Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Charlotte Mitchell

A s I walk into the station, I tip my head in greeting at Genny. She’s where she always is – at the front desk. She’s older, maybe mid-forties, with corkscrew ringlets for hair that’s now gray, the strands dulling the red shine it once had when I was a kid. My father never liked her. She was too shrewd for his liking, but I always enjoyed her. I found her hard personality refreshing, sturdy in a world where mine was complete chaos. There were times, even though we barely spoke, that I wished she was my mother instead.

Maybe things would have been a hell of a lot different. Maybe my life would have turned out exponentially different than what I’d endured then, and now.

I place the coffee I had bought for her at her elbow as I walk by. I honestly don’t know what kind of coffee she drinks, but there’s a shop just down the street, and she’s never complained about the black, plain brew that I bring her every morning. She’s always seemed the type for no bullshit like creamer and flowery froth. It’s a nice thing, what I do for her, because as far as I can tell, she has no one in her life. Aside from that, no one in this station will drink the coffee available in the breakroom. It’s the cheap kind that will have you shitting in the toilet within minutes of gulping the first sip.

Well, everyone except Miles. I swear to God, even though he’s a health nut, he has a stomach of steel.

Genny grunts her thanks, and I smile a little before shouldering my backpack strap higher and leaving toward the hall and, soon after, the rows of desks in the main area of the station. It’s always a good idea to be friendly with those in charge, and Genny definitely falls under that category, even if it is unofficial.

It’s calming when I breathe in the familiar scent of the station. I make my way past everyone else’s desk, but the feeling of security is quickly dashed away when I spot my lonely corner where I was placed when my application was accepted. The time-out corner is what I like to call it. Because I’m me. Because I’m new. Because of my father. Because of my mother .

I set my backpack down by the leg of my desk and nudge my chair back with my boot. There’s a pile of paperwork neatly stacked at the edge of my desk’s surface that I have to get through today, especially if the captain plans to bench me like Miles said he would.

Arguing with Captain Visser would be easy, but it wouldn’t get me anywhere. I came to that realization as I lay on my new, lumpy bed last night. He’s steelier than Genny, an iron gate that I have no hopes of breaching when it comes to his orders, and trust me, in the past, I’ve tried. But here, I have no say. Here, I have no authority; they’ve all made that plain as day, and it’s not just because I’m a rookie. To them, I’m not clean. I’m a sinner in the eyes of the law, just like my family.

Thanks, Dad, I think heavenward, the thought dripping with sarcasm.

I flex my jaw once as I take a seat and scoot my chair up to the desk. I’m determined to prove them wrong if it’s the last thing I do on this cruel earth. I love my father, and on some level, I loved my mother, but what they did was unforgivable.

I’m not them. I’ll never be them.

I reach for my pen, and as soon as my belly touches my desk’s edge, a shadow slithers over my desk. I can tell who it is by the aftershave he insists on using.

With a slow, agitated swivel, I turn toward Fredrick. His bald head shines in the station’s high fluorescent lights, and his curved and sparse eyebrows are shot up in a gleeful way. I know that whatever pops out of his mouth is really going to get me going, and not in a good way.

He was my father’s bully, and naturally, I inherited him.

“What’d you do over the week and weekend, Charlie?” The glee seeps through his tone, and if I had hackles, they’d raise.

I flex my jaw because he knows damn well what I was doing. Everyone does, but thankfully, no one except the captain and Miles knows where I now live. I don’t have to worry about anyone stopping by, not that they did before, but the last thing I want is widow casseroles from their wives.

“Putting my husband to rest, asshole.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Was he really your husband though? I mean –”

“Yes.”

He places his hands on my desk and leans forward, and I have a mind to headbutt him with how close he is now and make that smirk become a bloody nose. “No one in your family should marry, so I suppose it’s for the best.”

“Good thing I’m the only one left in my family,” I sneer. “I could say the same about you, Fred.” I cock my head to the side. “How many girlfriends does your wife know about now?”

His nostrils twitch. “Leave my wife out of it.”

I raise an eyebrow, knowing I struck a nerve by being privy to his secret life. “One little call and I can blow your life wide open.”

There’s a certain sort of satisfaction that licks my stomach when his face turns red. “You wouldn’t.”

I lean close to him so that our noses are almost touching. “Try me, or fuck off.”

