“Remember the kiss you gave me yesterday?” I asked.
“Yes.” She paused a moment, her tense muscles indicating her mental battle, but then her legs parted as I moved my hand up between her thighs. I stroked her gently until I found her clit and circled it with my index finger. She moaned and moved against me, spurring me to press harder as her back arched.
She was already wet with need, and I slid my fingers inside, pressing toward her g-spot as I stretched her open and she rocked against me.
I readjusted, pulling her forward and sliding myself underneath her until my knee rested between her legs. I was giving her the opening—the sliver of control.
Her moans melted my insides, and it all poured down to my stiffening cock—which was, fortunately, tucked under a pillow where she wouldn’t feel it. I stroked her hair with one hand, while my other moved inside her.
She inched up my leg until she groaned and shook with the building orgasm. I slowed my motion and she fisted her hands against the pillow under her head. I rubbed my hand over her once more, gathering her fluids and pressing my thumb against her ass. She moaned and tightened, but as soon as I slid a finger back in her pussy, she rocked back and allowed my entry. My thumb pressed deeper inside her, while my fingers still filled her pussy.
Her toes curled pressing into the arm of the couch and she ground her clit against me. With a final shudder, she tightened around my fingers and gave in as the spasm took control of her muscles, leaving her writhing in my lap.
“How’s the pain?” I asked.
I heard a faint sound, and then she spoke quietly, “I’m good.”
It was all that I could give her. Of all the stupid things that might give her some relief, I was the sick bastard who jumped to sex.
But then, I knew firsthand how much it could erase when necessary—and the bitter taste it could leave afterward. I was going to get her out of that place. Find a way to put all of the pieces I’d ripped apart back together, and make sure she made it back to her life.
Chapter 7
Friends in Disparate Places
When I escaped the memory hell of Dr. Combs’s office, I listened to a voice message from Trent. Miles had been moved to a new facility to ensure his safety while he cooperated, but he couldn’t convince Agent Michaels that it’d be helpful to ask him if he might know something about Alley’s whereabouts.
There were so many pieces of so many lives that I felt obligated to put back together.
Since I wasn’t yet back to work, no one could say I was ignoring the plan or their orders. Trent hadn’t mentioned exactly where they’d moved Miles, but it wasn’t hard to figure it out. They’d moved him away from other members of Milo’s organization, but I still thought the facility was more oppressing than he deserved. I hoped for something better for him—that one day he might be able to put his life together—but there weren’t a lot of programs here to help that.
It took ten minutes to pass through security and get signed in, but the wait for them to get him into a secure room took longer.
It was a good thing I wasn’t in a hurry.
Miles’ bright jumpsuit was a harsh contrast against the concrete walls, as he sat across the steel table from the door. “I expected it to take you a little longer.”
“I’m not here officially.”
“Came to shoot the breeze then—just like old times.” He kicked back in his chair and gave me a sardonic glare.
I wasn’t sure how to take cynical Miles, and I wasn’t ready to jump to the bad news without getting a feel for him first. “I need to figure out how to keep Ros—”
“I already know her name, may as well say it.”
His knowledge wasn’t the problem—it felt strange, like every part of my life colliding in an astronomical disaster where timelines cross and worlds explode or vanish into nothingness. “I need to know how to keep Rose safe.”
Miles barely moved, keeping his arms crossed and eyes dead set on me as he spoke. “You’re not even officially back on the force.... What about my request?”
“I came about that, too.”
His lip twitched. “Yet you’re amazingly alone.”
“Alley went off the grid—I didn’t know anything about it until after I spoke to you.”
“Then you have a problem.” He tilted his head, but that was his only reaction. He was holding back, tucking everything away so I—his current enemy—wouldn’t have a thing on him.
“Yeah, I do. I was hoping you might know something.”
“I’ve been incommunicado.”
“Is there anyone that she has a connection to? Anywhere she might go?”
Miles sighed and shook his head, slouching in his seat as if he’d given up on the façade and let his guard down. “You know her story. There isn’t anyone I’d know of from her past that she’d go to. Anything else?”
“Look Miles. I never wanted to let you go down.” I hoped that by coming clean he’d loosen his own lips. “I know you care about Alley—I want to find her, not just for you. I want to make sure she’s okay.”
“Have you talked to Rose? How much does she know?”
He wanted more than for me to come clean—an equal exchange of information. I shook my head. “We haven’t spoken since the day I was shot. I didn’t want to put her in danger.”
“You’re going to find Alley.” His voice nearly tipped up into a question, but he held it steady.
“I said I would.”
Miles swallowed and he scanned the room. “I assume your plan was built on the assumption that taking out Milo would cause an internal struggle.”
“Yeah,” that wasn’t where I expected the conversation to go, and it took me a moment to get my bearings, “But apparently everything has gone dead—aside from claims that Milo was a decoy nobody.”
