Page 93 of At Her Pleasure
He clasped his hands between his spread knees. The shirt she wore had holes and carried soil stains from past gardening work, as well as fresh earth she’d stirred up with her chopping. He wanted to pluck it off her gently, feel her warmth beneath the cotton. He curled his hands against his knees.
“I thought about it for a while. Made some contacts through people I knew. Finally sat down with a guy who had my kind of thinking. He was already involved in a loose network. They just lacked someone willing to do what it took.”
He met her dark gaze. “Someone who craves pain that never ends is already wired to keep his head and operate under levels of mental duress most can’t. Go figure, right? What they needed wasn’t someone to save the ones already in it. They wanted to get at the information needed to nail the major players and dismantle networks. They needed someone to run the long game, get in deep, be part of the system, seem like the same soulless bastard as anyone else. Take what he learned and funnel it to the right agencies. Logistics, operations, resource caches. When the key important people who could be flipped would be most vulnerable to being taken down.”
He took a breath. “If the current trafficked victims are freed or helped by that, good. But no matter what’s happening to them, even if right in front of my face, that’s not my job. I have to be a part of the machinery facilitating it, keeping it oiled and running, with money, with buyers, whatever’s needed to maintain my cover.”
He had to stop and stare at her feet for a minute. It had been a long time since he’d had to put it into words, a job description straight out of Hell’s HR department. “My handler told me I was perfect for it. I don’t have any family left. My parents died when I was young, and my grandmother raised me after that. She died a few years before this went down. No siblings, and I’ve had trouble keeping close friends.”
He lifted his gaze. “My grandmother said I always had a reserve to me, a watchfulness that made people uncomfortable. She wasn’t mean. She was worried about my isolation. I never felt much desire to fix it. Over time, I realized it connects to a dark place inside me. The other cops sensed it; they couldn’t pin it down, but I don’t think they were sorry to see me go, even though they had my back while I was one of them. Anyhow, that identity, everything about my background, was scrubbed and restructured.”
The story had her full attention, though she still didn’t look happy with him. “So what does someone find when they dig into your background?”
“If they go deep enough, they’ll find what was created to give me entry into trafficking circles. I was suspected of being a dirty cop, and when I quit, it was just ahead of them looking for an official reason to fire me.
“I’d been drifting on the edges of the BDSM scene before you and I met. My handler suggested I use kink event planning as my job cover. Privacy is everything in that world. I had his help and contacts to keep anyone from going beyond a simple membership vetting to find that fake record. Being accepted by clubs and organizations that use my legitimate services is a cover that works on the illegal side. Right or wrong, plenty of people assume BDSM is a cover or bridge to criminal sexual behavior.”
He grimaced. “Deep cover experience taught me how to become the friendly guy my grandmother encouraged me to be. The event coordinator. I already told you how I do what I do. I don’t have to be the Martha Stewart of party planning to be good at it.”
“You’re very good at it.” The implication in her tone was clear. Even if you’re shit at other things.
He took that as his due, the kick he needed to get into the rougher stuff. Mick leaned forward again, laced his fingers, unlaced them. The skeleton pendant dangled in open air, the chain twitching against his neck.
“This next part, I’m just going to get it out. It’s the only honest way to explain what happened tonight.”
He kept his gaze on her hands, her thighs, the way she sat. He thought about her body, how it felt against him. How it felt, just to be in her presence. Close enough to touch, even if touch wasn’t permitted. It helped, to hold onto that.
“Here’s a typical night at my other job. I’m sitting with a group of guys, drinking an aged Scotch and comparing it to Kentucky bourbon. Twenty feet away, a teenager who’s never had sex before is being raped by a billionaire who paid for the privilege. He wants to take the kid’s virginity in front of an indifferent audience. Once that’s over and the bill’s paid, he’ll take her home to be his live-in sex slave. I’ll never see her again. Never know what happened to her, because my focus isn’t on some end buyer piece of shit, but the men I’m drinking with. They supplied the kid, and connect to much bigger players who control the funnel of ‘product.’”
He moved his attention to the ratty sneakers. They looked like something from a dollar store. She didn’t wear any socks with them. She had dirt on her ankles. He thought about washing that off for her. Gentle hands, fragrant soap. Warm water.
“The fucking wasn’t just about exhibitionism. It was also business. He didn’t want to get home and find out she wasn’t a virgin. Like checking everything’s in the bag at McDonald’s before you leave the drive thru.”
He could feel the weight of her gaze increasing, evidence of an emotional reaction, but he still didn’t look up.
“I’ve given advice on where to bury a tobacco farm worker so she wouldn’t be found or connected to the people who disposed of her. A pregnant woman. She dropped in the field, probably from heat, malnutrition, dehydration. She was close enough to full term her fellow workers tried to get her baby out, but the cord wrapped around his neck, like a damn suicide in the womb.
“All forty-four of them—now forty-two—were kept in a barn when they weren’t working. No air conditioning, with old soup pots for toilets. They won’t run, because if they do, their family members back home will be killed in the most horrible ways possible. So they work until they drop.”
“Mick.” Her feet shifted. He shook his head, sitting back. Scraping his chair out of range. Let me get it done.
“If I was a cop, or officially associated with any agency, I couldn’t stand by when I witness or learn about crimes of that magnitude. Outside any official capacity, sponsored by concerned citizens with endless pots of money, I’m like a CI. I’m deep in the system, a problem solver, with the connections and experience to make things happen. That cover comes from eight built-from-the-ground-up years of verifiable history and reputation among them. I’m considered the go-to in certain situations, a man who can put the right people together, get things done.”
Mick rose and paced to the end of the patio, circled back, sat down again. “The call I took earlier tonight had to do with a crew that runs a small but way too damn busy distribution hub in Texas. I’ve been working a plan to get a higher up in their organization to meet a major buyer there. The information I can collect at that meeting might eventually shut down that artery, capture him and a shitload of the main players in their network.”
Cyn’s hands were laced in her lap. He wondered if she ever wore rings. “There are over sixty people at that location right now,” he continued. “Various ages, some slotted for domestic or farm labor. But twenty-seven are girls, ages twelve to sixteen, premium age for the sex trade. Something happened while they were being ‘seasoned’ by the onsite handlers, and two of them died a few days ago. Local law enforcement stumbled on the bodies earlier tonight.”
He remembered the fear in Salazar’s voice. “The call was the onsite man in charge. He was afraid it was going to get back to the higher up, or the major buyer he’s coming to meet. He wanted my help to make sure that didn’t happen.”
Which had meant placing the right calls to point local law enforcement toward another culprit, equally as guilty. Just not of that particular set of murders. Criminal activity at the border gave him a grab bag of options.
Mick took a slow, even breath. Let it out. “I had to tear him a new one for not telling me about the girls sooner. Not because it’s a goddamn tragedy, but because his carelessness jeopardizes future business transactions. Letting his men get carried away with the girls wastes assets.”
He rose again. This time he made a wider circle, stopping at the earth she’d turned. He nudged it with his toe, watching it crumble at the pressure. “If I get the intel I want, feed it to the right people and they do their job, it might severely damage or even destroy a pipeline that currently traffics hundreds of people. But those girls will still be dead. I won’t know what happens to the others. The agencies might be able to track where they are and get them back to their families. They might help them stay here, if that’s a better situation, but it gets more complicated for the ones who’ve been forced into doing criminal activity before they reach them.”
He turned to look at her. “Hundreds against two. Sounds like a way to sleep at night, doesn’t it?”
“No. It doesn’t.”