by B. B. Hamel
“Not innocent. But not a threat.”
“She was writing an article about us.”
“She was. But believe me, when I told her who I was, she nearly fucking flipped. She doesn’t want anything to do with it now.”
“Smart girl.”
“She is smart. And naïve. Vince, this girl isn’t going to be an issue.”
He looked at me for a second and then nodded. “Okay. I trust your instincts. But you’ll have to convince the others. You know I can’t stop them.”
“I know. I’ll do what I can.”
“Good. You have my support too.”
“Are there any updates on the Spider girl?”
Vince nodded. He took out a bottle and two glasses from his desk and poured two drinks. I walked over and picked one up.
He took his. “She’s dead,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Lonnie happened. Seems as though her heart gave out eventually. Blood loss and stress did her in.”
I nodded. We drank our drinks back.
“Did she talk?” I asked.
“A little bit. She talked about how the Spiders are a group of women fighting to liberate sex slaves. Said a bunch of idealistic bullshit, too.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I’m just hearing this secondhand.”
“She seemed like a fucking fanatic. She let Lonnie tear out all her fingernails before she started talking.”
“Shit.” He poured two more drinks. “To that badass bitch.”
“To the Spider.”
We clinked glasses and drank.
“Ernesto didn’t seem happy, if I’m honest. He didn’t seem to like what they learned.”
“That’s bad for the journalist.”
“It is,” Vince agreed. “And it’s bad for us. If this really is a group of idealistic freedom fighters, we may have a serious war on our hands.”
“It wasn’t serious before?”
“No,” he said. “Before we could negotiate, maybe come to terms or some shit. But now? They’ll try to bleed us dry before they give in, assuming what this girl said is true.”
I nodded, understanding. If the Spiders were in it for profit, we could offer them a better deal and maybe go into business together. But if they were just out to destroy us, well, then we’d never be able to get anywhere with them. There was just no common ground with an enemy that disagreed with your fundamental existence.
And in business, you needed common ground. Dasha had seemed tough, and I was wondering why she’d put up with so much pain instead of talking. She gave us the journalist, but that made sense. She probably saw Cassidy as so low value, she could give us that bit.
Then she decided to fucking die before she told us anything useful. That was one tough chick. I had to admit, I admired her courage and her convictions, even if they were pretty fucking ominous.
“What’s the plan for the journalist, then?” Vince asked.
“For now, I told her to lie low.”
“That won’t be enough, not with this Spider dead.”
“I figured that.”
“You’ll need to think of something else if you want to keep her alive.”
“She doesn’t know anything. Ernesto will see that.”
“No,” Vince said, shaking his head. “I don’t think he will. Ernesto is a stubborn fucking cunt, and he’s pissed about the Spiders.”
“He’s a sick bastard.”
“He is,” Vince agreed. “The whole thing is fucked up.” He sighed and poured two more drinks. “Whatever happened to the good old days when the mob didn’t buy and sell human beings?”
We drank and I shrugged. “Who knows? We don’t do it.”
“We don’t. And there are others in the mob who are against it, too.”
“Lucas?”
“Lucas, for one,” Vince said, nodding. Lucas Barone was Arturo Barone’s son and the heir to the whole family. When that old cock Arturo finally died, Lucas would be in control of everything.
And the mob would change for the better. Lucas had everything his father had, but he wasn’t burdened with being a total asshole. Lucas was smart enough to know what needed to be done, and hard enough to do it. But he wasn’t an insane person like his father.
Though Arturo had done a lot for the mob. He had taken the Barone family and grown it bigger than anyone could have imagined by being one of most vicious mobsters to ever live. Now we were one of the most powerful groups in the country, but back when Arturo had started we were almost nothing. We owed a lot to Arturo, but he wasn’t invincible.
“Is this going to be enough to finally make him act?”
“Probably not,” Vince said. “Taking over the mob and killing your father is no small thing. We need to wait.”
“Waiting isn’t my specialty.” I put my glass down on his desk. “I’m heading out.”
“Fine. Keep your phone handy. Who knows when they’ll come looking for you.”
“Stall them for me.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
I nodded to him and then headed out.
Things were complicated in the mob, and now Cassidy had been thrown into the thick of it. There was a war going on both outside and inside, and nobody was safe, least of all Cassidy.
Dasha dying was the worst thing imaginable for her, especially considering the girl hadn’t talked. If only she had given Ernesto something good, maybe Cassidy would be safe. As it was, I knew Ernesto would be after her, and I had to make sure he didn’t skip talking to me and go right for her.
I headed out, nervous anger in my stomach, ready to find and make sure Cassidy was okay.
9
Cassidy
I barely slept that night. I kept having visions of masked men breaking down my door and murdering me in my sleep.
The sun rose and pressed in through my windows, waking me up. I was exhausted and sluggish as I got up and made some coffee, but at least I was still alive.
