He shrugged.She was really taking this “I’ll protect you” crap seriously. Like she was going to fend off whatever evil they were about to encounter with her bare fists and wearing stilettos. Meanwhile, he was behind her, packing heat and armed with over a decade of experience as a detective. He was also accomplished in martial arts and had grown up in a household where defending himself against near-constant beatings had taught him a thing or two about protecting himself and others. The experience hadn’t been a happy one for him. But he was tempted to tell her about it now. If anyone should be out in front, it should be him.
She led him through a set of doors and down two flights of stairs. Subterranean as it was, he encountered stale air and picked up the coppery smell of blood. What he did not hear was the click of her heels. He zeroed in on her stilettos and realized she was walking in such a way that he couldn’t hear her footsteps. After concentrating on the phenomenon for several seconds, he shook his head. Maybe he’d underestimated her. Rowan, it seemed, had some skills.
“Do you smell that?” he whispered, inhaling the coppery tang of blood again.
“I suspect it’s about to get worse.” She paused at a door with a keypad lock. “Take my hand.”
He did as she asked and felt a strange ripple flow through him. He seriously needed to control himself. The kind of chemistry going on inside him when he was with Rowan was something that belonged in a high school classroom. He was positively smitten. Smitten like a man who’d never seen a woman before. The feeling was carnal, undeniable, and embarrassing.
He watched her type in a nine-digit code she must have procured from Verinetti. The door unlocked, and they entered a posh, dimly lit hall connecting a series of small booths, each with its own round table of dark wood. Each had a red velvet privacy curtain, but only a few were drawn, blocking the view of who was inside. Most of the curtains were tied back. As they passed, Nick saw both men and women sitting at those tables, eyes turned toward a runway where a fashion model paced. Dressed in a striking ball gown, the woman paused at the end of the stage where the guests seemed to evaluate her.
Hand in hand with Rowan, Nick passed another booth where an important-looking man with gray hair and an expensive suit turned to look at him. Gerald Stevenson. He squeezed Rowan’s hand. Hadn’t she said Gerald was the one buying up land for NAVAK?He wanted to ask the guy some questions, but Stevenson’s rheumy blue eyes passed right over him as if he weren’t even there, and then he drew his red curtain closed. Typical.
Rowan tugged him along the hall and into an empty booth, closing the curtain. She placed a finger over her lips. It would have helped a lot if she’d briefed him on what Verinetti had told her, but he could play along. She pointed at the woman on stage, then tapped her inner wrist.
He focused on the woman in the ball gown who paced away from them, turned on her heel, and paced back. There it was. He couldn’t make out the details of the tattoo from here, but it wasn’t difficult to see the placement and shape were the same.
Oh hell no. Nick looked right, then left. Lights flashed in each booth. Everything clicked at once. They were bidding on this girl.Human trafficking. He knew the signs, and they chilled him to his soul. All these people were here to buy the tattooed girls. And his dead girl? Probably bought by the wrong person, used up and thrown out. He swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat.
Rowan selected a set of headphones from the wall and handed them to him, then put her own set over her ears. A sultry woman’s voice filled his head.
“Once again, the current bid is eighty. She’s type B positive, no health conditions, and has fed on only fruits and nuts for the past seven days. Going once. Eight-five to the gentleman in booth six. Once… Twice… Sold to booth six for $85,000. You can pick up your purchase at the back of the auction house.”
Nick nudged Rowan and mouthed, “B positive?” Why were they giving out her blood type and her dietary habits?Oh dear Lord, he thought, they were auctioning these people for a medical purpose. Were they using them for black market organs? He fisted his hands, but Rowan shook her head and pointed at her headphones. A man walked out on stage, and Nick had no trouble spotting the tattoo on his wrist as well. So it wasn’t just women. This guy was big, muscular, not an easy target. It had to be organs.
“Now, a special treat,” the voice began. “Male, twenty-seven, type O negative. Blood has been purified of all foreign substances. We will start the bidding at one hundred.” A light blinked in one of the booths. “Thank you, booth four. Do I have 110?”
Nick reached for his phone. He needed backup. Human trafficking on this scale was not something he could handle alone. Even though he was careful to keep the thing behind his leg, Rowan’s hand slapped over the glowing screen almost immediately. Her face snapped toward the stage. The announcer was staring directly at him.
“Put it away,” Rowan whispered, removing her headphones. He slipped the phone back into his pocket and removed his own headphones. But Rowan looked nervous as hell. She took his hand again, and the electric ripple he’d noticed before washed over him. With a tug that pulled him out of his seat, she had them both out of the booth and into the hall before he could say another word. Three large men walked right past them as if they were invisible and burst into their booth.
She tugged harder, and before he could process how weird the entire situation was, he was running to keep up with her, following the bend of the hallway toward the staircase where they’d entered the auction room. Only there was someone blocking the exit, an athletic-looking man in a suit, tall and big as an NBA player. He had a blond woman in a short white dress against the wall, and she was trembling like she was scared as hell. The girl’s wrist was marked with a NAVAK tattoo.
Rowan’s grip tightened on Nick’s hand. He froze. What the hell was going on here? The big guy glanced in their direction but looked right through them. Nick looked over his shoulder. They were standing in the middle of the hallway.
And that’s when things went from weird to nightmarish. Nick watched as the man’s eyes turned from brown to silver and two sharp canines dropped from his upper mouth. Was this some kind of vampire cult? Jesus, those things looked real. The girl made a high-pitched noise in the back of her throat.
“Relax, little virgin,” the man said, and the girl did. Too bad that trick didn’t work on Nick. His ticker was pounding out a get-the-hell-outta-Dodge rhythm in his chest in reaction to the Halloween scare fest going on in front of him.
Those teeth landed in the girl’s jugular. If the slurping hadn’t turned Nick’s stomach, the flow of crimson that trickled down between her breasts and stained her dress certainly would. His brain refused to accept what he was seeing. People biting people in some twisted cosplay fetish? Nick could take it no longer.
He shook free of Rowan’s hand and drew his gun. “Hold it right there!”
Nick noticed three things at once. One, the man with the prosthetic teeth finally noticed him and reacted with a threatening hiss. He released the blonde, who ran away as fast as her legs could carry her. Two, Rowan disappeared. Like poof from his side into thin air disappeared. And three, the guy was pissed and didn’t seem a bit afraid of his gun.
“Who the fuck are you?” The man sniffed the air. “Human, you don’t belong here.”
“Shut the fuck up and put your hands behind your back.”
Big Guy did not comply. The man lunged for Nick and the freak was fast, really fast, but Nick was fast too. He’d spent his childhood dodging his guardian’s fists and years practicing jujitsu, and that was before the police academy. He’d had more than enough opportunity to practice in the field too. So when a guy as big as this one came at him, his body knew what to do. He leaned back, watched the guy’s fist punch the air over his nose, and at the same time levered his leg up to kick the man in the balls.
The freak hissed like a cat and flew backward, almost like an invisible force had thrown him. Even the biggest guys crumpled when hit in the family jewels.
Nick raised his gun again. “Don’t move. I don’t want to hurt you.” That wasn’t exactly true. Nick would love to hurt the dude, and the truth was he could have easily shot the man instead of kicking him in the balls. But he never pulled the trigger unless he wanted his target to die. And he didnotwant this creep to die. He wanted him to answer questions about the tattoo and the dead girl and what was going on tonight.
Where the hell was Rowan?
“Nick, look out!” she said in his ear.
