Chapter 9 #3
“Why are you so interested in interviewing the women at the port?” Ava graciously accepts her coffee mug from the returning attendant, pressing it tightly between both of her hands.
The look in her eyes is calculating and cold.
A far cry from the jovial, carefree woman who had been there just moments ago.
“Who wouldn’t want a scoop like that?” A shrug of my shoulders conveys an insouciance I don’t feel. “That was one of the biggest human trafficking busts in years.”
Ava huffs mirthlessly, her head shaking slightly as she continues to eye me from across the table.
“I don’t believe that.”
“Believe what you want.” I frown, no doubt giving away my air of nonchalance.
Tension in the room is strung tight, and I am walking a thin rope above a pool of hungry, hungry sharks that won’t hesitate to devour me if I give them a chance.
“I think you were looking for someone,” Matthias speaks up. “A Lina Davenport, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Monty has a big fucking mouth,” I growl, wincing slightly when Seamus’s hand tightens on my thigh in warning.
“Watch your language,” he warns. My nostrils flare as I meet his hard stare with one of my own.
“I checked into her.” Matthias keeps going, as if Seamus hadn’t reprimanded me. “No one but you seems to be worried about her being missing.”
“Lina and I were working on a sex trafficking story together. She said she’d found a weak link in Elias Ward’s organization.
Someone who could get her in undetected.
” I take a deep breath and slowly let it out.
“Lina was supposed to check in with me three days later. She never did. When I went to her house, everything was cleared out. It was like she suddenly became a ghost. Tony, my boss, said she’d quit.
Planned on moving to Texas to be with her parents. ”
“And you didn’t believe him?”
I scoff and take a sip of the hot coffee the server brought me. “Lina’s parents were abusive alcoholics who died in a house fire last year. Kind of hard to move in with their ashes. Lina and I have been friends for years. She wouldn’t just up and move without telling me.”
“So you thought the girls at the port might have seen her.” Dashkov confirms what he already knows. “Thought maybe they could tell you where they’d seen her last.”
I nod. “Only problem was…” I wrinkle my nose. “… both the port and the stables Elias had been holding women in were blown to smithereens.” I shoot a pointed look at Liam. “Thanks for that.”
“I’d do it again if it meant rescuing Ava.” He looks over at her, eyes glowing with affection. A lump grows in my throat. My father has never once looked at me with even a fraction of the affection that Liam is giving his daughter.
“None of the girls in the stables were named Lina,” Kiernan tells me. “Nearly all of them were Mexican, and the rest Ukrainian. All of them underage as well.”
Silence settles over Kiernan’s statement. All eyes focus on me, their gazes soft as they give me time to process what I’ve learned.
Lina is gone.
Lost.
If she hadn’t been at the stables, then she was either sold or dead. Either way, I won’t be finding her, especially not on my own.
“There might be a chance,” Matthias speaks up, his Russian accent filling the heavy air, but his words lighten the fog that has descended around me.
“No,” Kiernan growls. “I know what you’re thinking, and absolutely not. We agreed to get information from her, not use her as a tool.”
“What?” I ask, brow furrowing. My gaze shifts between the pair.
“She’s the perfect spy and our best chance at getting the information we need.”
Kiernan’s lips twist into an ugly snarl. “If you think I’m going to risk her like that, you’re bloody fucking crazy.”
“What?” I repeat, my voice gaining a frantic pitch. Does Matthias know something about Lina? Does he have a way to find her? Maybe he plans on having me become bait and go undercover. I turn to Kiernan. “What is he talking about?”
“Nothing.” His jaw clenches, and the hand on my thigh grips tighter.
“She’s the perfect—”
“I said no,” Kiernan roars, surging to his feet. His chair scrapes across the wooden floor loudly.
“Kier.” Seamus bites his lip anxiously, his eyes darting between his brother and me. “Maybe we should see what information we can get from her about him and then let her hear the truth.”
Kiernan sneers at his brother. “And if he catches her?” he snaps. “Say she believes what we tell her. What then? Even if she does believe the evidence, who is going to protect her if she gets caught?”
Evidence?
Evidence against whom?
Kiernan’s rage continues. “I am not going to take the chance he catches her and sells her to some perverted fucking—”
“Enough,” Liam barks. His hand comes down roughly on the table, shaking the wood.
I startle, my body stiffening at his outburst. When my father gets this way, it means a beating.
A lesson to keep me in line. He’s never raised his hand to me himself, though.
Fernando would be the one to strike at me. His whip, he calls him.
“Sit down, son.” Kiernan hesitates at his father’s command. “Now.”
Growling, he does as he’s told, sliding the chair closer to mine so we are nearly on top of one another.
“I don’t understand.” My gaze darts from one person to the next. “Who are you so worried about?”
“Your father, lass.” Liam’s jaw ticks. “Richard Crowe.”
My father? What does he have to do with any of this?