Focus (9 page)

“CJ,” he said, his baby voice and laughter ringing through ears. Suddenly, the bar wasn’t there anymore. It was just Nathaniel and me, and we were standing in the middle of a field of flowers. “I miss you CJ.”

“I miss you too,” I said, feeling the tears flowing. “Where are you?”

“I’m in a place where nobody tells me I can’t have cookies whenever I want them. It’s fun here, CJ. There’s lots of other kids here.”

“Nathaniel, I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I miss you so much.”

“I know, CJ. I know that you never meant to hurt me. I love you, CJ. I love you, and I’ll be waiting for you.”

“You will? You don’t hate me for what I did?”

“We don’t hate here. We only love.” At that, he put his little chubby arms around my neck. “Don’t worry, CJ. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. And you’ll be fine, too, CJ. Mommy and Stella will talk to you soon. I’m trying to make them talk to you, CJ. They’re just too sad to talk to you right now. But they will.”

“They will?”

“Yes.” Then he turned around. “I have to go, CJ. I’ll see you again one day, but not for a long time.” Then he blew a kiss to me and faded away.

“Wait,” I said. “You can’t go. Please, come back, Nathaniel. Please.”

But he wasn’t there anymore. The bar came back into focus, and I realized that I was sitting in a chair. The reindeers were gone, but everything was spinning and the lights were looking like a color wheel. A color wheel like in those 1970s Christmas trees. The bar reminded me of when I was a little girl and my mother bought one of those things that made lights and color spin on the top of my ceiling. I loved that thing. I felt suddenly comforted, as if I was a small child again, and nothing bad had ever happened.

I reached out to try to touch the colors, and I could actually smell them. The blue smelled like mint, the red smelled like licorice. The green smelled like apple. The purple smelled like raspberry. The yellow smelled like lemon. The orange smelled like an Orange Julius. All of the scents were very pleasant to my nose, of course.

I was vaguely aware that I was being led over to the older man that I started with. “Venus, you remember William, don’t you?”

“No,” I said. All at once, he got bigger and bigger, like he was made of helium. He literally looked like a blimp to me. “No. I can’t do that.”

I couldn’t exactly remember what it was that I didn’t want to do. I only knew that this man wasn’t anything that I wanted to be associated with.

As if to confirm this, he grew horns and sharp teeth, right before my eyes. He opened his mouth, and it was like a gaping maw. I looked into the maw, and saw fire and people screaming. I shivered. “No.”

Then, the next thing I knew, I was being ushered into another room. By Robert. He was dragging me back to a room. “Are you turning a VIP down?” he shouted at me. “Are you, Venus?”

“No,” I said. Suddenly, that was the only word that I could remember. “No.”

“You’re a liar.” And, just like that, Robert, too, changed to a demon. But he was an even scarier demon than was the other demon. He grew and grew until he was around 8 feet tall, and his skin was made of scales. He had an enormous tail that had a spike on it, and his skin was completely red.

The demon, who was Robert, started to whip me. He slapped me, and hit me and kicked me. I couldn’t feel any of it, though. I had no idea if what was happening was part of my nightmare or if it were real. At that point, nothing was real to me. “You’re going to learn, Venus,” he said. “You’re going to learn to treat our VIPs with respect. Or I’m going to kill you.”

The onslaught kept going, and I was on the floor. He was literally a monster, and the monster was beating me relentlessly. I looked up, and I saw Ginger, her neck still epically long. She looked sad, and she was shaking her head. “Who’s taking her to the hospital tonight?” she asked the monster.

“Tamara,” he said. “Call her in here.”

I laid down on the ground until another woman came back into that room. She was blonde and had large breasts that were filled with silicone. As I looked at her, her breasts got bigger and bigger and bigger, like they were two balloons that were being filled with air. “You know the drill,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “Come with me, newbie.”

I was being helped out of the club by this new girl. Everybody was laughing and pointing at me as I made my way out of there and I was soon in the back of a limo. “The usual place,” she said to the driver. “Presbyterian.”

I remembered that this was the place where I was for those months. I looked out the window, and everything was going fast. I felt like I was on a rollercoaster. Every small hill that the limo went down was like a large hill on a rollercoaster. “Wheeee,” I said as the limo descended an incline. Then, when the limo went up a small hill, I closed my eyes, anticipating the inevitable “whoosh” that would accompany us going down the next hill.

