(Blood and Bone, #2) Sin and Swoon (26 page)

“What’s the address on that house?”

She shakes her head but writes it down. “You are not going to like that house at all.”

“Is it as bad as the cabin?”

She shakes her head. “Worse. The cabin was just to train the girls to work the lodge. They would suffer there, learning how to be women of the night, as he liked to call them. Then he would take them to the lodge, and they actually would be grateful. No more cells and starving and shitting in those nasty toilets. No more bugs and sickness. No more Old Dick teaching them how to be a woman.”

I join her in a grimace. “Gross.”

“Life at the lodge was so much better. Senators and princes and presidents and businessmen. Life there was easy, compared.”

“Who ran it?”

“Dick. He was in charge of running it, delegated even. He had been given the job as part of a family heritage thing. He was like the head pimp, but he hired a woman to do the job of running the girls. It’s all very sick.”

“Have you ever been there?”

Her eyes tell me the answer before her lips. “Got to spend all of twelfth grade there. Took that month in a cell at the cabin to convince me the lodge was the better choice and that a few of the girls there could teach me far better than my schoolteacher. It was the reason I ran away at seventeen.”

“Why’s it closed down now?”

“I have no idea. I have remained detached from all of that.” She shrugs. “I imagine since Dick died, it was harder to keep it running; with no firm hand. Or maybe they are waiting for all the snow up there to be good for skiing and not crusty. It gets crusty this time of year. It’s a winter lodge, after all. Or maybe they just are taking a break so they don’t get caught. There is no proof of any of it happening unless you go there. I know I couldn’t prove any of it happened.” She sounds detached from it as she speaks of it. It is exactly the way I would sound if it were me.

I don’t have words for any of it. “This is all so much worse than I imagined. I am sorry for coming here and reminding you of everything.”

“Don’t be. I have lived my entire life with it and never speaking of it.” She shakes her head. “I’m just glad you know about it. I’m guessing that means it will all be exposed for what it is. Modern-day slavery is just as real as the old kind. People just think ’cause a girl is smiling, she wants to play along. But there are things you can do to make yourself smile through anything.” She slides the address over to me with a shaky hand, and a single tear splats onto her pale wooden table next to an old plate of noodles. She wipes her face and smiles. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get emotional.”

“Don’t be sorry.” I lick my lips nervously, processing what to say. What do you say to someone who has had this as a life? “I will make them pay.” It’s all I have.

A smile crosses her lips. “Thank you.” The horror she’s witnessed still lives in her eyes. I can see it.

I get up and leave, taking the address with me. When we get back in the car Henrico gives me a look. “Why do I get the feeling this is about to go very badly for everyone but us?”

I nod and drive as fast as I can back to the city. “If you want to keep your job, you have a choice: look the other way and lie in the end, or get out of the car when we get back.”

He laughs. “My mother always said I was the worst liar there was. I don’t mind looking the other way, though.”

“Okay.”

21. House of horrors

 H
enrico offers me another gun as he stashes his third one in his jacket.

Stanley passes me the shoe polish so we can all rub it over our faces and necks. I flex my hands when I pull on my gloves, giving the guys a signal, one I haven’t used in a long time. It means it’s time to move and no more speaking unless necessary.

We hurry away from the vehicle and run along the waterfront, jumping over a fence and down a sidewalk to the dock of the property next door. It’s an estate, most likely owned by someone at Amazon, the nouveau riche in the Seattle area.

The three of us hurry along the grass and lapping waves as we get to the next yard, the one she gave the address for. The fence near the water is actually a massive rock wall. We jump it and hurry up the side yard, hugging the bricks and rocks but spread out. I get to a door in the basement and drop to my knees, picking the lock quickly.

I send the text then. Here!

Me too! He responds right away. Done!

Listening for any occupants, I turn the lock and slink inside. The light on the security system doesn’t change at all. Once all three of us are inside, Stanley stays at the door to guard the entrance as Henrico and I slither through the house, making no noise.

The basement mostly is a series of rooms. I purposely find the boiler room so I can see Amanda’s bedroom next to it. There are three locks on the door, all on the outside. I turn the locks slowly, opening it to find a cot and decorations fitting a girl’s room.

They haven’t even taken down the pictures she drew. I signal for Henrico to stay as I go inside. Her pictures break my heart. I have seen them before on the walls of kids who came from bad living situations. She draws sunshine and a garden and a sky, making it look like she had windows in the room. Each view is one from a window.

I turn, grimacing, when I see a bell above the door tied to a string. These people are monsters. She was a modern-day Cinderella. And then something much worse.

I slip from the room, closing the door and locking it again so we can clear the rest of the floor. There’s a laundry room, a games room, and a utilities room. It isn’t as exciting downstairs as it is up. We creep along the stairs, each watching wherever the other person’s eyes aren’t, covering all areas.

Henrico is the perfect partner, but I still don’t trust him the way I should. We hardly know one another, and my previous partner whom I trusted with my life didn’t turn out to be the man I thought him to be.