He stands there for a moment because men like him don’t like to be bested, but eventually, he pushes off my desk, picks up my pen, and chucks it to the floor. I roll my eyes as he strides away, wounded pride and all. He may be an ass, and he may know how to grate my nerves, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to cower under his boot. I can dish it right back because I made it a valid point to find his weak spots when he discovered mine.

With a contented sigh, I readjust my seated position and reach to pick up my pen, not the one on the floor – because like hell will I give him the satisfaction of doing so – but another pen I have in my holder.

Just as my fingertip grazes it, my name is called from the other side of the station. I glance up and find Miles waving me over. Captain Visser stands right beside him, his phone up to his ear and only his side profile in view.

Visser is a formidable man who doesn’t put up with any shit. I suppose that’s how he got the job. He’s clean-cut with slicked-back brown hair, a thin waist, and broad shoulders that fill out his crisp, white button-down shirt. I used to have a crush on him in my teens, but as an adult, my preferences have changed. Even though my husband was my age, I found attraction to those a little older. Just not that old.

I sigh for a whole different reason. I don’t want to be lectured about desk duty and all the things I can and can’t do.

Scooting back my chair, I stand and weave between the desks as I make my way over. I’m in absolutely no mood to be reminded of where I stand in the food chain, but I bite my tongue instead of slinging a slew of curse words at the captain himself.

Miles glances at Visser for a second, probably hoping he’ll get off the phone, but when he doesn’t, he turns fully to face me while crossing his arms. “We have a situation.”

“Oh?” I like situations. Situations are my kind of thing. I like them, they like me, and the world goes round with a merry little tune. “What kind?”

“Someone was brought in this morning, and I want you to sit in on the questioning.”

Right. As if I couldn’t handle one on my own, but it’s Miles, so I know he doesn’t mean to hurt my feelings. Hell, it probably took some convincing with Visser for me to even leave my desk.

“Okay,” I say with a nod. I look at the closed and solid black interrogation room’s door and then back at Miles. “Who is it? What did they do?”

He answers my second question because that must be more important to him. “He was pulled over, and a dead body was found in his car.”

I blink. And then I blink again. Although this is Manhattan and death is far from unheard of . . . “Just in his car? Hanging out?”

Miles nods and rolls his neck. It pops a few times. “ Pulled over for intoxication, arrested for the body in his trunk.”

I curse under my breath. “Okay, well, let’s get –”

Visser hangs up his phone. “Oh no. There’s no ‘let’s’. You’ll be behind the glass with me.”

“But –” I begin, ready to plead my case.

Miles rotates to Visser and thins his lips into a fine line. “She needs the practice, sir, and this is a good opportunity for something other than traffic violations and prostitution.” Which is basically all I’ve gotten to interview since I left the academy.

Visser, with his big bushy eyebrows, narrows his dark eyes that miss absolutely nothing. He considers it for a moment, twitching the corners of his eyes like he’s debating about combusting or not, but eventually, he holds up a finger. “Fine. But she’s not to talk, only observe.” He swivels his hard gaze to me. “Understood?”

I nod quickly, but internally, I’m in disbelief that he’s giving me a chance. “Perfectly.”

Miles’s shoulders sag just a smidge with relief, and he pivots toward the door. “Ready?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer before he reaches for the handle, turns it, and strides inside like he’s about to own this arrest. He’s one of the best for a reason.

I follow closely behind him and shut the door as soon as I’m through. Then, I turn toward the table and the man sitting behind it.

He’s shockingly thin, the kind of thin addicts usually are, so it’s no surprise that they found him intoxicated. If he were at full health, he may have been a handsome young man, about my age, but by the track marks on his arm, that ship has long since sailed.

The clothes he’s wearing don’t seem like his own, loose and too large for his emaciated frame, and his head of mid-length blonde hair looks like it hasn’t seen suds in a week.

Miles sits down and glances at me, silently telling me to come fully into the room. I do as he asks and lean against the wall just behind Miles, and then glance at the one-way window to where I know Captain is watching this, and me, carefully.

I still can’t believe he let me in here. Not after the reasons for putting me on desk duty, and certainly not for being a rookie who has probably no business in an investigation like this. But I’m not about to utter those words aloud.

