“Raw Moon is just a small fraction of the business they do,” Lisa said. “An easy gateway to rich, unattractive, gullible men who will do anything to find a subservient woman to marry and control. Most of the men believe the transaction is over once they’ve paid for their bride.” Lisa shook her head. “But it’s never over. For the rest of her life, the people who sold her, own her. There’s always more money to be made off a beautiful woman. Even if it means kidnapping the girls they’ve already sold to extort a ransom from their new husbands.”
Sam sighed and met Linc’s eyes. “Kathy…”
Linc cringed. “But they killed Kathy before Gregory had a chance to pay the ransom. He did everything they asked. Why kill her?”
“That’s the con,” Lisa cried. “Sell the girls for marriage, make the profit. Then come back, snatch the girls, and take the ransom. Change her appearance and sell her off to the next highest bidder before running the same con. Same girl, different website. Same girl, different country. This is happening all over the world. Not just Shadow Rock. If you shut down Raw Moon there are already a dozen other Raw Moons in operation to take its place. Please understand, this is what these people are about. They’re too big to conquer. They’re smarter, they’re faster, and they won’t hesitate to silence anyone who gets in their way.”
“But that’s my point. Why kill Kathy?” Sam asked again. “She was still young, beautiful. Worth a hell of a lot more alive than dead.”
“I don’t know why they killed her…” Lisa gave a lazy blink of her eye. “Maybe she crossed them. Maybe she really loved her husband and didn’t want to leave him. Maybe she wore the wrong shade of lipstick that day. These people have no regard for human life and no sense of basic decency. This is about money. It’s about making it, doubling it, and tripling it ten times over. It’s not just the mail-order brides. It’s drugs, prostitution, and trafficking. You can’t begin to imagine their power. Their reach. Their capacity to produce silence in even the loudest room. To blur the line between law and order, good and evil—until it doesn’t exist at all. They create their own laws and mold them to their liking.” Lisa showed them all the photo of Emma again, voice hitching. “And the life of an innocent four-year-old girl will be a small price to pay if they ever find out I’ve just said these words to you.”
“What about the Aztec bird tattoos?” Sam frowned, fighting past the photo of Emma.
The phone collapsed back in Lisa’s lap, and she appeared to give in. “Locale denotations. A way of keeping track of the girls and their handlers by territory. An Aztec tattoo means Kathy’s original procurer works out of Guatemala. Same as me.”
Linc cringed. “Lisa, I’m so sorry.”
Sam leaned forward on her knees. “Lisa, say you and I are still on our ‘date’. What’s the next step if I decide I want to complete the transaction? Make you my new wife?”
“The $5000 you paid is just for one night.” Lisa met Sam’s eyes. “Once the mark agrees I’m worthy, I set up a second date, and call the boss. Then he comes in to procure the rest of the money.”
“The boss. One of the men downstairs?” Linc asked.
“No.” Lisa met his eyes. “The real boss.”
“What’s his name?” Linc asked.
Lisa gave him a pleading look, and all she said was, “Emma.”
Linc’s jaw clenched. “I don’t need you to speak the name that hasn’t left my head since the moment I heard it, Lisa. I need the name of your boss so I can deal with him appropriately and figure out where the fuck my daughter is."
Unmoved by the gradual rise of his voice until it was bordering on shouting, Lisa’s voice hitched too. “Why aren’t you hearing me? It took you five years just to find me, Linc—damn it, this is bigger than you!”
“Lisa,” Chavez’s voice rang in, causing every eye in the room to move to her. “Right now we have you on charges of prostitution, and if you get saddled with a prosecutor who’s feeling especially motivated, you might even get hit with accessory to kidnapping and extortion.”
Lisa’s chest expanded. “But I didn’t do anything.”
Chavez continued as if she hadn’t heard her. “And I can’t scratch your back until you scratch mine.”
“Lieutenant,” Linc glared at Chavez over his shoulder.
Chavez ignored him, arms crossed as she spoke to Lisa. “Help us get to your real boss. Not the two goons who accompanied you into the restaurant, but the real people behind this, and I swear to you I’ll do everything in my power to save you and Emma. But, in exchange, you’ll have to agree to give us everything you know. Names, dates, addresses. On top of that, in the event of a hearing, you’ll have to testify.”
