Domino (The Domino Trilogy) (35 page)

“I disagree.”

He blinked. “Of course you do. Most of my girls disagree with me when I first bring them in. But they all soon learn their place.”

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you’re interested in me to begin with,” I retorted. “Or my roommate Hannah, either. Why don’t you just take us out and shoot us and be done with it?”

I hear Hannah gasp just behind me. Then she whimpered. I knew she had to be holding back sobs. I felt terrible for dragging her into this mess. Then again, you could also argue it was all her fault. I had to get to the truth. “What use are we to you? What do you want with us? And why? From what I know of you, you could have your pick of any woman on the planet. Why go after two average girls from Cleveland? How do you even know who we are?”

He picked up his wineglass and took several long sips, emptying it. “Ah. At last you show me your mettle, Ms. Delaney.” He set the wineglass back down and waved his hand back and forth in the air. A young woman wearing a skintight leather dress and over-the-knee boots appeared, took it from him, and disappeared back into the gloom.
“I first caught notice of your friend Hannah at an art publications meeting six months ago. Or rather, one of my scouts did. That same scout followed you both for several weeks, and reported his findings back to me. I reviewed his information and felt that both of you would be welcome additions to my collection.”

“Your
collection
?”

“Ms. Delaney, I am first and foremost a businessman. But I am also a connoisseur of sorts. The success of my business lies in the high quality of my wares. So when I stumble upon high-quality specimens, I make it my business to get hold of them before anyone else does. In Hannah’s case I was a bit late to the party, of course. But not in yours. Except you and a former colleague of mine seem to have spoiled my goods at the last possible second. You will both pay for that mistake.”

“I assume you’re referring to Peter Rostovich.”

“Yes, of course. Your lover. Who else would I be referring to?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “How would you know what Mr. Rostovich and I do in private?”

He laughed. “Young lady, I have ways of finding out anything I need to know, anytime, anywhere. I even know what you had to eat the day before yesterday.”

“Oh? Then why don’t you tell me?”

“A pizza
margherita at your favorite local establishment, and room service at the Ritz-Carlton after your liaison. A club sandwich on rye with a side of skin-on fries, I believe? And a Moet mimosa? Am I right?”

A cold chill swept over me. Damn, he was good.  “Yes, you are. I assume you also sent your goons to harass my mother.”

“I did. And I’m not finished with your mother. Or your father. I intend to use them both as insurance to get you to do what I want you to.”

I did not like the sound of that.
Then again, he could have been bluffing---but I doubted it. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

“It’s not about what I
want
you to do, per se, Ms. Delaney. It’s what I will
require
you to do.” He folded his hands in his lap and looked me up and down, but didn’t explain what he meant. He seemed to be waiting for me to protest, or cry, or beg, or something. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. I stared him down hard, waiting for him to reveal what it was he was trying to use to manipulate me. My sophomore-year journalism professor’s words rang in my head:
The No. 1 rule of investigative reporting is just to shut up and let your subject talk to you
, he’d said.
Criminal psychopaths are egotistical and love to show off. Give them enough rope, they’ll always hang themselves.

He took the bait. “You’re going to join my international escort network. You and your little friend Hannah both. And you’re also going to
help me sort out a little problem I’ve been having in Sevastopol. I believe your considerable beauty and talent will come in handy with a very good client I have there who has been rather hard for me to satisfy of late.”

“
Escort
network? You make it sound like a fleet of exotic cars or something.”

He chuckled.
“I prefer to use innocuous terms. If I went around calling it what it really is, I would have a lot of trouble attracting the kind of clientele that generates an appropriate level of profit. There’s no money in cheap street whores turning tricks on the corner for workaday losers. But there
is
money in glamour. My clients have very specific tastes, and when I find something that I know will meet a certain client’s tastes, I make sure to do whatever I must to obtain it.”

Something
.
It.
So I was getting referred to as an inanimate object again. I didn’t like it. I choked down bile as I plotted my next move.

I trotted out a technique I’d learned from t
hat Professor Willis---that it’s often best to turn your subject’s own words against them during the interview. “You said earlier I’m a cheap whore, and yet you want to pawn me off on a picky client? Are you sure that’s a good idea? Wouldn’t that just complicate things with your client even more?”

Bluschen
cko frowned and didn’t respond for a moment or two. “At the end of the day, whores are just whores,” he said, seeming to choose his words carefully. “The only difference is the packaging.”

Hannah spoke for the first time. “Can you please just let us go?”

Bluschencko guffawed. “After all the trouble I’ve gone through to bring you both here, do you really think I’d let you go now?” He templed his fingers underneath his chin and gave us both a baleful look. “No, you’ll be coming with me, and doing as I say from now on. You might say that you’ve both become my property.”

“You can’t force us to do anything against our will,” I seethed. “This is America.”

His eyes burned into mine with barely contained rage. “You won’t be staying in America for long.”

The masked guard behind me hit me hard against the temple with his gun. Stars and galaxies exploded all around me. The room spun, black curtains crept into my field of vision, then everything went black.

TWELVE

I woke up in
yet another dark cargo van. This one was smaller than the first, and somewhat cleaner. There was a slight glow from a battery-powered overhead light embedded in the ceiling. Hannah lay opposite me in a disheveled heap, unconscious. She had a large bluish-black knot on her left temple, and a dried trail of blood led from it down to the corner of her mouth. I tested my limbs and found them unbound, my mouth ungagged. I supposed my captors saw no point in restraining me while unconscious. I felt mostly all right, other than a dull, throbbing ache in my temple where I’d been pistol-whipped.

