“All that aside,” I mutter to Kate, who’s watching me, waiting for a response.“How do you feel about a little recon?”
Her face goes from judgmental to impressed to suspicious in half a second.“What do you mean?”
I nod toward the office.“Any room that has a hand scanner is bound to have interesting things in it, don’t you think?”
She turns and looks, and a grin spreads over her face.“You mean like computers with things like ship dates and possible destinations?”
“And buyers and investors and even high-level owners of the ring,” I confirm.“You interested?”
She huffs out a low, sinister laugh.“Brooks, you’ve known me a long time.Have I ever said no to a little bit of good trouble?”
“A girl after my own heart,” I murmur.“Let’s go.”
We move toward the office, keeping our motions slow and as subtle as possible, and when we get there, I motion for Kate to wait outside while I go in and see what I can find.She nods once and then turns her back, moving in front of me to give me some cover while I slip through the door.It’s so easy I wonder for a moment if we’ve been set up, and glance up into the corners of the room to see whether there are cameras in here.
There aren’t.Of course there aren’t.They would never expect those poor, defeated girls out there to do something like break into an office.
Of course, they also aren’t expecting people like Kate and me.
I glance around the room, wondering where to start, and see that it’s very plain.One desk.One computer.One chair.
“They must have saved all the gaudy decorations for the girls,” I say, already moving for the computer.This group seems to have pretty good tech, from what I’ve seen, but they’re also from New Orleans, and I’ve spent the last eighteen years living in either New York or LA.
I’m betting I know more about breaking into computers than they do about protecting them.
In the end, it’s ludicrously easy.They don’t even have the thing password-protected.I boot it up and stare at the desktop, shocked at how easy it was to get in.Then I start researching.The files are clearly labeled: a list of girls, a list of buyers, a list of possible destinations.And, importantly, a list of the ships that take the girls out of here.Dates, ship names, shipping manifests.
I open up the list of girls first and scan it for Aislyn.I’ve been looking for her since I arrived, and still haven’t found her, and that bothers me.Has she already shipped out?Am I too late?
But her name is on the list, and the column marked for ‘exported’ isn’t checked yet.She’s here somewhere.I just have to find her.
I scan the list of buyers and destinations, but without my phone or even a pen or pencil, I have no way of recording anything.I do a quick search in the drawers but don’t find a thumb drive anywhere, and even if I did, I don’t know how I’d hide it.I’ll just have to hope my memory is up to the challenge of holding onto the information I’m looking at.
Finally I go to the list with the ship names and manifests.I need to know how much longer I have before I’m in real trouble.
The news there isn’t good.It looks like they do ship out once a week, on a fairly regular schedule.One hundred girls per ship, which explains why they’ve expanded to other cities.They must be going through the girls in New Orleans pretty quickly.The list of buyers gave me more information, though.They’re not just selling the girls internationally.They’re selling them in this city, too, as high-end escorts and pets.
They’re making sure their families see them acting the slave to other men.
I don’t puzzle over that one for too long, because a short knock on the door tells me I’m nearly out of time.
I go back to the shipping list and look for the next ship date, then count backward on my fingers to figure out what it means.I think I’ve been underground for twenty-four hours, which means it’s been three days since I got to New Orleans.Six days since Aislyn was kidnapped.And she hasn’t been shipped yet, which means she was definitely one of the first girls for the current group.
I glance at the date in that next row, and my blood turns to ice in my veins.
If my calendar is right, and this manifest is correct, then I’m already in more trouble than I realized.I’ve done my math wrong somewhere.Or maybe they’re changing the schedule.
Because according to this, we ship out tomorrow night.
***
When I slide back out into the main room, I find that things out here have escalated.There are several guards in the room, and they’re conducting what I can only describe as assessments on the girls.Each girl is led in front of two guards and told to strip down in front of them.Once they’re naked, they’re checked for any scars or imperfections.They’re pinched and poked at like cows at a market.
And then they’re told to spread their legs.
The guards are sliding their fingers against their pussies, and then inside them, to see how they’ll react.They’re taking their time on this part, too.Saying they’re doing their research and making sure the girls will sell.Their laughs are ugly and wicked, and I’m already curling my hands into fists, ready to kill each of them.
The girls have woken up enough to know what’s going on.And they’re sobbing.
