“What sort of fucktard keeps all of that in one file?” Yates wanted to know.
Romero began spreading things across the desk. “I don’t know. Just take the photos.”
Yates started clicking away. Receipts, invoices, cargo manifests, and shipping orders sat there ready to be examined. It was a treasure trove of information, all with logs, phone numbers, and destinations stamped all over the documents. It was almost too easy. Yates had half a mind to throw it all out as bullshit evidence that had been planted for some reason. Yet he couldn’t deny the validity of an invoice that he and Romero both spotted that had the address of the club in Richmond stamped on the top.
“For a shipment of Rohypnol and Fentanyl, just like you suspected,” Yates told Romero. “I suppose that at least gives these some credibility.”
“Maybe.” Romero shrugged and started stuffing it all back in the file folder. “Except it all feels too easy. It’s like this folder was compiled for exactly the reasons we need.”
“Like someone is trying to put together a bunch of incriminating evidence,” Yates agreed.
Just then they both caught the sound of a key in the lock. Yates had a split second to shove his phone in his cargo pocket, and shut off the pen light as Romero scooped up the folder. There was no time to put it back in the drawer. The two men slunk into the back of the office, deep into the shadows, and Yates hoped like hell that there weren’t huge overhead fluorescent lights about to turn on.
“I’ll show that pushy bastard!” someone muttered as they walked in the doorway and shut it carefully behind. “If he thinks he can treat me that way, he’s got another think coming.”
Romero grabbed Yates’s arm. Yates could already see that their unwelcome visitor was the reedy little man they’d seen outside talking to the bigger guy on the catwalk. Obviously the little man didn’t appreciate being told he was going to have to pay for his screw-ups.
The reedy man stomped over to the desk. “He thinks he’s so smart! But he never listens! They’re lucky more of these women don’t die from the drugs. It’s not like they’re doing tox screens to make sure that the victims don’t have some kind of allergy or something. For all we know, one dose of that stuff will stop their hearts!”
Yates realized almost immediately that he and Romero had been absolutely correct. Someone was compiling a bunch of information with an eye toward taking the organization down. This little man intended to do something with that file. Except now he was frantically searching the desk drawer for a file that was clenched in Romero’s hand.
Yates made a last minute decision. Stepping out of the shadows, he approached the little man from behind just to scare the crap out of him. “Looking for something?”
“What?” The guy jumped several feet in the air. “Who are you? I’m going to scream, and security will come running!”
“No you’re not,” Yates guessed. “Because you know that if you call security, then you will never get back the file I just found in your desk. They’ll confiscate it, and then they’ll start asking a lot of awkward questions. And I would suggest that you might wind up in jail, but we both know that there are far worse things for these people to do to you.”
“What do you want?” the little man asked in a voice that could barely be heard.
Romero stepped forward. “The truth.”
“What truth?”
“Who is the Broker?” Romero demanded. “Give me a name, a location. Give me something more than a list of clubs all up and down the Eastern Seaboard.”
“I don’t know his name!” the little man said urgently. “You think a guy like that is going to be stupid enough to just let us call him by his first name? You think he writes a check or something?”
“Then how does he pay?”
The man gestured to the folder. “There are bank accounts in there. If you know what you’re doing you can backtrack them and find the owner. The Broker doesn’t trust anyone. The people closest to him are bound by family ties. So whoever is on the other end of that bank account is personally connected to him.”
Yates nudged Romero. It was time to go. They’d already gotten far more than they’d expected. Yates pointed to the little man. “Are you going to go screaming to the big guy that we were here?”
“No.” The little man looked pissed. “In fact, take the folder! I’m so sick of this I don’t even know what to do anymore. I can’t get out. That’s the thing. They tell you it’s a quick buck, you know? But then you’re trapped, and they will never let go!”
Yates didn’t wait for another invitation. He clucked at Romero and the two of them bolted from the office. They shut the door behind them and headed off in the opposite direction that the guard patrol would be coming from.
There was something funny about this whole situation. Yates had a bad feeling in his gut. His instincts were telling him to get the hell out of there, and he could tell that Romero was experiencing the same thing. The two of them were practically sprinting as quickly as they could back toward their exit. Yates could actually see the window hanging slightly ajar just behind a crate. It was so close he could nearly feel the breeze.
Then, behind them, Yates heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire. A single shot that probably came from a pistol.
Yates froze. Beside him, Romero was cursing in Spanish. The little coward had shot himself. He’d given them the information, and then he’d killed himself. It wasn’t like he hadn’t given them ample warning of his intentions. He’d mentioned more than once that he felt trapped.
“They’re coming,” Romero muttered.
Yates didn’t need it spelled out to know that his fellow SEAL was talking about the guards. The thunder of boots on metal grating made a deafening noise inside the warehouse.
The two SEALs dove for cover behind a stack of crates. Fortunately the men jogging past with their M-16s at the ready were too focused on the gunfire in the office to pay a bit of attention to the strange shadows on the walkway. They pounded right past Yates and Romero on their way to see where the gunshot had come from.
“He’s dead!”
