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  “No. I was sent here to pick up two boxes.”

  “That ain’t what I asked, is it?”

  I shook my head. This guy seemed highly agitated. I just wanted to pick up the boxes and get out of Gardena. Carter hadn’t said anything about the person on this end possibly being trouble. Had he set me up, or at least put me in the crosshairs of a person who was not of sound mind? Maybe that was why he’d chosen me over the Faulks, because of my FBI experience. It made sense. Kind of.

  “I’m not a cop. My daughter and her friend are being held captive until I bring back two boxes. I have no idea what’s in the boxes—and I don’t care. I just want to get the boxes to the men who sent me and get the girls back safely.”

  He nodded and rubbed his chin as he looked over my head. He was thinking something over, but I couldn’t guess what. I spotted a patch on his shirt: US Customs and Border Patrol. This had to be an inside job. This guy had probably ensured the two boxes made it through the CBP security. LAX was one of several locations that received international mail. Nearby, likely in an unassuming warehouse, there was probably a CBP setup to scan all incoming packages. I knew they had drug-detection equipment, but beyond that, I wasn’t sure how the process went. Didn’t matter right now.

  “What does your daughter look like?” He smirked, rubbed his chin again.

  This guy was a pervert. Not surprising that he knew Carter and Nixon. Maybe he’d visited their sex prison. “Look, I don’t know…she’s just a normal teenage girl.”

  “You got pictures?”

  It was all I could do to not ram my foot between his legs, throw him onto the ground, and pound his face into oblivion.

  “No pictures,” I said with nothing behind it.

  “You got a phone,” he said, nodding at my hand. “So, you got pictures.”

  I took in a breath. “This isn’t mine. It was given to me by the person who sent me here.”

  “What’s his name?” he shot back.

  Was this a test? “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Couldn’t see it. He had on a mask.”

  A slow smile split his lips. Something shined from his teeth. Braces? Gold? Again, it didn’t matter. But it also made me wonder about the CBP hiring practices.

  “Okay, well…” His eyes looked off into the distance, and he rubbed that chin again like it was some type of genie in a bottle. I wondered what he was conjuring up.

  “So, can I just—”

  “You ain’t taking anything until I get my money.”

  Money? Carter never said a damn thing about a money exchange. Did it make sense that some type of currency would be used to pay for the product I was picking up? Yes. But Carter would have sent the money with me, or at least arranged for a wire transfer ahead of time. Unless Carter expected me to basically take it from this person, even if it meant a physical confrontation.

  Shit!

  Was this another reason I was chosen for this mission and not the Faulks? Carter might have thought that I could win a fight against this guy, if it came to that.

  If it came to that? Surely, Carter knew the details. Was Carter trying to rob this guy of the product? Was this guy alone? Hell, he could whistle, and three other guys could show up in the back yard and pummel me into dust.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, “but I’m not aware of any type of money exchange. Perhaps you can call my contact in Las Vegas and discuss any financial details.”

  A single shake of the head. “You’re smooth. Too smooth. It’s like you’ve got all the answers.”

  Did that mean he wasn’t expecting a money exchange? I couldn’t read his exact intentions. Part of me wondered if he was just toying with me.

  “I’m being transparent with you. I was told to do this one thing, and then—”

  “I know, I know…then you get your daughters back. Whatever.” He seemed bored with the topic now. I considered that good news.

  He stepped back and pulled the door open. “Come on in. I’ve got the boxes hidden in my room.”

  I paused a second. I didn’t want to set him off again. I really had no choice—I had to go inside. I padded up two concrete steps and stepped into the kitchen. There was a lamp on in the corner. Lots of dishes stacked up in the sink. A single chair and table. Pretty sparse.

  “I’ll just be a second.” He disappeared down a darkened hallway.

  The refrigerator was making a constant buzzing sound—the model had to be from the previous century, or thereabouts. It was covered in scratches, like someone had gone crazy and taken a machete to it. My eyes surveyed the kitchen some more. I was tempted to look inside a drawer and find a knife I could stash in my pocket. If he caught me, though, he might go ape-shit.

  I spotted some mail on the counter, so I shuffled over there, one step to the right, and looked down to see a name: Grant Valdez. I assumed that was the CBP guy’s name. I made a mental note to remember it. Eventually, once Erin and Becca were safe, I intended to take down this entire drug-prostitution ring. For now, though, nothing would divert my attention away from saving my daughter.

  “Okay, here’s the first box.” He walked into the kitchen holding a taped-up corrugated box. He seemed to be straining a bit.

  “Heavy?”

  “They put fifty-pound weights in it, so it doesn’t get flagged.”

  That verified the boxes had come from another country. But surely Grant wasn’t the main cog in this operation. He was living in a glorified dump. Still, though, I wondered exactly what was in the box. I assumed it was drugs. Outside of curiosity—my natural response was to always ask questions and seek more information—I knew it didn’t matter.

  “I can open the trunk for you,” I said, walking out the door.

  We reached the car, and he set the box in the trunk.

  “Just need that last box.” I thought a second. “I’ll just stay here by the trunk to make sure no one steals it. After all, it’s worth a lot of money.”