Miles smiled. “You did a little more than cause an internal struggle over command—you worked your way to the top, and whether they think you were a cop, or that you simply betrayed Ross, no one knows who to believe.”
I pressed my palms against my eyes. “It worked?”
“They’ll probably give up on Rose soon enough. They don’t really have a lot of options left—or even a reason to stay here.”
“How do you know all of this?”
The edge of his mouth tipped up, his expression stuck halfway between a smirk and a scowl. “Half of the men blame me for not figuring out we had a breech—the other half believe I got shafted more than anyone. I hear talk, even behind bars. Who the hell do you think our lawyers work for?”
All we had to do was keep going, and it was possible the entire organization would fall. “So I just need to convince everyone to clean up what’s left of the mess. But I assume you’re going to deny this whole conversation until I find Alley?”
Miles grinned and reared back in his seat. “I assume since you’re not supposed to be here, that would be quite a task to explain anyway.”
He had me there and I nodded. “Then why’d you tell me anything?”
“Like I said—” his expression relaxed into something I was more familiar with. “I’m a fan of your girl.”
At least we were in agreement about something. He finally reminded me of the man I hadn’t minded scheming with.
He leaned across the table folding his hands together. “Why are you so intent on helping me? I’m sure if you tried you could find some other kind of leverage to get me to cooperate.”
“Like threatening to leak who killed Ross?”
“Something like that,” he grunted.
“Because I think you’re better than that. And,” I smirked, “I happen to be a fan of your girl.”
Miles scoffed and sat back in his chair. “At least we’re playing from equal grounds.”
Even though I knew he’d be safer in the current facility, it was painful seeing him there—and even more difficult leaving him there. The strange circumstances surrounding our relationship aside, I couldn’t deny a certain level of res
pect for him.
On the way to the parking lot, my phone rang with another message from Trent. I had a feeling that I was going to have to come up with an explanation for visiting Miles whether I wanted to or not.
“Yeah,” I hoped he was just being a douche and calling to see if I’d gone to my appointment.
“You really think you’d go in there and no one would let me know?”
“No, but it was worth a shot.”
The phone crackled as he exhaled across the mic. “Did you find out anything?”
I explained briefly what Miles had told me as I climbed in my car.
“He gave you all of this without Alley?”
“He knows I’ll find her. He didn’t outright admit it, but he’s not going to back me up on the info until I do.”
“So I’m supposed to take an unsubstantiated story and do what? Hand it over to the feds and argue for Miles to get what he wants even though he claims the info didn’t even come from him.”
“Something like that.” I really wanted to say that it wasn’t my problem, but as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t protect Rose alone.
Trent went silent but didn’t end the phone call.
“There’s something you’re keeping from me,” I said.
“Not keeping,” he paused again. “I could use you at the station.”
I wasn’t sure if his cryptic request was a request for help or bait to get me there so he could give me a chewing out in person.
I went in through the front door of the station this time, nodding to Officer Huston as he buzzed me through. Out of the corner of my eye, I also saw the two officers who’d stopped Evan and me. They didn’t acknowledge me, so I kept walking without a second glance, choosing to avoid confrontation.
Once I reached Trent’s desk, I twisted the chair around and straddled it to face the desk—keeping my back to the wall so I could see the whole office. My still-empty desk still sat across from us.
“You seem different,” he said, giving me an appraising glance before he revealed his motives.
“Maybe because for once, I have something productive to do.”
“Something you’re supposed to be staying out of,” he said pointedly. It was a fair warning, which I chose to ignore.
“Then, you wouldn’t have asked me here.” Unless he really did just want to call me in for a lecture.
His gaze traveled over the room—it was quiet for the moment. Experience said it wouldn’t last.
Trent’s hand went to the top drawer and he pulled the folder from the bottom of the stack of cases he kept there. “A few of the other girls have gone off the grid.”
“Not surprising. Unless you think there’s something more behind it.”
“The feds were handling their relocations—setting them up with living accommodations, therapy, and job training or placement organizations. Some went quietly along with it—a few reconnected with families and others were quite vocal about their disdain for the upheaval. Alley was one of the quiet ones—but seemed more depressed than anything. She wasn’t the first to go off the grid. We’ve tracked down two of them, they’d both simply seemed to want to go about things on their own. Moved in together got jobs. Didn’t raise any flags—”
But it could lay the foundation for others to do the same.
There were thirty-seven girls living at the Retreat at all times. Some guests brought their own, but they weren’t on site during the raid. Ross had wanted nothing he couldn’t control while Milo was visiting—but he got far more than he bargained for despite his caution.
It was a damn shame since I would have relished bringing a number of the clients down as well. The investigators should have recovered all of the Retreat logs and videos—tapes were reviewed and regularly erased, but Ross kept his own collection for “insurance.” The big news of the raid probably sent most of those people into hiding though, so any attempt to bring them all in wouldn’t be easy, and the Feds had more pressing matters to deal with.
