The Killer’s New Obsession by B.B. Hamel
Cam
Ileft her alone in my apartment. I didn’t want to do it, but I played my hand and she left me no choice. I needed those USB sticks, and she wasn’t about to make my job any easier.
So I backtracked through that park, found the alley, and spent the next half hour poking at every brick in that goddamn wall until I found the right one. The cash was there, the sticks were there, and I shoved the entire haul into a black gym bag. It looked pathetically empty, hanging off my shoulder, but it probably contained the most important objects in the entire city.
Linc met me at the Feast and Famine, a dive bar on the southern tip of the Valentino territory. Not many people went there, and it took him a few minutes to show up. I downed a whiskey before he finally came inside with his laptop tucked under one arm.
We retreated to a table in the back and he flipped open the lid. “What’s so important that you had me come all the way down here?” Linc asked.
I spilled the bag onto the table. He stared at the USB sticks, fourteen in total, then looked up at me with a bemused grin.
“Irene took these from Ronan,” I said, gesturing at the pile. “She took those sticks and a few hundred dollars.”
Understanding flashed across Linc’s face. “And he was going to kill her,” he said. “Which means these things are important.” He picked one up and held it between two fingers. “No wonder he’s got guys out looking for her.”
“How many guys?” I asked. “Where’d you hear this?”
“Saw them myself,” Linc said. “Crawling around West Philly, banging on doors. I scared a couple assholes off, but that won’t stop him.”
I rubbed my face with both hands and cursed softly. I knew Ronan would come for her, but I didn’t think he’d do it so fast, or with any real strength. “Plug one in,” I said, gesturing at the sticks. “I want to know what’s on it.”
“If I get a virus, you’re buying me a new laptop,” he said and plugged the stick in.
“I doubt Ronan’s in the computer virus business,” I said, though it wasn’t entirely impossible. More and more mobs were moving into cybercrimes, since that was quickly becoming the most lucrative business around.
The Valentino family remained old-school and analog though.
“Huh,” Linc said, clicking around for a second. “Looks like a bunch of spreadsheets.”
I shifted my chair around to stare at the screen. He was right, it was a bunch of Excel spreadsheets with titles like Jessica, Angelina, Rachel, all general female names.
“Open one,” I said.
Linc sighed and doubled clicked on Angelina.
The spreadsheet loaded slowly, but when it did, we both leaned back in our chairs and stared.
It was a profile. The top left corner was a picture of a stone-faced brunette girl, young and pretty, choppy short hair, thin cheeks. Her stats were next to it: age, weight, eye color, that sort of shit. It listed what looked like cargo ships, based on some quick searching, and a town in Ukraine. At the bottom was a price, in the thousands, which seemed absurdly, disgustingly low.
“This can’t be what I think it is,” Linc said.
“Open another.”
So we did, and another, and another, and each of them was the same: some girl from Eastern Europe with a fake American-sounding name, a list of physical attributes, what looked like a shipping manifest, and a price.
When we’d looked at the whole stick, Linc plugged in another one, and another. They were all filled with Excel spreadsheets with female names.
“There’ve got to be a hundred girls here,” I said softly, leaning back in my chair in complete shock. “This has got to be half the girls they’ve trafficked in the last few years.”
“Names, dates, ships, and I think there are a few fixer names in here. Look, the name Anatoli keeps coming up.” Linc pointed at a couple of profiles. “I bet he’s the guy shepherding these girls over.”
Everyone knew the Healy family trafficked in girls from Europe. It wasn’t some secret—the bastards brought them over in droves, sold some off to other crime families across the country, and whored the rest out like slaves. It was fucked up, and something the Valentino family hadn’t gotten into, or at least not like the Healys.
But seeing records like this was astounding. It was one thing to hear the rumors and to occasionally see the girls working corners, but another to see ship names, fixers, stats, weight and prices.
I slammed Linc’s laptop lid closed.
“Hey,” he said. “Careful. Computers don’t like that.”
“Don’t tell anyone what you saw,” I said, yanking the USB stick from the drive. I stashed the sticks back in the bag with the cash and zipped it up. “Not anyone, do you hear me?”
He nodded once. “This is big, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know. I need to see what the Don wants to do with all this before we make any moves.”
“You’ve got ideas though, don’t you?”
“I’m working on it,” I said and stood up. “Tell nobody. Understand?”
“Yeah, boss, I hear you.”
I nodded then pulled the cash from the bag. Irene wouldn’t need this, not after I took care of her. I tossed it down on the table.
Linc snorted and took the stack, thumbing through it.
“For your silence,” I said.
“What a generous man,” he said, grinning. “It’s why we stick around.”
“Maybe one day you’ll be loyal to something other than money.”
“I hope not,” he said, smiling. “Money’s great.”
I left him there to enjoy his little windfall. My mind was already working circles around this problem, coming up with ideas about how to maximize these profiles and how exactly I can use them to destroy the Healy family. This was the sort of information most crime families fought and died for—and as I stepped out into the sunshine, a realization hit me hard.
Ronan knew Irene took those sticks. He knew she hid them, and he knew I probably had her. He had guys on the street searching for her already, and that would only get worse.
She wasn’t safe on the street. Hell, she wasn’t safe anywhere.
I got in my truck and hurried back to my apartment.
Ronan knew me. I’d come for him more than once in the last few months and our guys were always on the lookout for each other. I didn’t think he knew where I lived, but I couldn’t be sure. Ronan was a clever bastard and slippery as hell, and I wouldn’t put it past him to stake out my place.
