“So, Saxon’s clubs are really a front for prostitution?” she asked, thinking of the hallway in the club and how the stripper was leading a man to the V.I.P. room—Dutch had been similarly engaged. Had he paid the woman for sex in that room? Or did they agree to meet up later?
“Clubs like that are basically advertising. No deeds take place inside the walls, but customers who want more can get it. The problem is that some of those customers want certain things and are willing to pay for it.”
“What do you mean, ‘certain things?” Cassidy asked slowly, though she was pretty sure she knew what he was going to say.
“You name it and some sicko has asked for it. Sex with children, for example.”
Cassidy’s insides went cold. “Saxon does . . . that?” she asked, hugging herself tight with her free arm.
“We don’t know for sure.”
Cassidy felt the city air press on her. “Okay,” she said more to herself than to Bruce. Her brain tried to examine this new information, but it was as if she refused to unpack it.
But Bruce continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “ . . . smuggled into the country, or coerce teen runaways into working for them. We busted a private club a few months ago in Texas that set up an auction for girls who are still virgins.”
Cassidy tried to keep up, but a rising panic was pressing on the walls of her mind.
“ . . . looks Pike has also been indicated in several assaults, but he’s never been convicted,” Bruce was saying, pulling her back to the present.
“Why don’t the girls just run away?” Cassidy managed, feeling like a pit of doom was slowly opening below her. An unknown force pulled her closer to the edge. “It’s not like in foreign countries, like your cases, where they hold onto their passports then move them across borders. This is America.”
“Sometimes they do,” Bruce said, his voice hardening. “But most of these girls have nowhere else to go.”
Cassidy hugged herself, feeling wretched. “God, that’s awful,” she said.
“Sometimes the men beat the girls if they try to escape. Or they get them hooked on drugs, so even if they do leave, they come back because they know they’ll get their fix.”
“Ugh! Stop!” Cassidy cried. She tried to take a full breath but her chest felt too tight. Then, a horrible thought soared to the surface. “What if Saxon has done something like this with Izzy?” she said. “What if he’s got her somewhere?” Cassidy imagined Izzy riding placidly on the back of Saxon’s motorcycle to some private lair where he did horrible things to her. The pit below her gave a yank.
“Anything’s possible with a guy like that,” Bruce said. “But from what you’ve told me about Izzy, she’s not exactly their target . . . she’s not the right age, for example. He may well have just given her a ride like he said. Have you checked all the apartments nearby?”
Cassidy looked around, realizing that she was on Turk street, the same that paralleled the back of the club. “A few.”
“Okay, well, maybe you could do a little more door-knocking. She might still be with that friend she was supposed to meet for the party.”
Cassidy’s gaze swept from the units across the street to the other buildings. “That’ll take all night,” she said, continuing toward the red building’s entrance.
She replayed the conversation with Saxon in her mind, hoping to snag a detail she missed, when a sudden realization struck her. “How did he know I was a professor?”
“Huh?” Bruce asked.
Her feet stopped moving as she replayed the conversation again, her mind attacking the puzzle. Had she told him about her profession? “Saxon called me ‘professor,’ but I don’t remember talking about my job,” she added, thinking of her U.W. Geology t-shirt. “I think I told him that Izzy was a student, but I didn’t say she was my student.”
“Maybe he guessed,” Bruce said.
“Maybe,” Cassidy replied as her fingers began to shake. She clenched her eyes shut as the sharp smell of the jungle and fried shrimp hit her nostrils. The phone slipped from her fingers.
“Cassidy?” Bruce’s voice called from far away.
Twenty-Three
Mel was dragging her down the stairs of the treehouse. Her breaths felt ragged in her ears as she tried to work the knife free from the multitool in her hands. She could feel Mel’s burning grip on her arm, feel her leg muscles straining, resisting against him. Her arm swung around with the knife glinting in the moonlight. She struck something and Mel cried out. Then she was on her back with Mel slamming her hand into the platform until she let go. She screamed and fought, her body arching off the planks while he pulled the kit from his pocket. I was going to wait, but I can see we’re going to have to do this right now.
Cassidy gasped, feeling locked down, unable to break free. She tried to pull herself back, telling herself that Mel was in jail, that he couldn’t hurt her again, but her heart raced, she was sweating, the smell of the hardwood and Mel’s skin made it so real. It made her think of the stairway to Saxon’s office and how the walls had seemed to press on her. Another wave of panic flooded through her, this time accompanied by pops of color flooding her vision. She squeezed them shut but it amplified the sound of her gasping.
Desperate, she scooped up her phone and hurried away from the horrible sounds and smells flooding her senses. She had the vague sense of watching herself from above as she raced wildly down the street, crossing the busy road without waiting for the light—causing cars to honk at her. With no direction, she ran until her lungs ached and her legs burned. She ran as if Mel was on her heels, a knife raised like a warrior.
Rounding
