“Jesus Christ,” Simon muttered, as he watched a pair of soldiers rake over the bloodstains in the sand to obliterate all evidence of what had just happened.
* * *
The director of the Qing Pu Prison, a heavyset man with a large appetite, frowned when the clanging of his telephone interrupted his lunch. He wiped the noodles from his chin before reaching for the receiver.
“Good morning, Xia Jia,” the familiar voice said.
Xia had never met the Broker in person but had wondered many times what face belonged to such an icy voice. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“To our mutual friends,” the Broker replied. “Supply and demand.”
He quickly pushed the soup aside. “Is there trouble with the supply?”
“On the contrary,” the reptilian voice said. “Your services have been most satisfying. The product is not the problem. It’s the delivery time I would like to discuss.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I have an order here that needs to be filled by the end of the week.”
Normally, Xia had a month to fill the Broker’s latest list of black-market organs, which gave him plenty of time to make the necessary arrangements. Blood tests had to be conducted on the death-row inmates to ensure they were good matches and had not become infected with HIV or other diseases, guards had to be given adequate time to coerce a signed donation release, officials had to be bribed to speed the process and eliminate necessary paperwork and review, and the hospital nearest the prison had to be notified to begin preparations. Most of the time, the organs harvested for the Broker went to rich clients from the US and Europe, who resorted to “transplant tourism” because their prospects through legitimate channels looked bleak.
Reducing the turnaround to less than a week would be extremely difficult, but he was not about to hesitate in trying to meet the Broker’s demands. “Tell me what you need.” Xia Jia noted the list of organs, with their respective blood types, on the napkin before him. “Big order for me to fill in a matter of days.”
“And you will be rewarded accordingly. Does a twenty-percent raise sound interesting?”
“Per product or total shipment?”
“Product. If you fill the order on time.”
Xia stared at the ticking clock on the wall as he calculated the hefty bonus being offered. The list was a lengthy one and would require another mass execution of prisoners. “The time is not enough. I—”
“Are you saying you can’t accommodate my demands?” The Broker’s cold and ominous tone gave him goose bumps.
Xia didn’t know how he was going to pull this off with all the recent restrictions that had been imposed on organ donations, but disappointing the Broker would mean the end of his luxurious life. There were plenty of other penitentiary directors to turn to who would be more than willing to do whatever was necessary for that price. “I can do it. You will have your order filled on time.”
“If this goes well, it could be the beginning of a permanent arrangement. A very lucrative one. How do you feel about that?”
“I would like for our business to grow,” Xia replied, “but other people will have to be notified.”
“He can expect a phone call from me today.”
“No problem then. Everyone satisfied.”
“Satisfied indeed,” the Broker said slowly. Xia could picture a smile on those reptilian lips.
Once they’d disconnected, Xia summoned his second in command to begin expedited blood tests on at least forty death-row inmates, to ensure they’d have the proper number of matches. Then he called the hospital director. Holding two rounds of executions the same week was unprecedented, but it would no doubt have the unintended benefit of keeping the rest of the prisoners at the enormous complex docile and compliant for a long while.
* * *
Simon shrank back against the cold brick wall of his cell when two soldiers armed with electric batons entered, followed by a man in a white medical jacket. Still edgy and anxious from the shock of seeing the executions, he panicked.
The guards pinned him roughly against the wall, and when he struggled, one discharged his baton against Simon’s ear. His body jerked involuntarily and he cried out as an excruciating roar filled his ears and obliterated all other sound. Limbs tingling with pain, he saw but didn’t feel the prick of the needle as the man in white drew a vial of blood from his right arm. Without a word, the men departed, leaving him gasping for breath.
Rollo watched it all from the cot but didn’t move until the soldiers had gone. “Tough luck, mate,” he said as he helped Simon unsteadily to his feet.
Simon fought to calm his runaway heart. This couldn’t be happening. He’d just tried to smuggle a small amount of opium, for God’s sake; it wasn’t like he’d killed somebody. “How can I get out of this, Rollo? Isn’t there somebody I can bribe or something?”
“Not unless you’re rich, man. Your organs are worth a hundred grand or so, I hear. And you’d have to have it on you, ’cause they damn sure won’t let you talk to anybody on the outside. My mum still doesn’t even know I was arrested.”
Simon stared out at the blue sky through the bars and wept.
Chapter Eight
New York
Next day, November 17
Chase and Jack returned to the brownstone at eight thirty a.m., figuring Massimo would probably allow himself at minimum a good six hours’ sleep before he ventured out. By the time he finally emerged from the building shortly before noon, both of them were wired from too much coffee. A small shoulder bag containing surveillance cams and listening devices rested on the console between them.
“He knows you,” Chase said as she fit an earpiece into her ear so they could communicate. “I’ll take him while you go inside.”
“I think I can manage to shadow someone without being seen, thus the name Phantom.”
“Don’t you mean Silent Death?” Chase used the nickname Jack was known by in the underworld.
Jack’s head turned so fast Chase thought she’d hurt herself. “Don’t look at me like you’ve seen a unicorn.”
