Onscreen, a broken doorway gave way to an empty space.
“Ransacked,” Cassie said. “When Lovelyn told me they’d been there and that Kane had barged the door, I went and had it fixed and paid her rent so the landlord wouldn’t kick her out. All her clothes were there. Her things. Now? They’re gone.”
My internal alert system for danger paid attention. Not to the missing possessions but the kicked-in door. That hadn’t been me.
“Could be an opportunist thief.” I stroked my chin.
“Who took every single thing she owned? I don’t think so. Then there’s this.” Cassie paged to an article and held it up. Under a headline that read,Who Are the Marchant Heirs?, there was a headshot of Dixie’s sister, Mila, with two others after, blacked-out silhouettes with the names underneath of Kane Marchant and Darcy Marchant.
Fuck.
“The press are looking for her. What happens if they find her first?” Cassie asked. “When they learn she was a sex worker? Do you want to know what her ma said when Lovelyn spoke to her this afternoon? She said good riddance. Dixie doesn’t have anyone else besides us to protect her. Not from the news, and not from whoever attacked her and left her for dead. It was a miracle that she survived, not an accident.”
White-hot rage shot through me.
Cassie smiled. “That’s it. Brew that anger. Gotta be bad if Tyler reacts. This is only going to get worse for her when the press finds out who she is.”
Apparently, I was now the emotional barometer.
That felt like a design flaw.
Not one to consider now, not when my world was Dixie the heiress. The hidden legacy. I’d known she had secrets. I’d seen them in her from day one. It was part of what I found fascinating about her.
Secrets equalled vulnerabilities.
Cassie pushed her advantage. “If a reporter finds her before we do, they’ll put her face on screens everywhere as heir to a criminal empire. I can’t even imagine what she’s done to hide from her past, but between us in this room, I’m certain her family fucked her over. Why else would she run like that? It’s them she’s scared of.”
Arran spoke. “Dixie is one of us. It’s now a crew priority to bring her back.”
Fucking hell. I’d claimed her in the nick of time.
I swallowed the emotions that battled within me and forced myself back to neutral. I had to get control of the narrative. “Leave it to me. In case she’s still on Torlum, I’ll tell Kane to hang around and wait her out. If she fled on a boat, we can assign crew to the coastline, checking in with the small villages she might have landed at. Assuming she doesn’t have a car, she’ll be hiding out or waiting on local transport.”
Arran watched me. “No active ops right now?”
“Nothing urgent. It’ll be good training for Ash and Heretic to go on a hunt.”
Also a huge waste of time, but I wasn’t revealing that.
Ash and Heretic, the Atherton brothers, plus Kane, made up my intercept team, a distinct unit of four of us in the skeleton crew, mine to manage in our role of taking down traffickers.
Arran nodded. “Then you’re our lead in tracking her down. Use whatever resources necessary.”
I almost smiled. Tasked with finding the woman I stole. Life had a sense of humour. Even if I didn’t.
“Got it,” I managed.
Cassie’s eyes danced. “Bring our girl home.”
Arran nodded and moved on. “Aside from that, we need additional measures for the women of the club.”
They talked through how to support the dancers and sex workers coming to and from the warehouse every night, but my mind stayed fixed on a distant place. My home on the ridge with a beautiful woman concealed inside.
I’d lied to my crew.
If they found out, they wouldn’t trust me anymore. And yet I couldn’t and wouldn’t regret my actions.
Eventually, we were done and Arran released us to get to work.
