by Desiree Holt
Fuck.
Well, he’d get people doing a canvass of the houses on the water and the boats in the marinas, see if by some miracle something turned up.
But his instincts told him she’d been running from something. Just a feeling he had, but he’d learned after ten years as a detective to trust his gut.
Damn, but he hated shit like this. Too many bad things happened to young women—girls, to be honest—these days. He wanted to find the bastards and strangle them with his bare hands.
Shoving those hands in his pockets, he stared across the blue-green expanse of salt water he was facing. There were a couple of private islands out there reachable by private causeways. The residents counted their wealth in the millions. Many millions. The thought of going door to door and asking them if anyone was missing a young woman flooded his mouth with a sour taste.
He sure hoped to hell Riley came up with some identification. Maybe then they’d have a place to start.
Chapter Ten
It was just after seven when Lindsey dropped John at the hotel so he could shower and change before heading to the office.
“I want to get there before everyone else,” she told him when she let him out. “And don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d like to keep this under the radar as much as possible.”
He nodded. “I understand.” Then he grinned. “But you have to go a long way to put anything over on either Taylor or Noah.”
“I know.” She bit her lower lip. “I just don’t want them to think—”
He cupped her chin and turned her face so he could look into her eyes.
“Trust me to be circumspect and discreet, Lindsey. Especially in the office. Okay?”
“Okay.” She let out a little breath. “I’ll do my best to trust you on this.”
“You can. And I’ll keep doing my best to earn that trust.” He stroked his thumb over her chin.
“How will you get to Elite?”
“I’ll take a cab, but I’m also thinking about renting a car. You won’t always be able to chauffeur me, and I like having my own wheels.”
“Makes sense.”
He paused. “Lindsey, I know it was just the one night, but there was something special about it. Something deep. If you didn’t feel the same connection I did, tell me now.”
For a moment she hesitated. She’d given this a lot of thought before taking him home with her last night and she’d come to a decision. Two could play at this game. She was getting too old to let men dangle her on a string. Make false promises. Disappear from her life and show up much later as if nothing had happened. She wanted this time with John because, hell! The sex was unbelievable. But this time she’d be the one to walk away when it was over.
She slowly let out a breath. “I did. Feel the same. “
His sensuous mouth curved in a smile. “Good. Very good. Please trust me, Lindsey. I won’t make the same mistake again. I’m in it for the long haul, and I hope you are, too.” He ducked his head for a swift kiss, just a brush of lips. “Okay, I’d better get the hell inside.”
“I’ll have pastries at the office,” she called as he closed the door.
He nodded, winked and walked into the hotel.
She allowed herself a moment to admire his very fine ass before pulling out into the street. Yes, she’d enjoy the hell out of this because she deserved it. But she wasn’t putting her emotions out there again. She’d learned a painful lesson the last time.
She was running much later than she wanted so she headed straight to Elite, and was glad the offices were empty when she arrived.
Leda arrived a few minutes after she’d finished turning on the lights and got her office going.
“Would you please call down to my favorite bakery and ask them to send up a pastry tray?” Lindsey asked her. “Make it enough for everyone.”
“They’ll earn it.” She looked at the sticky note on her telephone. “You want today’s client meetings rescheduled? Can I ask why? I’d think right now we need to be hand-holding more than ever.”
“Don’t freak, but the police will probably be around here today asking questions. We don’t need them in the mix with our clients.”
“Police?” Leda’s eyebrows shot up nearly to her hairline. “Holy crap. What for?”
Lindsey explained to her about the autopsy and that everyone on the staff would be questioned.
Leda’s eyes were like saucers. “Do they really think someone here did this? Switched his pills?”
“I don’t think so, but they can’t leave anything to chance. As soon as everyone’s here, get them in the conference room for a few minutes and I’ll lay it out. I don’t want them to freak any more than I know they will.”
Sarah walked in five minutes later, stowed her things and stuck her head into Lindsey’s office.
“Taylor’s not here yet, but—”
“Yes, she is,” a musical voice floated behind Sarah.
The admin jumped. “Holy cow, Taylor. You’ve got super stealth skills.”
Taylor laughed. “I had to learn them when I inherited Arroyo and found some of my executive staff were trying to kill me off.”
Sarah’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”
“Not even a little. If not for Noah, they probably would have succeeded.” She turned back to Lindsey. “Anyway, that’s later in the day. The big news is Aiden Colby called early this morning to tell us he’s cracked the SIM card.” She glanced at her watch. “He should be here in the next fifteen minutes and he said what he found is not going to make us happy at all. Lindsey, I want to make sure you sit in with us when he gives us the information. It’s important for you to know everything.”
Lindsey forced herself to remain calm, but what on earth could he have found? How could something relate to Elite and she knew nothing about it? She wondered how many other things she might have missed, and how. Things it seemed she was just not paying attention to.
“Thank you, Taylor. I want you to know I’m as surprised as you are about this—”
“Stop right there.” Taylor held up a hand. “Whatever he found, I don’t blame you for any of it. People can be very devious and deceiving when they want to. Let’s wait until we have the information before we start pointing fingers or shouldering blame, okay?”
