Black Kat (7 page)

“I’ll make a deal with you, but I have a few conditions.”

Alexander seemed amused.  “Are you really in a position to negotiate, Miss Rossi?”

Kat’s eyes glinted, the green color taking over.  “These are deal breakers for me, Mr.
Petrovsky.”

“Very well.
  Go on.”

“First, I’m taking this file with me.  Second,
I want to know the minute you get new information.  And, finally…this business arrangement is just that…strictly business.”

“That is your copy to do with as you please.  I will update you immediately in the case of new information.”  Alexander paused, considering how to address her last stipulation.  He had expected as much.  “As for our relationship becoming personal, you have my word, Miss Rossi, that I will not lay a finger on you until you beg me to.”

Kat snorted even as she felt relieved that he wasn’t expecting repayment in the form of sex.  “I wouldn’t hold your breath, Mr. Petrovsky.”

“I accept your conditions, but I have one of my own.  You will allow me to call you
Katya.  Miss Rossi is too formal, and Kat…well, Kat, is not nearly reflective of the beauty of its owner.”

He was smooth.  Kat had to give him that.  His words washed over her, causing warmth to flow through her even as it made her uncomfo
rtable to be called beautiful.  “Fine.”

“And, please call me Alexander.  I don’t think I can stand Alex, and Al is simply out of the question.”  He grimaced just speaking the horrid name.

Now that they had the important details ironed out, Kat stood to leave.  She picked up the file and held it against her chest as she walked toward the door.  Alexander walked alongside her and lightly placed his hand under her elbow.  Kat’s first instinct was to shy away from the innocent touch, but instead of stepping out of his reach, she turned to face him.

“I assume you’ll let me know what the plans are for Saturday.  I’m not sure I have anything appropriate for a charity gala.  My cocktail waitress costume probably won’t do.”

Alexander chuckled.  “Janice will contact you with the details and arrange for something to wear.”  As he opened the door and gestured for Kat to go ahead of him, Alexander spoke to Janice.  “Janice, Miss Rossi will be accompanying me on Saturday to the gala.  Please make all the necessary arrangements.  And make sure Miss Rossi has my cell number.”

Janice raised an eyebrow at the last request.  Nobody, except
Luke, Natasha and herself had Mr. Petrovsky’s cell number.  “Of course, sir.”

Alexander’s hand once again brushed the fabric covering her arm as he leaned closer to say, “Thank you,
Katya.  I think we will find this arrangement to be mutually beneficial.”

A faint shiver ran through her body.  Kat didn’t recognize it as the usual sense of fear she felt when someone got too close.  It was different, and she wasn’
t altogether sure what it was.  She could only nod in response and snap her fingers to get Blade’s attention.

Alexander held the glass door for her and Blade and waited with her for the elevator to arrive.

“Do you want my number?”

Alexander glanced at her and tucked his hands in his pockets.  “I already have it.”

Kat rolled her eyes.  “Of course you do.”

When the elevator arrived, Kat and Blade stepped inside.  Alexander watched her until the doors closed.  Once he was out of sight, Kat slumped against the wall and dropped one hand to Blade’s head.  She realized that not only had she let Alexander touch her arm, which was a hug
e deal for her, but Blade had not once growled at him.  Did that mean he could be trusted?  Or was he so manipulative as to even fool her…and Blade?  Kat held the thick file tightly as she walked through the lobby of The Onyx feeling like she might have just made a deal with the devil.  A handsome devil, but a devil nonetheless.

Chapter Eight

Kat paced back and forth in front of her open closet door with her hands in the back pockets of her distressed jeans.  Blade followed her with his eyes from his place on the bed.  Pausing to look over her board again, Kat felt like she was so close to something. It was just out of her grasp.

The pictures of the room where she had been held were now lining the left side of her closet wall.  The initial shock of looking through the file yesterday had mostly worn off. 
Kat was glad she had not looked through the file in Alexander’s office and had instead waited until she was home.  In her apartment with the deadbolt locked and the chain on the door.  Huddled in the corner of the sofa with Blade by her side.  She had not been scheduled to work last night, which was good because she would have had to call off anyway.  Nobody wanted a cocktail waitress who was a blubbering mess.

Tears were not something Kat often indulged in.  That’s what she considered it - an indulgence. 
To allow herself a moment of weakness.  To allow herself to be a victim.

Next to the pictures of her personal hell were the pictures of several powerful men in the city.  Men who could have arranged the kind of sex-trafficking ring she suspected she had been a part of without being caught. 
Men with power and influence.  Men like Alexander, though his picture no longer hung on her wall.  Kat didn’t fully trust him yet, though her instincts told her she could.  She reminded herself that he could be using her.  Keep your enemies close.

On the right side of her board were newspaper articles, including her own, of young women who had gone missing over the last ten years.  All of them were from poor families, bad neighborhoods.  Some were prostitutes or known drug addicts. 
Women who wouldn’t be missed.  Women who the authorities didn’t care enough about to find.

