“Up. Quickly,” Lucas ordered, and the girls dashed up the staircase.
His heart ricocheted in his chest as the guy reached under his jacket, but no shots rang out as Lucas herded Mia and Becca upstairs. The traffickers were probably reluctant to risk hurting the girls—not because they cared about them, but because they were valuable. The guys who ran this place probably figured they had him cornered. Lucas heard the men conferring downstairs, barking instructions to one another in a foreign language.
Shit.
He started knocking on doors. “FBI. This is a raid. Put your hands up and exit the room immediately.” He banged on six doors and finally heard noises behind one of them. Business must be slow on a Wednesday morning.
A door opened, and Lucas dragged out a terrified looking middle-aged guy doing up his pants, along with two young ladies wearing nothing except satin teddies. The sound of pounding feet on the stairs had him pushing the kids inside the room and slamming the door, making sure it was locked.
This room was vastly different from the plain accommodations he’d seen downstairs. There was a four-poster bed on a raised platform, a mirror on the ceiling and the wall. Plush red velvet drapes. Sex toys on the bedside table, the funky scent of semen and latex in the air.
He tried not to gag.
And if the real thing wasn’t enough, the huge TV screen was turned to a porn channel. Mia’s eyes doubled in size. Lucas stepped in front of it and urged her toward the window that overlooked the front street. He tried to unlock the catch, but it was screwed shut. “Christ knows what would happen if there was a fire,” he muttered.
“Mommy says it’s wrong to curse,” Mia scolded him.
Despite the mounting tension, he and Becca shared an amused glance. The doorknob rattled. The sound of metal scraping metal as someone tried a key in the lock. The smile on the older girl’s lips wobbled.
Lucas grabbed a wooden chair from beside a vanity.
“Stand back.” Time to signal his need of assistance. He slammed the chair into the old sash window, and glass exploded into a million different pieces.
That should do it.
The men on the other side of the door went silent as they reevaluated the situation. Six agonizing seconds later, he heard the sound of a truck pulling up outside and a series of shouted instructions. Then the unmistakable sound of a breacher busting the front door out of its frame.
The troops had arrived.
“I’m an FBI agent. Help is on the way,” he told the two girls. They held onto one another as he went to the bedroom door and listened. He couldn’t hear anything on the other side, so he unlocked it and eased out, just in time to catch sight of one of the men he’d seen in the kitchen, fleeing into a bedroom at the rear of the building.
Dammit. There had to be another way out. He looked at Mia and Becca. He couldn’t leave them behind—but he shouldn’t take them with him, either.
No choice. He wasn’t letting them out of his sight, and he wasn’t letting these assholes get away.
“Follow me. We need to move fast, but quietly. Understood?”
Mia and Becca nodded, both desperate to get out of this hellhole.
He sprinted down the corridor and slid the last ten yards to the room where he’d seen the men disappear. For once his luck was holding, and the door had caught on the latch rather than closing completely. He peeked inside but the room was empty except for a couple of unmade beds. Where the hell did they go? He wedged the door ajar with a chair so his colleagues would know which direction he’d taken. A silk robe swung back and forth on a metal hanger inside the walk-in closet. He shoved the robe aside and ran his hand over the wood. A hidden door sprang open when he pushed against the panel. Bingo.
The opening on the other side was as black as Hades.
“It’s like Narnia,” Mia whispered.
“Only scarier,” Becca agreed.
“Keep close. Hold hands,” he instructed quietly. Lucas turned on the light of his cell and felt his way along. He found a handrail, his foot searching out the first riser of the stairs as they began their descent. They crept down the twisting staircase. Suddenly the thundering sound of footsteps got closer and closer. Then he realized it was the cops pounding up the stairs on the other side of the wall.
Becca tripped and he turned to steady her. “Easy.”
“Where are we going?” she asked, as if starting to doubt the wisdom of blindly following a strange man down a lightless tunnel.
Smart girl.