Lindsey nodded, breathed a sigh of relief as Taylor left the office and had just booted up her computer when her phone buzzed.
“Yes, Leda?”
“Aiden Colby is here along with Mr. Martino and Mr. Cantrell. Mrs. Cantrell wants everyone in Craig’s office, and I’m to hold all calls.” Leda’s voice had an uncertain edge to it.
“That’s fine,” Lindsey assured her. “If anyone wants to see any of us, just tell them emergencies only until this meeting is over. Then I need all the staff together for a very brief meeting.”
“Got it.”
She made sure to fill her coffee mug before walking into the office. She didn’t think her stomach could hold any pastry, as tense as she was.
“I’ll still be working in the other office,” Taylor said, “but this one has more room and gives us a better meeting setup. Let’s get to it.”
When everyone was seated around the table where John and Lindsey had been doing some of their work, Aiden cleared his throat.
“Taylor, you told me you had Craig Wainwright investigated with your usual thoroughness before you made him the offer to join Arroyo. Am I correct?”
She drew her brows together. “Of course. Why? Did I miss something?”
“If she did,” Noah interjected, “it’s an anomaly. She usually uncovers everything right down to their choice of underwear.”
“Even the best miss something now and then,” Aiden told them.
“Come on, Aiden,” Taylor said. “Give. What have you uncovered?”
“This guy had to be either a master of secrecy or he’s closely connected to someone who is. To be able to keep a link like this hidden so no one had a sniff of it, and discover
ed it in an investigation, takes a lot of skill and practice. Or a connection to someone who can tell him what to do.”
“A link like what?” Noah’s voice was deep and edged with impatience. “And how did you find it? Let’s have it, Aiden.”
Aiden pulled a tablet from his briefcase.
“How I found it is how I find everything. I break down the encryptions and follow the codes. Even with burner phones, there is a way to trace things, if you know how. People who write programs for phones and other electronics usually build on a code word. The important thing is finding it. I did, and with less trouble than I expected.” He looked at Lindsey. “Taylor and Noah have heard this before, but I wanted to give you the simplest explanation of what I do and how I find what I’m looking for.”
“Thank you.” She folded her hands in her lap, reaching for a calm she was far from feeling. She was sure whatever was coming was going to be bad. “I appreciate it. This is a brand-new area for me. Plus, I worked with Craig for four years, fairly closely. I can’t believe I would miss something as bad as whatever you found.”
“People more used to dealing with this stuff have missed it, so don’t beat yourself up. So you already know this is a burner phone and what that means. No official carrier, plus the calls will be going to another burner phone.”
Lindsey frowned. “But how do they activate it without a carrier?”
“Aahhh.” He smiled. “That’s like putting nickels in an anonymous piggy bank. You buy SIM cards already activated by an anonymous provider with a specified number of minutes. Or you can buy a Dark Web card that only routes your calls to other users in that same system. It bypasses all the usual carriers.”
“Then how do you trace the calls? And find out who has the cards? And the phone?”
He grinned, like a kid who was just been given the biggest Christmas present.
“What’s that old saying? I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you?” He winked. “Just joking. Once I have the code word, I break down the data into little pieces then go out into places I shouldn’t be to match them up. That’s the simplest explanation.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Simple is good for me.”
“So, cutting right to the chase, here’s what I found.” He looked at Taylor. “The call came from a man named Alex Enescu. I’m sure you’ve never heard of him and you should be plenty glad of that. I dug around for information on him and let me tell you, he’s not someone you’d want to share a drink with.”
“Who is he?” Noah demanded. “How does he fit in here?”
“He’s Romanian, and if he was a Mafioso, they’d call him the capo de capo. The boss of all bosses. He came to the States a few years ago and has a big estate in Miami Beach. He’s probably running his organization from there. It’s a sad fact that too many men like him have come over to this country and set up shop here. Miami’s one of their hotspots. International port, lots of activity, lots of ways to disguise what they’re doing.
“According to what I read,” Aiden went on, “he has his finger in whatever makes money, legal or not. Everything from clothing factories to nightclubs to illegal drugs to illegal arms to you name it. If it makes money, he’s into it.”
Noah stared at him. “Are you fucking kidding us? What the hell was Craig Wainwright doing hanging out with someone like this?”
“I think I need to have another chat with our investigators.” Taylor looked at Noah. “If Craig really was involved with this man, we could be looking at serious trouble here.” She let out a slow breath. “International trouble. Arroyo is, after all, an international conglomerate, and we go out of our way to avoid any kind of problems in the countries where we do business. All right, Aiden. Go on. So this guy is the head of some big criminal network?”
“Oh, yeah. And he stays untouched because he pays all the right people. And, by the way, makes sure everyone knows if they come after him, they’re dead. He’s not only the boss of all the bosses—he’s the worst of the worst.”
“I can’t believe this.” Taylor rubbed her hand over her face. “How did this happen? How did they hook up? Did he reach out to Craig? Did someone connect them?”
“That’s the question we need to find the answer for,” Noah growled.
