“Maybe that’s something we need to really think about,” he said softly. “I’m not sure any of us have thought that far ahead.”
“No?” She looked surprised. “I would have thought that to be the first item on your agenda.”
“It didn’t happen like that.” Sparks thought back to the beginning. “Rachel was taken. Her roommate Cassidy contacted my commanding officer—Trapp—and told him that the police weren’t taking Rachel’s disappearance seriously.” What next? Sparks searched for the chronology as he and Jaipriya circled a peaceful little manmade lake in the center of the park. “Trapp sent Romero to Richmond to search for Rachel. They found the club where she was taken, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. Cassidy used herself as bait and discovered the THC connection. That led us to Hansen Pharmaceuticals. Yates made contact with Tasha, who was also researching other women kidnapped in the same way. We discovered that all of the clubs used in the abductions were owned by men who belonged to something called the Inner Circle.”
Jaipriya snorted again. He could see her smile, but he couldn’t decipher its meaning. Then she shook her head. The long, dark fall of hair down her back shimmered in the sunlight. “That Inner Circle stuff is bullshit. I’ve heard my father talk to my uncles about how Americans can be manipulated into doing anything if you tell them they’re part of an exclusive club.”
“He said that?” Sparks marveled at the blunt comment, especially since it was so very true. “It’s embarrassing to admit, but your father is right.”
“Pita said the Inner Circle was a list of men that would go down with the ship.” She looked a little surprised by her own words. “I never realized he was talking about this, though. I thought that the Inner Circle was some sort of tax shelter thing.”
“Explain,” Sparks encouraged.
“Well.” She took another sip of her coffee. He was briefly distracted by the way her lips looked. Their softness and beautiful dark pink color was making him hard just staring at her. Then she spoke again, and he had to try to focus on the words. “My father and my uncles often provide foreign investment advice to rich American men. Most of the time those men are looking for a way to evade American tax laws. They put up capital for foreign business ventures, and then the profits are earned overseas, and whatever returns the Americans receive aren’t subject to all of the taxes here in the US. I don’t know exactly how it works, but the rate is different. Plus they can use internet money transferring sources to funnel funds into other investments, and the circle of never paying the IRS continues.”
“Damn.” Sparks began to see the scope of this entire operation and realized that his team was barking up the wrong tree. Several of them, actually.
JAI WONDERED IF she had made him angry with her frank assessment of his investigation strategy. She wasn’t really good at this sort of thing, but it was impossible to grow up in the household of a financier and not pick up a thing or two when it came to money.
“You know,” she began slowly, “I was always amazed at the complete naiveté of my friends when it came to money.”
“Meaning?” Sparks prodded.
His expression was hooded. She couldn’t read what he might be thinking. They had circled the little lake twice now, and she really wished that they could somehow be transported to another time and place, where none of this mattered.
“Well, let us take the example of American men who want only to invest in a foreign business venture to avoid paying taxes.”
“All right.”
“How many of those men really pay attention to what the business is?” She contemplated this notion, thinking of several conversations she had overheard without truly understanding them. “A club is a good example. If something is called a club, there is an automatic assumption about what it is.”
“A nightclub you mean.”
“Exactly.” She drank her coffee and savored the bitter taste on her tongue. Someday she would like to own a coffee shop. The thought briefly distracted her, and she had to purposefully refocus on her topic. “But maybe the club is a gentleman’s club instead. Perhaps there are half a dozen trafficked slaves living in tiny rooms above the main room. They were purchased from sources all over the world. They aren’t paid because the laws in the country where this club is located don’t require it.”
Sparks looked almost sick. His handsome face was pale. “But the American investors don’t realize this. They own clubs in America and they own clubs overseas. And they trust some finance guy to tell them what club to buy into, and as long as their income is diversified into multiple countries, they can step around tax laws, and it makes them happy without asking questions.”
“Yes.”
“This is making me want to throw up,” he told her grimly. “Maybe we need to get the IRS involved.”
Jaipriya shrugged. “That could be a start. Obviously this ‘Inner Circle’”—she didn’t bother to hide her distaste for that idiocy—“isn’t protected by diplomatic immunity. If the IRS were to get a little hint that there might be millions waiting for them in this investigation, they might be inclined to put a priority on it.”
“Going to jail for tax fraud is fine, but having millions garnished from your personal stash of play money would certainly make you less likely to invest.”
“Not that the Armeen al Sauds need people to invest,” Jai reminded him. “But it would certainly piss them off.”
SPARKS GRINNED AT Jaipriya. “I certainly like the idea of pissing them off.”
“I don’t know that you want them to know that you’re after them.”
“They know,” he told her grimly. “Tasha was held briefly down in the DC area. She actually saw Rachel. Rachel said that the men know her brother. That’s the other part of this that none of us really knows what to do with.”
Sparks stopped walking. Jaipriya went a few steps farther before turning around to give him a confused stare. “What’s wrong? Did you have somewhere else you need to be?”
“If this is personal for them, and for Trapp, then perhaps we are going about this all wrong.” Sparks considered this new possibility. “We keep saying we just want this to stop. Maybe that’s not enough.”