Kat was the lucky one.  Colin had saved her from an unknown fate, but he hadn’t saved her soon enough.  What had happened to her in that basement dungeon had forever changed her.  Kat, the teenager with dreams of getting out of poverty, was dead.  Kat, the woman who lived for revenge and dreamed of spilling the blood of the man responsible, was the person that Colin carried unconscious and broken from
the dingy basement.

From the nightstand, Kat’s phone rang.  Blade’s brown eyebrows shifted as he looked toward the source of the noise.  The display showed the most recent number to have been programmed into the phone.  Alexander
Petrovsky.  The only other person Kat considered important enough to have his number in her phone was Colin.  And he had put it there himself.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Katya,” the low voice streamed through the line.  He sounded just as arrogant on the phone as he did in person.  “I trust you have received the dress that Janice had sent over?  Did you find it to your liking?”

Kat almost
laughed at the formal way he spoke.  If his accent didn’t give away that English wasn’t his first language, they way he formed his sentences surely would.  But Kat didn’t laugh.  She walked to the door where the garment bag hung.  Unzipping it to run her fingers over the decadent fabric, she said, “It’ll do.”

Alexander
chuckled.  “I’m glad you approve.  I will have a car pick you up at 7:00 pm.  Don’t be late.”

“I’m never late.”

“I don’t doubt that.  The other reason for my call was to let you know that Mr. Westin has a lead.  It’s a long shot, but a lead nonetheless.  I considered holding this information until after our date on Saturday, lest you decide to back out of our deal.  However, I consider this an act of good faith, Katya.  Don’t abuse it.”

Impatiently tapping her foot, Kat hurriedly said, “I won’t back out.  I gave you my word.  Now, what’s the lead?”

“There is a woman by the name of Jill Stuart who might have been held in the same location before you.  Gil is going to her place of employment, and I use that term loosely, later today to talk with her.”

“She got away?”

“Yes, it seems so.  The information from our source isn’t entirely reliable, so this could turn out to be a waste of time.  But I wanted you to know we are working on it.  You have my word as well, Katya.”

“Where does she work?”

“A fine establishment, I’m sure, by the name of The Violet Vixen.  Her last known address appears to be right next door.”

“Thanks for letting me
know,” Katya said, already pulling on her jacket and tucking her gun into her bag.

“I will call you with an update after Gil pays Miss Stuart a visit.”

“Okay,” Kat said impatiently.

“I’ll see you tomorrow evening,
Katya.  I’m looking forward to it,” Alex said in a low voice.

“Can’t wait, Alex,” Kat said before ending the call.  She smiled to herself as she imagined him frowning at her choice of
nickname.

Kat knew where
The Violet Vixen was located, though she’d never been inside.  It wasn’t a place she had any reason to go…until now.  It didn’t take long to drive there, and five minutes later Kat parked her car a block down from the address.  It looked like any other street in the rundown area of Las Vegas where she had lived for twenty four years.  The building with a cracked sign appeared to be abandoned, but Kat knew better.  She knew just what could go on inside a place that everyone thought was abandoned.

Kat stood in front of the old two story house
next door with crumbling steps and peeling paint and took a deep breath.  Her messenger bag was slung across her chest so the bag lay on her right hip.  Easy access to her gun if it came to that.  The front door was locked, so she made her way through the knee deep weeds covering the front yard and crept around the side of the house.  Every window was boarded up, so Kat headed for the basement door.  It was locked as well, but the glass was broken.  So she was able to reach inside and turn the lock.

The house was quiet.  It was the middle of the day, so the girls were probably sleeping until dark when it would be time to go to work.  Prostitution was legal in Las Vegas, but the kind of shit that went down in places like this wasn’t legal
anywhere.

For obvious reasons, Kat hated basements, which was why she lived in a second floor apartment.  The stairs to her left led down to a dark and musty smelling basement.  The sight and smell made her stomach roll, and Kat wasted no time taking the steps up to the first floor.  The kitchen had been gutted, leaving no appliances or cabinets.  There were some slivers of light coming in through the cracks in the boards.  It was enough light for Kat to see where she
was going.

The peeling linoleum floor was littered with trash, used needles and condom wrappers.  Kat walked carefully, avoiding making any sound at all as she navigated to the stairs at the front of the house.  The stench of
sex and sweat permeated the air even though there was no one in sight on the first floor.

The stairs creaked under Kat’s boots as she quickly climbed to the second floor.  A long hallway with closed doors on either side loomed in front of her.  Checking the first door she came to, Kat found it unlocked.  Pushing it open she saw a bare room furnished only with two stained mattresses on the floor.  There were four women either sleeping or in a drug induced unconscious state.  Slipping inside, Kat shut the door behind her and kneeled next to the first woman.  Her bleach
ed blonde hair was stringy and dark brown at the roots.