Everything outside looked like a carnival. There were clowns on the sidewalk, and a small boy carrying cotton candy. A Ferris wheel loomed right in front of me. “Let me out,” I said to the girl who was next to me. “I want to get on the Ferris wheel. Please let me out.”

“I can’t let you out,” she said. “I have to get you to the hospital.”

But, we didn’t make it to the hospital. The limo slid on the icy streets and I felt a mighty crash. I wasn’t strapped into the back, so I flew forward and I was vaguely aware that I hit my head on something hard. It might have been the windshield.

And, just like that, everything went completely black.

I
had been
at this for hours. It seemed like days. I kept meeting dead-ends whenever I tried to breach Yuri’s security protocols. One thing was for sure – he had more security than any governmental entity that I had ever tried to penetrate.

“How is it going, Alexei?” Nikolai asked me. He brought me some water to drink, along with a cup of coffee.

It was going to be a long, long night.

I stretched my neck. “It’s not. I can’t seem to get past his firewall. I’ve tried everything I can think of, and nothing’s working out like I want it to.” I took a deep breath.
You have to focus, Asher. Just block out everything around you and focus. “
How is it going out there? How is Marisa doing?”

“She’s calming down. I think that she is finally starting to believe that we aren’t going to hurt her.”

“That’s good news,” I said. I felt totally distracted, however. “Goddammit. I can’t believe that this is taking so long.”

“Just be patient,” Nikolai said. “You’ll get there. Of course, he’s going to have a very high level of security. Look at who he is and what he does. If he had a system that just anybody could hack into, he would be in a world of trouble.”

I put my head in my hands. I could hear CJ’s voice in my ears. She was terrified and alone. She was being shipped off into a distant country, and I would never see her again. I imagined all the worst-case scenarios in my head. I knew that I couldn’t do this. I knew that I shouldn’t do this. But, yet, I did. I did, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I couldn’t get her suffering out of my head.

“I need to take a break,” I said. “I need to step away from this and come back with some fresh eyes.” So, I went out to check on Marisa.

She was sitting on a couch, a blanket wrapped around her. Nikolai had supplied her with some hot tea and some potato chips from a vending machine. I sat down next to her. “How are you holding up?” I asked her.

“I’m okay. I’m doing better now, I think.” She shuddered a little bit and wrapped the blanket around her tighter. “I think that I’m safe. Am I?”

“You are.” I took a deep breath. “How was CJ?”

She shook her head. “She was amazing. I don’t think that she was breaking down at all. She kept telling me that we were going to get out of there. She kept trying to calm me down. But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t calm down. All that I could think about was all those
Criminal Minds
episodes where the serial killers take their victims and keep them hostage before killing them.”

I nodded my head. “Yes. Perhaps those shows aren’t the best thing to watch sometimes. They can make the world seem like a really dangerous place.”

“Isn’t it dangerous?”

“Yes. But most people will never experience it.” I paused. “Tell me more about CJ. I want to hear everything that you know.”

“I don’t know much,” she said. “I know that she was blindfolded and chained to the bed. I was also chained to my bed, but I didn’t have a blindfold on.”

“You didn’t?” I wondered why CJ did but Marisa didn’t. “Do you know why that would be?”

“No,” she said. “But maybe it was because CJ was sold and I wasn’t. So, CJ couldn’t see the person who bought her. I don’t know, though.”

“Okay. Listen, think back. Was there anything that would tell you who bought CJ? Anything at all? A first name, anything?”

She shook her head. “No. That man who took me, he just said that CJ was sold, and that he couldn’t sell me because I was too headstrong. Or something of the sort.”

I sighed. Marisa wasn’t any help at all. But she did tell me that CJ was strong, and was holding up and not breaking down. That was a good thing to hear.

But was CJ still strong? Or was she somewhere being raped and beaten? Was she being brainwashed by somebody?

I hated not having these answers. I absolutely despised it.

“Thank you, Marisa,” I said. “I need to get back at the computer. I have to keep trying.”

“I hope you can be successful,” she said. “CJ seemed like a nice girl.”

