afraid you’re going to have to be more specific than that. What ‘everything’ do you mean, exactly?”
She huffed. She didn’t want to tell him anything, let alone involve him in her secret investigation. But if the FBI raided the bar and shut it down, her only lead to Max would be lost.
After weeks of frantic searching and the police seeming to ignore her, she couldn’t take the constant panic anymore and had walked into the Voodoo bar to demand answers. It was the last place her brother had been seen going into the day he disappeared. And given that it wasn’t the kind of joint he would normally have been caught dead in, logic suggested the place had something to do with his disappearance.
When she’d barged into the club, Vitaly had mistaken her for someone applying for the waitress job advertised in the window. He’d offered her the position on the spot, and in a combination of instinct and impulse, she’d taken it.
For the past two months, she’d been watching and listening and learning. But the mob bosses who employed Vitaly were extremely cautious. They rarely showed their faces, and they never did anything to hint at illegal activity—not counting the whorehouse upstairs.
She occasionally served drinks in the back lounge where the lap dances happened, but she’d never waited on the mob bosses where she could get a chance to eavesdrop on their conversation.
She had also never set foot above the ground floor of the bar and didn’t intend to, either. In all honesty, she was scared to death of getting sucked into the inescapable downward spiral that was the sex trafficking industry.
“You haven’t given me a good reason not to call the feds...yet,” Ashe said, jarring her from her thoughts. “And I happen to believe trafficking in underage girls is about the worst form of exploitation there is. I have zero sympathy for anyone engaged in it.”
“Neither do I,” she muttered.
“Well, then?”
He hadn’t moved a muscle, but a promise rolled off him to have answers out of her tonight, come hell or high water. She studied him closely. He’d shown genuine concern for her in the club and had even subjected himself to bodily harm to save her from that thug. Plus, he seemed prepared to listen to her. So heck...maybe she should take him up on his offer. Because thus far, she’d had zero success on her own finding out anything about Max.
Decision made, she released a long, slow breath that made her entire being feel as if it had deflated. It seemed as if she’d been holding that breath for months. Had she really been living under so much tension and stress? As good as it felt to trust him at least a little, she wasn’t prepared to give up all her secrets to this man she barely knew. So she chose her words carefully. “Someone I know used to hang out at the Voodoo, and then we lost touch. I’m trying to figure out what happened.”
“A girl?” he asked quickly.
Oh, God. He thought she knew one of the trafficked girls from Eastern Europe who were virtual prisoners upstairs without identification documents or knowledge of the English language or American laws. Not to mention many of the girls were drug addicts who were paid for sex with heroin or crack.
“No, no. Nothing like that. A guy. I’m hoping I’ll run across someone who knew him and may know something about why he was there and where he went.”
“Ahh.” Ashe’s expression shuttered abruptly, and he leaned forward to reach for his wet shirt.
Good grief. He thought Max was her boyfriend. Cripes. He must think she was a weirdo stalker chick working at the Voodoo to chase down some poor guy who’d fled from her and intentionally left no contact information.
She winced as she bit the inside of her lip to stop herself from correcting Ashe’s mistaken impression. It was for the best. As hot as he might be, she had no time in her life for a dalliance that might distract her from finding her big brother.
Her gut howled at her that Max was in trouble and until that internal scream was silenced, she was off the market for men.
Ashe shrugged into his damp T-shirt. “How long do you need to find your...friend...before I call the feds?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been there two months and haven’t caught a lead yet.”
“And you’re sure he’s still alive?”
Her spine stiffened in denial at the notion of Max being dead. It was what the cops thought. All this time with not a hint of him, no credit card hits, no banking transactions, no sightings...
“I know he’s alive,” she declared.
“How?” Ashe asked the question evenly enough. As if he was willing to hear her reasoning.
She sighed heavily. “I feel it in my gut, okay? I know that sounds lame, but I would know if he were dead. And I’m telling you he’s not.”
He stared at her for a second and then nodded briefly. Really? He believed her? No scoffing comments about how stupid it was to rely on a gut instinct? On how the facts said she was wrong? Wow.
He spoke gruffly. “Two weeks. I’ll help you look for your boyfriend during that time, but that’s all you get. It’ll take the law that long to gather evidence, get the warrants and set up a raid. Innocent girls are suffering every day there.”
Oh, God. She’d never thought of it in those terms. In her panic to find Max, she’d had the power to save those girls and hadn’t. She was a horrible human being! In that context, giving her two weeks was frankly damned generous.
“Don’t have the cops wait on my account,” she said grimly. “When they’re ready, they should shut the place down. I’ll tell you this, though. The Voodoo is the tip of a much bigger iceberg.”
Ashe gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean by that? What iceberg?”
He leaned forward, watching every nuance of Hank’s body language intently. Now they were getting somewhere. What the hell wasn’t she telling him, though? He sensed lies in her words as sure as he was sitting here.
She answered, “Vitaly, the owner of the Voodoo, has bosses. Russian mob bosses. I haven’t seen many of them around the joint, but his place is definitely a front for them.”
“What kind of front?”
“I imagine they launder money through the place, although I haven’t seen Vitaly’s ledgers. He keeps all of those on his cell phone, and that thing never leaves his hands or his pocket.” She blew out a breath. “Believe me, I’ve tried to get a look at it. But I’ve never seen him lay his phone down once.”
“Anything else?”
She snorted. “He’s a moneymaker for his bosses. Vitaly gripes all the time about the measly cut of the Voodoo’s income that he gets. The rest is going up his chain of command.”
Ashe frowned. “The mob, be it traditional Cosa Nostra or the Russians, usually takes only a small cut of the profits