Lisa looked in the midst of saying no, but when Linc leaned forward and grabbed the cell phone that had fallen into her lap, the words got caught in her throat.
For the first time that evening, the sentimental gleam in Linc’s eyes had vanished. The tears had dried. His hand didn’t even shake as he held the phone out to Lisa. All he could see, all he could think, and all he could breathe was finding that little girl with big blonde curls by any means necessary.
Even if setting up a sting with Lisa’s boss put Emma’s life in danger, it was also Emma’s only hope. The only way to get closer to the truth. Closer to the daughter he’d never known, but already loved with every pulsing vein in his heart.
“Call your boss and set up the second date,” Linc said. “Now.”
Lisa stared at the phone for a long moment before slowly lifting her blue eyes back up to his, peering at him from under her shadowed brow bone, her chest heaving wildly.
The look in her eye sent a chill down Linc’s spine.
Then, without a word, Lisa snatched the phone away from him.
26
After calling her boss, Pablo, to set up a “second date”, the following afternoon, Lisa sat across from Sam in the back corner of The Allegra Seafood Grill. Regardless of circumstance, Lisa remained the picture of calm in her seat at the small table, wearing a fitted white dress with her long black hair down, brushing the valley under the swell of her breasts. Across from her, Sam donned jeans and a loose, checkered shirt with a wire strapped to her chest and a Glock hidden in her waistband.
Scattered across the grill—jam packed with Shadow Rock residents and tourists alike—Linc, Lieutenant Chavez, and the rest of the undercover team were dressed in street clothes, attempting to blend in. Their eyes moved carefully around the restaurant, awaiting Pablo’s arrival. According to Lisa, Pablo would arrive to finalize the marriage transaction between Lisa and Sam. Five hundred thousand dollars was set to exchange hands, sitting in a duffle bag next to Sam’s feet in unmarked bills.
Upon Pablo’s arrival, Sam would hand him the bag, allow him to walk away with the money, and leave the team to nail him on the way out. In the process, Sam would also “nail” Lisa, making it appear as if Lisa was under arrest as well, and not aiding the police in a sting meant to take down her boss. It had taken ages to convince Lisa to set up this sting the night before, her blue eyes filled with apprehension when she’d finally called Pablo, but there was no other choice. This was the department’s only chance to get their hands on a big gun in Shadow Rock’s trafficking world. A world that was slowly but surely tearing their island apart.
All they needed was one—one big fish to start a domino effect, knocking down one boss after the other until they finally got to the core of the ring.
Unlike his fellow officers, however, Linc wasn’t worried about the core. From his own small table, he did everything he could not to stare across the restaurant at Lisa, lest he be too obvious. He hadn’t slept a wink in the adjoining hotel room the night before. The vision of his daughter’s face had been seared too deeply in his brain, and his heart, leaving him staring at the ceiling for the better part of the night. Even at that moment, seconds from nailing the man who knew where his daughter was, Linc couldn’t help but wonder if this was the wrong move.
Was Lisa right? Would
her boss send out an order to have their daughter killed if this sting was successful? Even if they made it look like she was under arrest too? Would Pablo smell the ruse a mile away? Would nailing a trafficking kingpin mean signing his daughter’s death warrant? The daughter he’d never met?
Linc grappled with the terrifying questions in his head—the same way he had the evening before—as they sent his heart racing. He checked his watch and looked toward the restaurant entrance, and decided once again that he didn’t have a choice. If he didn’t nail Pablo, it was guaranteed that he’d never find Emma. If he did nail Pablo, at least there was a chance of getting more information. Information he’d never get his hands on otherwise.
With mere minutes remaining before Pablo’s arrival, the grill was popping. In mid-afternoon, most of the tourists were just waking up, and the grill was located less than five minutes away from the cruise port that had brought them to the island in the first place, so it was naturally packed. The grill had been built at the bottom of the hill, Shadow Rock’s most poverty-stricken area—often likened to the slums of Rio De Janeiro. Nestled between one of the most dangerous streets in the city and one of the most up-and-coming, the grill exemplified the gentrification taking over Shadow Rock’s poorest neighborhood to the letter.
