by Cindy Dees
Jennie Finch spoke grimly. “You were right, Ashe. Vitaly Parenko is an alias. He’s been Vitaly Parenko for going on a decade now.”
Ashe asked somberly, “Is he actually Russian?”
“Most likely,” Jennie answered. “You reported that he sounds like a native Russian speaker. I’m gonna go with the obvious and say he is.”
“Did the Russian mob build his fake identity?” Ashe asked.
“Possible. They’ve got enough ex-KGB types to know how to do it.”
“Has he got a record?”
“Checked it,” Jennie replied. “Ran his face against the FBI and Interpol wanted lists. Nada.”
Ashe frowned. “Okay, so he’s a Russian mobster living under a fake name. Why a strip club in New Orleans?”
“Money,” Hank piped up. “He complains all the time about his bosses taking all the money from the club.”
“Who owns the club?” Bastien asked.
Jennie answered, “Public records indicate a man named Al Nichols owns the property. Can’t find anything on him whatsoever. Another alias, if I had to guess.”
Bastien frowned. “Who runs the whorehouse, then? Hank, does Vitaly run the upstairs operation, too?”
She shrugged. “He goes up there every hour or so like he’s checking in on things. But he spends most of his time downstairs in the bar.”
Ashe leaned forward, nodding at Bastien, who nodded back. They were thinking in the same direction. If Vitaly wasn’t sitting right on top of the sex trafficking operation, then that meant somebody else was. Who was running the brothel?
Ashe turned to Hank. “Have you ever overheard anyone talking about the upstairs operation with Vitaly or with someone else?”
“No.”
“How many regulars pass through the club to go upstairs? Do any of them look or act like management?”
“Lots of customers have a drink—or five—and then head upstairs,” she replied. “The problem, though, is that there’s a rear exit from the lap dance lounge. This theoretical manager of yours could be coming and going through that door, and I would never see him or her in the main bar.”
“Sounds like a stakeout’s forthcoming,” Ashe commented with a heavy sigh.
“Be my guest, man. You’re on your own tonight because I’m pulling a double shift, but I’m off tomorrow,” Bastien replied.
Hank supplied, “Things shut down upstairs—or at least it gets quiet and customers quit coming and going—by about three a.m. most nights. If whoever runs the brothel leaves at night, it would happen around that time.”
Ashe nodded. “What else have you got for us, Jennie?”
“About the missing man. Max Kuznetsov.”
Hank visibly tensed and Ashe asked grimly, “What about him?”
“I’ve got his cell phone records for the last few weeks before he dropped out of sight. I’m still running names, but I thought maybe Miss Smith could take a look at the names and numbers and see if any stand out.”
“Sure,” Ashe replied. “And you can call her Hank. Email me the list of names.”
“Just a sec...done.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah,” Jennie said a little reluctantly. “His fake ID was nearly as good as Vitaly’s.”
“Fake ID?” Hank squawked. “What are you talking about?”
“That’s not his real name, of course.”
“Yes it is! I’ve known him my whole life. That’s always been his name.”
“Well, his alleged father, this Yevgeni Kuznetsov guy, doesn’t exist. I can only conclude that his whole family history is a ruse.”
Hank stared in disbelief, first at the phone and then at Ashe. She stammered, “I have pictures. Memories. I grew up with Max. With both of them. They existed.”
Ashe reached across the table to grasp her hand. “We’ll figure it out. Jennie’s the best. She’ll unravel this mystery.”
“I exist,” Hank said blankly.
Ashe and Bastien both laughed. “Of course you do.”
“But if Max and my father were using aliases, then who am I?”
That was a damned good question. One thing was clear: her family was nowhere near as simple or straightforward as she seemed to think it was. Either that, or she was concealing a great deal from him very, very well. The notion worried him. He valued honesty above all else in life. It was one of the few things he and his father could agree upon without nearly coming to blows with one another. Please, God, let her be on the up-and-up.
Jennie had nothing more to report. Ashe ended the call as Bastien stood up, announcing, “Well, kids. I gotta get ready for work. I’ll be home around dawn tomorrow. Make yourselves at home and don’t have too much fun without me.”
In short order, he and Hank were left alone in his friend’s odd abode—a house within a shop. It had all the comforts of home: kitchen, living room, two bedrooms and bathrooms. It even felt like a regular house if he didn’t stop to think about the huge auto restoration shop encasing it.
Hank spent the afternoon surfing the television. From the way she was switching channels with no interest in the shows on the screen, he gathered she wasn’t paying the slightest attention to it.
He spent the afternoon formulating and discarding various plans for infiltrating the club. He did end up with a list of information they needed and supplies that would be necessary to launch a full-scale assault on the place, though.
He made a big salad for supper and carried a plate of it to Hank in the living room along with his own. He sat down beside her on the leather sofa. “Tell me more about your father.”
Her expression went tight, closed off. Yeah, he knew the feeling of having a difficult, distant relationship with a parent. Or maybe that was her shutting down on secrets she wasn’t planning to share with him.
She muttered, “There’s shockingly little to tell. I have vague memories of him living at home with us when I was really little. He traveled a lot for his work, and I was always excited when he came home.”
