Page 121 of Connor's Claim
My breathing came hard and I backed away. If I didn’t leave now, I’d do this with her all night, but duty called me out.
“Make yourself come again while I’m gone.”
She breathed a laugh. “I’m going downstairs to Cassie’s room, so that could get awkward pretty quickly.”
“Everly,” I warned. I needed to know we weren’t wasting any time.
“I’ll find a minute to slip away,” she promised. “Please be careful out there. I want a life with you. I want all the things we said to each other, and for us to live here and be happy. I want to lie in bed with you while you read your thriller novels and for us to work side by side. Come back to me.”
“I will, I swear.”
I also made her swear not to go down to any of the public floors, and ensured we had guards throughout the building ready and prepared, then it was time.
Arran wouldn’t have called me without good reason. My pulse beat steadily, and I shifted into action mode.
But Everly paused me one more time before I left. “There’s something I forgot to say earlier. I overheard a phone call in my father’s house. Red called the public line and asked my father to pick up. He said he could offer a deal to bring down the skeleton crew and tried to shame me for being seen naked on game night.” She curled her lip. “Fuck him. Anyway, my father picked up and said something about licensing. I didn’t hear anything else but I thought I’d better mention it.”
I thanked her and kissed her goodbye, my thoughts moving at double speed.
The shadows outside the warehouse accepted me. In the nondescript old car we used for recon, I backed out of the space, curling my lip at Riordan’s matte-black bike one bay over. For Everly’s sake, I needed to get to know him. He’d repaired the damage I’d caused, but for a show of loyalty, I needed him to adapt the colours that lit up the machine when he rode. From blue to neon pink and black.
From now on, he’d fly the skeleton crew flag proudly.
For late evening, the traffic was a steady line of red taillights all through town, but eventually, I arrived in a quiet street made of a mixture of run-down housing and disused office blocks. A figure appeared in the doorway of the address Arran had given me, and I recognised one of our crew. Exiting, I prowled over and merged in with the shadows.
He gave a head jerk for me to follow then took off into the building’s gloomy interior. Broken glass crunched under my boots, but I followed, senses alert in the tense air and still night.
Faint music reached me, growing louder as we climbed a set of utilitarian stairs which delivered us to an open-plan office. Here and there, broken furniture littered the floor, desks upended and papers strewn. The crew member silently left me, and I scanned the space until I located the man who’d called me in.
Masked up, Arran watched the street from a window. He was at the far side of the broad building where it adjoined another road, and here, the music was louder still. Carefully, I joined his stakeout, dirt on the window and a cluttered board behind us masking our shapes.
He spared me a look. “Tell me what you make of that.”
I followed his gaze to a church across the street. Last time I’d driven down here, tormenting the Four Milers with a scoutaround their limits, that church had lain silent from years of disuse. Built of stone, it had an entrance hall and a tower rising above, the bells long since removed. Kids had graffitied the walls, and paint had peeled on the door.
A freshly painted door which now lay open, spilling light to the pavement. Two men guarded the entranceway, welcoming a cautious visitor who climbed the short flight of steps with his eyes wide at whatever he could see through the doorway.
The visitor entered, and I scrutinised the building. This was the source of the thudding music, and I recognised at least one of the thugs playing bouncer from previous gang scuffles.
A car pulled up down the side of the church, and a man climbed out with a woman’s hand clamped in his. She was young, maybe twenty, and her fair hair hung forward over her face so I couldn’t identify her. I didn’t miss the aggression in how he yanked her into a side entrance of the building.
In a heartbeat, I realised why Arran had needed me to witness this.
“Strip club or brothel?” I asked.
“Possibly both. Opening night.”
Hot breath caught in my lungs.
The rising, shared anger between us could seem hypocritical, but that was surface level only. Divine, our strip club, and the unnamed brothel above operated for the benefit of women who chose to work there. Typically women who’d been trafficked and abused yet decided to flip the narrative and make money on their own terms. We provided protection and security. We offered a safe space and took predators off the street.
What I was looking at now was undoubtedly a sham version. One where the women were coerced rather than enabled. Red didn’t give a fuck about hurting people. He’d sell his own grandmother if offered cash for her bones.
The Four Milers had expanded beyond their territory of drug-running and blatantly breached ours.
I exhaled fury, facts adding up across the past couple of weeks.
To Arran, I quietly outlined the call Everly had overheard between Red and the mayor. “We’ve had women quit, too.”