Provoked

by Riley Murphy

  Neil’s mind raced. There were advantages and disadvantages of working around a crowd. Neither of which changed the fact that Kelli would spot him coming a mile away. “Kelli knows who I am.”

  “That’s why we’ll be going in the back way. When they lock down the kitchen it’s practically sealed off from the front of the building. We can access the area we need to without going near the club. There’s one security guard back there, but I’ve got that covered.”

  “Do you mind telling me how you came by all this information?”

  “No can do.” Wilde eyed the coffee table and then said, “Cool.” He bent and picked up a red piece fitting it into the puzzle. “I used to do these when I was a kid. Do you mind?”

  Of course Neil did now that Wilde was going to be close-lipped about his contacts, but there was more than one way to get info out of the guy. “No. Knock yourself out. You want some tequila?”

  *****

  As Charlie headed back to Cat’s she was thrilled about one thing. Neil was giving her a second chance and this time she wasn’t going to blow it. She thought about everything he’d said regarding the situation with Cat and came back to the same thing every time. Didn’t her sister deserve a second chance?

  When she pulled into Cat’s drive she was surprised to see the lights on at this late hour. Her sister was usually an early to bed girl when she wasn’t working at the club. Charlie hadn’t even exited the car when Cat swung the front door open, and called, “It’s about time you got back.”

  Charlie was out of the vehicle and up the front steps so fast she nearly fell. “What’s wrong? Is Mom okay?”

  “Yeah, Mom’s fine. It’s this I’m having a problem with.”

  Cat moved aside and Charlie saw Regina standing in the hall behind her. “Oh my God! It’s you. It’s really you.” Charlie shot past her sister and threw her arms around her friend, hugging her close.

  “Aw, isn’t this sweet?”

  Charlie laughed. She didn’t care how snotty Cat was being. She paid no attention to her as she leaned back, and took a good look at her friend. “Where have you been? What happened to you?” She turned to Cat, and said, “Why didn’t you call me?”

  Her sister shrugged. “I tried.” Then she pointed to Neil’s jacket. “I see you went to Cannon’s. Maybe you were too busy to hear your phone.”

  Charlie pulled Regina with her to the couch, doing as Neil had suggested and listened. Her friend wound up giving them the short version, Charlie was sure. About how she was taken and then held at some bar down in the seedier side of town. There were girls there from all over the globe who’d been promised the land of the free only to be sold to the rich and old.

  “Kelli Sharp really is a slave trader?” Charlie whispered.

  “The politically correct term is trafficker,” Cat called out. “And I’m crushed you didn’t believe me when I told you weeks ago.”

  Reggie looked between the two and then explained that there were working girls that were free to come and go, but that Sharp used numerous properties in the area to hold the women who weren’t before he shipped them to the buyers who purchased them. She explained how she was supposed to be going by train to Utah, but then, thankfully, Jude had intervened and she managed to escape.

  “Told you he was connected.”

  Charlie gave Cat a withering look and then took a moment to process all this. The details were a little sketchy, but the overall discovery was horrifying. After Charlie got over her initial shock, she made note of the awkward silence. There was a tension that threatened to build and if she didn’t diffuse some of it, her friend would be forced to share more details. Things, Charlie sensed, she wasn’t ready to speak about. “You don’t have to answer my question.”

  “Thank you. And you don’t have to worry. There are people who know about this. They’re working on it.”

  Was she speaking about Neil and Jude? Although Charlie wanted to ask, she took her friend’s cue and changed the topic. Reaching out, she brushed Reggie’s bangs aside. “What happened to your hair?”

  “You saw Jude?”

  Charlie turned to Cat who had picked up on the change of topic and said, “I saw him too. Tonight actually. I’ll tell you about it in a minute.” Turning back to Reggie she smiled. “Well?”

  “I went back to my natural color.”

  “I like it better black.”

  “Hello?” Cat rudely waved. “What did Jude have to say?”