“‘Just stop’ is a pretty generic purpose,” she agreed. Turning her back to him, she continued walking down the path. She turned and started off across the grass. “Perhaps it’s time to meet with your team and define your goals. It’s the first task of starting any business.”
“This isn’t business.” Sparks had never truly realized how true that was. “This is very personal.”
“Perhaps, but your team is an organization with members and goals. Each of you has been working separately, yet with a singular destination in mind. Yet none of you have really put all of your information into one pile—so to speak.”
“You’re saying that we need to have a family meeting.” He couldn’t help but laugh. “I suppose at the rate we keep adding members to our group, that’s not a bad idea. Maybe everyone can meet down in DC.” Sparks caught up to Jaipriya and grabbed her hand. “Would you come with me?”
She didn’t look at him. “If you wish.”
“Why are you doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“You’re acting as if you don’t have a choice,” he told her flatly. “You can always say no.”
“Can I?” Her frown bothered him intensely. Then she shrugged one narrow shoulder. “I don’t have much money, and I have nowhere to go. I need to think about getting a job or talking to the university about acquiring a living situation and loans. That’s all new to me. Plus, I have no idea if my father is going to come after me or not. How does any of that give me choices?”
Sparks wanted to answer her, but he didn’t have a response. She was absolutely right. His actions had effectively taken away her choices and made her a refugee. He inhaled deeply and then exhaled. “I did this.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her sharp words carried the hint of an accent. It wa
s the first he’d ever heard from her.
“Please,” he said firmly. “Come and stay with me. I want to help with this mess I’ve created for you. No matter what, my team and I were going to make a mess of your life. It’s the least I can do to help you out and keep you safe until this is straightened out. Or at least until there is some kind of resolution.”
He could practically see her wrapping her pride around her slender body. “I’ll let you help me, but I’m going to continue to pull my own weight somehow.”
“Fine.” He could tell he wasn’t going to get any more concessions from her. Not today, anyway. “It’s a deal.”
Chapter Eleven
Jaipriya had driven down to the DC metro area plenty of times, but usually when it involved something fun—like shopping. At the moment they were driving through parts of Washington, DC that she could have never imagined existed in a town known for its money and power.
Sparks kept looking across the cab of his truck, as if he were trying to decipher her thoughts about this impromptu trip using her facial expressions. Fortunately for her, she’d been walking around behind a mask of politeness for nearly her whole life. She wasn’t quite ready to have him prying into her inner thoughts at the moment. There was an element of disloyalty in what she was doing. At least, it felt like disloyalty. Her father was someone she should be loyal to. Right?
She closed her eyes and called up an image of Pita as she recalled him from her younger years. She remembered her very first real sari. Pita had told her how beautiful she looked, and then he had fastened a wonderful heart-shaped locket around her neck. He had kissed her cheek, and she had felt so proud to be his daughter. How could this same man be standing aside and letting Hasim and Jabar put other people’s daughters into slavery?
Sparks finally spoke. “Are you all right?”
“No.”
He swung his truck into a parking spot at the curb on a street full of older buildings. Then he shut off the engine and gazed at Jai. “My friend Breckin Yates has a basement apartment in that building there.” Sparks gestured to a place barely half a block away. “Are you ready?”
Jai wanted to laugh out loud but managed not to. Was she ready? She was dressed like a homeless person in the clothes she had been wearing when she snuck out of her father’s house last night. She was certainly as ready as she was ever going to be to go and meet a bunch of strangers who would almost certainly judge her very harshly before the night was through.
Given all of this, she did not answer Sparks. She simply opened the passenger door of his vehicle and got out. Then shut the door and waited for him to do the same. His hasty exit suggested he might actually believe that she was going to bolt. How laughable. She was in this up to her eyebrows at this point.
Sparks flashed her a grin that made her belly do a little flip flop. She wished she could stop being so physically attracted to the man. It would go a long way toward making her feel better.
“It’s going to be all right,” he told her as he took her hand.
The man was strangely optimistic for a Navy SEAL.
“Uh huh.”
SPARKS COULD SEE that Jaipriya didn’t believe him that things were going to be fine. He couldn’t really blame her. Anyone was bound to be nervous when preparing to walk into a room full of strangers who might potentially see you as the enemy.
He knocked on the thick metal door of Yates’s apartment and waited. Seconds later a young woman threw open the door. It was Tasha. She was a private investigator whose investigation had run along the same lines as theirs. Now she and Yates were in each other’s pockets more often than not.
“Hey!” Tasha flashed him a bright smile and then threw a glance over her shoulder. “Sparky’s here!”
“Thanks,” Sparks said irritably. “Nothing like being reduced to a Little Rascals-sounding character.”
“Whatevs,” Tasha said dismissively. “Come on in. The gang’s all here.”
Sparks raised his eyebrows. “Bones is here?”
“Dude, have you seen Marina drive?” Tasha shook her head. “The girl likes the throttle.”
It was hard to reconcile the notion that Bones let someone else drive him around, even though Sparks knew that Marina had control issues after spending nearly six months as a prisoner in one of the human traffickers’ facilities.