“She is,” I said, feeling wistful. What I wouldn’t give to have gone back in time and undo the damage that happened after I said goodbye to her. Would everything had been different if I just would have found a way for us to stay together? I knew that there was a way. It would involve CJ meeting my father, which is the one thing that I didn’t want to do. But my father could give her protection. That could be the only way that CJ and I could truly be together.

If that was the only way, then that was what would have to happen. I hoped that I could convince my father to come to New York City to meet with us. I would rather that happen then the other way around – taking CJ to Russia to meet with my father. That would be too much of a culture shock for her.

Especially after she went through this ordeal.

I sat back down at the computer and I furiously ran some more diagnostics. I was going to find a way around Yuri’s firewall if I had to sit there all night. All week. All year. However long it took, I was going to sit there until I figured out exactly who bought CJ.

And then hell would be brought down upon that man.

Even so, I heard my father’s voice ringing in my ears. “Alexei,” he had said. “Do not make waves in America. Stay on your own side of the line, Alexei. If you keep out of the business of the syndicates there, then I can continue to protect you. If you start a war, then you better be able to finish it.”

If I started a war, then I better be able to finish it.

Was I about to start a war?

Maybe. Hopefully not. It all depended on who bought CJ. If it was a member of a Russian syndicate, then obviously I would need to tread lightly. If it was a member of any other syndicate, same thing.

But if the person wasn’t connected…then I would do anything in my power to get CJ back. I would literally kill to get her back.

Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, though. Hopefully it would be just a matter of money changing hands. Everybody had a price. I just had to find it with this person, whoever it was who had her.

Sighing, I got back to work.

S
everal hours later
,
I was finally there. I was finally in.

Thank God.

I scoured all of Yuri’s records, frantically looking for the transaction that would indicate who had CJ. They were encoded, of course, so it took me a few minutes to break the code.

Then I finally had the name. Robert Moran, who owned a series of escort services/strip joints. These places catered to the well-to-do, and they were all underground, as they were illegal.

The problem was, he owned about ten of these places in the city. And another twenty worldwide. It was still a needle in a haystack. It was just that the haystack was a bit smaller than before.

“Okay, Nikolai,” I said. “We’re going to have to divide and conquer here. Between the two of us, we’re going to have to visit every one of these places in the city and find this man.” I was also able to find a picture of this Robert Moron person, oops, Moran, so I knew who I would be looking for.

I called my driver to take Nikolai to five of the places. I would go to the other five.

I prayed that I wasn’t too late. I also prayed that CJ wasn’t going to be shipped to one of the overseas clubs. If that were the case, I might never see her again.

I
naturally gravitated
towards the major club that I knew about. I called Nikolai before going in. Marisa was with him. We had agreed that this was best. “Okay,” I said. “You know what to do. If you find this guy, you call me. I’ll be there immediately.”

“Of course, Alexei,” he said.

“Good. And I’ll do the same. If I find him, I’ll call you. But I will start the negotiations before you get her.” I felt better knowing that Nikolai was on my side. He always did have my back. And he would be invaluable in case I needed backup.

I walked into the club, and a red-headed woman immediately made a beeline for me. “Asher Sloane,” she said. “Speak of the devil.”

My ears perked up when she said that. “What do you mean by that?” I said. “And who are you?”

“My name is Andrea Fontaine,” she said. “But I go by Ginger.”

“And how do you know me?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Everyone knows who you are. Of course, I never thought that I would see you in a place like this, but, then again, we do have our share of billionaires here.” She smiled coquettishly. “But talk about a big fish. Anyhow, come in, come in. Have a seat and make yourself at home. Who can I bring you? Blonde, brunette…redhead?” She batted her eyelashes at me when she said that last word. “I hope you like redheads. You know what they say about us.” Then she smiled again. “Then again, maybe you like somebody more punk. Pink hair, blue hair, whatever flavor you want. We have it all. Perhaps you also might like something a bit more ethnic. We have black girls, Hispanic girls, Asian girls. Take your pick. I’ll bring her out to you.”

“I only want one girl. Her name is CJ Parker.”

She shook her head. “She mentioned you.”

My heart started racing. “What do you mean, she mentioned me?”

“She said something about you being her prince charming. Of course, she was pretty wacked out at the time.”

“Where is she now?”

She raised an eyebrow. “You need to talk to Robert about that.”

“Tell me,” I said. Then I texted Nikolai to get to this club. “Now, tell me where she is.”

