“That sounds lovely,” I reply.“Though if it’s a ball...”I let my voice fade away, leaving the implication that I didn’t exactly bring a ball gown with me to New Orleans.
Instead of replying, my father snaps his fingers and looks behind me.I turn to see his butler coming in, carrying a large box.
“A welcome home present,” my father says smoothly.
I glance at him, confused, then take the box from the butler and open it.Inside, I find a deep green satin ballgown.And when I look at the tag, it’s my size.
My heart drops into my stomach and I look up to see that my father is grinning.And it’s not a nice grin.
“I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he says smoothly.“At Under the City.Nine sharp.”
He stands and walks out of the room without saying goodbye, and I watch him go, my skin crawling with the knowledge that he did know I was in town.And that he knows what size dress I wear.
And that my favorite color is green.
I give myself a full five minutes to feel off balance about the whole thing, and more than a little terrified.Then I hear him go upstairs to his room, and grin almost as widely as he did.
Moments later, I’m up and hustling toward the office he keeps on the first floor.And the computer he has in there.As long as his passwords haven’t changed, I can be in and out in ten minutes, max.
***
It takes me twelve, but it’s worth the danger of the extra two minutes.
The idiot has the file sitting in plain sight on his desktop, and it has more information than I could have hoped for.I don’t have time to upload it to the cloud so I can look later, but I take as many pictures as I can–names of girls, locations, and timelines–and then zero in on something he has on his calendar for today.A sight highlighted with a code that I’ve seen attached to the names of other girls in the file.
That code has to mean a girl is going to be either picked up or dropped off.
And this time and date comes with an address.
I walk as quickly as I can from the house, trying to look both elated about the dress–which is actually beautiful–and like I’ve just had a lovely dinner with Dear Old Dad.
The truth, of course, is somewhat different.Because he might not have wanted to tell me anything, but that doesn’t mean I’m out of the game.I’ve got an address and a time, and that’s really all I need for now.
I’m going hunting.And my dad’s operation is the target.
Lucien
Night has fallen by the time we get back to the mansion, and it’s well and truly dark out by the time I’m standing from my research, stretching, and going to stare out the window.Technically we’re in the basement, in what I’ve built as the war room, but really it’s half of the first floor of the house.
Because I’ve always liked the idea of an underground war room.But I live in New Orleans, and this is a town that floods regularly.We don’t have the foundation for underground rooms, and if we built them anyhow, they would flood often enough to make them pointless.
This room might as well be underground, though.This is the sole window, the rest of the room made up of stark brick walls and concrete floors.Maps and screens line the room, giving us a 360-degree view of whatever we’re researching at the time, and several tables in the middle of the room hold ten different computers.Their screens are all lit up right now, though Daniel and I are the only ones in the room.We have the lights turned low because I think better that way, and have been going through list after list of boats heading in and out of the New Orleans port.And the train stations.And even the trucking yards.
I believe I know who’s buying and selling girls, now.Simon leBanc was at Dom Landry’s club, acting suspicious enough that I’m sure he was doing something nefarious, and upon further research, we found that several of the missing girls have disappeared from Landry properties.But that doesn’t give me much.I’m not exactly going to go to the Landry mansion, have a steak dinner with Dominick, and demand to know what he’s up to.
Even if I did, it wouldn’t solve the biggest problem.
We need to know when the next shipment of girls is leaving, so we can stop it before we lose them forever.I would bet my whole fortune that Brooks’ friend is in that shipment, and though it doesn’t matter to me whether Brooks finds her or not—Brooks’ problems are her own—I’m honor-bound to make sure no other girl is sent away from our shores.
I can’tnot.But it doesn’t have anything to do with Brooks.
Seriously.
The problem is, the girl Brooks is searching for is very hard to find.We tracked her from New York to Atlanta, and then to New Orleans, but her trail went dead as soon as she arrived here.They must have taken her immediately underground, because no one seems to have seen her since then.I only know she arrived because I found a man who was working at the train station when she came in and recognized the fact that she wasn’t from New Orleans.
He was also more than willing to talk, when I paid him enough.
So she arrived in town, and then disappeared.
