Sexual Games [The Heroes of Silver Springs 8] (Siren Publishing Classic) (26 page)

What other kind of rave is there?
Mallory kept quiet and let Sophie continue her story.

“I wasn’t having any fun at first.” She laughed, but there was no humor in the tone. “I was too scared to be there. Then one of my friends started in on me about loosening up, getting out on the dance floor. She handed me a glass of punch.” She closed her eyes and bowed her head. “There must have been something in that first drink. I’ve thought about it over and over since that night, and I realized it didn’t really make me feel funny, but it made me feel happy. I started to have fun.”

“Ecstasy,” Mallory said softly. “That’s what it does to you.”

Sophie shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is I wasn’t afraid anymore. Then Jim started dancing with me and he gave me another glass of punch. That one tasted funny, but for some reason, I drank it anyway. I was so stupid,” she said through gritted teeth. “Almost immediately, I started to hyperventilate. He wrapped his arm around me and walked me outside where there was a van waiting. I knew not to get into that van, but by that point, I couldn’t do anything. I was so out of it. I passed out in the back of that van and woke up here.”

“How long have you been here?” If Lexie had been here when they brought Sophie in, the girl had to have been here for several weeks, maybe even a month.

“I don’t know. The days get all jumbled together.” Sophie narrowed her eyes and angled her head at Mallory. “You said you’re an FBI agent. Surely you weren’t as stupid as I was to let Jim buy you a drink.”

“No.” Though he had tried the first night she met him. Damnit, if only she had known that night. She could have saved this girl at least a few days of horror. “I was working undercover at Stardust. Kenneth—at least I’m pretty certain it was Kenneth—blew my cover.” The only explanation she could come up with was that Kenneth purposely gave her away so she would be brought here where he knew his sister was being held. “The manager called me in this morning to talk before the club opened. When I got there, Jim, Wade Forbes, was waiting for me.”

“You’re here because of my brother, too,” Sophie said on a scornful laugh. “If I ever get out of here, he better hope he’s nowhere to be found because I will rip off his balls and feed them to him through a straw.”

Mallory didn’t tell her about the fire at Stardust or about the possibility Kenneth hadn’t made it out alive. He might be their only hope of being found. God, wasn’t that a horrible place to put her hopes?

“I think he did it on purpose. I think he knew Forbes would bring me here to you.”

“You were asleep for hours. He drugged you.”

Mallory nodded. “In the van, right before he brought me inside, I guess.” She looked down at her arm and saw the tiny hole the needle had left in her flesh. “I don’t know what was in the syringe. All I know is one minute I was struggling to fight back and the next I was in la-la land.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have anything for you to wear. Some woman brought this shirt to me. I don’t know when. It feels like years ago, but I’m sure it couldn’t have been that long. I hope not, at least. I know it probably stinks. It’s been forever since they’ve allowed me a bath.”

Betty had to be the woman Sophie spoke of. Mallory looked down at herself for the first time since she woke. A faded blue blanket covered her naked flesh. She forced a smile as she looked back at Sophie. “A blanket is better than nothing. Where are we? Do you have any idea at all?”

“A room in a cellar or basement or something.” Sophie shrugged. “There’s a long hallway outside that door and a bathroom somewhere. He’s made sure I was too wacked out to notice anything the few times he’s taken me out of here. He left that pan over there for me to, um, relieve myself the rest of the time. That’s why it smells so bad in here.”

Mallory hadn’t noticed the stench until Sophie drew her attention to it. Funny how the senses could block out unimportant things when the mind was focused on primary details.

“Sometimes I hear music,” Sophie continued. “Club music, but it’s very faint, almost like it’s next door or across the street or something.”

Mallory’s mind reeled. They weren’t close to Stardust. She knew that much because the ride in the van had been too long. She tried to think back to that trip and attempted to gauge how much time had passed before Forbes injected her with whatever had been in that syringe. Had it been ten minutes, fifteen, twenty? She wasn’t exactly sure.

