried like hell what the “yes” after it meant.
Both men shrugged. They might not know the answer, but their grim expressions told her it was probably bad.
“And what is this weird combination of stuff below? They both have decimal numbers, they’re separated by a comma, and the last number is negative. Is that…longitude and latitude?”
“It is.” Nash was already pounding away on his phone. Then he looked at Ethan with a shake of his head.
“An island. Am I right?” Ethan asked.
“Tiny. Private. In the middle of the Atlantic, sandwiched between the west of Cuba’s southern tip and the most westerly Cayman Island.”
“Fuck.”
“Is that where they’re taking those girls?” Haisley asked in dawning horror. It was terrible enough for these victims to be ripped from their homes, but to be transported out of the country to a foreign land with no government reach, no help in sight…
“This one at least,” Ethan answered. “But look, victim two, Collette, has all the same information after her abduction date and her initial. Except…wait. There’s another seven-digit code beneath the B we can’t figure out and the location.”
“What the fuck could that mean? Damn it,” Nash grumbled.
“I don’t know. Where does that leave us?” Haisley asked.
“Still searching,” Ethan admitted. “Sometimes cases are one step forward and two steps back. We just keep plugging away.”
“And hope for a break.” Nash sighed.
“What he said.” Ethan’s eyes were fixed on the computer screen as he clicked away. Suddenly, he sat up straighter. “Anyone ever heard of a business called Rugs Direct Unlimited?”
“Nope.” Nash shrugged. “Should I?”
Haisley shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it, either.”
Ethan scowled at the monitor. “I found an advertisement of sorts. There’s a picture of a pretty typical area rug stretched across a hardwood floor. The ad copy reads: Exclusive, one-of-a-kind decor. Lay them right the first time, and they’ll be yours forever . They’re based out of Cuba.”
Nash lifted a brow. “Want to bet their ‘headquarters’ is on a small island between the mainland and the Caymans?”
“Oh, god.” Haisley slapped her hand across her mouth. “They don’t mean rugs. They’re talking about…”
“Women,” Nash confirmed.
She was going to be sick. “Is this how they’re finding…buyers for these girls? Through a fake rug business?”
“That’s my guess. Let me see if I can find a website.” A few clicks later, Ethan swore. “It’s prompting me for a password.”
“So anyone with the right credentials can just…shop for a sex slave?” Haisley pressed a hand to her chest. “That’s…”
“Disgusting? Repulsive? Terrible?”
Even imagining the horror these women must be enduring was hard. “All of it. And nothing on the computer might help us get into that site and rescue those girls?”
“I need more time. Nothing is jumping out at me right now, but I’m going to head home and keep looking.” He raised a brow at Nash. “You staying?”
Nash looked between her and Ethan. Half of her hoped Nash remained. She missed him when he wasn’t around. And this investigation was taking a dark, creepy turn. On the other hand, despite their spontaneous New Year’s Eve kiss and her blossoming feelings, she and Nash were no longer an item. Being this close to him for too long would only land her in trouble.
“Nah, I’ll go with you. We’ll look through this together.” Nash gathered his things as Ethan did and stood. “I’ll catch up with you when I have something, Rowe. Text me if you stumble across any clues or talk to Benedict, okay?”
Everything on his face said he could take or leave her, that he didn’t need or want her anymore. It hurt like hell, but what had she expected, especially after she’d told him to back off? When tequila wasn’t doing his talking and he wasn’t flirting for the hell of it, she was just another of his former flings. She didn’t mean anything to him.
“Sure. See you next week.” She hustled out of the conference room and into the women’s bathroom before hot, unwanted tears fell.