Chapter Seventeen

Magnus

Jade didn't hesitate.

Her baton whipped out. She instantly cracked it across Arnaud's head, dropping him flat to the carpeted hallway. The arm I'd crunched under him, he lay on his face, blood seeping from his thin hair trickling down his cheek. His eyelids and finger twitched madly, making me think she'd really knocked his brains loose.

"Good job," I muttered. "Let's go before the cook wonders if something's amiss."

"Gawd," Jade breathed, retracting her baton. "I didn't even think. Did I kill him?"

Bending, I briefly held my fingers to his face, feeling the light warmth of breath on my skin. "He's alive. C'mon. Quick and quiet."

Her hand in mine, we slipped down the stairs, as silent as phantoms, and crossed the house to the back door. Through the closed kitchen door, I heard the cook preparing Arnaud's lunch, odors of fried onions wafting to my nose. Once outside, I made sure to relock the door, hopefully creating a mess of confusion as to who the intruders were and how they got in.

Without revving the engine, I drove the Jeep down his drive to the street. I glanced back, half-expecting to see Arnaud yelling, waving, running in pursuit of us. If he regained consciousness soon, no doubt he'd call his thugs to find the invaders.

"He didn't recognize us," Jade commented.

"He would have had you not dropped him," I replied, watching for trouble and traffic. "I think, from his viewpoint, he caught sight of blondes with spectacles, but he hadn't the time to look past them to the faces."

"He'll put it together, though," Jade mused. "He'll figure out it was us."

"And put blondes in his goons' watch list?"

"Bingo."

My head itched horribly under the wig, making me crave to rip it off, but I kept it on. Despite the speed of today's information spread, it would be a while before all of Arnaud's allies would know of the change in our appearance. "We may have to get different wigs."

"Yeah, I figured as much."

We returned to our hideaway, the heat from last night's fire still permeating the place. Still, as Jade loaded the pictures we took into the computer, I built a new blaze on the hearth. Ginger, purring and rubbing her cheek against my leg, begged for an ear scratch. Her yet unnamed brother watched stoically from Jade's sleeping bag.

"Lunch?" I asked.

"Not yet. I'm still full from breakfast."

Moving the protesting cat, I sat beside Jade to watch the laptop's screen. The hundreds of photos took time to load, and she hadn't finished with the first camera yet. When that finished, she plugged in the second, and began the procedure again.

"I think I can call up from this file while that loads," she murmured, using the mouse pad to open the folder.

Photo icons filled the screen. "Here we go."

The first pictures she called up were the porn. Clicking slowly through them, she paused on a photo of a man, bare assed naked, standing while a nude woman knelt at his feet, her mouth filled with his erect cock. The photo, clear, concise, showed his face.

"I don't think that's his wife giving him a blow job," I murmured. "And the girl is barely over the legal age of consent."

"She looks Asian or Filipino," Jade agreed. "His wife is in her sixties with blue hair."

"So, we have my old man taking pictures of high government officials with his sex trafficked girls. Keep going. Who else did he nail?"

Jade scrolled through the photos. "That guy looks familiar."

"He should. He brings you the news every night on the national broadcast. Damn, he's really small."

"Doesn't have much to be proud of, does he?"

Jade continued to tap the computer, revealing sports and movie celebrities, state and federal government leaders, a few high-profile ladies getting eaten out by my pop's sex workers.

"This is dynamite," she commented. "Worth killing over. Any of these people would suffer should these pictures get out."

"Let's take a look at the ledgers."

Again, the cameras captured clear images of the lists of names, dates, amounts spent. After a time, we sorted the accounting into two files – the payments going out, and those coming in. I added a few in my head, and suspected Arnaud made millions on the blackmailing schemes.

"Look here," I said, pointing to the list of trafficked women. "He made stupid money here. He smuggled in these gals from Mexico for less than ten grand and sold each for five grand."

"Here's a section on dope," Jade added. "Shipments, dates where they came in, payments to the smugglers, amounts dealers paid him. Stupid money isn't even that half of what he's making."

I met her gaze fully. "You know what this means, Jade. Nothing will stop him from killing us. He's not stupid, he'll know we looked at his stash of criminal activities. We've just made him desperate. And desperate dragons are the most dangerous kind."

Jade nibbled her lip, studying the screen. "We don't have any choice now. We have to get out of here."

I sat back, dragging my hands through my hair. "Where do we go? Who do we take this to? The feds? The newspapers? Investigative journalists can take all this, open the can of worms for everyone to see."

Nodding slowly, Jade said slowly, "But do these people in these pictures deserve to have their lives ruined? They had sex for Pete's sake. That shouldn't be a crime that forces them to lose everything."

"They're having sex with trafficked women," I reminded her.

"Do they know that?" she snapped. "What if they don't know these women are being forced against their will? What if they were told these people are hookers? Men have sex with prostitutes all the time, it's as common as dirt."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But what's that compared to our lives? You certainly didn't ask to get involved in this shit. I didn't either, but my old man involved me in it."

