“Maybe even a family is in the cards for you,” I say, backing up toward the wall and propping my foot once more as if I truly don’t care about this conversation and what happens to him. I do because I’m not heartless, and there are more ways to save someone than what’s traditional, but I can’t let him know that.
I watch his chest as he inhales slow and deep. And on the exhale, he says, “I don’t know their names.”
Flicking my gaze for just a second toward the window, I hope like hell they’re still watching. “What do you know?”
His shoulders deflate, and he slumps in his chair, utterly defeated. “It’s an entire organization that you guys are walking into. People die when they get too close. People like you.”
“People like me?”
“Those who still have a heart.”
I nod, but my heartbeat thunders in my chest because – damn it! He’s talking to me. “I’m not as fragile as I look. You can tell me what I need to know.”
He considers me carefully as though he truly fears for my life just to have the words uttered to me, but eventually, he whispers. “It’s sex trafficking, but not in the normal sense.”
“What do you consider normal?”
He shrugs a little. “Stealing men and women, holding them hostage while people fuck them until there’s nothing left of them. Nothing that makes themthem, I mean.”
I swallow thickly because something tells me he has experience with this. Perhaps it’s the entire reason he uses drugs, to escape what was done to him. Or maybe it’s to escape what he’s doing for them?
He presses on. “These guys steal women and men from other countries. I don’t know how or the logistics, but they do.” His gaze rises from the table to me. “And then they kill them for profit so that someone can fuck their corpse.”
I work like hell not to show my shock. “Necrophilia?”
He nods once.
“And somehow you got roped into transporting the bodies to . . . where exactly?”
He glances away, shame coloring his pale, hollow cheeks. “I leave them in an alley. Someone comes to pick them up after I leave. Some sort of cleaner.” He looks back at me. “I used to check the papers to see if they ever found anyone I transported, but . . .”
“They must be good at their job.”
“All of them are,” he grumbles. “You have no idea the amount of danger you’re in just by knowing.”
I ignore that comment and ask, “What else do I need to know?”
He sighs in that defeated sort of way again. “I don’t know anything else.”
“What do they look like? Where do they meet?”
He shakes his head. “I mostly only know about the porn side of their operation.”
“There’s a pornography side?”
He begins twisting his fingers again and opens his mouth to say something, but a knock comes from thewindow. I nearly growl in frustration as Peyton looks at the window as if he hadn’t realized it was there, and I watch as his mouth clamps shut.
“I’ll be back,” I promise him before I exit the room.
Visser and Miles meet me in the hallway. Miles is wearing a prideful expression, but Captain looks pissed as hell. I internally cringe at the lashing I’m about to get.
“What did you pull me out for?” I demand, an edge to my tone.
“I told you not to talk,” Visser growls.
“If she hadn’t . . .” Miles’s voice trails off because all three of us know the truth about that.
Captain pushes a hand through his slick-backed hair, tousling it a little. He doesn’t know how to proceed here because there are many options, many roads we could take, but each one is as dangerous as the other.