“What?”
“I know you heard me.” Chase looked at her watch.
“Why did you call me that?”
“It wasn’t random, if that’s what you want to discern.”
“How do you know?” Jack whispered, never taking her gaze off Chase.
“Your question isn’t interesting and the answer not very remarkable.” Chase opened the car door. “If you want me to really daze you, ask me the right question.” She grabbed the bag and got out of the car.
Few pedestrians were in view. Chase picked the lock on the door in a few seconds and slipped inside, pausing to listen for signs of activity. All quiet, but for the low hum of the furnace. After planting cams to cover the front and back doors, she quickly checked the rooms on the ground floor. A waiting area with couches to her right, three rooms converted to bedrooms, a small kitchen in the back, and a storage room with bedding, towels, alcohol, and other supplies.
The second floor contained what she was looking for—a bedroom with a two-way mirror and attached watcher’s room. She planted cams in the vents and hid listening devices, then checked the rooms on the third floor to make sure no other rooms had been modified as watchers’ suites.
Massimo’s door on the fourth floor was locked, but no challenge. Wrinkling her nose in disgust at the man’s cluttered living room and kitchen, she stepped over dirty clothes and headed toward his desk. A stack of mail yielded the bouncer’s full name: Massimo Umberto.
After planting cams and a listening device, Chase fired up his laptop. She was copying files onto her flash drive when Jack’s voice came over her earpiece. “How’s it going?”
“Quite productive. Got his name and I’m in his computer. Where is he?” Chase asked.
“Swallowing burgers at a dive around the corner. You’d think the guy hadn’t eaten in a decade. He asked for the bill. If he’s going st
raight back, you don’t have more than seven.”
“I’ll be out in five. Delay him if you have to.”
“I’ll stall him.”
“Go for the virginal, corn-fed, country-girl tourist scenario.”
Chase finished and got to the car about a minute before the bouncer rounded the corner and came into view. Jack waited until he went inside to hoof it back to the rental.
Chase handed her the flash drive. “Massimo Umberto. Upload the files to Reno and see what he can dig up.” She started the car as Jack turned on their laptop. “Not much else we can do until the club gets going tonight.”
“Where to?” Jack asked, her discomfort about Chase’s earlier comment still obvious.
“I’m starving.”
“Bacon and eggs sound pretty damn good.”
“Not the bacon part,” Chase said.
“Since when? You used to live on bacon.”
“I haven’t touched meat for ten years.”
“Oh, one of those.”
“A vegetarian.”
“Almost right,” Jack said. “You love sex and vegetables. That makes you a vagetarian.”
Chase laughed. “Corny.”
Jack, still very serious, turned to face her. “So how do you know?”
“Still not the right question, but I’ll answer anyway. Because our paths crossed.”
* * *
The enormous Cave’s dark ambience and décor suitably reflected its moniker. The central dance floor was lit by a frenzy of rainbow spots, digitally programmed to flicker in patterns timed to the pounding beat blasting from the speakers. Around the dark perimeter, booths and couches provided couples the opportunity for semi-private trysts in cushy comfort.
Chase led Jack into the club at the stroke of midnight—early prime time for the pickup crowd—and paused at the edge of the dance floor. Though she hadn’t visited the Cave in years, it was still so familiar she felt she’d hardly been away.
Men and women hungrily rubbed up against each other as they danced, or talked, or stole away toward the shadowed couches. The whole atmosphere was one of practiced foreplay or a prelude to sex, which made it hard to distinguish the working girls hoping to score a customer from the party women simply out for a night of fun.
Jack kept to her right as they eased through the packed crowd toward the bar. Every now and then they had to pause to negotiate a new way through. Jack seemed annoyed at times, and Chase had to smile every time Jack tried to turn her body away from whoever rubbed against her.
They found standing room at the end of the bar and ordered drinks—beer for Jack and a Diet Coke for Chase.
“So, this is your crowd.” Jack watched two women kissing a few feet away.
“It hasn’t been for five years.”
“Most of the women are, what, twelve?”
“Over twenty-one, but yes, I like them young.” Chase rarely dated or paid for a woman over thirty.
“They look barely legal,” Jack said with distaste.
“If memory serves me well, and I know it does, Cassady can’t be more than twenty-five.”
“Twenty-six, and that’s different. I didn’t snatch her from a club, high on E, and seduce her in a bathroom stall.” Chase raised an eyebrow. “Don’t even try to deny it,” Jack said.
“Oh, I won’t. I’m merely impressed at your astute remark.”
“Don’t be. You’re not that original.”
“True. But when I realized every other stall was being used for the same reason, I felt so…common, I moved the romance elsewhere.”
“Still sex-crazy. There’s more to life, you know.”
“What a profound observation. I might have to sew that into my pillow.”
“Yeah, you’re fucking hysterical.” Jack sipped from her bottle. “Hotel, fuck pad, car. Where do you take them?”
“Living vicariously, are we?” Chase shot back.
“Forget I asked. Whatever.” Jack scanned the crowd on the dance floor, while Chase covered the crush of people coming and going around the perimeter.