Then again, if he were watching, he could’ve grabbed Irene when she ran off to check her stash.
I parked and hurried up the front stoop. I slammed into my apartment and bolted the door behind me. It was quiet and empty, but my bedroom door was still shut.
I banged hard then tried the knob. Locked tight. “Irene,” I shouted. “I need to know you’re in there.”
“Go away,” she said.
Relief flooded through me. I leaned back against the wall and sighed, getting myself together.
That reaction surprised me. My job was all about danger—I put myself in the line of fire all the time, and asked my men to do the same. But the idea of Irene getting hurt, especially after I’d only just found her again, that threatened to drive a wedge into my chest. I needed her right now, needed to bring her back to this world and get her settled, and I couldn’t risk losing that, not again.
Once I calmed down, I knocked at the door again, softer this time. “We’ve got to talk,” I said.
“Go away,” she said, her voice muffled by the door, but closer now. “I’m not in the mood to talk.”
“I know what’s on those sticks.” I rattled the bag next to me, like she’d know what the sound was.
The door unlocked and she opened it a crack. Her face was skeptical, but curious. “Seriously?” she asked.
“Come out,” I said.
She followed me to the kitchen table and sat down like a wary cat ready to spring up and run off at any moment. I dumped the bag and I caught her frown as she looked over the sticks.
“Where’s my money?” she asked.
“Give it to Linc,” I said. “I’ll reimburse you. How’s two thousand sound?”
She made a face like she was about to argue, but curiosity got the better of her and she snatched up one of the sticks from the table. “All right, whatever. So what’d you find?”
“They’re profiles,” I said, sitting down cross from her. I tapped on the table with my fingers.
“Profiles,” she said, frowning at me. “Are you joking?”
“Not at all.” I picked one up and waved it in the air. “They’re profiles of girls that the Healy family’s been trafficking. Girls from Ukraine, some from Russia and Thailand, places like that. Girls they’ve bought and sold.”
Her face slowly fell into horror as she stared at the sticks then dropped the one in her fingers. It clattered onto the table and joined the others like a gravestone.
“You’re joking,” she whispered.
“Now you know why Ronan wanted you dead,” I said. “He thought you knew.”
“I had no clue.” She shook her head quickly. “I would’ve burned the whole lot of them, or thrown them in the river, or something. Oh my god, they’re girls.”
I realized with a start that she could’ve known some of the people locked away in those spreadsheets. She’d lived on the streets long enough that she had to have dealt with some of the girls turning tricks for the Healy family, and most of them were from someplace else, someplace far away from the city. Poor girls with no other options, sold some lie about making a new start in America, ripped away from their poor origins and sent into hell to sell their body for eager, pathetic men. These sticks could’ve represented friends, people she cared about, and I hadn’t even thought about that.
“We’re going to use these against them,” I said softly, leaning forward to look into her face. “You get that, right? This can hurt them.”
“Hurt Ronan,” she said, sounding like she was somewhere else.
“Badly, maybe even bad enough to take him down, him and the whole operation. There are names in the profiles, dates and places and addresses, and I have a feeling that we’ll dig up a lot more once we start looking into them.”
She sucked in a shuddering breath. “Goddamn it, Cam,” she said. “Ronan’s going to kill me, isn’t he?”
“No,” I said. “He’s not coming anywhere near you.”
“But I really can’t go anywhere until he’s gone.” She stared down at her hands then stood up suddenly and walked away from the table.
I followed her. She faced me, arms crossed, and I gently touched her shoulders, drawing her close. She let me hug her, hold her tight, and she didn’t cry—but I felt her body shake and tense, like sobs wracked her chest.
“You’ve been through too much,” I said softly. “And now I’m going to ask you to go through more.”
“How?” she asked, looking up at me.
“We need to figure out how we’re going to use these against Ronan and his people,” I said. “And I might need your help to do it.”
“Why me?” She shook her head. “I barely know them.”
“You worked for them,” I said. “You know some of their people. We can use that.”
She sucked in a breath then nodded once. “All right,” she said. “I’ll help. But I’m not doing it for you.”
“I didn’t think you were,” I said, smiling softly, and kissed her cheek. She stiffened, but didn’t pull away. “It’s good to have you back, you know that?”
“I bet it is,” she whispered, and turned her back on me then walked over to the window. I left her alone and gathered up the sticks, shoving them back into the bag.
“We’ll take these to the Don,” I said. “From there, we’ll figure out where to go.” I hesitated and watched her carefully. “You’re with me, right?”
“I’m with you,” she said.
“No more running.”
“No more,” she echoed with a sigh. She stared up at the ceiling, then forced a rough smile. “It’s weird, you know? I feel like I haven’t settled down in two years, then suddenly you come storming back into my life, and now it’s like I’m back where I should’ve been. Except it doesn’t feel right.”
“Why doesn’t it feel right?” I asked.
“We’ve changed,” she said. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about this. I guess I should put on something nice if we’re going to see the Don, right?”
I wanted to push her on what she meant, but decided to let it go. The harder I tried to force her to fit into the mold I wanted for her, the faster she’d fight back and get away from me again. I had to be careful, or else I’d lose her all over.
“You’re fine in whatever you want,” I said, but she already walked past me, back to my bedroom. “You’re going to have to sleep on the couch eventually,” I called after her, but she only laughed.
I sighed and sat down to wait, drumming my fingers on the table.