Miles sits back in his seat, appearing relaxed as he stares at the suspect. He stares so long that even I grow uncomfortable. The young man fidgets, but he doesn’t break his gaze from Miles, even though I can tell he wants to.

Finally, Miles speaks. “What were you doing with the body, Peyton?”

Peyton glances away and flexes his weak jaw. I shift my weight and rest the sole of my boot against the wall, waiting for him to answer, but the answer never comes.

“Why did you kill her?” Miles presses.

Peyton closes his eyes briefly and then opens them to stare at the wall to his left.

I don’t know what Miles sees, but he leans forward as if Peyton just gave everything away. “You didn’t kill her, did you?”

Slowly, Peyton looks at him.

“Who did?”

Again, Peyton says nothing.

There’s a folder to the left of Miles’s elbow, and he slides it to himself, flips it open, and takes out the pictures. I do my best to not show any sign of emotion as he places the pictures in front of Peyton.

“I bet you didn’t even see her body when it was put into your trunk. Mutilated, right arm torn off, eyes open to witness it all until she took her last breath.” Peyton glances at the pictures of the naked woman and then turns a hard glare at Miles. Hell, even I have a hard time looking at the woman. She’s indeed missing an arm, as though it had been ripped clean off. There is no clean cut in the flesh. Instead, it’s shreds and chunks of skin where her arm once connected to her body. The rest of her body is covered in bruises, and half of her left breast is gone.

What the hell am I witnessing right now?

“Did you know she was raped?” Miles presses on. “Was that before or after she was dead?”

Peyton remains silent, keeping his cold, twitching gaze on Miles.

He leans into the table, and I watch as he smirks at Peyton. “Do you know what they do to pip-squeaks like you in prison?”

I suppress a shudder. I do. We learned about it in the academy.

“This woman won’t be the only one who gets raped and mutilated.” He bites out his next words. “You have one last chance before I walk out that door and throw you into the wolves’ den with the other heathens that’d make one hell of a snack out of someone who looks like you.”

I watch as Peyton’s jaw grinds so hard that I swear I hear a tooth crack. In an angry whisper, he says, “No, I didn’t know any of that.”

“Then what do you know?”

Peyton breathes out a slow breath and then looks at me. I don’t move a muscle under his scrutiny. To me, he mutters, “It doesn’t matter if I tell you or keep it to myself. Either they’ll kill me, or prison will.”

“I suppose it’s how you want to go out then, isn’t it?” I clamp my mouth shut, having forgotten that I’m not supposed to speak.

Miles doesn’t flinch at my disregard for the rules because Peyton is still looking at me, and he looks so damn close to being ready to talk. I don’t know if it’s because I have a friendly face or if it’s because we’re so close in age, but he wets the corner of his lips before pressing on. “I didn’t kill her.”

“Then who did?” I chance again, knowing damn well I’m pressing my luck.

Peyton looks at his hands and starts twisting his fingers together. “What do I get if I tell you what I know?”

Miles looks to the one-way window, and it’s then that I realize that Captain Visser and he already had this conversation. I’m a little annoyed I wasn’t given that information before coming in here.

“Treatment.”

Peyton snaps his gaze up. “That’s it?”

“It’s better than prison,” I mutter.

“I don’t think you realize the shit show you two walked in on,” he says in a threatening sort of way.

“Then tell us,” Miles urges, unaffected by the hostility. He leans back in his seat once more.

“I want more than treatment.”

“What is it you want?”

“A new life,” he demands. “I want out of East Harlem. Somewhere quiet. A sleepy town, maybe. Anything but this.”

Miles is utterly still as he processes this information, but I know for a fact, because I know him so well, that this part wasn’t discussed with Captain. He stands from his chair, looks at me, and strides out the door.

A heartbeat goes by, and no sound is made except for the click of the door as it latches.

“Where’s he going?” Peyton asks, a little panicked.

I shrug even though I know that he’s going to the other side of the glass to ask Visser if it’s even possible. A DA has to be consulted if she’s not behind the glass already. There are legal hoops to jump through, but even I know his request is a long shot. Someone has to pay for the woman, and it’ll likely be Peyton.

“Jesus,” Peyton hisses. He turns pleading eyes from the door to me. “You have to believe me that I didn’t touch that woman.”

I shrug again and glance at the window, hoping Visser is too busy to see me defy him once more. “Why should I believe you?”