“All of the above, plus a few more. But constant hunting and relocation gets tedious after thirty-five. Don’t you think?”
“Never been the partying type.”
“Maybe not,” Chase said. “But you had your needs before Cassady. You must have fulfilled them one way or another.”
“None of your business.”
“That either means you did and aren’t too proud of it, or you didn’t and feel embarrassed about it. Which one is it, Harding?”
“You’ll never know.” Jack shifted again to dodge another attractive woman who deliberately detoured to brush up against her. “So where do you take your meaningless sex nowadays?” she asked once the woman had continued on.
“I don’t take them anywhere. They come to me,” Chase said matter-of-factly. “I buy my romance.”
Jack turned to stare at her. “As in whores?”
Chase tried to ignore the undercurrent of surprise and disapproval in Jack’s tone. “Don’t be crass. I use professionals.”
“That would explain your attitude with the agency yesterday. You use call girls.”
“Temporary companions.”
“I see.” Jack went quiet for a long while, obviously uncomfortable about Chase’s revelation. They both went back to scanning the club in search of Amber. All of a sudden, Jack blurted, “I doubt you need to, so why?”
“It keeps things simple. All I owe them is cash, and satisfaction— in my case anyway—is guaranteed. We all have vices.”
“That we do. Whatever it takes, right?”
“Have you ever indulged in the service of professional pleasure?”
“I told you how I feel about the topic,” Jack said. “I think it’s disgusting, and I refuse to participate in the trade.”
Her hypocrisy was irritating. She wasn’t above working for criminals who likely dealt in the skin trade but had a problem with Chase buying sex? Jack, of all people, was in no position to judge her.
“You’re a hypocrite, Harding.” Chase pushed away from the bar and eased into an opening in the throng of people passing by.
Jack stayed on her heels. “Just because I used to work for scum doesn’t mean I liked it or adopted their habits.”
Chase turned to look at her. “So you were held at gunpoint to work for them?”
“I did it because I thought I didn’t have options. I was wrong, and if I could take it all back, I would. Trust me, no one feels shittier about my past than I do, so let it fucking rest.” Jack pushed past Chase and into the crowd around the dance floor.
It was hard to see much of anything this close with all the bodies pressed up against each other, so Chase sought a better vantage point. She tapped Jack on the shoulder and pointed at the narrow gallery above. Jack nodded and followed. They both let out a sigh of relief once on the quiet balcony.
“I’m getting too old for this shit.” Jack took another sip of beer.
“What was your vice of choice?” Chase was curious because she knew there had to be something. “Before, of course, you found… love?”
“And my time machine works. We’re back in 1989 and you still can’t handle that word,” Jack said.
“Only now it’s practically a Pavlovian reaction.”
Jack smiled. “Can you at least try for an inward cringe?”
“And hide the cynic in me? Never.”
“Is it because cynicism is still the only thing sustaining you?”
“That, and PEZ,” Chase said.
Jack smiled. “I figured. I found your Spider-Man one in the glove compartment. Empty. They should have thrown you in rehab years ago.”
“I make no apologies or excuses for my addiction. PEZ may even be what led me to discover my preference in temporary companions.” Chase tried to sound serious.
“I can’t wait to hear this one.”
“Look at the similarities. Both can be bought, variety in faces, they’re sure to p
lease, and most importantly, both are disposable.”
Jack rolled her eyes. “Screw rehab. You need a shrink.”
“Been there, done that, then did her.”
“And you even managed to pay for it by the hour.”
Chase laughed. “I always get my money’s worth. But she did help me discover one thing about myself.”
“Is this going to get graphic?”
“My skin doesn’t react well to polyester carpeting.”
Jack laughed, nearly choking on her beer. “What an insightful moment for you. I’m all goose bumps.”
Chase checked her watch. One twenty. Where was Amber? Two minutes later, she spotted their target amidst the crush of people at the edge of the dance floor. “Four o’clock.”
Jack immediately followed her gaze. “About time.”
The crowd around Amber thinned enough for them to get a better look. “She’s…h…h…ho…” Chase stuttered. Amber certainly knew how to dress to show off her exquisite hourglass figure and long legs to best advantage. Her top was corset-like, exposing the ivory skin of her shoulders and arms while hugging her high, perfect breasts and the flat plane of her abdomen. A strip of black silk along the top and bottom outlined the white designer garment, and a matching ebony ribbon laced up the back. Black Dolce & Gabbana jeans—tight, and low-cut—accentuated Amber’s firm ass and the curve of her hips, and designer heels gave her a statuesque presence. She wouldn’t have looked out of place on any New York runway.
When the call girl turned toward them, Chase inhaled sharply. Amber’s medium-brown hair, cut to her shoulders, shone with brilliant golden highlights and was layered to frame a perfectly balanced oval face. Her long neck and classically delicate features reminded her of a young Grace Kelly, but Amber’s ready smile and easy laugh added an enticing approachability to her cool elegance. She was nothing at all what Chase expected.
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