Unspeakable

by Elisabeth Naughton

  He knew how to disguise himself on the network, making sure he used onion servers so nothing could be traced back to him, and had set up an account with the site long ago so his motives—in situations like this—wouldn’t be questioned. All “members” were vetted, not with any kind of background search, since the whole point of the Plague’s dealings was that they were anonymous, but with money. And he’d made sure to transfer a good chunk of his profits from the vineyard these last few years into a Bitcoin account they could verify was at the level expected for membership—meaning he had enough funds on hand to buy what they were selling.

  Keeping that account high enough was part of the reason it had taken so long to gather the money to expand his winery, but he didn’t regret it. Not if it saved some poor kid from a hell he didn’t even want to imagine.

  He posted his interest in the auction and waited. It didn’t take long to be approved and for a separate message to come through telling him where the auction would take place late Friday night. Unlike the dealings he’d witnessed at seedy strip clubs in the past, though, this was happening at a very different kind of club. A club the cops steered clear of because it catered to the top echelon of society. To the really corrupt fuckers who had no problem buying people as if they were nothing more than chattel.

  Disgust turned his stomach, but he was determined to do what he had to do to get that girl out of there. He owed her that much after the way everything had gone down the other night. But first, per the terms of the invitation, he needed a date.

  For a moment he’d considered contacting Blake to see if she’d pose as his companion for the evening, then thought better of it. Not only did he not trust the woman, but the sultry images of her in his guest bed were still circling in his head from Tuesday, and he knew seeing her decked out in something slinky in that club just might make him lose his mind.

  So he went with the second-best option. He took a chance and circled back to that alley a few blocks from Assets where he’d talked to that redhead. And by some stroke of luck, she was not only there but also said yes.

  “You’re sure no one’s going to recognize me in there?” Brooklyn fixed the strap of her slinky black dress as they stood in the lobby of the posh building downtown and waited for the elevator.

  “Not a hundred percent sure, but I’m pretty sure you’re safe.” In the slim-fitting dress that hit just above her knees and matching, tasteful heels, and with her red hair straightened and her makeup subtle, not flashy as it had been earlier, no one would ever take her for a street worker. In fact, looking at her now, Rusty had a hard time envisioning her on the street at all. He also had a hard time believing she was only twenty years old, a fact he’d wrangled out of her when they’d been at the mall picking out her dress for the evening.

  “You hope.”

  The elevator doors opened, and he held out his hand to let her move into the small car in front of him. Her heels clicked as she stepped in and turned back to face him. Tugging at the sleeve of the purple dress shirt he’d worn, hating that he’d had to dig out a pair of slacks and a jacket for this place, he stepped in beside her, feeling old next to the young girl, feeling like a louse for taking her to this club. Of course, he was paying her, and this wasn’t for fun, but he still felt like a douche. The only plus to the entire night was that he hadn’t needed a tie. And that she’d said yes on such short notice.

  “Here.” He tugged the eye mask he’d picked up for her earlier from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

  “What’s this?”

  “Something to make sure no one recognizes you.”

  She smirked and slid the leopard-print eye mask on, fixing the strap so it tucked under her hair while he tugged on his black mask. “How do I look?” she asked when they were both done.

  “Completely anonymous.”

  She chuckled and faced the doors.

  “Did you think about my offer at all?” he asked as the car started to move down.

  “You mean about the wine?” Gripping her clutch in front of her, she flashed him a look with green eyes that seemed so much darker here than they had on the street.

  “Winery. The tasting room’s opening in a few months. I need people who know how to deal with the public.”

  She huffed. “And you think a hooker is your best option?”

  “No, I think someone who’s smart and savvy is my best option. As for the ‘hooker’ part, I’m pretty sure that’s what you’re pretending to be, not what you really are.”

  She turned to face him, her eyes narrowing as if he’d belittled her. “I don’t need you to save me, you know. I don’t have any Cinderella fantasies in my head. I’m a realist.”

  “I know you are. And it’s clear as day you can take care of yourself. But there’s nothing wrong with accepting help now and then from people who are willing to give it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to help me? You don’t even know me. I know you don’t want sex; you already made that clear. So what’s your deal? Do you have some knight-in-shining-armor syndrome?”

  He knew she meant the question as a joke, but to him it wasn’t funny. Not at all. He turned and looked down at her. “I knew someone like you once. No one helped her. Not even me when I should have. I don’t want to see anyone else end up like her.”

  Her green gaze searched his for several seconds. “So that’s why we’re here?”

  “Yes. That girl I asked you about the other night? She’s going to be auctioned off to some pretty unsavory people in this club tonight. Unless someone stops it from happening.”

  “You’re talking about that dick with the accent, aren’t you?”

  The one who’d pulled a gun on him in those tunnels. “Yes. You know him?”

  “Not well. He approached me a few times. I told him to fuck off.”

  “See? I knew you were smart.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Not that smart. Look where I am.”

  “You can be anywhere you want to be, Brooklyn. Do anything you want to do. All you have to do is believe you can make it happen.”