  Charlie gave Reggie one more hug and then addressed her sister. “They found the gem.”

  Her sister quickly sat forward with her elbows on her knees. “Great. What are they going to do with it?”

  “I don’t know.” Charlie shook her head, and then asked Reggie, “Do you want something to drink?”

  “I already offered her something and she declined. So what are their plans?” Charlie gave her sister a look and attempted to tamp down her outrage. Cat was in rare form at the moment, persisting as if she wasn’t being rude. “Wilde. Cannon. What are they going to do?”

  “I told you. I don’t know. And you can stop being so rude to my friend.”

  “There’s something not right about her.”

  Charlie expected Reggie to defend herself. At the very least she certainly didn’t expect her to sit there looking guilty as hell and blushing besides. “Reggie?”

  “It’s time I told you the truth. About me and why I wanted to work at the museum.”

  “Here we go,” Cat chirped.

  Charlie pretended like she didn’t hear it, waiting for Reggie to continue.

  “It’s not…I had to. I sought out the position with the museum when I learned the key had been stolen. Once I knew who stole it, I worked hard to get us as close to Wilde as possible.”

  Charlie was speechless. All of those fortuitous things that had mysteriously fallen into place while they’d been investigating the missing shipment, suddenly made sense.

  “I told you vagina was going to fuck you over.”

  Charlie wasn’t in the mood for Cat’s ‘I told you so’. “Quiet.”

  Reggie put her hands up in a placating manner. “I didn’t want to F-you over. I don’t think I did. My friend’s freedom depended on that key making it to Mexico. When it never arrived on her twenty-first birthday I traveled here to find out why. That’s when I discovered it had been stolen. I applied for a job with the museum, biding my time, in the hopes I’d be able to eventually recover it.”

  Cat waved her hand in the air. “Should I still be quiet?”

  Charlie glared at her, and then turned, eyeing Reggie. “You can put your hands down. Is this why you had the idea to do the bikini contest? You knew Wilde had the key.”

  “I thought we’d kill two birds with one stone. You’d get the money you needed and I’d get the key. Only after I slipped the pills into his drink—”

  “I called that one!” Charlie gave her sister an extra special stink-eye glare that didn’t faze her a bit when Cat turned to Reggie, explaining, “I did. I knew she didn’t have the courage to pull something like that off. She’s too soft. A veritable bleeding heart. She was the one who confessed to stealing the angel from the McGowen’s fence on the ranch next to ours. No one would have ever known, but little goodie-two-shoes was so afraid Santi Claus was going to leave only coal under the tree for us, she confessed and we had to give our clubhouse mascot back.”

  “We were six years old, and that angel looked like a dude. Sue me.” Charlie took a deep breath, let it out, and said, “Reggie, never mind her, please, continue.”

  “She fucks you over and she gets a please. I don’t ever fuck you over and I get nothing but your self-righteous BS?”

  Charlie was going to question her about that, but Reggie asked, “Should I continue?”

  “Yes. My sister will behave. Go ahead.”

  Charlie started to fan herself. She really was getting all worked up over this.

  “Like I was saying, that night when Jude started to g
o loopy—I felt bad about that, by the way—”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you did,” Cat drawled.

  Charlie was steaming. She continued to fan herself. “Cat! Zip it!”

  Reggie looked between them and then talked fast. “You saw him pass out and you went a little crazy. Honestly, I thought you were going to call the police on us.”

  “Unbelievable.” Cat snorted. “You had to cleanse your moral soul over us borrowing a wooden Cupid, and when your friend here decides to pull off what I’m pretty sure is a felony, you embrace your spade-like tail and horns?”

  Admittedly, Charlie knew she’d never make a good thief. The events of that night, after she’d found out that Reggie had taken the sleeping pills out of her purse and used them on Wilde, were a little too surreal. She’d been so nervous after that she’d almost thrown up. “I wasn’t supposed to find the key, was I? Is that why you were acting so strangely when I found it? You didn’t want me to, did you?”