I needed to get the hell out of my apartment. I kept seeing those men attacking me, and nothing seemed to help. I showered, got dressed, and drank some coffee.
I hadn’t heard from Rafa yet, but I hadn’t really expected to. I wished he hadn’t left, but I didn’t understand why. He was the enemy, but I couldn’t really think of him that way. He had said he didn’t want to hurt me, that he wasn’t going to hurt me, and for some reason I believed him. I trusted him, but maybe I shouldn’t have.
Rafa was a total stranger, but I still found myself attracted to him. It was so stupid and frustrating, but I kept seeing that kiss. Now he knew my real name and who I was, so all of that had to be over. Still, he had said he wouldn’t hurt me. I had to believe in that.
And I had to do what he said. No more researching the Spiders. I was done with human trafficking, done with the whole damn thing. I wanted to help the city, but I didn’t want to get myself killed. I could do more good alive than I could dead.
I left my apartment and got into my crappy, old, beat-up Nissan Altima. I headed out to the paper’s office, needing something to distract myself.
I wasn’t full time at the paper, but I could still come and go. I could use the office if I needed to, and there were always stories that needed a freelancer to write them up. They were usually really boring fluff pieces, like articles about local T-ball teams or something like that, but they paid money. I could use a little money and a little distraction.
I parked and headed into the office building. I rode the elevator up to the fifth floor, glancing over my shoulder the whole time. I was paranoid and I knew it, but I had to keep myself together. Rafa had said I needed to just lie low, so that was what I’d do.
The elevator doors opened and I walked out onto the floor. I smiled and nodded at the receptionist, who waved to me as I passed. I headed toward the bull pen in the back, my heart beating fast.
I loved newspapers and journalists. Writers were the weirdest people in
the world, and journalists were the weirdest writers. They were jaded and tough people, each of them a grizzled veteran of countless stories, disappointments, fights, and threats. I wanted to be a real journalist one day, a proper journalist, not the pretender I currently was. My human trafficking story was meant to be the start of that, but now I’d have to find a new way.
The room was buzzing as I crossed the floor. I nodded at a few people I recognized, but mostly I was a stranger in here. I was just a freelancer, which meant I was the bottom of the bottom. I didn’t mind that so much, though sometimes the more established people could be assholes.
“Yo, Cass!”
I paused and smiled. “Jimmy.”
“How’s it going?”
Jimmy stood in the door of his office, his arms crossed. He was in his fifties, his hair graying, his skin taut and tanned. He was thin, probably from the constant stress of being a newspaper editor.
He was the man who had hired me. I considered him my mentor in some ways. When I first got started freelancing, he was the only person to go out of his way to try to help me learn the ropes. He was a good guy, though he could be pretty tough sometimes.
I liked that about him. I liked that he was a no-nonsense kind of guy. His newsroom was orderly, or at least as orderly as a newsroom could be.
I walked over and shrugged. “It’s going okay.”
“Haven’t seen you around in a couple weeks.”
“Been busy.”
“With what? You haven’t written me a damn thing.”
“I was working on my own story for a bit.”
“That human trafficking thing? Still on that?”
“I was,” I said, shaking my head, “but I’m not anymore.”
“What stopped you?”
I paused, not sure what to say. For a second, I wanted to tell him the truth.
But that was stupid. I couldn’t tell him the truth. Rafa had specifically told me not to tell anyone, or at least he had strongly implied that. I wasn’t about to be an idiot the very next day.
“I just got stuck,” I said. “Got sick of banging my head up against it. So now I’m taking a break.”
“Don’t take a break too long,” Jimmy said. “You’ll lose the magic. Know what I mean?”
“I don’t, no. Not really.”
He shrugged. “In any job, there’s a flow. You get into that flow, the job goes easy. In writing a story, a serious story, the flow can be long and boring, but it’s there, sitting at the edges. You can’t lose that.”
“I hear what you’re saying.”
“So stick with it. Every important story started out with a slog. You’ll get past it.”
“Thanks. Maybe I will.”
“You here for some cash in the meantime?”
“That’s the goal.”
He nodded. “Got some real awful shit in the bin. Go have at it.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Good luck, kid.” He waved and disappeared back into his office.
I walked away, frowning to myself.
Was I giving up too easily?
The whole point of being a serious investigative journalist was that you didn’t give up easily. You fought tooth and nail for the truth, no matter what. And here I was, walking away at the first sign of difficulty.
But no. No, that was so stupid. Most journalists didn’t get death threats from the mob. This wasn’t a normal situation.
I kept walking, distracted and frustrated. I stopped at a long table in the back of the room filled with story slips, basically little one-page sheets presenting what stories needed to be written. I grabbed a few that looked promising and headed back out.
They didn’t pay much, maybe a few hundred per finished product, more if they actually got used. But I could make rent if I churned out a few of them per month. They took maybe a week’s worth of effort, sometimes less, sometimes more. It all depended on what I took.