“You’re an FBI agent,” Sophie said again. “That means you’ll have a butt load of big bad guys with guns looking for you, right?”

Mallory had to laugh at that. “My team will be looking for me, yes.” But she wasn’t going to stack all her cards in one pile on them finding her before Forbes returned. She could find a way out of this herself. All she needed to do was think.

“It can’t be Mallory.” Jackson said it more to convince himself than anyone else in Cooper’s office. They were all listening, though, and Tarantino and Cameron shook their heads as they watched him pace the tiled floor. Cooper sat behind his desk talking quietly on the phone, to whom Jackson didn’t know and frankly didn’t give a shit unless it was Mallory. It obviously wasn’t, so he continued his pacing.

It had been hours since the fire, since the discovery of not one but two bodies. The second hadn’t been as badly charred as the first. The medical examiner had quickly determined it to be male due to the frame build and other indicators, though a conclusive identification had yet to be made. Firefighters were still at the scene, making sure the fire was indeed out, and wetting down hot spots. Fire investigators had been called in, but so far, nothing had been found to give them any further leads.

“You may not want to hear this,” Cameron started, then sighed. “Hell, I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’m not sure if we should hope it is or it isn’t.”

Jackson saw red. He whirled on Cameron, fisting his hands at his sides. For the first time in years, he wanted to beat the holy living shit out of his best friend. He maintained enough control to keep his distance, to keep his voice low when he spoke out of respect for his boss’s phone call, but he knew his tone was cold as ice with an expression on his face to match. “How in the
fuck
can you say that? She’s your sister.”

“Yeah.” Cameron’s voice cracked on the calmly spoken word. “And I don’t want to think about what that bastard is doing to her right now if that’s not her lying in the ME’s office.”

Forbes would torture her. None of them had a doubt about that. Knowing she was an FBI agent, that she had penetrated one of his businesses enough to get inside in an effort to take him down, would lead him to do things to her Jackson didn’t want to think about. Forbes would try to get her to reveal whatever information the bureau had managed to gather on him.

Which isn’t a whole hell of a fucking lot.

“She’s alive,” he said through gritted teeth. “Forbes took her out of that passageway the firefighters found. He got her out through the woods.”

He wouldn’t believe anything else. He couldn’t. Tough-as-nails Mallory could get through anything as long as she lived to try. Whatever Forbes did to her before they found her didn’t matter. He would see that she got whatever help she needed to cope. “That’s not her, damnit. That’s not Mallory.”

Please, God, don’t let it be Mallory. Don’t take her from me now.

He understood. After all the years of dancing around one another, all the years of her fighting her love for him, he finally, truly understood why. If he had lost her, his life would never be the same. No one could ever replace her. He wouldn’t even try. He would live the rest of his days waiting for his time to come, waiting for the moment when he would be reunited with her again.

“No, it’s not.”

Jackson stopped in his tracks and spun to face his boss, half certain the intense hope inside him had caused him to hear what he wanted to hear rather than what Cooper actually said. His pulse pounded so loudly in his ears that he barely heard Cooper’s next words.

“No positive identification has been made yet. However, our ME is ninety-nine percent certain that is not Mallory’s body.”

A heavy, thankful silence blanketed the office. Jackson wanted to move, he wanted to sit, he wanted to rush out of the office and find Mallory, but shock and sheer elation froze him in his spot.

Tarantino was the first to speak. “What about the second body, sir? Has the ME identified it yet?”

The second body had been found in the rear of the building where the office had been.

Cooper nodded. “It was Carl Jordan, the club owner. Or at least the one on record, in any case.”

“When is the last time Kell checked in, sir?” Jackson actually felt his mind switch gears. Mallory was alive…for now. They had to find her, and fast.

