“Yes,” he said, sounding irritated. “Much like what we’re doing now, it’s against the rules. But it depends on what you consider a date.”
“Hooking up in the back seat of your car?” I said, unable to control the annoyance in my voice.
He was quiet for a long moment. “That wasn’t a date. And you’re the only one, if that matters.”
“Why would it matter?”
“I don’t know, Birdie. You tell me. You’re the one who brought it up.”
I didn’t respond to that. He was right. I was being petty. And we were having such a nice day together, so why was I trying to sabotage it? I glanced though a stack of bath towels and called out, “I’m not finding anything in the bathroom.”
“Oh, shit. No way! Birdie, check this out.”
I popped my head out of the doorway and spotted Daniel standing in front of the sofa, holding something. When I got closer, he turned around and held it up.
“Is that...?”
“The bag Darke was carrying,” he confirmed. “All the times I’ve studied it in the security footage... I never noticed this. Look at the front.”
Excited, he handed me a black-and-white striped plastic bag. It was wrinkled and creased, as if it had been balled up. An unassuming logo was printed on the front—so small, anyone might miss it. A stylized music note surrounded by the wordsTENOR RECORDS.
“Oh, wow!” I said. And then it hit me. “It’s empty. It wasn’t when he was carrying it in the hallway. And he left it behind.”
“Whatever was in that bag, he gave it to Ivanov. So, I’m thinking cash.”
“Where was it?”
“In the trash,” Daniel said, pointing to a gold trash can near a desk. “They must have sat here on the sofa and chairs—a pillow from the sofa is on the floor.”
I nodded and smoothed out the bag, peering inside. A piece of paper was stuck to one side. “Did you see this?”
“What is it?” He tugged one corner and we read it together. It was a printout, one that was hard to read; the ink was light, and the font was strange. The edges of the page were jagged, as if they were perforated.
“Dot matrix,” Daniel murmured. “Who even has a printer like this that still works?”
“Someone from the Ukraine, apparently.” All the headings at the top were Cyrillic. But the bottom half of the paper contained a spreadsheet, and inside its columns were English letters.
“It’s a list of names,” Daniel said, reading aloud, “Oleksander. Aneta. Danya. These are all names, yeah? What’s this column?”
Initials. Maybe abbreviated surnames. And then another with either anMor anF. “Male or female?”
“Probably. And this column has dates, I think.”
“They’re in the European format,” I said. “See? All this year.”
Except one from last year, which was crossed out with a blue pen, and two more that had future dates. Neat blue checkmarks had been added to one of those names with future dates, and one dated last month. Both males.
“What the hell is this? A prostitution ring?” Daniel said. “I was joking before, but Christ. My mind is going straight to sex trafficking or mail-order brides.”
“Illegal immigration?”
Daniel nodded. “Okay, yeah. That soundswayless scary. But it doesn’t make sense. Why is Darke involved in... whatever this is?”
I didn’t know, but inside my head I compiled all the information we’d learned today into a quick profile:
Suspect:A. Ivanov
Background:Ukrainian; married; at least one child