  The tension was back. This time mushrooming all around them. Even Cat sat still and waited to hear the answer.

  “I worried you were going to return it to the museum and I’d be back to square one, or worse, having to deal with Sharp over it.”

  Charlie pulled at her collar. Man it was warm. “Do you still need it?”

  Her friend shook her head, and Cat piped up. “Ask her why.”

  Charlie spun around, scowling at her sister. “Why what?”

  “For the love of God. Ask the right questions. Why doesn’t she need the key anymore?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Charlie looked down at herself and closed her eyes. Talk about obvious. No wonder she was frying. She still had Neil’s windbreaker on. She shrugged out of the coat, saying, “Sharp has the key back.”

  “So?” Her sister sounded mighty snippy. “She already said she didn’t want to have to deal with Sharp over the key. What changed?”

  “Everything changed.” When Charlie yanked off the jacket a paper fell out of a pocket and floated to the floor. She bent and scooped it up. “We…” Seeing the image of the woman on the flyer she lost her train of thought, and then lost more than that when she read the headline above it.

  The Pearl

  She scanned the rest of the page and half walked, half collapsed backwards to the couch. Without a word she handed it over to her sister.

  “What now? Are you…?” Cat examined the paper. “This can’t be.”

  But it was.

  Charlie sat there and went through all the possible scenarios she’d conjured about reuniting with their missing sister. Not one of them had ever played out like this. Where her sister Pearl was slated to be sold to the highest bidder in Kellie Sharp’s auction next week.

  “Did you know about this?” Cat held the flyer up so Reggie could see it. Charlie felt like she was walking in a dream when Reggie stood up so fast the chair she was sitting in tumbled over backwards.

  “That bastard. Jude knew and didn’t tell me. Like hell that’s going down. Sharp’s got her?” Reggie punched her balled up fist into the palm of her hand, and growled, “Charlie, do you have any weapons?”

  Oh yeah, Charlie was definitely dreaming. She had to be. The closest things to weapons she’d ever packed were her mother’s sleeping pills.

  Cat put a hand on her knee and said, “I’m feeling it now.” Then she turned to Reggie and announced, “I have a thirty-four ounce Louisville Slugger, a tire iron, mace, and a stun gun.”

  “How many volts?”

  Charlie eyed Reggie and then Cat. Was this really happening?

  “Seven hundred thousand, straight Alkaloid battery insertion.”

  “Smart. I don’t like the rechargeable options either. They don’t maximize the current capacity.”

  When Cat got up, Charlie blinked. “Where are you going?”

  “To figure out how we can bring our sister home.”

  “Now?”

  Reggie and Cat looked at each other. It was Reggie who said, “Tomorrow night the club is hosting demonstrations. They’re going to be busy. If we can come up with a plan by then it would be the perfect time.”

  “Coming?”

  She probably should have hesitated, but the second she slapped her hand into Cat’s outstretched palm, she never looked back.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Neil was impressed. Wilde had done his homework. Just as he’d explained, the back of Kelli’s club where the kitchen was located was shut down for the night. The pier was deserted and so was the patio. Not only was it cold, there was a storm moving in and the waves were already crashing into the pilings.

  It was easy gaining access to the building, now all they had to do was make their way to the north side of it. According to the plans that Wilde had gotten from one of his contacts, there were several holding rooms that had been set up like cells.

  Neil hadn’t been surprised to learn this. Kelli’s bouncers probably used them on a nightly basis to control the crowd. The kind of people encouraged to join this club were the kind of men and women who were no strangers to a view from behind bars. The plan tonight was to get to those cells before Kelli’s dubious clientele did.

  Wilde held up his hand. “Hang tight. I have to deal with the security camera.”

