Giselle snorted. Her skin was still pale, but she’d stopped shaking. “Except he found me.”
“No. He didn’t find you. He asked about you, but he didn’t get his hands on you and he won’t. But did he ever bring you here? Did anybody?”
“No. He kept me and the other girls on the other side of town, over by the old high school.”
There wasn’t just one “old” high school in Seattle, but there were a lot fewer than expected for a city that was two hundred years old. Online school had rendered many of them obsolete and many had been demolished to make room for more skyscrapers. The area Taryn had assumed was the pimp’s territory included an old school. She had no idea what it was used for these days.
Taryn reached out and patted the girl’s hand. “That’s what I thought his territory was, too.”
She’d terrorized Giselle and still wasn’t any closer to discovering why he’d shown up tonight. Frustration clawed at her insides.
“Did he have any rivals? Enemies who might have territory around here?”
Over the past few years, Taryn had leveraged the Jack’s reputation to eradicate the pimps who claimed territory around the bar. Most people believed they’d left of their own volition—which they had, if you counted threats of bodily harm and disappearance as their own decision. When new pimps had tried to move into the territory, well, they didn’t last long.
Giselle shook her head again. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.” She sounded frustrated, which was better than scared in Taryn’s mind.
“It’s okay. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t missing any information.” Taryn took a deep breath and prepared to ask her last, worst question. “Could he have put a second tracking device on you?”
“No!” Giselle trembled and wrapped her hands around her middle. Taryn expected her to cry, but she was a fighter and held her tears back. She hated to think about how Giselle had learned that skill.
“No,” Giselle repeated. “Do you think there’s another one?”
Fuck.How was Taryn supposed to answer that? She didn’t think so, but to risk everything she’d built on a hunch?
She chose her words carefully and tried to be reassuring. “No, I don’t think so. But I want to be sure. Just in case your pimp was tricky and used a second one.”
She braced for Giselle’s reaction. Once again, she proved stronger than expected.
After several fortifying sips of heavily sugared coffee, Giselle clutched her mug in both hands and stared into it. “What do I have to do?”
“We’ll need to do a second scan, with stronger equipment.”
“Can I think about it?” Giselle asked.
Shit, Giselle wasn’t going to like her answer. Taryn needed to be respectful of her feelings, but the answer was no. “I want to say yes, Giselle, but I can’t. I need to know for sure so I can protect you and the other girls.” Taryn looked her straight in the eyes. “Do you understand?”
She sniffled, but nodded. “I understand. If there’s a second tracker, will you send me away?”
“Absolutely not.” Taryn reached over and squeezed her hands. “We’ll do the scan now and if there’s a second one, we’ll take care of it the same way we did the first one. Okay?”
With one last sniff, Giselle straightened and nodded. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
Chapter16
After Taryn completed the scan—nosign of a second chip—Giselle returned to her room and Taryn returned to the business of running the bar. She found Dani pacing outside her office.
“Everything okay?” Honestly, Taryn wasn’t sure she could handle another issue tonight, but as the owner of Razor Jack’s, that was her job.
Dani shrugged. “How was the scan?”
“Clear.” Taryn sighed and let them both into the office. “I didn’t expect another chip, but I really want to know how that fucker made his way here.” She waved Dani toward a chair and pulled two bottles of fizzy water out of the small cooling unit she kept there. No caffeine, no alcohol. She needed to be clear-headed to deal with this new problem.
“Are you sure she didn’t contact him?” Dani’s voice was purely professional, but the pinch of her lips revealed how much she hated asking that question.
“Yeah, she was really freaked out. I’m sure it wasn’t her. Everything okay out there after I left?”
The silence grew and Taryn dropped her head into her hands. She’d really, really intended it as a rhetorical question.
