Her gaze went from to Diesel, back to the kid, and again to Diesel. “Is he serious?”
“He’s very serious,” Diesel said. “Women are a valuable commodity.”
She shook her head slowly. “Please, no,” she said. “I don’t want to think of this place being into slave trade.”
“It’s not slave trade,” the kid protested. “The women do what women do.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
He looked at her, frowned, looked over at Diesel.
Diesel smiled at him. “You should probably answer her question.”
“Women. They have sex with men,” he said. “That’s what women do.”
She sat down with a hard thud. “Is that all you think women do?”
“Sure,” he said. “What else?”
“Wow,” she said. “I don’t even know where to start, but I’m a scientist for one.”
At the term, he looked at her, confused. “Scientist?”
“Yes,” she said in a dry tone. “I work in a lab, where I find cures for diseases. But I think the disease that you have is a lack of humanity.”
He obviously didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, and that just made her realize how much worse this really was. She looked over at Diesel. “Will you let him go?”
“Well, we’ll have to,” he said, “but not too fast. I think we’ll leave him in a ditch somewhere.”
He immediately jumped out of his chair, and Diesel immediately slammed him back down again.
“I don’t care what you do with him,” she said. “You could throw him where men do what men do.”
At that, all three men looked at her, and Diesel asked, “What does that mean?”
“Well, if he wanted me for what women do,” she said, “then I think you should want him to do what men do.”
“What’s that?”
With a hard voice, she said, “Shit on the world. Find a great big toilet, and dump him in it,” she snapped.
The two men looked at her with serious expressions on their faces.
She rolled her eyes. “No, I’m not talking about you two,” she said, “but nothing in this kid’s attitude makes me want to stay here.”
“Good thing we’re not staying,” Diesel said. He looked over at the punk. “Who’s your boss?”
“I don’t have one,” he said immediately.
“Who you’re scouting for?”
“No one.”
“Too late,” she said. “You already said that you were sent in. Who sent you in?”
He stared at her, looked over at the men, and just shrugged.
“That’s fine. Get your team to deep-six him. He’s just a waste of money. There’s only so much clean air and water on this planet, and this guy doesn’t deserve to have any of it.” She walked to the food, opened up the bags, and sniffed. “Wow,” she said, “this smells delicious.”
Jerricho took the containers out of the bag. “I just brought a selection,” he said, “street food mostly.”
“Fine, a little street food works for me,” she said.
There were no plates, but he had picked up chopsticks, so she opened up one of the containers and started in on it.
The kid looked at her and said, “I could have some food too.”
“You could,” she said, “but you know what? Women do what women do, and I’m not sharing because that’s not what women do. As far as I’m concerned, you’d better shut up and get the hell out of my sight before I get really angry with you.”
He stared at her. “You have no reason to be angry with me.”
“How many women are you responsible for dumping into a brothel?”
“Well, some we hire out,” he said, with a shrug, “after we use them ourselves.”
“Jesus,” she said.
Diesel looked at the kid and said, “You better shut up right there. The Western world doesn’t appreciate rapists and sex traffickers.”
The kid looked at him and said, “In Manila, it happens all the time.”
“But that doesn’t mean it should happen,” she snapped. “That doesn’t mean the women are willing.”
“Doesn’t matter if they are not,” he said, almost bewildered. “It’s the way the world works.”
“Here maybe,” she said, tossing down the chopsticks, suddenly her appetite no longer existed. “But it shouldn’t.”
And she stood, walked to the bathroom, and closed the door. She stared at herself in the mirror, knowing that sex trafficking of women and children had happened the world over, but to think that this guy admitted to it, and knowing that the police system was so bad right now that it probably wouldn’t do any good to call the cops on him, she sat here for a long moment, wishing she was anywhere but here.
When a gentle knock came on the door, she called out, “Come in.” The door opened, and Diesel, standing there, leaned against the doorjamb. “Are you okay?”
She shrugged. “It’s a cesspool of humanity out there,” she said. “I really don’t want to be touched by it any more than I have to.”
“He is part of a bigger issue here.”
“Which is why I doubt there’s any point in calling the cops on him, is there?”
“I didn’t say that,” he said. “I think we’ll turn him over to one of my teams, and they can collect the entire gang, see how far the roots of this go. It will only be one of the Hydra’s heads, but it would be something.”
She looked at him gratefully. “Do you think they’d help?” she cried out. “Just to think of all these young women thrown into their sex-for-hire system is enough to make me puke.”
“Well, he’s out cold right now because I got tired of listening to him talk,” he said. “Come on out and finish eating.”
She looked at him and shook her head. “My stomach’s not very happy.”
“Well, we’ll be leaving soon,” he said, “so I need to make sure that you have a nap and that you have food.”
She groaned, as she got up from the edge of the bathtub, where she’d been seated, and walked back out again. Happily, she realized the idiot was tied up and unconscious. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d keep him that way until we leave.”
“Won’t have to worry about it,” Jerricho said, as he tapped his cell