  Neil crouched down and waited. After he took a look around, he watched Wilde go to work. The guy knew what he was doing. Once he took care of the camera, and motioned for him to follow, Neil made a mental note to ask him were he’d learned the excellent technical skills. Neil envied that kind of knowledge. Unless it was a car engine, he was no tech whiz. He was one of the few men left in the world who actually liked getting his hands dirty. As he’d explained to Jude, he was more a survivalist by nature. If he was going to kill anyone he’d be doing it up close and personal.

  Not that he couldn’t use a gun. He belonged to his local range, and did compete occasionally, but he wasn’t an expert and he’d never shot at a live target before.

  Always a first time for everything.

  “You’re up,” Jude whispered, motioning toward the security guy who was dozing at the desk.

  Neil took the gag and length of rope from his sack and went to work. It wasn’t hard sneaking up on the man. An elephant could have walked by and Neil doubted the guard would have flinched. How had Wilde called this one?

  After he put the cloth and twine down on the floor, he forgot about everything, but rendering the guard unconscious. This particular move required proper placement as it didn’t restrict air flow, as many people assumed, instead it momentarily cut off the blood supply to the brain until the victim blacked out. The trick was making sure the victim’s airway wasn’t compressed, restricting oxygen. He was going for momentarily incapacitated, not permanently dead.

  He was very careful, and even though the guy put up a struggle Neil remained calm, evenly applying pressure to both carotid arties. When the guy choked out, Neil lowered him off the chair to the floor.

  “I’m going to need a lesson. That was fucking brilliant,” Jude swore, bending down to help him secure the guy.

  When they were done, Neil looked up. “Didn’t you say there was a closet around here?”

  Jude nodded and went to the end of the hall where it T’d off into two different directions. “It’s down here.”

  Neil grabbed his sack, slung it over his shoulder, and then grabbed the guy’s feet to pull him.

  “You need help?”

  “No. Just make room.”

  “What’s that?” Jude asked, pointing to the lump on the guard’s chest, when Neil got to the closet.

  “It’s his phone. I turned it off and stuffed it under his shirt. If anyone comes to check on him they’ll think the guy went to take a piss or something.”

  Jude nodded. “Good thinking. Let me help.”

  Wilde was a little heavy-handed, pushing the guy toward the corner, so Neil stopped him. “No, we need to face him the other way. I have to get this length tied to the rack up there so he won’t
be able to move. You sure he’s the only one back here?”

  “Yeah. Did you see that station he was sitting at? That was some fancy shit he didn’t have turned on. I’ve seen less fancy in the locked-down lobbies of swank high rises in New York. What a waste of perfectly good security programming.”

  Neil waited for Wilde to move and then he stepped out of the storage closet and closed the door. “Good thing, right? It worked out great for us.”

  “Yeah, but what is he doing back here that he needs that kind of shit guarding it? Are they trafficking out of the club too?”

  “I don’t think so. He auctions slaves here. It’s a club thing. Different than what he’s doing outside these walls. Those women, the ones he’s selling outside of here? They don’t have a choice. They’re being held at what he calls ‘safe houses’. I’m sure the only reason Regina was drugged and moved to Channey Street, was because she was difficult to handle.” Neil dropped to one knee and readjusted the items in his sack so it would be easier to carry. “The houses that Sharp uses are scattered in residential communities so he can’t afford any difficulties.”

  “I’m not going to ask how you know about that. Do you think he’s branching out? Drugs maybe?”

  Neil stood and looped the strap over his shoulder. “Who the hell knows? I tend to not look for problems while I’m trying to solve one. Now,” he turned to the right and then left, asking, “which way?”

  “We’re going to have to take an educated guess here.”

  “A guess?” Neil scowled and Jude scowled right back.

  “It’s not my fault. Along with that brand new high-tech security desk? That,” he hiked a thumb over his shoulder indicating to the hall behind him, “wasn’t in the plans I got. The extra hall wasn’t in it either.”

  Neil hung his head for a second and then lifted it back up. “Do you have an educated guess to make?”