“I’ve never killed anyone in my life!”

“Not even for the drugs?” I ask, pointedly looking at his track marks.

“No!” He jiggles the cuffs as he thumps the table. “I’m not a killer, and I’m certainly not a rapist.”

“Then you have a conscience.” I push off the wall and come to stand on the left side of Miles’s abandoned seat. “Do you have a big enough one to tell the truth?”

He shakes his head. “Not until I get my deal.”

I cock an eyebrow at him. “What are you so afraid of, Peyton?”

“Dying!”

I wave a hand in the air dismissively. “Besides that.”

He chuffs and flares his nostrils. “I don’t think you understand what they’d do to me if I told a soul.”

I grab one of the pictures of the woman and hold it up. “I can imagine, but I can also imagine that someone like you knows how to hide.”

He twists his lips to the side as he considers my words.

I shrug again and gently place the picture back down. “If it were me, I’d take the deal I was given. Chances are we can convince them to put you in a treatment center far away from here, and then you can start your new life there on your own.”

It isn’t hard to tell that he likes the sound of that because, this time, he wets his whole bottom lip in thought.

“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 them them , 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 the window. 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.

We could storm wherever they make the porn, but that’s only cutting off the tail of a snake. I don’t know if snake tails grow back, but this one sure as hell would, and it’d scurry off into another dark shadow. We’d never find the head of the operation.

I watch as he silently debates himself on how he wants to proceed when I blurt, “Send me in.”

He looks quizzically at me. “You defied me, you’re not going back in.”

“No,” I say, squaring my shoulders because this might be the best or the worst idea I’ve ever had. “Undercover, sir.”

His eyes blow wide. “Absolutely not.”

I point at the closed door. “You heard him. They’re running two operations. If I get into one, I can reach the other, and then we can take down whoever owns and runs it. This is bigger than kidnapping, sir. If I could just get in – ”

“You’d die,” he growls. “You have no experience here, Charlie. Besides, there’re other agencies that handle sex trafficking.”

“But –”

He swipes a hand through the air because he knows I’m about to get territorial. “The answer is no.” He looks at Miles. “Finish the interview. Squeeze what you can out of him.”

And then he walks off.

Inside, I fume, but I keep it off my face as I turn to Miles. “I have to do this, Miles.”

His lips thin out in a displeased sort of way. “You’re not going to do anything.”

I place my hands on my hips and glance around to make sure no one is looking or listening. “You can either be on my side or be in the dark, but I am doing this.”

“Captain said no, Charlie,” he growls. “You intend to go behind his back on this? On putting your life at risk just to prove yourself?”

I raise my eyebrows as I think this over and then answer simply, “Yes.” All of that is true.

He crosses his arms over his chest, but I can tell he’s starting to get angry with me. “And just how do you suppose I explain your absence?”

I shrug a little. “I have a few vacation days left.”

“And you think it’ll take a few days to get to the bottom of this?” he hisses.

I shrug again. “It’ll give me a head start. I’ll deal with the rest when it comes.”

He curses under his breath and glances away, ticking his jaw. In my head, I silently plead for him to not let me down, to be there for me like he has time and time again. When he comes to some sort of conclusion, he looks back at me. “You’re going to do this no matter what, aren’t you?”

It wasn’t really a question, but I answer with a nod anyway. It’s extremely difficult to keep the smile on my face because it hadn’t taken much to wear him down to be on my side about this.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he whispers, “The first sign of trouble and I’m pulling you out, Charlie. I won’t have another Mitchell die.”

“Fair enough,” I whisper back, and I mean it. My father’s death was hard on him, and I have no intention of making it harder.

He drops his arm to his side, glances around, and then grabs the door handle. “You’re going to ask him how to get into this operation. I don’t like this, Charlie. I don’t like that you’ll have to . . . whore yourself for the job . . . Can you even handle this?”

Both of us know that going into the porn business means that I’ll eventually have to partake in the porn part. It’s not a pleasing thought, but I grumble anyway, “It’s just sex, Miles.”

He shakes his head because we both also know it’s not just sex. But I can handle it. I’ve handled everything else in my life, and this won’t be any different. “Fine, but constant communication, got it?”

I grip his elbow and squeeze my promise. He looks like he wants to puke as he opens the door.