  Hannah McClane had said that to him once. He’d never forgotten. It was part of the reason he was here now.

  The look she shot him said she wasn’t sure she believed that, but as she turned to face the elevator doors once more, she said, “I don’t want to see any other young girls wind up like me either. And I definitely don’t want them anywhere near that prick with the accent. But I still think you have some weird hero fetish.”

  He smirked.

  “And I’ll think about the winery. But you should know up front, I don’t even like wine.”

  “Well, you’re not old enough to drink it.”

  She flashed him another sly look that said she was way wiser than her age. “Touché.”

  The elevator doors opened, and he reached for her hand, playing the part of an older dude with a hot young girlfriend out for a night of fun. In a low voice he said, “Stay near me at all times. I don’t want anyone getting any ideas about you.”

  “Don’t worry.” She gazed across the trendy club with its sparkling chandeliers and people in masks and suits and fancy dresses with a look that told him she wasn’t nearly as confident as she’d seemed minutes before. “This is not my normal crowd. And I don’t want these freaks getting any ideas about me either.”

  They moved into the fancy room, where a maître d’ spoke quietly with Rusty and checked off the name he used online. Moving past the check-in station, they went down another set of steps and into the main club. A dance floor took up the central space. A popular beat echoed through the room, and couples were moving and dancing across the floor. U-shaped velvet booths were set up all around the perimeter, and off to the left stood a long, shiny bar, complete with every type of alcohol imaginable.

  Brooklyn glanced around with wide eyes as they reached the main level and leaned close to his ear. “Have you been here before?”

&nbs
p; “No, but they described it on the site. This is the tame part of the club.”

  “Tame?”

  “Supposedly.” Rusty nodded to the left, where a set of double doors kept opening and closing, admitting different couples. “I guess things get pretty wild back there.”

  “How wild?”

  “Anything you can imagine.”

  “Like orgies and stuff?”

  “And whips and chains if that’s what you’re into, depending on the night.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “I’m actually not.”

  She glanced around the room again. Most of the men were Rusty’s age and older. Most of the women were in their low twenties, like Brooklyn. “Depraved old fucks, aren’t they?”

  One corner of Rusty’s mouth turned up in a half smile, her comment easing the pressure in his chest just a touch. “Thanks.”

  She looked back at him. “For what?”

  “You just called me old.”

  She tipped her head. “Well. You are, kind of. How old are you?”

  “Way too old for you. Trust me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Please. You’re not even my type.”

  He led her toward the bar, not wanting anyone to think they were acting odd standing around staring. “And what is your type?”

  “Innocent. I like guys who aren’t fucked up.”

  Rusty got the bartender’s attention and ordered two club sodas.

  “I also like skateboarders,” she said when he handed her the drink. “Something tells me you aren’t a skateboarder.”

  “Nope.” He steered her away from the bar and into the shadows. “That’d be my younger brother.”

  “You have a brother?” She sipped her drink through the stirring straw, just as a kid would do.

  “I have three. The youngest is close to your age.”

  “And he skateboards?” She took another sip. “Maybe I will think about that wine job.”

  “He’s a little fucked up.”

  “If he boards I might be able to overlook that.”

  Rusty’s grin widened. He liked this girl. Liked her a lot, in a friendly, big-brother kind of way. He just seriously hoped he wasn’t about to screw up her life.

  “So where’s this girl we came to find?” she whispered, leaning into him as she glanced over the dance floor again. “Will she be out here?”

  “No, she’ll be somewhere in the back.”

  She drew back and looked up at him. “Then why are we wasting our time out here?”

  Shit. This was the part he hadn’t thought through. “I told you, it’s supposed to be pretty bad back there.”

  She shot him a get-real look. “I’ve worked the streets. You think I haven’t seen bad stuff?”

  He knew she had. And he definitely didn’t like that. “Yeah, I know, but—”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Are you worried about being turned on by what you’ll see back there?”

  He nearly choked on a sip of his soda. “No.” Using the napkin wrapped around his glass, he swiped at his lips. “That’s not at all what I’m worried about.”

  “Because if you are, it’s normal. I mean, people get turned on by the sounds and sights of sex all the time. It’s biological. That’s why porn’s so popular.”

  His face heated. He knew she worked in the sex industry, but he really didn’t want to be having this conversation with her. It made him feel . . . like a lech.

  “Trust me. That’s not the problem.”

  “Then what is?”

  What was the problem? It hit him all at once. The problem was he didn’t want to be in this club with her. He wanted to be here with a woman who was his type. One who was feisty and combative and tough and who’d run from his house before he’d had the chance to even check to see that she was okay.

  “Why didn’t you ask her to join you tonight?”

  He blinked and looked down at Brooklyn. “What?”

  “The woman you’re thinking about,” she said softly. “Why didn’t you ask her instead of me?”

  His face heated again. Fuck. Had he said all of that out loud?