“Talk to Robert,” she said. “Let me lead you to him.”

At that, she walked through the maze of the club, back to an office. Robert Moran was there. I recognized him from his pictures. “Robert,” Ginger said. “Meet Asher Sloane.” Then she raised an eyebrow at Robert and walked away.

He stood and extended his hand. “Asher Sloane. Welcome to our club. Welcome. I’m very honored to have your interest in my place. I think that you’ll find that we’re very discreet and you can definitely find anything you would like here. Just say the word, and we’ll have a girl for you.”

“I’m not interested in a girl,” I said. “At least not in the way that you’re thinking. I’m interested in one particular girl. Her name is CJ Parker. You have her here, and I would like to buy her back from you.”

He sat down. He looked disappointed that I wasn’t interested in being part of the clientele. “CJ Parker. Well, I don’t know who it is that you’re talking about.”

I took a deep breath. “Of course you do. Ginger knew who I was talking about immediately. Now, you’re going to tell me where she is, and you’re going to allow me to buy her from you.”

“Oh, I am, am I?” he said. “Who do you think you are, coming in here, demanding that I give you confidential information about a girl who may or may not work here?” He tried to feign indignation, but I knew that it was an act. I could see right through it. He had CJ, that much was clear.

“I’m not here to play games,” I said, as I looked around me. Two very large men had entered the room. I suddenly wished that I had started the negotiations with Nikolai around, because it suddenly seemed as if this entire thing wasn’t going to end very well. “I’m here to offer you as much money as you need to let CJ out of your service.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Well, you know that I paid $3 million for her.”

“Then I’m prepared to offer you $6 million to get her back.”

He shook his head. “She’s a valuable commodity. She can earn me ten times that in the three years that I will have her with me.”

“Okay, then, I’ll offer you $60 million.”

He swiveled in his chair. “You’re in the position to do that, I know. You really want this girl, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “I won’t hide that fact. I want her.”

“You’ll do anything to get her?”

“Don’t force me to do something that I really don’t want to do.” And, at that, the two large men tried to tackle me. But I got the jump on them, so I wrestled one to the ground, and then swiftly punched out the other one. I knew just where to hit these men so that they crumpled to the ground.

I immediately drew my weapon, as I saw Robert stand up with a gun. The two men got up off the floor, groaning a little, and I saw Robert motioning to them with his eyes.

I turned to them. “Don’t move. If you do, Robert here will be dead. Trust me, I have experience with this type of thing, and I will win. Every time.”

Robert motioned them to leave, and they did.

“Okay,” he said, and then he looked at the door. “Looks like you have a friend here.”

I didn’t turn my head. My eyes were completely trained upon this worm of a man. “Yes. Now, if you don’t want a bullet between your eyes, I suggest you tell me where CJ is. And I suggest that you take yes for an answer and let me buy her off of you.”

My hand never wavered. My gun was pointed right at his head, and was cocked. He, too, had a gun pointed at me, but I noticed that his wasn’t cocked. This meant that I could easily get a shot off before he could.

I had the upper hand in these negotiations, and he knew it.

“Okay,” he said. “CJ doesn’t mean that much to me. I’ll take your deal.”

“Nothing doing,” I said. “That deal is off the table. Here is my new deal. I’ll pay you what you paid for CJ. Nothing more and nothing less. And you’re going to tell me where she is, because if you don’t, I will kill you.”

“Okay,” he said. “Transfer the money into my account,” he said. “And I’ll tell you where she is.”

I looked at Nikolai and nodded my head. I could have just threatened to kill this man and not paid him anything, but I knew that, if he actually got his money for CJ back, he probably would leave me alone. If he was out this money, then there might be a war started, just like my father warned me about. I didn’t know what kind of ties this guy had, but I knew that he had to have some kind of mob backing.

Better safe than sorry.

Nikolai transferred the money, and Robert checked his computer, his gun still trained on me. He nodded. “Okay. CJ has been taken to New York Presbyterian Hospital.”

I swallowed. “The hospital. Why is she there?”

“No questions,” he said. “I gave you the information that you needed, now please leave.”

I nodded and gestured to Nikolai. He texted my driver, and the two of us left the club.

Then we sped to the hospital. I had no idea why she was there, but I had a feeling it had something to do with that worm back there.

I should have killed him when I had the chance.