Taylor shook her head. “I know this is far-fetched, but do you think he has any connection to Ruben Madea, our oh-so-generous host who owns the island in the Caribbean that Elite uses for photo shoots?”
“Anything is possible.” Noah’s face was a hard mask. “But let me point something out to you. If we’re dealing with both Hispanics and Eastern Europeans, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?”
Lindsey frowned. “A wide network of criminals? More extensive dope trade? Illegal arms? What makes this so different?”
A muscle twitched in Noah’s jaw. “Sex trafficking.”
Lindsey felt as if every drop of blood was draining from her body. “Are you kidding me?”
Noah shook his head. “The sex trade has really gone international in the past few years. Plus, this could be a joint operation between two international organizations covering the whole gamut.”
“We need to find out if there’s a connection,” Taylor insisted. “Hispanic criminal? Island in the Caribbean? Romanian crime boss? Not only would this be a disaster for Elite, it also presents a danger to the models Craig took there. By the way, which agency does he get the models from anyway?”
“That I can tell you.” Lindsey tapped the screen of her tablet, where she’d ben transferring all her notes for easy access. “Something called Bella Donna.”
“Pretty Woman,” Taylor translated.
“Yes,” Lindsey agreed. “Appropriate, I guess. They have offices in New York and Miami.”
“Noah, could you put someone on it ASAP? I want to know who the owners are and the names of their other clients. And don’t use our usual people. They fell down on the job where Craig is concerned so I’m not inclined to trust them at the moment,” Taylor said.
“I’ll get hold of Charley Graham again. I’m going to send both names—Ruben Madea and Alex Enescu—to him.” He looked up at Lindsey. “Charley runs a top-shelf security agency based in Tampa that we use for a lot of things. He can turn over rocks other people can’t even find.”
“The agency is actually part of Arroyo,” Taylor added. “Noah put it together when he became vice-president of security for the entire conglomerate and hired Charley, who is the best of the best, to run it.”
“I can give you a couple of names, Taylor,” John broke in. “For the future. Several of my other clients use them to vet people.”
“Text them to both of us,” Noah told him, his face a rigid mask of anger. He shook his head. “Fuck. If Wainwright was still alive, I might have to kill him myself. Was he that money-hungry that he was willing to get in bed with someone like Enescu?”
“Uh, I hate to throw this into the mix but—” John looked around at everyone. “What if the sex trade came first and Elite was created as a vehicle for finding girls and processing them?”
There was dead silence for a moment, then Noah exploded.
“Fucking son of a bitch. God damn it to hell. John, you take those books apart inch by inch. And I’m putting Charley Graham on everyone and everything. Fuck. Just fuck.”
Lindsey thought Taylor looked as if she was about to faint.
“I thought we were past finding sham companies in Arroyo.” Her voice was strained when she spoke. “That we’d know the signs.”
“Some people are very, very good at it,” John told her in a soft voice. “When you originally told me about Elite, I checked them out and they looked perfect.”
“I’m calling Charley now.” Noah stepped out of the room with his phone to make the call. When he returned, he gave them one sharp nod, an indication Charley’s people were already on it. On everything.
Lindsey felt nauseated. How was it possible all this was going on almost right under her nose and she didn’t even
have a hint of it? She was an experienced executive, with credentials in this business. She was supposed to have her shit together. How did this happen?
“Taylor. Noah.” She set her coffee cup down, convinced that if she drank any more, she’d throw it up. “First of all, I hope you believe I had nothing to do with this. And secondly, you must think I’m pretty damn stupid not to know this was going on practically under my nose. I feel sick about it. I can’t—”
“Stop.” Noah’s voice cut her off. “We don’t think any such thing. I guarantee you Enescu is very sharp to continue to operate at the level he does, and he’s used to hiding things. Second, Craig was no idiot. If he got himself involved in this, he knew from the beginning what he was doing and how to hide it so there was never a smell of anything wrong. So, let’s get past that, okay? We do not blame you for a bit of this.”
“All right.” She blew out a breath. “I— Thank you.”
“Go ahead, Aiden. Let’s hear the rest of it.”
“There were a number of calls on that phone between Enescu and Craig. Very cryptic ones. There were also some between Craig and Madea. Basically, they used the phone to arrange meetings, shipment, although of what I can’t figure out. They just referred to merchandise. It could be any one of a number of things.”
Noah nodded his head. “We brought that up before. Guns. Drugs. And our latest idea, the sex trade. But how in the absolute fuck would Craig get involved with someone like Enescu?”
Lindsey was sure if Craig was standing in front of them Noah would have beaten him to a bloody pulp.
“The first question to answer,” Taylor said, “is how he met him. Does Enescu travel in the same social circles as the Wainwrights and others? Would they embrace a criminal like that?”
“The social circle thing is totally possible,” Aiden pointed out. “That’s how it happens to a lot of people. A sniff of the money to tease, then a little more and a little more, not caring how and where it came from and boom! You’re right in the middle of a crooked mess. Craig could have gotten involved in conversation, heard the big numbers flying around. Decided he wanted in on it.”