The Triangle Conspiracy

stores, convenience stores with bars on the doors and windows, even the chain fast-food places looked depressed. Sean could almost smell the despair. Every city had its own answer to this, Sean knew, but it didn’t make him feel better about it.

And this leads me to the wealthy, educated daughter of a powerful U.S. senator?

Stranger things had happened. Sean swallowed. He hadn’t had a drink since the beer this morning at Faith’s house, and he was feeling a bit shaky. Just need to settle my nerves a bit, he thought. He pulled into a liquor store, grabbed his wallet and the photocopied Associated Press picture, and bought a pint of Jack Black.

The liquor store clerk was a young Latino man who looked barely old enough to legally work in such a place. Sean paid for his bourbon, then put the picture on the counter.

“You know this girl?” he said in Spanish.

The clerk looked at him, surprised at hearing the bolillo speak perfect Spanish. “Don’t know her,” he responded in kind.

“Look again. Maybe you’ve seen her around the neighborhood. I think she works around here.”

The clerk gave him a long look. “Dinero, senor.”

Sean was prepared for this. He’d already transferred some of Owens’s cash to his wallet. He peeled off three twenties and gave them to the clerk.

“Britt,” the clerk said. “She works the other side of Shields. Check the parking lots of the three motels. She’s usually in one of them.”

“Gracias.”

“De nada.”

Sean pulled out of the parking lot as the rain increased. He heard thunder cracking in the distance. Was this Oklahoma City or Seattle? He made a mental note to ask Faith if the weather was always like this here. He pulled the Jeep back onto Shields, crossed Southeast Forty-fourth Street, and drove a few blocks. Then he pulled a U-turn on the wide boulevard and headed back toward the strip of three motels.

Each of the motels was laid out in the same way, shaped like a rectangle with one open end facing the street. He couldn’t find a name anywhere for the first one. Its sign only read Vacancy HBO Free calls.

I wonder how many people who rent rooms here watch HBO, Sean thought wryly. None of the motel’s doors was open, but he knew that by itself didn’t mean anything. ICE had busted a huge ring two years ago, in which young Mexican girls-many of them underage and all of them illegal-were brought across the border to Nogales and Tucson and basically sold into indentured servitude. Since the I in ICE now stood for Immigration, Sean had been on the team that raided several motels much like this one. It had been a good operation, and Sean liked to think the lives of several of those girls had been saved by what the team had done.

He blinked. That was back when his career still mattered, when he could still make things work.

“Cut that shit out,” he said aloud, watching the doors to the motel rooms.

After a few minutes, one of them opened. A skinny young white guy with fuzzy stubble on his face came out, red-faced, still tucking in his shirt. He got into a rusty Ford pickup and drove away. A black woman, older than Sean, in leather shorts and a black halter top, came to the doorway, scanning the parking lot. Sean inched the Jeep toward her.

He rolled down the window. Before he could speak, she leaned down and said, “I’m Monica. Fifty for BJ in the car, one-twenty for half-and-half inside. I’m bad and I’m good, baby.”

Sean held up the photo and turned on his dome light. “You know this girl?”

“Turn that light off! Are you crazy? Shit! Turn that off!” The woman backed away from the Jeep.

Sean shook his head. Must be slipping. He’d bought the Jack Black to settle his nerves, but hadn’t opened it yet. “Sorry,” he said, and flicked the light off.

Monica snatched the picture from his hand and took it back to the light of the motel room. She was back in only a few seconds. “Where’d you get this?”

“Does it matter?”

“You a preacher?”

“No.”

“You a cop?”

He hesitated slightly. “No.”

“Yes, you are. Shit, what are you, federal? OKC cops don’t get Jeeps with Arizona plates.”

So she was more observant than Sean had thought. That was good. “It’s complicated.”

“Good-bye, Arizona. I gotta earn a living.”

Sean kept his voice even. “Come here, Monica. It’ll be worth your while.”

She turned expertly on her spike heels. “Show me.”

He peeled off ten twenties. “This is as much as you’ll get from your next three tricks put together, and just to talk.”

“You’re a dumb fuck if you pay me that much just to talk. Give it here.” He passed her the money. “Okay, so you ain’t a cop. That picture was taken at that stupid little march we had here last year.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“Stupid shit. Some big-shot governor’s daughter comes in here with a megaphone, wantin’ all the girls to ‘organize,’ like she’s the United Fucking Mine Workers or some shit like that. Talkin’ ’bout choice. I told her, ‘Honey, I didn’t choose shit. This body’s all I got to earn my pay. I got three kids and I got expenses and this is what I do.’ ”

The rain had slacked off, but Monica had seemed oblivious to it anyway. Sean decided not to correct her on who Daryn’s father was. “So what happened?”

