Virgin Dancer (6 page)

"Yes," she whispered, the sound barely audible. Her every instinct told her to retract her hand, to stand up and go to one of the lower decks. It would be the best for her piece of mind in the long run. Ending this here and now would be preferable to the turmoil of emotions that raced through her every time he touched her, even just looked at her. She didn't want to fall in love with this man.

Too late.

Taking a deep breath, she wrapped her fingers around his and began to talk, just to relieve the tension. She told him about the town she'd grown up in, her love of dancing and Caleb, and listened to him as he spoke about his parents' home by the North Sea, the large family in which he grew up. The illusion of the moment was perfect, and neither of them wanted to destroy it with questions that couldn't be answered.

*****

Chapter Five

The rain had become steadier, but Alrik didn't care about getting soaked. After Jade had gone, he stared out at the water, raking a hand through his hair as he let out a shuddering breath. He'd offered to call her a taxi, but she had preferred to walk, leaving him with a too-quick goodbye that had felt weird to both of them. This afternoon hadn't made his life easier; in fact, being with Jade again had complicated things.

Why had he met her now, when the goal he'd been working for almost four years to achieve was so near? Only a few days ago, he had finally managed to convince Iago Ascobar, the head of a human trafficking organization, that he was a trustworthy business partner. Ascobar had agreed to sell him Ukrainian girls to work in his club, or to do with them as he pleased. Once Alrik 'owned' them, he could sell them as prostitutes to club patrons, force them to do whatever he wanted while they served him as sex slaves - young girls who had been abducted from their home, or lured into the trap of the criminals under false pretense. Most of them were kept imprisoned under inhuman circumstances, raped and beaten, and no one cared if they lived or died. In some cases, not even their own families cared about them anymore.

Alrik did.

As an undercover agent of the RKP, the Swedish police board's criminal intelligence and investigation division, his first contact with human trafficking had been in Stockholm, where he and his colleagues had blown several hideaways of a network of modern slave traders. They’d found dozens of young women and underage girls, mostly from Lithuania, Estonia and the Ukraine, brought to Sweden and kept against their will. Their own parents had sold some of them, others came willingly because the sex traders threatened to kill their families, or just for money to escape the desperate poverty in their home country. Their passports and meager personal belongings were taken from them to keep them dependent on their new bosses. They were raped, offered to business partners, sold as prostitutes to brothels and massage parlors or as sex slaves to private individuals who could do with them whatever they pleased.

When Alrik had freed some of the victims for the first time and looked into their empty eyes, he'd been shaken to the core. They were a small group of terrified, broken girls, some of them not more than children, kept in a dirty, small shed that was inhumanly hot and stank of excrement and rotten food. He had a sister in the same age range, a happy girl whose worst worry was what to wear for school or whether the boys she fancied liked her back. Something snapped into place in him, and he knew that this was what he wanted to do - go after the bastards who had done this. Later, his division had begun collaborating with the FBI when they found out that the sex traffickers had also expanded to the USA.

However, this criminal network was so well-organized and highly secretive that they could only blow some of their houses with raids and arrest some minor straw men, but never any of their leaders. They simply moved their business to other cities and continued as before. In recent years, all traces had led to one central figure who seemed to organize the whole ring. Alrik was sure that Ascobar was the person they'd been hunting for so long. But he hadn't managed to avoid being caught for so long without good reason. Ascobar was extremely cautious - disguising himself as the owner of a shipping company - and clever, never engaging in a deal himself unless it concerned extremely wealthy customers who bought a large number of girls at once. Even then, Ascobar only met with business partners he knew personally.

During these last years, Alrik had opened the club with his own savings, making it a huge success within months. Cooperating with FBI agents, he'd built up the almost-perfect cover of a wealthy club owner who provided well-paying customers with high class prostitutes, coming from his own escort service. Good Lord, he was glad that Jade hadn't found out about this special branch of his business, although it was just a part of his cover, of course.

The whole con had been carefully planned and organized solely to deceive Ascobar while Alrik drew closer and closer, encircling him like a spider catching an insect in its web. He'd needed Ascobar to trust him before he could try to contact him about buying a large number of girls to use as escorts. All the time, he'd been extremely careful not to betray his true identity, or do anything that would make Ascobar suspicious. Luckily, he'd finally succeeded in this; and if everything went well and according to plan, the FBI would strike as soon as Ascobar had proved himself guilty.

They needed to catch him in the act of actually selling the girls to a buyer, and Alrik would make sure that this happened.

The fact that Jade had literally danced into his life at this time was something he hadn't expected. She was so different from all the women he'd met before.

She was a kind-hearted woman, strong, compassionate, and protective of the people she cared about. It had moved him more than he'd admitted when she had told him about her autistic brother today, love shining in her eyes. She'd talked about how proud she was of Caleb, and that she wanted him to live with her some day. Alrik had done a background check on Jade after he'd met her for the first time, so he had known about Caleb even before she had mentioned him on the ferry.

Jade. God, he wanted her so much. He loved the way she reacted to his touch, the way she answered to his kisses with reckless abandon. Since he’d met her, he’d felt incredibly alive. He loved to simply hold her in his arms. He wanted to bring her so much pleasure that she squirmed under him and screamed his name. Even just talking to her and hearing her natural, unspoiled laughter in response to a funny remark made him happier than he'd been in years.