“Did your folks fight a lot before the divorce?”
“Not that I remember.”
“How did he react to the car crash?”
She frowned. “It took him a couple of days to get to the hospital. He was overseas when it happened. I remember my mom being surprised that he took care of all the medical bills. I guess we were still on his health insurance or something.”
Or something. Ashe made a mental note to have Jennie look into how those bills had been paid.
“And your father was in the art business like your brother, right?”
“Correct. He imported pieces at the request of clients and auction houses. The antiques he generally got in the US. He had them trucked in when people wanted them. A lot of the art came from overseas.”
“Do you know who any of his clients were?”
“God, no,” she said quickly. “That was all strictly confidential. Even Max won’t say a word about his clients to me.”
Which might explain why Jennie could find no trace of the man. Ashe asked, “Where are his personal possessions?”
“I suppose they’re stored with the other stuff from our house. When my mom died, there was an auction. The remaining stuff got packed up and put in storage somewhere.”
Another mental note: have Jennie find that storage locker.
“What about Max’s home? Where is it?”
She looked down at her plate, abashed. “I don’t know. I lived in a dorm at Tulane, and he and I texted or called from time to time but didn’t really see each other. He was busy. I was busy...”
Tears welled up in her eyes.
Regret. He probably ought to feel some of that regarding not seeing his father for so long before he died. Or for not making it home for the bastard’s funeral. But he just couldn’t work up any sense of remorse.
Sure, his father had made him into the man he was. For that, he could be grateful. But the other stuff, the coldness, the judging, the harshness...
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Nope. No regret.
He yanked his attention back to the discussion at hand. “I’ll have Jennie see if she can find out where Max was living. Maybe we can swing by and check it out.”
Hank nodded miserably. Wow. Was that guilt, too?
“Kitten, your brother is a grown man. Whatever he got into is his responsibility. It’s great of you to be so determined to find him, and I’m willing to throw every resource at my disposal into helping you. But none of this is your fault.”
“I hear you, and my mind knows you’re right. But my heart hurts too much to accept that.”
He lifted the plate out of her hands and set it on the coffee table. “Come here.”
She huddled against him, shivering, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her. “You’re not alone anymore, Hank. A whole bunch of really smart people are going to help you figure this out.”
“Thanks to you, Ashe. I’ll never be able to pay you back.” She reached up to kiss him, and he lurched away from her.
“What?” she asked in worry.
“You do understand that I don’t expect you to sleep with me to pay me back for my help, right?”
She blinked at him in shock. Clearly the idea had never occurred to her. Thank God. He leaned down and captured her sweet mouth with his. She tasted like orange slices and black pepper from the salad. Sweet and spicy. That was her, all right.
“Help me forget everything for a little while, Ashe.”
He knew all too well the tactic of using sex to escape reality. Special operators employed it all the time. Sex as stress reliever, sex to erase grisly images the mind refused to forget, sex to feel a little less like a monster. Oh, yeah. He got it. And he was okay with giving that gift to Hank tonight.
As she rose from the sofa and drew him by the hand into the bedroom, he wondered if all the women he’d had one-night stands with over the years had exercised the same generosity. Had they known how much he had needed them? He sent out a silent thanks to all of them, wherever they were right now, and wished them happiness with someone less screwed up in the head than him.
Then Hank was undressing him and being quick about it, and he couldn’t think about anything except returning the favor.
Her movements held a frantic quality he recognized all too well. She was absolutely focused on forgetting. On falling into a world of pure sensation. On feeling good, even if only for a little while. He gave her his body to use as her playground, and she threw herself into the venture with abandon.
But at some point, he found himself needing to call a halt to her manic energy. “Relax, Hank,” he whispered. “I’m not going anywhere. We’ve got all night. Why don’t you let me take care of you for a little while, okay?”
“Uhh. Oh...okay.”
He soothed her body with his mouth and hands, helping her to unwind when she couldn’t do it herself. Finally, at long last, when she was moaning and writhing beneath him in genuine pleasure that had nothing to do with panic, he sank into her.
Intentionally, he kept the pace of their lovemaking slow and easy. Not only was he concerned that she might be a little sore already from last night, but he wanted her to stay present. Here. In this moment. With him for the sake of being with him.
Funny how he was the one who insisted that this be real. That was a change from his usual MO. But it felt right to him. He didn’t want to be with Hank any other way except with full disclosure and total honesty. Damn. What did that say about the two of them as a couple? He’d never cared about such a thing before with any woman. Was this yet another signal that she was The One?
An odd sensation of...hopefulness...leaped in his gut at the notion.
Cripes. Had he been that lonely all these years and never known it? Amazing. His reflective train of thought was broken by Hank moving with more urgency against him, her body demanding more from him in no uncertain terms. Grinning, he turned his attention to the entirely pleasant task of driving Hank out of her mind with pleasure. He had to hand it to her. She was one wickedly responsive woman. Sex would never be dull with her.
“Earth to Ashe. Come in. If you don’t get busy pretty much right now, I’m going to have to take matters into my own hands and ravish you.”