“How many of the girls are missing?” I asked.
“That we haven’t managed to track down—four.”
That didn’t seem like an exorbitant number considering the circumstances, distrust of the system, and shame. Life back in the real world wasn’t so kind when you were looking over your shoulder waiting for someone to see your bad deeds through the pearly façade.
“That doesn’t include the ten who refused help that we did manage to track down, including one picked up for prostitution last night.”
“I’d expect that number to climb—it hasn’t even been a month.”
“At least two girls are working for an escort company, but we haven’t been able to prove there’s any wrongdoing or connect it with the other cases. But if they believe they’ve found someone to take care of them, odds are they’re not going to roll.”
A few of the girls knew how to play the system and if they found the right situation they were probably making a killing themselves. Either way, former sex slaves in an escort business seemed far from innocent.
They were doing what they knew how to do. What they’d been trained for—in some cases most of their lives. Whether anything illegal was going on or not it was not a healing situation. If they weren’t the ones taking advantage, they were putting themselves in a position to be manipulated.
“Which girls?” I asked, gesturing toward the file and hoping for a peek.
Trent flipped it open. “Chelsea Sea—”
“I don’t know their real names.”
Trent raised a brow and nodded. He took two sheets from the file and slid them toward me.
“Trick and Babs.”
“Were all of the names that bad?”
“Kat, Gabby, Raini.... Ross didn’t like anything too vulgar, but every name had a reason.”
Even Silver. Although I didn’t devise that one as much as fate did. I’d done the unthinkable and let her choose her own name, and she chose the color of her nail polish, but it was ironically fitting in every way.
She was strong enough to take everything we threw at her and malleable enough to survive and retain her strength.
I heard Trent scoff and lifted my gaze.
“I can tell who you’re thinking about,” he said.
I stuck to the business at hand before he could say or ask more. “Trick was one of the more dominant girls. She and Babs worked in tandem a lot, but Babs was a follower.”
Before I could explain further Captain Richards came out of the corner office and headed straight for us. He was wearing his usual brown tweed suit, but his greying hair was even sparser than I remembered. Since he was nearing retirement, he was extra cautious about anything getting in his way—namely me and this case.
“What are you doing here, James?”
“I needed more info on a couple of girls,” Trent said.
Richards’ face twisted until he looked like his head was deflating. He pursed his lips and stared at me.
“Just helping out,” I said.
“You’re no longer cleared to be flying under the radar. Time for both of you to start playing by the rules. Let the Feds handle the rest of the case, and move on.”
“I’m working the prostitution case I brought to you this morning,” Trent said. “Not the Fed case, but James knows the girls who might be involved, which makes him just like any other witness.”
I winced at the words, but it was an apt argument.
Richards placed his palms on the desk and leaned toward us, lowering his voice. “Witnesses don’t interview suspects.”
I wasn’t sure which occasion he was referring to, so I kept my mouth shut.
The captain pointed to me. “I’m not just talking about yesterday.”
So much for acting independently. “Then put me back on the case.”
“First, I don’t have clearance from any of your doctors. Second, I’d be daft to put you on a case where the suspects believe you’re dead. The shooting was unfortunate, but it gave you a clean
out, and you should keep it that way. As long as your buddy, Miles, hasn’t already outed you.”
“Miles saved my life,” I said dryly. I may have been apprehensive at first, but our conversations told me that I could at least trust him as far as this situation was concerned. “He’s not talking. And I can work the case without anyone figuring it out.”
“Until you’re called to testify. Right now the Feds have a lid on it, so don’t push it.”
“I’d be surprised if the whole death thing would hold up either way. Their lawyers are smart enough to pull the right strings.”
“What about the missing girls,” Trent asked. “It’s an unrelated case that won’t put his name back in the official records for the federal trafficking cases.”
“Right,” Richards threw up his hands. “We’ll have him track down girls who think he’s dead.”
This argument was going to keep going back to the same place. “I know them better than anyone here—I can help track them down without revealing myself.”
“I’m sure you do know them,” he grimaced, but I tried not to take offense. This whole case had gone against his better judgment and taste and I didn’t entirely blame him. “I still have no paperwork to reinstate you.”
“Then, I’ll get it.”
“How well can that side of yours be healed after only three weeks?”
Nearly four. “Well enough to push papers and do interviews.”
“Until someone gets miffed.”
Trent sat back in his chair, threading his hands behind his head, with a smug expression on his face. “That’s why he has a kick-ass partner.”
I could have rolled my eyes, but Richards’ scoff was enough to hold me over. The sound of his shoes squeaking against the old tile floor as he headed back to his office was his only response. I’d be lucky to ever leave a desk again. But even that was better than sitting at home.
Trent immediately returned to the case at hand as if the interruption had never occurred. “Anything else I should know about the girls?”
“Trick.” I pushed her photo toward him. “She knows how to get along just fine.”
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