“I want to see which direction the fu—” He caught himself. “Which direction the men who held you go in, so the cops can catch them.”
They kept moving downwards. The staircase became so narrow his shoulders barely fit. It smelled old and musty, like the attic in his parents’ West Virginian summer home.
He had no idea how deep they’d gone but the coolness of the air and quietness made him think they’d reached basement level, maybe even lower. The tunnel started to level out and headed horizontally northwest. They sped up to a jog, following the indistinct sounds of the men ahead of them.
The loud noise of a rusty hinge grinding had him moving faster, but it was difficult to sprint when he was virtually blind and leading two children.
A sudden volley of voices up ahead had him slamming on the brakes. The girls crashed into his back with barely a sound. Survival instincts were out in full force. This wasn’t a game. He moved cautiously forward and edged around another corner. Three men stood beneath an open trapdoor near a short wooden ladder. They were arguing over a cell phone, saying something like “char yo” a lot.
Lucas frowned. What the hell was “char yo”?
Suddenly the madam’s phone in his pocket buzzed to life and all three of the men looked in his direction. Shit—they must have gone beyond the range of the signal blocker. He ducked back around the corner as bullets ripped into the exposed wall beside him. The clatter of footsteps told him they were heading up the ladder, but the bullets kept coming.
“FBI. You’re under arrest,” Lucas yelled. Now would be a great time to have a weapon, but they’d decided not to risk it for this particular op.
“Fuck you, motherfucker,” came the reply. They’d obviously learned their English from Bruce Willis movies.
Mia clasped her hands over her mouth, eyes as big as golf balls. Lucas held back a grin even as tension mounted. He pulled out his cell and jabbed the number for the leader of the task force before passing it to Becca. “When someone answers, tell her to stay on the line.”
The shooting stopped, and the trapdoor banged shut. The loss of light had him poking his head out from behind cover. The men had gone. He clambered up the steps and shoved at the hatch, but something blocked it. The sound of a car’s doors slamming told him they’d got into a vehicle. He rammed his shoulder into the wood above his head, over and over again. He needed the make and model and maybe the plate of the vehicle.
“Tell them the perps are escaping by car,” he told Becca, who repeated everything he said into his cell.
The weight shifted above his head and he managed to open the door an inch. He got a flash of a sedan driving sedately out of the garage. “Silver Beemer.” He reeled off the tag number.
He gave the hatch another shove, and whatever was weighing it down shifted enough for him to force the entrance clear.
He climbed out and turned to help first Mia and then Becca up the ladder. Both girls looked around with dazed expressions. They’d been through hell, but they were alive. He gave them a reassuring nod. “You’re safe now.”
Mia’s brave expression immediately crumbled, and she started to sob. In the same instant, Lucas felt a shudder run beneath the soles of his sneakers. Army training kicked in, and he opened his mouth while simultaneously pushing both girls to the ground.
The force of the explosion threw him up in the air. He hit the ground like a paratrooper who’d pulled his ripcord a thousand feet too late.
Goddamn it.
What the hell just happened?
After a few seconds of staring up at the corrugated roof of the garage, sirens started screaming in the distance. It was hard to breathe because of the smoke and dust and ring of fire encircling his ribs. He coughed and swore, coughed and swore again.
The bastards had blown up the tunnels.
Sonofabitch.
He rolled onto all fours and crawled to where Becca lay unmoving on the garage’s dirty flagstones.
Mia hacked noisily a few feet away, but at least she was conscious. Internal injuries were a real possibility—the most lethal aspect of any explosion was blast overpressure. Air waves traveling at supersonic velocities that could rupture lungs, kidneys and bowels. He needed to get them all to the hospital ASAP, but in the meantime Becca’s face was bloodless. He checked her pulse and airway and started CPR. Mia staggered to her feet.
“Grab my cell phone,” he told her and pointed to where it lay.
Tears made streaks in the dust on her face.
“Call SSA Sloan.” He didn’t explain how to do it. Kids seemed hardwired into technology. “Put it on speaker.”