He laughed richly. “I’ll look forward to that some other time. But I’ve got this tonight. Hang on tight to me, baby. It’s time to fly.”
* * *
A vibration under his pillow woke him some time later. It was pitch-dark in the windowless room, and he could feel Hank’s soft warmth in the bed beside him. Her breathing was light and quiet and slow. She was out cold.
He grabbed his cell phone and slipped out of bed carefully. The glowing screen announced that it was nearly 1:00 a.m., and that Commander Perriman was calling.
Ashe closed the bedroom door behind him and moved into the kitchen, as far away from Hank as he could get while staying in the house. “Hey boss.” He pulled on a pair of jeans as Perriman apologized briefly for calling so late.
As if that had ever stopped the man. Hah. He was famous for calling his team at all hours of the day and night. But then, their job wasn’t exactly the nine-to-five variety.
“Can you talk openly now?” Perriman asked. “Or is Hank within earshot?”
“No, she’s not nearby. What’s up?”
“Jennie just sent me a report on her old man. You knew his name was fake, right?”
“Yes.”
“Turns out he was likely a big-time smuggler.”
Ashe sat down heavily on a convenient chair. “What?”
“There’s no concrete proof, but he’s got all the signs. Multiple offshore bank accounts. Piles of cash in hand. He paid for his ex-wife’s hospital bill in cash. We’re talking upwards of a half-million bucks. He carried it into the hospital in a briefcase, apparently.”
“He could’ve borrowed it from someone. Hell, from a bank, for that matter.”
“His travel records are equally mysterious,” Perriman told him. “The guy hopped all over the globe.”
“He was an art dealer. Hank said he imported stuff. Couriered it around.”
“Perfect cover for a smuggler. When Jennie dug into the records of the auction houses Kuznetsov Sr. worked for, there were frequent omissions and outright irregularities in the records around the objects he brought in.”
That was damning. Still, his boss wasn’t the kind to make a serious accusation based purely on circumstantial evidence. Ashe asked grimly, “What else have you got?”
“I think the son may have followed in the father’s footsteps.”
Ashe swore low and hard as Perriman continued inexorably, “I need you to treat the daughter as a possible suspect. It’s entirely possible she’s in on the family business and is using this supposed disappearance of her brother’s to worm her way inside our organization. To find out what our capabilities are.”
Ashe shoved a hand through his hair in dismay. Hank, a smuggler? No way. “I’m the one who randomly wandered into the bar where she works.”
“That doesn’t mean she and her boss didn’t seize on the opportunity that your unexpected arrival on the scene represented and throw her at you.”
He tried to recall if Hank and Vitaly had had any conferences in a back room together right after he showed up at the club. There had been one moment...Hank had disappeared into a storeroom for a couple of minutes and Vitaly had followed her inside. They hadn’t been in there together for more than a minute or two, but that could have been enough for the Russian to give her orders to gain Ashe’s trust and get in his pants.
Still. What were the odds?
That was, of course, his heart talking. His head weighed in with a reminder that Perriman didn’t go around making accusations of criminal activity lightly. It made sense that the daughter would be like the father and son.
“What about the mother? Was she in the dark?” Maybe, just maybe, if the mom had been clueless, Hank would be, too.
“Doubtful. Jennie has reason to be
lieve she acted as a mule for the husband, even well after they divorced. There were regular deposits in her bank account from an offshore account over the years. She lived well beyond what her own income and child support would account for.”
“Alimony from the ex-husband?”
“Maybe. Possibly it was more. Payment for services rendered.”
Ashe realized he was shaking his head back and forth in denial.
“Keep your distance from this girl, Ashe. Be careful around her. She may be a black widow.”
Hank, a hardcore criminal with killer tendencies? Now that was laughable.
Or was it?
Chapter 9
Hank woke to total darkness interrupted only by a thin strip of light on the floor. She lurched upright. Door. Daylight beyond the door. Bastien’s house. And the terrible revelation from last night that her father was not who she’d always believed him to be. She supposed it might have made sense to hide his true identity as a matter of personal security. After all, he carried around priceless works of art and dealt in large sums of money on a regular basis in his line of work.
But why would he and her mother have falsified his name on her birth certificate, for crying out loud? That seemed a little excessive, even for the most paranoid person. Maybe they thought that as a little kid, she wouldn’t be able to keep the secret and would spill his real name by accident. The explanation felt like a bit of a stretch, though.
Perhaps his deep paranoia about the internet and his hatred of electronic data were the reasons he didn’t appear to exist when Jennie Finch had gone looking for him. Maybe he’d been too old-school to show up in a modern, computerized search. That must be the explanation.
God knew, her father had been a secretive man. He’d withheld almost every detail of his life, of his past, from Hank—and, to her knowledge, from Max. How much had her mother really known about him? Hank cast her mind back to the time before the accident. Her mother had never spoken about her father voluntarily, and had only with great reluctance answered any questions Hank remembered asking about him.
It had always been understood by Max and her that they did not talk about their father or his work. When asked, they were instructed to say that he was a furniture salesman. And if anyone inquired where he traveled, they were instructed to answer that they did not know. Which was largely the truth anyway.