“I talked to him about an hour ago. Leroy Platt is bouncing around the surrounding cities alone. If he has one of the missing girls, she isn’t with him. We were hoping he would lead us to where he’s stashed the girl, or girls, but so far he isn’t doing anything to draw any real attention to himself, isn’t leaving any indication that he’s out for more than a simple vacation.”

“We can’t wait for him to decide to come back to town,” Cameron said. “Mallory may not have that much time.”

“I want a warrant to search his house.” Jackson didn’t ask his boss. He told him.

“I’m already a step ahead of you, Graham. We’ll have the warrant by morning.”

“That’s not soon enough.” Mallory could truly be dead by morning. If the information they had gathered on Platt was as solid as they believed, then he might be able to lead them straight to Mallory.

Cooper lifted a brow and steadied his gaze on Jackson. “It’s the best I can do.”

“Have Kell bring him in, sir.” Jackson added the “sir” as an afterthought, knowing he was skirting a thin line by giving his boss orders.

“Mallory’s life isn’t the only one on the line here, Graham,” Cooper reminded him sternly. “If we bring Platt in before we know what he’s done with the girl, we may never find what he’s done with her. Searching his house will be risky enough. If he’s tipped off that we’re on to him, he and his connections in this town will be all over this bureau. We’ll be in a fight to prove his guilt with little more than circumstantial evidence, wasting valuable time we could be using to find these missing girls.”

“Platt isn’t the only fucker in this city paying top dollar for a sex slave,” Tarantino reminded them. “There must be others or we wouldn’t have so many missing girls.”

“Sharp is working around the clock to analyze the data from the Stardust computer hard drive,” Cooper told him. “It’s taking longer than anticipated to pinpoint and decipher the cash transactions he’s finding. Forbes is apparently good with computers.”

“Sharp is about to get some help,” Jackson decided.

Cooper’s lips twitched. “He won’t like that. He prefers to work alone.”

“I don’t give a damn what he likes, sir.” What Jackson liked was Mallory by his side, and right now, that computer hard drive was his best link to her.

Cooper gave him an almost imperceptible nod. “Good enough.” His gaze switched to Tarantino and Cameron. “I’ve got men watching Platt’s house. If so much as a rat scurries outside that place, we’ll know about it. If he hasn’t returned by morning, we’ll move in as soon as I get confirmation of the warrant. Cameron, I want you to go home and take care of that arm. I need you in top shape when this goes down.”

Cooper got to his feet, walked to his private closet, and took out a casual shirt and another pair of pants. “Jennifer Moss returned to work at Cinderella’s tonight. I’m not crazy about that, but she hasn’t spotted a tail on her in days and hasn’t noticed anything unusual.”

“Are you thinking her going back will cause Forbes to resurface tonight?” Jackson asked doubtfully. If he wanted Jennifer Moss, he would’ve taken her a long time ago.

“No, but I’ve been wrong before. Forbes felt threatened enough by her association with Lexie Stratus to have her watched for a while. As far as we know, he isn’t aware she’s been talking to us. I want to make sure that hasn’t changed.”

* * * *

He shouldn’t be here.

Thaddeus leaned against the front bumper of Cameron’s SUV, tipped his head back, and stared at the stars. It was a beautiful night, too pretty after the day it had been. Two people had died today, one of them possibly Cameron’s sister. God, what the man must be going through right now.

He lifted his head, glanced at the door to the building, and sighed. He had thought about going inside, but he didn’t want to disturb Cameron. The man would be working, feverishly attempting to find his sister’s killer, if she were truly dead. And if that wasn’t her body found today, he would no doubt be turning over every rock and leaf in Waterston to find her.

Which means he could be in there all night.

And that would leave Thaddeus standing out here waiting like an idiot. He should go. He hadn’t talked to Cameron, not
really
talked to him, since their date. It was bad enough that he had slipped at the fire scene today and called the man
baby
in front of the lieutenant. Now he was waiting outside the man’s place of employment and had been for over a half hour.