She did as he asked and held the phone toward him as it rang. Becca wasn’t breathing.
“Is she okay?” Mia asked.
“Randall?” Sloan answered.
“Yes, ma’am.” He didn’t pause the CPR.
“What’s your sitrep?”
Supervisory Special Agent Carly Sloan was a former military operator and solid team leader, but she sounded fraught.
“We followed three perps through underground tunnels to a nearby garage but they set off an explosion that prevented us from giving chase.” He repeated the details of the car they’d escaped in as he continued to pump blood through Becca’s veins and force oxygen into her young lungs. So much for promising they were safe. He heard Sloan give orders for an APB. “We need a bus for a teenage girl caught in the blast. She’s not breathing. Also an eight-year-old female needs to be checked for internal injuries.” As did he.
“Mia Stromberg?” Sloan asked urgently.
“Yes, ma’am. She’s safe. Tell the team I locked up the female perp in a ground floor bedroom in the northeast sector of the house. I saw at least two other females and a male client on the first floor. Not sure where they went.”
“Where are you?” There was an odd catch in Sloan’s voice.
Finally Becca’s chest started moving on its own, and she drew in a rasping breath. Randall heard more sirens and struggled to his feet. He needed an idea of where they were in relation to the command post to direct the ambulance. Outside the garage, he whirled in a circle. His mouth fell open when he spotted the column of dust rising into the air where the houses had been standing.
“Holy crap.”
“Yeah.” SSA Sloan’s voice was hoarse with emotion. “No kidding.”
The bastards had dropped the entire row, along with everyone inside—including cops, federal agents, trafficked women, and one of their own. The chance of surviving that devastation was slim to zero, but they had to try to rescue whoever might be alive.
“How many of our guys were inside?”
“Four agents. Eight Boston PD cops.” Sloan’s voice cracked.
And Christ knew how many others locked in those rooms, including Mae Kwon, who could have been a gold mine of information if they’d gotten her to talk.
Grief fused with anger and settled into his blood like a virulent cocktail. Those dirtbags had killed indiscriminately to save their own asses. It would take months to sort through the debris. Months to piece together the evidence. Months to identify the dead.
As forensic countermeasures went, this was a doozy.
He gave Sloan directions for the medics and noticed Becca’s eyes had closed again. “Shit. I think the girl’s stopped breathing. Get the paramedics here ASAP.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Just send a bus.” He ran to Becca’s side and gave her a series of quick breaths. He put his phone on the ground beside him. “Supervise the rescue. I’ve got this.”
“Negative, Agent Randall,” Sloan bit out, obviously in motion. “It’s possible you have the only witnesses left alive. We need them safe. Understood?”
He put his finger to Becca’s carotid, but the thrum of life was eerily silent. Goddammit.
“I want to go home.” Mia started crying. “I want my mommy and daddy.” She wiped her face on her T-shirt.
“You’ve been very brave, sweetheart. Just hold on a little longer while I try to help Becca.”
“Is she gonna die?”
The teen’s lips were an austere shade of blue, her skin paler than his mother’s finest porcelain. His own heart thrashed so hard he could feel it hammering against his sore ribs. Hers lay inert in her chest.
“Come on, Becca. Come on!” Desperation made him pound her sternum more forcefully. The sound of a siren grew closer, but not close enough.
“They’re here!” Mia shouted excitedly, looking outside the door.
Finally.
But Lucas had the terrible feeling they were too late to save the kid who lay lifeless at his side. And it didn’t seem fair that right on the cusp of freedom, Becca had once again had her life stolen away from her as if she didn’t matter. As if she was worthless.
Chapter Two
“Why are you calling me on this line?” His inside man, Rabbit, asked in a strangled whisper.
He got his nickname from his online handle “Tinyrabbit.” He didn’t like hopping around or have big ears; he just liked burrowing into small holes.
Rabbit was useful. Otherwise he’d be dead.