Reaching out, Kat shook the woman’s shoulder.  Jerking awake
, the woman scrambled backward, her muddy brown eyes wide and flickering back and forth around the room.  It was only when she was halted in her backward scramble that Kat noticed she was tethered to the wall by a chain around her ankle.  Well, didn’t that bring back some great memories

Kat held out her hands in an effort to calm the woman. 
“Sshhh.  I’m not going to hurt you.  Can you tell me your name?”

The woman was twitching and those dilated pupils were still racing around the room, but she managed to get out her name.  “Angel.”

Sure it was.

“Okay, Angel.  I’m going to get you some help, but I need your help first.  Do you know where Jill is?”

With a shaky hand, Angel pointed her jagged and chipped red fingernail to the far corner of the room.  The dark haired woman lying by herself on the twin mattress pushed into the corner didn’t appear to be tied down like Angel and the other two women lying with her.

Kat moved away, ignoring Angel’s hoarse whimper.  Crouching down next to Jill, Kat cautiously touched her shoulder.  After several shakes it was clear that Jill was not just sleeping
, but completely out.  She looked seriously worn down.  There were track marks all over her arms, and her body looked equally used.

Looking back toward Angel, Kat said in a hushed tone
, “Why isn’t Jill tied up?”

“Because she doesn’t want to leave.”

“Who is keeping you here?”

Angel shuddered and wrapped her skeletal arms around her scantily clad upper body.  “The others call him Dante.”

“How long have you been here?”

Angel’s unfocused eyes told Kat even if she answered that question, it would likely be a distorted perception of time.  The woman shrugged.  It was clear that she was being held against her will, unless she enjoyed being tied to a dirty mattress with two other women.  Yet she didn’t ask Kat for help or seem to be able to do anything other than rock back and forth.

Dante, whoever he was, was obviously keeping the women drugged.  And some of them, like Jill, had become so far gone that they didn’t even try to leave anymore.  Was this where she would have ended up if Colin hadn’t found her?  Kat liked to think she would have fought against her captors no matter what.  But looking at Jill lying motionless on the mattress so like the one Kat had been found on, Kat wondered if she would have broken too.

As Kat stared at Jil
l and saw what she could have become, she knew her suspicions had been confirmed.  Hers hadn’t been a simple kidnapping by one deranged man.  She had been taken and plunged into the world of sex-trafficking.

Never before had she considered herself to be lucky.  Someone who had gone through what she had wasn’t inclined to think of themselves as fortunate.  But crouched on the floor of a dirty room that held sins she was intimately familiar with, she thanked a God she didn’t believe in that Colin had saved her.  She wasn’t Angel or Jill or any of the other nameless girls in this hell hole. 
She was Kat Rossi, and she had her life.  If her resolve wasn’t already strong enough, she vowed then and there to never stop until she brought the man responsible to justice.  Whether it was
Dante
or someone else in charge, Kat would bring him down if it was the last thing she did.

A creaking noise in the hallway had Kat swinging her head toward the door.  Heavy thuds in the hallway alerted her that it was a heavy man walking and not one of the other malnourished junky working girls.  Without a sound Kat moved to the side of the door and reached into her bag for her gun.  There were sounds of the man knocking loudly on the doors and yelling
, “Wake up!”  When he slammed his fist on the door by Kat’s head she didn’t even flinch.  Adrenaline and her training kept her calm and still.

As he moved away to pound on the next door, Kat considered her options.  What she wanted to do was open the door and fire her entire clip into the back of his head.  But that wasn’t the smartest option.  She had no idea if he was alone.  The better option was to get out of the house and call Colin in to handle this the right way.  After all, the man in charge of a sex trafficking ring like this wouldn’t stoop to manage the girls himself.  The guy in the hallway was
probably just a hired hand.

When Kat heard him pound on the door at the end of the hall, she took a deep breath and cracked the door.  She was in the room closest to the stairs, but if he turned around he would see her.  Taking a chance that she was faster and knowing she could use her gun if it came to that, Kat slipped out the door and ran for the stairs.  The top step creaked under her foot and she didn’t stop when she heard a yell from down the hall.

“Hey!” a deep voice shouted.  In spite of the size of the man that Kat glimpsed as she ran, he was surprisingly quick on his feet.  Kat jumped down three steps to the landing and was immediately body slammed from behind into the wall in front of her.  Her cheek was pressed flat against the mildewed wallpaper, the scent of evil filling her nose.  The man had his thick arm around her throat as he pressed into her with the full weight of his body.

The feel of a man’s body flush against her was enough to make her stomach roll, but Kat kept her head clear.  From this position she only had one choice, and thank God she already had her gun in her hand.  Shifting to the left as much as she could, K
at pressed the barrel of her 9mm to the meaty thigh of the man behind her.  The shot rang out and was quickly drowned out by the sound of pain.

“Oh,
fuuuuck!” the man groaned as he stumbled backward onto the stairs, grasping his leg with both hands.  Kat didn’t wait around to see what he would do next.  Before his ass hit the steps, she was racing down the bottom steps and out the door.  Kat ran until she was at her parked car halfway down the block.