Jade saved all the files to the laptop and unplugged the camera. "We can't risk losing these. We have to hide them."

I took them from her. "There are plenty of places in the basement."

After taking a plastic bag from the kitchen, I wrapped the cameras in it, then headed down the rickety steps. The place, while depleted of wood, was dark and filled with shadows. In a corner, I pried up a floorboard, and tucked the small package underneath. I replaced it, then examined it for any evidence that I'd tampered with it. For good measure, I stacked wood atop it, making the corner appear as though the previous residents had begun a new firewood pile before stopping.

Upstairs, I found Jade rolling our sleeping bags up. "Why are we taking them?"

"For a just in case," she answered. "Dump the cat food on the floor. We may not be back for a while."

I obeyed, and also filled a couple of bowls with water, suspecting they'd freeze after a time. Stroking the cats as they crunched the chow, I hoped they'd be okay until such time as we might come back. "Stay safe, kids," I murmured.

I returned to the front room in time to see Jade carrying the bags into the garage. The place seemed empty and forlorn without them, despite the cheery fire on the hearth. While not much of a home, it protected us when we desperately needed it.

Collecting some of the food, as well as the medical supplies into a paper sack, I carried that out to the Jeep. Jade had already collected our spare clothes, setting them in a neat pile on the seat. "Ready?"

"I think so," Jade answered. "The laptop's in my backpack. Should we take a minute to discuss where we're going?"

"We can do that in the car. Grab it, we need to go."

I don't know where my need to rush came from. In the Jeep, I started the engine, then opened the garage door. Jade tossed her pack into the rear seat and jumped inside. After I backed the car from the garage, I shut the garage door again.

"Let's boogey."

Expecting a snide comment about being retro, I glanced at Jade. She nibbled her lip, watching her side mirror intently as I drove down the street. Just as I turned the corner a few blocks down, I caught sight of black SUVs driving into the neighborhood.

"Oh, shit," I muttered. "We left just in time."

"Will they find the cameras?" Jade asked, watching our rear over her shoulder.

"Not likely. They'll see we're gone, then start the chase. Let's hope they were thinking about the house and not the Jeep that just turned the corner."

"That might occur to them eventually."

"Time to get lost."

I wound the Jeep through side streets before hitting a main avenue through the city, then joined the heavy traffic on it. My stomach on edge, I kept a watch for black SUVs, absently wondering why Arnaud insisted upon using them. A more anonymous pickup or sedan would do the job just as easily.

Unable to deal with the wig any longer, I yanked it off, then the glasses, and scratched my itchy scalp. "So what's next?"

"The FBI," Jade murmured. "In Washington."

"That's across the country," I protested. "Why not offices closer to home?"

"And risk the agents being on his payroll?" she demanded. "No. We talk to the heavy hitters in the division that tracks human traffickers. Focus on that angle first. Give them the evidence to bring Arnaud down."

I rubbed my chin. "He may already be on their radar," I mused. "Importing illegals for the sex trade is a despicable crime. The feds may not have the evidence they need."

"Until now."

"Right."

"We need to stop," Jade commented. "Get cash. Arnaud may be able to track credit cards."

"Shit." I growled under my breath. "Can we do anything without him finding out?"

"It's interesting he found our safe house," Jade added. "How?"

I thought again about anonymous vehicles. "Maybe he had us followed. Picked us up outside the restaurant, tailed us, but we didn't catch them at it. Then once he realized we may have seen his stash, he sent his goons."

"Makes sense," Jade agreed. "So he'd know what we're driving. And he may anticipate what we're planning to do with what we know."

"Are you trying to scare me? It's working."

"We have to get out of the city," Jade said. "There's a branch of my bank a few blocks down and to the right."

"Take your wig and glasses off," I advised. "If you don't look like your ID picture, the teller will get suspicious."

She, too, scratched her head vigorously after tossing the wig into the rear seat. "I hate that thing."

"Ditto."

I parked in the lot of her bank and kept the engine idling as she went inside. Nervous, I tried to watch all angles at once, worried about anonymous cars, cops, black SUVs. One of Arnaud's goons might be simply watching, calling in our location. The cops on his payroll cruised for us, searching for people of our description as well as blondes with glasses driving a Jeep with temporary plates.

"Come on," I muttered, tapping the steering wheel. "Let's go, baby."

I had no idea what might be taking Jade so long, and my nervousness mounted. Constantly on the lookout, I saw a dude sitting in an ordinary looking small pickup across the busy street. Time passed. He continued to sit there. So did I. Twice, three times, then four, I caught him staring straight ahead. At me.

"Oh, my fucking shit," I moaned. "Totally anonymous. If I hadn't seen him looking at me –"

Jade opened the door and made me jump, my heart bashing against my ribs. "What's wrong?"