“I need to know what’s going on.”
“What if they trace this call?” Rabbit sounded frantic enough to hang up. He couldn’t be that stupid, could he?
“The bumbling feds? Do you really think I’d use a phone they could trace?” Andrew Britton asked silkily.
“No.”
Good. “Do they suspect you?”
“No.” Rabbit’s voice trembled. “No one knows.” He sucked in an audible breath then finally settled. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“They don’t have much.” A breathless laugh escaped. “Blowing the joint was a stroke of genius.”
No remorse for lives lost. No realization that he’d have been as dead as the others if he’d been there today. Just the need for self-preservation.
“Have they identified who they’re looking for yet?” Andrew asked.
“No. Just that the three men who escaped had Asian features.”
Excellent. Criminal activity was much more satisfying when the feds weren’t chasing your tail.
“Witnesses?”
Rabbit cleared his throat. “An FBI agent called Lucas Randall—he posed as a client to get inside the brothel. Says Madam Kwon took him to Mia when he offered her enough cash.” Rabbit’s tone was bitter, but he was shrewd enough not to pursue it. “He grabbed the kid and made a run for it. He claims to have seen the guys’ faces.”
That was not good news, but most white Americans were not skilled at telling Asians apart. “The only other survivor was Mia Stromberg?”
“Yes.” Rabbit’s voice was laced with sweat and trepidation. “Apart from some lucky cops who followed them into the tunnels. They didn’t see anything.”
Andrew didn’t bother to tell Rabbit that none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for him. Others might argue it was a risk they both took in their business association. But the fact Rabbit had wanted that particular child, that he’d goaded Andrew’s cousin Brandon until his pride had become involved in proving he could carry out such a high profile abduction in broad daylight…that was on him. Rabbit would pay for his appetites, just as soon as he was dispensable.
“According to the reports, Mia didn’t see anyone’s face except for Madam Kwon,” Rabbit added hastily.<
br />
Mae Kwon had sealed her own fate by being a stupid, greedy bitch. “And you’re sure no one else survived?”
“Positive.” Rabbit sounded cocky now. Back in control.
“How long were the cops watching the place before they raided?”
“Not long. Twelve hours max.”
Not as long as Andrew had feared. They’d have photographs of some of the clients, but not of members of the Devils. Nothing to trace them to the source of their operation. Nothing to bring a SEAL team to his door.
Not yet.
“Twelve whole hours? So why didn’t we hear about it?” His tone was deceptively calm.
“I didn’t know—”
“Then why do we need you?” he snarled.
Rabbit cautiously kept his silence.
As soon as Andrew had heard about the explosion, he’d pulled the website and disentangled the half-assed attempts to trace his location. It wouldn’t take long to relocate the businesses and set up shop again under a different guise. Even without the darknet, the sheer volume of these operations in the US made them virtually untraceable.
“How did they find us?” he asked. “And who gave them the password to get inside?”
The verbal password was only issued to people who applied online. People he personally vetted. It was changed weekly.
They ran an exclusive setup for repeat customers. Clean girls. Nice decor and surroundings. Not some stained mattress in a roach-ridden dive.
“I don’t know how they got the password. I’ll find out. They found the brothel after an anonymous tipoff claimed to have seen the girl being carried inside on Tuesday.” Rabbit was trying to sound useful. It was a good survival strategy.
Andrew narrowed his eyes as he absently watched code scroll down his screen. No one snitched on this organization and lived. No one. And if someone had been watching the business that closely, what else had they seen? “How anonymous?”
“Strictly confidential—about eight people know and I’m not one of them.”
“Find out,” Andrew snapped.
“I don’t think I can.” Rabbit’s whisper was pitched high enough to raise the hair on Andrew’s nape. “The tipster already got a hundred thousand dollar reward from the family but the name isn’t in any of the reports. I looked.” He swallowed. “I can keep digging if you like.”
Cold Secrets (Cold Justice Book 7) Page 2