On one side of the grill, the buildings were new, the people affluent, and the brands recognizable. Every storefront boasted the names of the biggest chain restaurants and most expensive designers. On the other side of the street, where the hill began its ascent, colorful shacks lined the dirty sidewalks, packed in tight. Tattered clothes hung from laundry lines strung across buildings that were packed in like sardines, constructed with the cheapest supplies, crumbling and near collapse after decades of warring with the elements. Battered streets and alleyways led narrow paths towards the top of the hill. The higher you climbed, the more degraded the surroundings, proving Shadow Rock had a long way to go when it came to helping its poorest people.
With a deep breath that he didn’t complete, Linc bit his lip as he took in the hill he’d grown up on, fully visible since the grill had been built in all glass. None of its surroundings were left a secret. Not the boats bobbing in the marina to the west, the farmer’s market to the south, the shopping center to the east or even the broken down shacks to the north. In a way, it was one of the most honest establishments on the island. Refusing to allow their patrons to ignore the doleful world that still existed on the north side.
It existed, and because of people like Pablo, it was only getting worse. That afternoon, however, Linc and his team were ready to do their parts to help make it better, and when Sam and Lisa suddenly shared a kiss from their table across the restaurant, every officer in the room shifted in their seats. It was the cue they’d agreed upon—that when Pablo walked in, Lisa would kiss Sam passionately. A display Lisa insisted was necessary. Otherwise, Pablo would become suspicious.
So as Sam and Lisa’s lips locked, Linc moved his eyes to the grill’s front doors as coolly and calmly as he could. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Lieutenant Chavez do the same just as a massive Latino man wearing all black entered the restaurant, a stone cold expression on his face. His vacant, dark brown gaze scanned the grill—fists clenched even though he faced no adversary, body perpetually taunt as if constantly preparing to flee. He continued surveying the restaurant, turning his head and showcasing the long black ponytail, as well as a geometric neck tattoo that Lisa had described the evening before.
Linc’s heart sped up. The rest of the team kept their cool even though he was sure their adrenaline was pumping as well. The way it only could when they were close to nabbing their man. Now, all they had to do was wait. Wait for Pablo to catch sight of Lisa and Sam, approach the table, and take the money. Though they already had a slew of charges to slap him with, Pablo taking the money would add ten more, and they wanted to bury this son of a bitch if they could.
So when Pablo caught sight of Sam and Lisa and began toward them, Linc ignored every bone in his body that begged to leap from his seat and attack. He kept his eyes on the lunch he’d ordered but hadn’t touched, waiting until Pablo passed his table.
When Pablo didn’t pass, however, Linc’s eyes shot up, finding Pablo frozen in place, squinting, eyeing Lieutenant Chavez, who’d caught his eye from where she sat alone at her own table across the restaurant. Pablo’s eyes shifted, landing dead onto another undercover cop sitting alone at the rear.
Then, Pablo looked right at Linc. He cringed.
And Linc could see it in his eyes.
He’d been made.
They’d all been made.
He knew it even before Pablo turned on his heel and ran for the exit. Linc flew out of his seat before the son of a bitch even had a chance to finish turning, chair screeching against the restaurant floor as he did, nearly tipping it over as he raced after Pablo. Chavez left her seat as well, breaking into a run in pursuit of Pablo’s wide, retreating back. Every other undercover officer followed suit, drawing their guns as they jetted after Pablo, who was barreling into anyone standing in his way as he hurried toward the exit, desperate to escape.
Little did Pablo know, escape was futile because there was also an officer waiting outside the front door, just in case that asshole decided to run.
The officer had already drawn her gun before Pablo could take two steps out of the door, pointing it square at his chest.
“Police!” the officer cried, freezing Pablo in his tracks while grabbing the attention of every soul milling through the busy marina, prompting screams at the sight of a gun. “Put your hands in the air and get down on your knees now!”