  “I . . .” Words wouldn’t seem to form on his lips. He couldn’t even think of an answer.

  “You know, for a knight in shining armor, you’re not all that smart when it comes to women.”

  He blinked again, knowing what she said was totally true. He had absolutely no idea how women worked. Especially Blake.

  “Sometimes it’s a curse having pinpoint intuition.” She took the drink from his hand, turned and set both glasses on the end of the bar, then closed her fingers around his and pulled. “Enough stalling. That girl’s waiting.”

  He let Brooklyn pull him toward the double doors, more confused than he’d been before. Not about her, though. About Blake. And what the hell he really wanted from the woman.

  “Word to the wise, though,” Brooklyn said as she looked back at him with a knowing grin. “I’m pretty sure you’re gonna want to call that woman when you get home tonight because you’re gonna be all kinds of out of sorts after you see what’s behind these doors. And something tells me she’d be the only one who’d be able to fix that for you.”

  Well, fuck. He had a feeling this girl might be right. And he had no idea what the hell he was going to do about that, because he was fairly certain he was the last person Blake would ever want to fix that for.

  Harper was operating on a hunch. A big hunch. One she hoped wasn’t about to land her in serious trouble.

  Or worse, dead.

  After Robinson texted her back with confirmation her deal was a go, she’d spent the last three days researching the Plague and scanning the dark web for anything she could find on the group. What she’d uncovered was pretty disgusting. What she’d realized was happening right here in Portland was downright revolting.

  The Plague was careful—she’d give them that. She’d had to do a lot of searching and hiding in chat rooms to get even a whiff of their site. But once she stumbled onto a chat about an auction in Portland tonight, she’d known where McClane would turn up next. And she’d known just how she could convince him she was on his side.

  Sure, she could have stopped by his house since she knew where he lived, had a heart-to-heart with him about the whole thing, but she knew people. She knew someone like McClane would never go for that. The only way to convince him was to prove herself. And if this didn’t do the trick, she didn’t know what would.

  Getting into the building was a definite problem. She knew where the auction would take place—in the lower levels of a swanky hotel downtown. But she couldn’t get on the guest list. There wasn’t enough time to be approved as a member, and she didn’t have that kind of cash lying around for the approval anyway. So her second choice had been to get around the security she was sure would be tight for the event. And she’d done that by contacting a friend at the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability and obtaining print maps for the tunnels that she knew still ran under all the buildings in the city.

  Locating access to this particular building hadn’t been that difficult. And after she got over her fear of rats in the tunnels below, it hadn’t even been all that dangerous. A set of stairs had led up to the boiler room, and to her surprise, the lock on the aged steel door had been so old it hadn’t taken much to jimmy it to get in.

  Once inside, she’d tugged the clothes she’d brought with her out of a duffel, quickly changed, then stuffed everything else back in and hidden the bag behind a furnace. Smoothing her hand down the shimmery full-length emerald dress with spaghetti straps and a slit that ran right up to her thigh, she shook back her hair and told herself, hopefully, she wouldn’t need to play the part of the rich and lecherous mistress about to get her freak on. But just in case anyone saw her slinking around the back rooms, she wanted to blend in, not stick out like a sore thumb in jeans, sneakers, and her go-to fitted black tee.

  She had no idea if she’d chosen the right kind of
dress. The website had said formal, but she’d gone for more conservative than slutty, figuring the people who could afford this kind of entertainment wouldn’t look like they’d walked in from a strip club. She could have gone for something shorter. It would have been easier to move in. But “shorter” meant tighter, and “tighter” meant she wouldn’t have been able to wear her thigh holster—which she was really grateful for now.

  “Find the girl,” she muttered to herself as she headed for the door. She pulled it open, then scanned the dark corridor that was—thankfully—empty. Nothing else mattered. She didn’t even care if McClane was here or not. Once he realized she’d been the one to get the girl to safety, he’d know she meant business. And aside from that, part of her—a big part of her—wanted to find the girl to make up for the fact she was the reason McClane’s rescue the other night had gone to shit.

  She moved out into the corridor in her low, sparkly heels, clutch in hand, and turned to her right. The hallway wove around through the back of the building. Doors were spaced every so often along the corridor, but each one she checked was locked. Then she heard voices.

  Male voices. Several. Coming in her direction. Speaking a language she didn’t understand.

  Her adrenaline pulsed. She didn’t know who they were, but she wasn’t about to be caught, especially down here. Heart in her throat, she quickly darted in the other direction, found another set of stairs that led up, grabbed the railing and took them two at a time until she found a swinging door and pushed herself through, only to draw up short when she realized she’d stumbled into a kitchen.

  A man in a chef’s hat turned her way and scowled. With a wave of his hand, he muttered a string of words in a language Harper didn’t understand, then pointed to another door on the opposite side of the kitchen.

  “I’m so sorry. I was looking for a restroom and got lost.” Harper skirted the ovens and the long stainless counter in the middle of the industrial-size space where several other cooks stared at her as if she’d lost her head. “I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again.”