“Some of the girls went with her. Like Britt, the one in that picture. She was so proud of gettin’ her picture took like that. She fell hard for all those lines, ’bout making a political statement.” She drew out the word political.

“Where is Britt now?”

“She mainly works the Oasis. I used to, but the rooms are cleaner here. Don’t smell as bad.”

“Thanks, Monica. Why don’t you take a break? Go get some coffee or something, get out of the rain.”

“Shit, Arizona, if I ain’t on my back or my knees, I ain’t making a living. I got no time for coffee.”

Sean nodded to her and pulled out of the parking lot. The third motel in the strip was the Oasis, or at least Sean assumed it was. The sign had an O and an s, but the rest of the letters were gone. He parked in a corner and waited.

A door opened. A heavyset Latina came to the Jeep. “You want to party?” she said in heavily accented English.

“Waiting for Britt,” Sean said.

“Well, piss on you, then,” she said, and wobbled around the parking lot on absurdly high heels.

Ten minutes passed. Another door opened. Another man got into another pickup truck and drove off. Sean recognized Britt’s hair before anything else-long, dark, and straight, almost stringy. She was taller than he’d thought, probably almost as tall as his sister. Her body was well proportioned, and she looked strong. He made eye contact with her, and she started toward him.

She leaned in the window-they all leaned in the window, Sean thought. “What’s your pleasure, honey?” Her accent sounded upper midwestern.

He took a wild leap. “You from Chicago?” he said.

“Rockford,” Britt said. “You?”

“Evanston.”

“Oh well, Evanston. Do Evanston boys pay to fuck girls from Rockford in Oklahoma City?”

“Not tonight, Britt.”

He watched her reaction to his knowing her name. “Do I know you?” she said.

“No.” He showed her the photo.

“Hey, you cut-” Britt stopped herself. “Who are you?”

“I want to talk to you, Britt. About Daryn.”

“What about-” Britt backed a step away from the Jeep. “I don’t want to talk to you. Who told you where I was?” She straightened up and looked out into the street. “I bet it was that goddamn Monica.” She raised her voice into the rain. “Fuck you, Monica, you bitch!”

“Britt, I want to help Daryn.” Sean took a deep breath. “I know you care about her. When I saw this picture, the whole picture, I knew. I knew you cared about Daryn.”

Britt’s posture softened. “What’s it to you one way or the other?”

“You’ve seen her, haven’t you? Haven’t you talked to her in the last month?”

Britt shook her head very slowly. “She was here last year. We did the march.”

“I know. But since then. She came here, didn’t she? She came back to Oklahoma City. Not for the march. For something else. For some one else.” Sean ached for a pull of the bourbon, but he couldn’t look away from Britt. Not now.

Britt waited a long moment. “Why should I talk to you? I don’t know who you are.”

Sean breathed out very carefully. On the road last night, he’d come to the conclusion that he might need a new set of ID to complete this project. As an ICE agent for seven years, he’d learned a few tricks outside the book, as most law enforcement officers did. The country’s best ID forger was in El Paso, and Sean had taken a detour and stopped there late last night. For two thousand of Tobias Owens’s dollars, he had a new ID showing that he lived in Oklahoma City and that his name was Michael Sullivan.

“I’m Michael,” he said. “I just want to make sure she’s all right. I’m not here to tie her up and take her back to her father, if that’s what you’re wondering. You can trust me, Britt. Do you want to get in?”

“I don’t trust anyone,” Britt said. “Anyone except-” She wiped a hand across her face and pulled the strings of her hair back. Rain dripped off her chin, but she made no move to get in the Jeep. “She wanted to get off the road. She wanted to be someone else, something else. She didn’t want to be the senator’s daughter anymore. And me and her, we kind of hit it off when she was here. She liked the city, not too big, not too small.”

“So where is she now?”

“It’s not that easy. She’s-you have to get it, you know? Dar-she’s not like other people. She’s, like, brilliant. I mean, she has this vision, she calls it. Justice for all. Not like that stupid shit that kids say in the flag salute. No, real justice for all people. She’s so smart and she’s so good. And she wants to know what other people are like. I mean, look at her. She’s this rich senator’s daughter, but she doesn’t touch her trust fund and she cut up all her credit cards and she left behind her car. The girl’s got a Porsche and she left it. She wants to feel what we feel.” Britt dropped her voice down. “She wants to feel what I feel.”

Sean remembered what Owens had said: Perhaps she secretly wishes she was a prostitute herself, so she could indulge herself and be paid for it.

Well, I’ll be damned, he thought.

“Britt,” he said slowly, “is Daryn working the streets herself? Right here in Oklahoma City?”

Britt gazed out toward the street. “Not the streets.” She swept an arm back toward the Oasis Motel. “Not this scene. She wanted to, but I thought-you know, no one would believe it. You meet her,