Being with her filled the emptiness inside of him, and eased the horrible loneliness that held his heart in its icy grip whenever he was alone late at night, staring unseeingly out into the night through the windows of his cold, quiet penthouse.

Despite his strong feelings for Jade, he wouldn't allow himself to see her again. A relationship with a woman - anything that would cloud his senses and make him vulnerable - was the last thing he could manage right now. He needed to think clearly, and he wouldn't put her into any danger by getting involved with him. It didn't matter how much his body tightened with need when he thought of her, or how much he wanted to taste her on his lips again.

Falling in love was not an option.

*****

It was over.

The evening was colder than Jade had expected when she had left her apartment earlier. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself as she walked down the narrow side lane. She could have taken the subway, but had chosen to walk instead, feeling that she needed to think. Think about what had just happened to her.

She had spent almost two hours with a man she barely knew, but it had felt as if they had known each other for ages. He had made her laugh with funny tales of his childhood, and had listened to every word she'd said with surprising attention, knowing that they would not see each other again. Still he'd seemed to absorb every piece of information as if he really cared about it, cared about
her
. She had even forgotten to tell him about her strange feeling of being followed. But then, maybe she'd simply overreacted. Wouldn't he think her crazy if she told him?

God, she hated the thought of never looking into his eyes again, never hearing his voice that had the power to make her tremble with need. She knew that she would cling to the memory of these few short moments all her life. Finally, she'd have another man, but she knew that there was no one like him. Not like Alrik.

Strangely enough, this shared time on the ship had meant so much more than the night she had been in his penthouse. She was sure that he had treated her with a side of him he rarely presented to anyone. Even if he didn't want her, or thought that she didn't fit into his life, she knew that he had been himself, and that what he'd told her about his past was true. Whatever happened now, this was something nobody could take away from her again. And her hand in his had felt right, so right.

She was so lost in thoughts that she didn't notice the dark grey BMW that drove up right beside her until it was too late. Two men jumped out to grab her arms and shove her into the back of the car. She tried to scream, but everything happened so quickly that before she knew it, she found herself on the back seat of a speeding car.

"Hello," an unfamiliar male voice said beside her. When she turned around, still speechless with fear, she looked straight into the dark eyes of an elegantly dressed man with neatly combed-back hair. Despite his designer clothes and fancy car, he looked ordinary. If she’d met him on the street, she wouldn't have deemed him the type to kidnap young women. Panting heavily, she stared at him.

"My name is Ascobar," he continued. "A pleasure to meet you, Ms Cameron." He extended his hand, but she didn't take it.

"I want to leave this car," she hissed. "Stop it at once and let me get out."

He smiled. "Oh, I will. After I've talked to you."

"About what? And how do you know my name?"

"It's not a big deal to find out someone's name," he said, shrugging. "But what I wanted to talk to you about is your Swedish lover."

"Alrik?" she asked, breathlessly. "He isn't my lover. I hardly know him."

"Of course," he said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. " We are speaking about the same man you were accompanying on the ferry this afternoon? It was so endearing. I wouldn't have expected this kind of behavior from Alrik Larsson. He has no lack of women offering themselves to him, that much is certain."

She turned her head to look out of the dark glass of the window. The streets seemed to fly by outside. She was screwed.  Most probably this man was a criminal, and this whole business had something to do with Alrik, screw him. If she’d only stayed away from his damn club and had celebrated with her friends somewhere else.

He snickered. "Hurt, are you? I hope you didn't actually believe you were something special to him. It was smart of you to play hard-to-get, though. That way, you managed to pique his interest, probably for more than one night. I just wonder how long it will last."

"It's none of your business," she snapped, "but you couldn't be more wrong."

"However," Ascobar continued, "I never heard that he showed so much interest in a woman before. Usually, he doesn't meet girls for romantic ferry rides. This is why I need you."

"You …  need me?" Jade gasped.

"Yes. Let's say that Mr Larsson and I are planning to do business. To avoid any risks, I prefer to be well-informed about my clients before I finish a deal. I gather as much information about them as possible, but with him there's something I just can't put my finger on. I'm sure that he's hiding something, and you'll find out what that is. He's not who he claims to be, I'm quite sure of that."

She stared at him, disbelievingly. His expression was impossible to read, but it was clear that this man wasn’t joking.

"You want me to spy on him?" she stuttered. "But I told you the truth - I hardly know him! We agreed not to meet again."

He grinned. "Then you'll find a way. It's obvious that he's very … impressed with you." His eyes traveled down her body, in a knowing way.

"Fuck you," she said.

"Oh no, my dear, this is exactly what you'll be doing to him. Entice him with your sweet pussy, make him fall in love with you - whatever it takes to make him slip his guard." He took a cell phone out of the pocket of his jacket and dropped it into her lap.

"And why should I do that?" Jade whispered, knowing that she wouldn't like the answer. But it was even worse than she had imagined. His cold reply made her rigid with fear as she stared at him, disbelievingly.

"Because you love your charming little brother, of course," Ascobar said. "My people followed you when you went to see him last time. I paid him a visit myself this morning, just to make sure that he was well. Told him I was a friend of yours. You know, I really like his idea about this new search engine. At first I thought that he was dumb, but he's rather a young genius, don't you think? Maybe I'll even help him start a business when he's of age - provided that he lives long enough. Life is dangerous for teenagers these days. They are so easily drawn into taking drugs, and just a little overdose … Many things can happen to them. And don't even think about taking him away. I'd find you."