Pablo stood motionless, defying the orders. He stared into the officer’s eyes, his chest and shoulders heaving, the soft breeze blowing wisps of hair that had escaped the ponytail he’d tied low on his neck. Then, as chaos picked up all around him, Pablo smiled at her. His smile spread wide, even as he reached a hand into his back pocket.
And just like he knew she would, the moment Pablo got his fingers around the pistol concealed in the back of his jeans, the officer opened fire. Two shots, square in the heart, their deafening cracks splitting through the previously calm afternoon air. Terrified screams rose from all around as tourists scattered like ants, some covering their heads and hitting the ground right along with Pablo as the shots sent him crumpling to his knees.
Seconds later, after elbowing his way through the panicked crowd, Linc slowed to a stop in front of Pablo, who’d collapsed into a heap on the ground, his eyes still blinking slowly as the last wisps of life left him. The gun Pablo had drawn but hadn’t had a chance to fire hung lazily from his fingers.
Scowling down at him, Linc kicked the gun away from Pablo’s flaccid hand, forcing tourists to jump over it in their haste to escape the madness.
Just as the gun finished sliding across the ground, another shot rang out. Another crack piercing the air.
This time, Linc jolted in shock at the sound, right along with the civilians dispersing all around him. Instead of running, however, his wide green eyes shot over his shoulder toward the restaurant, his heart in his throat, just as another crack rang out from inside.
“Shots fired!” an officer screamed from inside.
Linc jetted back toward the restaurant, drawing his gun as he moved, every vein in his arms pulsing as he braced his Glock in front of his body, stepping over civilians who’d tripped and fallen to the ground as well as the ones who’d hit the ground on purpose, all screaming, crying, and begging for their lives.
As soon as Linc re-entered the grill, which was just as much a madhouse as the farmer’s market outside, his eyes flew to the only table that mattered.
And what he saw there stole his breath, stopped his heart, and filled his eyes with a moisture that made them sting. Still, he braved the sting, every breath coming ragged as he hurried across the restaurant—where some patrons were hiding behind the tables—shouldering his way through the manic crowd in his hurry to get t
o the back.
As he made it to the table where, just seconds earlier, Sam and Lisa had been locked in a kiss, his mouth fell open, and he was unable to help a rapid shake of his head, unable to wrap his mind around the sight before him. For several seconds, he stopped breathing, frozen solid.
Sam, slumped in her seat, every bone in her body limp, head collapsed against the back of the chair, stared vacantly at the ceiling, brown eyes wide open. A gaping hole in her neck gushed blood. Her loose, checkered shirt had been lifted over her stomach, revealing a gun holster with the flaps hanging open and her Glock-22 missing.
“Fuck!” Chavez’s voice cried out from over Linc’s shoulder, followed immediately by the beep of her radio. “Chavez to central, officer down! Officer down!”
Chavez’s horrified voice grew hazy in Linc’s pounding ears as his wide eyes flew towards the back door of the restaurant, which hung wide open. In a flash, everything was moving in slow motion. The Aztec tattoo, the long milky limbs, and the soft wisps of jet-black hair, flying in the breeze as they disappeared out of the door and out of sight.
“Lisa!” Linc’s heart exploded, and he was running, racing for the door, grabbing his own radio as Chavez’s frantic voice faded away, his own shattered howls filling the air as he activated the radio and spat a hurried plea, hardly able to believe the words leaving his mouth. “All units, we’ve got a perp on foot moving southbound on Row Street. Homicide suspect, female, brunette, approximately 31 years old. Perp is armed with an officer’s gun—” His voice broke. “I repeat, the perp is armed.” He broke off communication and shouted, “Goddamn it, Lisa!”
His lungs felt like they’d sealed themselves shut as he blasted out the door and onto Row Street, following the path he’d just seen Lisa take. He gasped in each strangled breath, and his eyes flew in every direction, finding nothing but broken streets riddled with debris and graffiti covering the walls of every colorful shack before landing on a young Latino boy with no shirt or shoes, hopping up and down on his dirty toes. A pair of red bottom stilettos lay abandoned a few feet away from his bare feet.
Raw (Revenge Book 6) Page 18