I got into the elevator and headed back down, my mind buzzing with Jimmy’s words, with Rafa’s threats. I didn’t know who to believe or who to trust, or if I needed to simply do what I thought was best.
It was all so much. I clutched the story sheets, trying not to let anger overtake me. Then again, maybe anger was good. It was definitely better than fear.
The elevator got to the bottom and I walked back out through the lobby. I didn’t know what I wanted, and I didn’t feel any better, but at least I had some work to do. I was best when I had something to distract me, something to throw myself into. I wasn’t going to forget what was happening to me, but at least I could ignore it for a little bit while I got these assignments done.
As I walked out into the warm summer day, I stopped in my tracks.
Up ahead, leaning against the hood of a black muscle car, was Rafa. He smiled and took his sunglasses off when he spotted me.
Fear and excitement spiked through my chest. It was a strange feeling. I wanted to run away and I wanted to run toward him, and I didn’t know which was stronger.
In the end, I just stood there. He walked up to me, wearing an expensive-looking suit and smiling that cocky grin.
“You look good,” he said to me.
“How did you know I was here?”
He shrugged. “I followed you.”
“You what?”
“Followed you.”
“That’s creepy.”
“Yeah, maybe. But you’d thank me if you understood why.”
“Try explaining.”
He frowned at me. I wanted to reach out and touch his handsome face. I wanted him to press me against the wall and kiss me until I couldn’t stop myself from tearing his clothes off. I wanted to scream for help.
“Are you sure you want to know?” he asked.
“I need to know.”
“Your friend is dead.”
I gaped at him, sadness welling up in me. I barely knew her, and yet I felt such sadness for her death. I could barely describe it, but I had felt a strange kinship with her. She was so much stronger than I could ever be, but part of me thought that if things had been different for me, maybe I could have been her one day.
But now she was gone, and I felt a sadness drill its way through my stomach.
“How?” I asked.
“You know how. If it makes you feel any better, she didn’t talk. Well, except to dime you out.”
“It doesn’t make me feel better.”
“I didn’t think it would. But listen to me. You’re in even more danger than before.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the only lead they have left.”
“But I don’t know anything.”
“I know that. They don’t.”
“What does this mean?”
“It means that I was making sure nobody is trying to snatch you off the street and tear your fingernails off until you tell them anything they want to hear and more.”
I took a step back from him, horrified. “They do that?”
“They do that.” He shook his head. “I’m not trying to scare you here, Cassidy. I’m trying to help you.”
“You’re doing a great job of not scaring me.”
“I’m not suited to this,” he said. “I’m not normally trying to fucking save someone.”
“What are you normally trying to do?”
He was big and intense, muscular and tattooed. I knew what he normally did.
“I normally break skulls. I normally hurt people. Bad people, but still.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Trust me. That’s all you can do.” He gestured at his car. “Come on. I’m going to give you a ride home.”
“I have my car here.”
“We’ll get it later. I want to make sure you get home okay.”
“And then what? You stay at my place forever?”
“No,” he said. “And then I leave. I need to go back to the compound and figure this shit out.”
“What compound?” I gro
und my teeth, frustrated as hell. “I’m over my head here, Rafa.”
“I know that.” He suddenly stepped toward me and put his hand on the small of my back. I froze, the twin feelings of fear and excitement surging through me.
Excitement won over. I didn’t move a muscle.
“I’ll take care of you,” he said. “Come with me.”
“Okay,” I practically whispered.
We walked toward his car, and I felt a tingling desire rush down along my back. As I climbed into the passenger seat and his engine roared to life, I wondered if I was making the right decision here.
I didn’t know this guy. He was intense and gorgeous, but so far all I had was his word for it.
But he knew my name. And he knew who Dasha was.
And he was definitely in the mob.
I knew I was screwed. There was no going back from that.
Maybe Rafa could keep me alive and get me through this.
10
Rafa
I drove Cassidy back to her apartment, checked to make sure nobody was waiting for her, and then left. As far as I could tell, I was the only one following her, and none of Ernesto’s guys were lurking around the building.
As much as I wanted to stay, I had to get back. I had to talk to Ernesto and see what he was thinking before I made any other moves. Maybe I could have brought the girl with me, but that was like pulling her into the hornet’s nest.
She was safest in her apartment. I told her that if anyone other than me came to the door, she should call the cops. That wouldn’t help in the long run, but it would keep her alive for a little bit. Long enough for me to try to help, at least.
I pulled into the parking structure and headed back inside. My mind was buzzing with a thousand different scenarios, but one thing kept coming back to me.
I wanted that girl. As soon as I had touched her body, I was reminded all over again. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking about her that way. I couldn’t see her as just another civilian, an enemy of the mafia. I couldn’t think of her as a target.
Sure, she’d lied to me, but fuck, I lied all the time. I didn’t give a damn that her real name was Cassidy or that she thought she was going to use me for a story. She knew as well as I did that she wasn’t going to get shit out of me, that she was really just doing it because she couldn’t help herself.