I seemed to have escaped a serious concussion or other injuries
despite two severe blows to the head, but I wasn’t sure if Hannah had been so lucky. I tried to rouse her, to no avail. At least she was still warm and breathing.

I didn’t know where
Bluschencko’s people were taking us, but I ventured they might try to cross the border into Canada, then fly us out to wherever it was we were going from there. I couldn’t say exactly where our ultimate destination was, but I was betting on Sevastopol. That would fit in with what little I’d deduced about Bluschencko so far.  And if I ended up there, I just might be able to do the research Peter had started me on in person. Then again, I thought if I ended up there, chances were equally good that Rostovich would come after me there, maybe even stage a rescue.

All right, so that last part was probably wishful thinking. But still, it seemed something like that would be
Peter’s style. And I had to latch onto whatever hope I could find at this point.

I resigned myself to the fact that come what may, I had been kidnapped and would soon be spirited out of the country.
I checked my pockets for identification, my cell phone, something---and of course came up empty-handed. Bluschencko wouldn’t be able to smuggle us out of the United States without ID---at least, not on a commercial flight. Of course, I was sure that a criminal mastermind like him probably had ways of getting around that. Phony documents, private planes, bribing government officials, sophisticated human smuggling operations. It all made sense given how I’d seen him operate thus far.

I rubbed my temples, trying to numb my splitting headache so I could think.
Bluschancko was a human trafficker, I knew that much. It would appear that Hannah and I were being trafficked. Becoming a forced sex slave was a distinct possibility. I supposed there might be a few others, too---maybe I’d become a drug mule, a sweatshop worker, or sent to a sinister camp where they harvested organs for the black market. Maybe I was in store for all of those things, in that order---I’d read that sex-trafficking rings were always on the lookout for additional revenue streams to take advantage of once their slaves wore out their sex appeal. I was in a good position to find out if that was really true.

I didn’t know why, how, or where this long strange trip was going, but if I kept my wits about me, I could have just landed the investigative reporting gig of the century
.

If you keep your wits about you, Delaney
? My inner self scoffed.
At this point, just concentrate on staying alive.

Good point.

I didn’t just have myself to worry about, either. Hannah was trapped here with me---probably with a concussion---and she might never wake up. Bluschencko had made some not-so-subtle threats against my parents’ lives, too. And I think it went without saying that I was going to miss my article deadlines. Graduating from college probably wouldn’t happen now, either.

Still, I had to figure out some way to turn things around. I’d always dreamed of being an “embedded” journalist----and here was my chance. I didn’t have a pen, paper,
iPad, computer, camera, or any other reporter’s tool, but I had my eyes, my ears, and my brain. I would use all three to the fullest, and soak up as much information as I could. And come what may, I’d try to figure out some way to get Hannah and me back home safely.

But how? There was no way for me to communicate with the outside world, unless I could somehow get a hold of a phone, or a passing bystander, or something. And even if I could, who could possibly help me when I didn’t know where I was, or what was going to happen?

My hands were cold. The van was unheated and the air damp; I noticed chilblains forming on my palms and wrists. Lacking gloves, I shoved them deep into my pants pockets. In the left one, my fingers stumbled across a piece of crumpled cardboard. I retrieved it, smoothed it out, read the fine raised lettering in the feeble light. It was Julian’s card, the concierge from the Ritz-Carlton.

Julian had offered to help me, and
Rostovich had vouched for him. I doubted I would be able to get away with contacting Rostovich directly under Bluschencko’s watchful eye, but I might be able to finagle a way to reach Julian. Rostovich had made cryptic references to Julian’s military past. I wondered where their original association had come from. Dollars to donuts it had something to do with Bluschencko, or so my gut told me. And my gut hadn’t been wrong much lately.

But that meant contacting Julian---assuming I somehow could---would be inherently risky
, probably just as risky as contacting Peter himself. I wasn’t sure I wanted to expose myself to any more risk at this point. Then again, at this point what did I really have to lose?

I would just have
look for whatever opportunity I might have to escape, or at least get some kind of word out. Meanwhile, I’d soak up whatever information I could about Bluschencko and his operations like a sponge. I’d have to blow off two plumb freelance assignments before even having the chance to work on them, but I had a feeling that whatever copy I could pull out of this mess---assuming I made it out alive---would be ten times better.

I leaned back against the cold metal wall of the van, listening to the wheels thrum underneath me, and my thoughts turned instantly to
Rostovich. I still knew so little about him, even if we did know each other in the Biblical sense now. And the logical part of me said that if I were to be lucky enough to escape this ordeal, my first order of business should be to cut the man out of my life entirely. Clearly, he was bad news. But the feelings that wracked my body and mind were not logical. No, they were primal. I thirsted for more contact with Rostovich the way a caged lion craves a return to the open savannah.

Nobody said love’s perfect
, I thought to myself. Leave it to me to make the worst choices possible where sex was concerned. It’s not as if I had a lot of positive role models. My whole notion of romance came from century-old melodramatic novels, not real life.

My thoughts
drifted to my parents. I hadn’t always had the best relationship with them---especially not my mother. But they didn’t deserve to get dragged into this mess. I resolved that if it came down to it, I’d sacrifice myself for their sake if I had to. Ditto for Hannah. I’d never be able to live with myself if anything happened to any of them. To make a graceful exit would just be easier for all concerned.