“Okay, now that Sparks has decided to join us,” Romero said pointedly, “let’s get started.”
Tasha had already slammed the door behind them. Sparks glanced over at Jaipriya and realized that she was struggling with the urge to bolt. Her expression was serene, but her big dark eyes were huge as a hunted animal’s.
“Everyone?” Sparks raised his voice to be heard over the chatter of six other people. “This is Jaipriya Bhatia. She was nice enough to help us by providing us with some info from Jabar and Hasim Armeen al Saud’s files.”
“Have a seat.” Romero’s investigative partner and significant other, Cassidy Cross, shot Jaipriya a speculative glance. “And why don’t we begin with how Ms. Bhatia got this info to begin with?”
Jaipriya primly chose a chair and sat down. Sparks didn’t miss the fact that the chair was nearest to the door. She obviously didn’t want anyone sitting between her and escape. All things considered, that was pretty fair.
The long, low basement space that made up Yates’s apartment had a bathroom, a bedroom, and the main room, where they all sat around Yates’s “war table”. The SEAL was more than proficient with a computer, and he had a workstation set up where he and Tasha were now sitting. Tasha had the file that Jaipriya had given to Sparks in her hand. She was thumbing through the listings. Just about the time Sparks was about to say something else about Jaipriya’s involvement, Tasha gasped so loudly that Sparks wondered if she had sucked all the oxygen from the room.
JAI FELT ALMOST panicked when the blond woman—apparently called Tasha—made an animalistic noise of rage and terror. The sound lifted the hair on the back of Jai’s neck. She felt the instant urge to flee even though she had done nothing. At least, nothing she knew of.
“This is my client!” Tasha said hoarsely. “This is Emily. I’ve been searching for her for over a year. She’s alive. Oh my God, she’s alive!”
A man whom Jai thought to be Yates—if she had managed to get the connections correct—put his arm around Tasha. “Don’t torture yourself. Just don’t.”
“But do you know how thrilled her parents will be to know that she’s alive?” Tasha’s voice was rising in pitch.
The woman who had answered the door jumped in. “You can’t go tell them that! What if this list is old or something? We have no way of knowing the accuracy. That would be emotional torture for her parents.”
Tasha whipped around, and Jai actually stood up. The intensity of Tasha’s gaze was enough to make Jai consider bolting for the outdoors and safety. What could the woman want from Jai?
“Get a new list,” Tasha demanded. She took three steps toward Jai, pointing a finger at Jai’s midsection. “I want to see an updated list. Go get one. Now!”
“Hey!” Sparks snapped his fingers. “Tasha, Cassidy, you need to back off. Now.”
“Fuck that!” Tasha snarled. “This bitch knows stuff she’s not telling. I’ll make her tell. Just give me five minutes.”
“You better slow your roll, Tasha.” There was something almost menacing in Sparks’s body language as he put himself between the two women and Jai. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but you’d best remember that she came here to help when there was no fucking reason for her to care.”
Jai hid behind Sparks’s broad frame and took a few deep breaths as she tried to calm down enough to think rationally. These women probably had a right to be angry. They had been looking for people much longer than Jaipriya had even realized her father was working for Jabar and Hasim. Still, she wanted out of here. Now.
“I think I should leave,” she told Sparks.
He cranked his neck around to
look at her. “Please stay? They’re going to chill out. I promise.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Because you’re a fucking coward!” The one called Cassidy spat the words as though she wanted to flay Jai alive.
“I’m telling you, Romero.” Sparks was practically vibrating with anger. “Get your girl under control, or I’m not going to be responsible for my actions.”
Romero took a step closer. “You’d better not be threatening Cassidy.”
“Okay. Okay.” The big, dark-skinned man they called Bones raised his hands. “I think it’s time we all took a step back and remembered that we are all here because we want to help. It doesn’t matter where we started.” He glanced down at the tough-looking Latina woman by his side. “Marina probably knows stuff she doesn’t realize either, but I’m sure as fuck not going to let you guys pick her brain with a water board. All right?”
Yates sighed and touched Tasha’s arm. “Bones is right. You can’t just browbeat everyone you see, Tasha. That’s no good, and you’ll just hurt a lot of people who didn’t ask to be involved in the first place.” Yates sent a pointed glance in Jai’s direction.
SPARKS WAS GLAD that cooler heads were starting to prevail. Tasha had always been a bit over-enthusiastic as far as he was concerned. Yates called it her passionate nature and dedication to her goals. Sparks called it annoying as hell. But to each his own, right?
Behind him, he could feel Jaipriya trembling. It didn’t matter what the others saw at this point. He didn’t care. He turned around and drew her into his arms. It was a testament to how rattled she was that she didn’t even try to pull away. She rested her cheek against his chest instead. He tucked her head under his chin and held her for a moment until he felt her start to calm down.
“Well fuck,” Tasha muttered. “I guess that explains a few things. Dammit. This is more complicated now.”
“Is this the real Sparks?” Romero asked the room at large. “Because at this point I’m willing to consider cyborg occupation or alien abduction.”
SEAL INVESTIGATIONS: A 5-Books SEAL Romance Series Page 53