The shout came from across the warehouse, right in front of the office door. There was light everywhere now. Someone had flipped on all the overhead floodlights. Any remaining shadows were quickly being blown away by the intense glow of fluorescent lighting.
“Out,” Romero told Yates. “Now!”
Yates didn’t need an invitation. He shoved his body through that window and rolled once he hit the walkway. They had to make it to the fire escape and get outside of the building’s perimeter before the guards decided to put the place on lockdown.
As if Yates’s thoughts had conjured it, an alarm started blaring at a terrific volume. Everything seemed to be fully lit, and the whole building was illuminated like Christmas. It left Yates and Romero climbing furiously down the side of a warehouse fire escape with their profiles completely exposed to anyone who might care to look.
Yates had never been so relieved to have his boots touch the ground. He heard Romero behind him, and the two of them bolted for the vehicle. They took a roundabout, pre-planned route that would throw off anyone who might be following, but it didn’t seem that they’d garnered any attention like that.
“Do you feel like this was entirely too easy?” Romero asked when they climbed back into the cab of Yates’s truck.
“Every damn minute,” Yates growled. “Let’s just get home and look at the file. If we’re lucky, it won’t blow up on the way.”
Romero was still chuckling when they pulled up in Yates’s parking space. Both men exited the vehicle. Yates felt uneasy without understanding why. They were back in safe territory. He should feel just fine. Instead he was antsy and irritable. He just wanted to check in on Tasha and maybe get some sleep. In fact, sleeping with Tasha would be just about the perfect activity for the moment. Even if that meant literally sleeping and not something more fun.
“No.” Romero’s voice was guttural.
Yates glanced around, looking for the threat. Then he realized that there was no overt threat. Romero had been denying the fact that the front door of the apartment was hanging wide open.
Picking up their pace, both men entered the apartment at a much higher rate of speed than was probably wise. There could have been an ambush or something, but honestly Yates thought he probably would have welcomed the challenge. Anything would have been better than the absolutely empty apartment that he and Romero discovered.
“They aren’t here.” Romero sounded truly gutted. “Someone snagged them. Someone has to have taken them! Cassidy wouldn’t have wandered off like that without saying something to me. She knows how dangerous it is and how many people there are in this game who kidnap women and use them for one thing or another.”
“We have to find out where they are and who took them,” Yates muttered. “There has to be an answer.” Then he had a flash of memory. The smarmy PI who’d been standing across the street. What if he wasn’t quite as stupid as he had appeared to be?
“Johnny Dean.”
“Who?”
“That idiot PI who was casing my place the other day. He claimed to be following me, and he most certainly was working for someone local and connected to this case.”
“Did you get a name?” Romero sounded not just terse, but near panic.
“He was too afraid of his employer to say.” Yates felt a shot of his own panic. “I say we go beat it out of him if necessary. Although I have a feeling he might be our assailant this evening. I can’t imagine how he got the drop on them, but it obviously happened.”
“They can take care of themselves.” Romero sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than Yates. “We just have to find them.”
Neither one of them said what they were both thinking, which was that they were on the hunt for damning details about a human trafficking ring that took young women and didn’t care one bit if they kidnapped them in public with a million people watching.
Chapter Twelve
Tasha thought of the derogatory comment she had made to Cassidy about getting herself kidnapped just to get some additional info on the perpetrators. When Tasha had initially mocked Cassidy’s choice, she’d only been thinking about how stupid someone would have to be to get kidnapped in the first place. Tasha had always considered herself a little above being a target. She was smart, organized, and always kept aware of her surroundings. Yet here she sat on a chair in a basement somewhere with a pair of zip ties cutting into her wrists and making her skin burn.
“I made fun of you for getting yourself kidnapped before,” Tasha muttered. She felt compelled to say something to the woman who was now her only companion in this strange odyssey. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m just having trouble wrapping my mind around the idea that you teased me about that earlier tonight,” Cassidy whispered. “It feels like it’s been a million years!”
The door at the top of the steps opened with a protesting squeal. Tasha saw a shadow on the cinderblock wall. “Quiet! No more talking, or I’ll come down there and cut your tongues out!”
Tasha cursed beneath her breath. This guy was such a dick, and she wasn’t even totally certain who it was. The voice was familiar, but Tasha hadn’t gotten a look, since she’d been passed out asleep on the couch when someone had jimmied the lock on the apartment door and then injected both women while they were sleeping.
“I want to know how they got past Yates’s security system,” Cassidy said, barely breathing as she spoke. “It was like the thing wasn’t even set.”
“Or”—Tasha thought about Johnny Dean’s assertion that he’d been watching Yates—“someone has been stalking Yates and found out the password. Probably by taking pictures of him inputting the code onto the keypad.”
“Shit.” Cassidy sounded disgruntled, but not scared. It almost made Tasha laugh.
Tasha gave a snort, feeling annoyed. “They certainly took the wrong women if they’re looking for someone to intimidate.”
“Do you have any idea who would do this?” Cassidy looked around. “Is anything familiar?”
Tasha grimaced. “Not really, but it’s just a basement. Let me think a minute. My head is still fuzzy.”