At the top of the stairs, we enter an enormous living room and kitchen–great room combination. It’s so large there are three sitting areas and two fireplaces. The kitchen gleams with marble and excess. Henrico takes the right and I the left, ending up in a library off the dining room and circling back. He shakes his head and points at the round set of stairs in the middle of the massive entryway. I unlock the front door, just in case, and creep up the stairs after him. We have not made a sound nor heard one until we get to the top of the stairs. Then I pause, giving him an odd look. He wrinkles his nose, and I imagine we assume the same thing. I have to admit it never crossed my mind that this is what we would find.

But we do.

We clear all the rooms, including one with a wall of surveillance. I attach the remote access to the computers and cameras. Immediately Antoine goes to work.

There are several bedrooms on the top floor—five, to be exact. Each has its own en suite, again with marble and slate as the varying design features.

The lights are all chandeliers, and the walls all feature wainscoting and beautiful wallpaper. The whole house looks like it could be in a magazine.

Until we enter the last room, the one with the heavy breathing and grunting.

Then it pretty much goes to shit.

Henrico grimaces, turning his face away for a moment.

I continue in, feeling every part of me tingle with disgust and revulsion.

A man in his midforties holds a camcorder in his hands. He’s filming as another man and woman have sex, but not a normal kind of sex. The man is older, maybe in his late sixties. He’s tied down to the bed, spread-eagle. A soft and flabby woman in her forties, not a small woman and not a huge woman, lowers herself onto him, literally bouncing on his cock and balls. She is squatting over him, dropping her vagina in an awkward thrust. Somehow in the commotion and the large size of the room they do not notice us standing there with our mouths agape.

The woman has on a lacy bra, which about covers the clothing for all three of them. The man holding the camera is erect, completely, and naked, with his own penis going in and out of something very odd. I don’t know what it is, but he’s jerking off with it. I have a terrible feeling it’s a pocket pussy, something I saw once in a sex-toy collection.

Henrico leaves, not even able to keep a straight face. But I lean against the wall, still completely stunned at what we have found, until the man with the camera slips in behind the woman as she drops to her haunches and leans forward. I assume both men are inside of her, but I can’t take the view any longer. No one should have to witness that.

We exit the front door, sending a message to Stanley to meet us at the car.

He’s there before we are, giving us a look. “You find them?”

“Good God.” Henrico shakes his head. “She was right, what is in this house is much worse than anywhere else.”

He takes a minute, looking like he might take a knee. “So the two younger ones—” He gives Stanley a wide-eyed look. “And I am being generous with the
younger
.” He spins back to me. “The younger ones are the brother and sister? Who the fuck was the old man getting raped?”

I shake my head as Stanley starts to giggle, as much as a man in his late thirties with a mustache and a slight belly can giggle. Which is surprisingly more than I imagined him capable of. “The brother and sister were raping an old dude?”

Henrico makes a face again. “And filming that shit, man!” He looks like he might cry. “I am never getting rid of that image. Never. I could turn to drugs and alcohol, and that shit is gonna still be there. I won’t ever have normal sex again. I’m gonna cry and squeeze my eyes shut and pray it ends before my wife notices I’m sobbing.”

Stanley laughs harder; even I laugh a little.

Henrico gets in the car, waving a hand at the house and then me. “It is the Sunday before Christmas, Jane! And that was unholy!” He spits before he slams the door, and it’s Stanley’s turn to take a knee. He’s laughing so hard he can’t breathe.

I roll my eyes. “Laugh it up—you’re watching the video footage we got.” I climb in too and cringe as the last few days make an attempt on my sanity.

“Look, Jane, I like you. But I gotta do Christmas morning in three days. I can’t do that with old people jacking off in my head. Can we just take the week, gather our thoughts, and go from there?”

I look at Henrico and nod as I start the car. “Yeah, I don’t think we are going to come up with anything groundbreaking until all the data is seen. We have protocol on the video footage that needs to be processed. You take what you need for the bureau, and I’ll take everything else, and we will meet back up January 2 here. I’ll send the location.”

He scowls at Stanley in the headlights, still laughing and stumbling as he tries to get up from kneeling on the dirty street. “Look at this jackass!”

“I’m a little grateful it was what it was. When Amanda said it was worse than what we found in that lodge, worse than what was up that hill in that cellar, I was scared. I have to give it to her, visually, this was horrid. But kid porn still trumps this in my head.”

“Yeah, that’s part of the job I hate, the shit you can’t unsee. Kid porn would have killed me inside, this just traumatized me. Not because they weren’t attractive either, but because they’re brother and sister. What is wrong with people?”

22. The long way home

 H
e’s stunned, outright insanely silenced by my request. After a long pause Dash mutters, “You
want
to go to their house for Christmas?”

I want to say no and have a drink, but that’s not an option. “Yes. I am getting the plane to stop in DC and pick you up on the way. Why don’t you bring Angie with us? She won’t want to stay in DC alone, not surrounded by the things she and Rory had.”

He chuckles a little. “She burnt all his shit, so it’s just hers and some ash. She went crazy too. She loaded it all up in that old T-roof Corvette he bought last year, and burned the whole car and bags of stuff. Then she jarred up the ash, said she saw it on a movie, and has the jars in a box on the back porch, getting snowed on as we speak. Scariest thing I have ever seen.”

“Damn!”

“Oh, she is angry. She already agreed to spend Christmas with us so there should be a change of heart if it’s at my mother’s. Maybe my family will prove to be a distraction. I think she needs to see you anyway.”