Tasha took in everything she could about their surroundings. They appeared to be in a basement. Yes. But it wasn’t damp, and the walls appeared to be cinderblock and not sandstone, which meant that they likely weren’t in an old neighborhood somewhere. That was actually a bonus. If they’d been squirreled away in the cellar of some old Cape Cod-style house in the burbs, Yates and Romero would never find them.
“It looks industrial,” Tasha mused. “Look at those fuse boxes. They’re huge.”
“So maybe an apartment building?” Cassidy wondered.
The door opened again, the hinges protesting loudly. “Hey! I said to shut up!”
Tasha took a chance and just went for it. “Johnny Dean, you’re an ass if you think nobody is going to know what you’re up to!”
There were heavy steps on the cement stairs. The wood railing creaked as someone leaned on it. Then Tasha saw Johnny’s pinched face come into view and felt a shot of satisfaction.
“God, you suck at this stuff, Johnny. You know that?” Tasha mocked him on purpose, trying to get him riled. If he were upset, he’d be more likely to divulge information on accident.
“You better shut up right now!” Johnny insisted. He pointed right in Tasha’s face. “My bosses are going to put you in a big container and ship you so far away from here that you’ll never see anyone you know ever again!”
“Johnny,” Tasha said in her most reasonable tone of voice. “Do you have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into?” There was really no reason to alienate this guy. He was their only connection to the outside world at the moment. Maybe they could make him see reason?
“I know what you’re doing, and it isn’t going to work,” Johnny said, folding his arms over his chest like a petulant child.
“Johnny, the people you’re working for are scary.” Tasha decided to try fear. Johnny Dean wasn’t exactly known for his bravery.
“It’s only scary when you don’t do what they say. Otherwise, they pay great, and always on time!” Johnny said with honest enthusiasm. “It’s the best job I’ve had in a long time.”
Tasha didn’t bother hiding the derision in her expression. He really was stupider than she had thought. “Yeah. And I see you’re using the ambiguous ‘they’. Meaning that you have no idea who it is you’re working for. And you don’t even realize that they’re setting you up to be the patsy.”
“You’re lying!” Johnny got right in her face.
Tasha could actually feel his breath on her skin. It made her nerves tingle and her stomach want to revolt, but she didn’t dare back down. “You’re being used, Johnny. Nobody cares about the gopher once he’s served his purpose. After they find a way to stop Yates and Romero from discovering what’s really going on, they’re going to murder you in your bed.”
Johnny shook his head, turning and pacing energetically from one end of the basement to the other. “That’s not true! You’re a liar! I’m valuable. And I have so much stuff on them. You know, dirt. Real dirt! They won’t touch me!”
Tasha laughed. “Until they decide you’re too much of a threat.”
“Not to mention unbalanced,” Cassidy murmured in an inaudible voice. “What in the hell is going on?”
“You say you’ve got dirt. What is going on, Johnny?” Tasha said loudly. “You seem like you’re scared! Are you scared?”
“They’re coming to get you!” Johnny said suddenly, jamming his words together in a rush. “They’re on their way right now to pick you up!”
“Then why are you still here?” Tasha taunted. “Shouldn’t you be worried that they’ll take you too?”
He seemed to take this threat with some seriousness. Turning on his heel, he pounded his way up the steps. She heard a door slam somewhere upstairs, and th
en all was ominously silent.
*
“This house looks deserted,” Romero commented.
Yates had to agree. It was odd, but Johnny Dean’s first floor apartment in Michigan Park wasn’t that far from the Edgewood neighborhood Yates called home. Both were DC suburbs. Both were filled with moderately priced housing. And now Yates was trying to decide if Johnny Dean had actually kidnapped Tasha and Cassidy and then stashed them in this little brick building.
Romero nudged Yates. “Let’s go in and get this out of the way. You never know. The clue we need to find Cass and Tasha might be inside.”
Romero was right. Yates gave a curt nod, and the two of them did a standard urban building approach, swapping sides, covering each other’s backs, and finally getting to the doorway of the first floor flat.
“Locked,” Romero confirmed, turning the ancient doorknob mechanism.
Yates pulled out his Leatherman. The knob looked as if it was part of the original hardware for the building. Hell. It actually looked like it had been repurposed and predated the whole structure. It was worn and discolored from exposure to the damp air. It took a little careful maneuvering of the picks, but Yates finally got the thing open.
“’Bout time,” Romero groused.
Yates snorted. “Keep your pants on.”
They went in quietly, but needn’t have bothered. The place was deserted. Yates and Romero cleared each of the four rooms and then met back in the living room. Yates pulled out the small flashlight he kept in the pocket of his cargos and began swiping the room for any pertinent information.
“This guy is a real piece of work.” Romero was staring at the wall of the living room.
Apparently Johnny Dean liked to put up photos that were pertinent to his cases. It was difficult to tell whether the snapshots were from current or past cases, though. A good portion of the subjects he had photographed were female, and a lot of them showed women in various states of undress.
“Is that…” Romero began slowly. “It is! Yates, this is a photo of Rachel!”
SEAL INVESTIGATIONS: A 5-Books SEAL Romance Series Page 23