  “Actually, I need your help,” he said, backpedaling toward the open gate. “The contents of the other box fell out all over the floor. It might take a while for me to pick it all up. I don’t want to be accused of stealing anything…if you know what I mean.”

  I just wanted to get the hell out of Gardena and start the drive back to Las Vegas. “Sure, okay.”

  We walked inside, and I followed him down the hall and into a bedroom. A lamp with no shade illuminated the room. The carpeting was shag—green, no less. Next to a mattress with no frame, there was a wicker side table with a plate of food on it—some remnants of rice and a couple of pieces of leftover chicken.

  “Where’s the mess?”

  An arm wrapped around my neck—I’d momentarily turned my back on Grant. His hold was tighter than I expected. I could hardly breathe. He used his other hand to grope my breast. I smacked at his hand. I could hear him laughing.

  “Come on now,” he said. “Fighting back is going to make this a lot less romantic.”

  I dug my nails into his arm—that had no effect. The lack of oxygen was numbing my brain. A wave of panic rushed over me. I rocked my body violently left and then right, but he seemed to be expecting it. He was agile and went with the motion.

  My head felt like an overblown balloon—as if it might pop at any moment. Either that or I might pass out. Then what? He’d have his way with me, maybe worse. I tried to reach over my head and gouge his eyes, but he smacked my hands away. I was losing strength by the second. I stomped on his feet. Still he clung to me. I swung an elbow into his gut. He jerked back to avoid the full impact. It was like he knew my playbook.

  “Let’s just lie down on the bed, and you can rock my world,” he said with a chuckle.

  I’d underestimated Grant Valdez, and I was about to pay a dear price for it. But my thoughts—and I knew these might be my last lucid thoughts—went to Erin. She was experiencing something far worse than Grant Valdez. He was
just one man. She was a scared child surrounded by deviants.

  A second later, he slammed me down to the mattress, got on top me, and used his knees to hold down my arms. Most importantly, though, the pressure on my throat had been relieved. I gasped out a few breaths.

  “Now, let’s use that mouth for what God intended.” He smiled while unbuckling his trousers.

  I struggled to move my arms. There was a little give, but I didn’t press it. Not until I had a plan.

  He took off his shirt, threw it in the corner. “I’m going to get undressed. If you move from this position, I will beat the snot out of you. Your face won’t be recognizable.”

  I didn’t move.

  “You doubt me?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Because, just for your awareness, I was the LA Golden Gloves champ in the hundred-fifty-two-pound weight class. I knocked out twenty-four fighters in my amateur career.” He held up a fist and popped it against his opposite hand.

  I could feel the power. Damn, I’d really misjudged this guy.

  He stood up on the mattress and lowered his pants.

  “I’ll take my own clothes off,” I said.

  “Now you’re talking.”

  I shifted my legs and turned to sit on the edge of the bed.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He grabbed my ponytail and jerked my head back.

  I let out a squeal. “I’m just a little shy. Where do you expect me to go? I know you’re faster and definitely a hell of a fighter. I’ll do whatever you want, and then I’ll leave.”

  He nodded. “Okay. Not very romantic, but you’re treating this like a transaction. You go down on me, I give you the last box.” He laughed mockingly, as if he’d just negotiated the greatest one-sided deal in the history of the world.

  For whatever reason, my mind was hit with a slice of irony—I was in LA, the epicenter of the entertainment world, and ground zero for the secrets of so many men using their position of power to harass, assault, and rape so many women. And here I was, a so-called trained law-enforcement official, who was stupid enough to get herself in the same situation.

  I started unbuttoning my shirt while my eyes darted around the room. I spotted a hard-soled shoe on the floor. I tried to picture myself lunging off the bed, grabbing the toe-end of the shoe, and then swinging the shoe and connecting with his jaw. Two problems. First, I wouldn’t have a very good grip on the shoe, which meant I probably wouldn’t have a lot of torque behind my swing. Second, with Grant being a boxer, he probably had a solid jaw. It would take a hell of a shot to even daze him.

  I needed another plan.

  “You’re taking too long,” he said in singsong mode. “Speaking of ‘long,’ I think you’re going to need to channel your Watergate informant.” He laughed at his sick “Deep Throat” joke.

  I wasn’t about to turn around. Not until I was forced to do so. I thought my pounding heart might crack a rib. I was afraid, but more than anything I was fucking pissed! This maggot thought he had all the power over me…to service him in any way he saw fit. Fuck him!

  In the midst of my disgust came a thoroughly simple idea. It was my one—maybe my only—chance to escape.

  I jumped up and screamed, “Mouse, mouse, mouse!” I pointed at the floor while hopping up and down, feigning revulsion to something that didn’t exist.

  “Where?” Grant said, spinning around on the mattress.

  “Over there, by the closet. Eeeww! I think I might vomit!” I said, lathering on the horror of seeing a mouse.

  “I’ve got traps all over the house. How did he get through?” Grant leaped off the bed, pushed the box away from the front of the closet, and searched for the nonexistent mouse.

  While he wasn’t watching, I grabbed the fork off the plate and ran for the door.

  “Hey, what the fuck, bitch!”

  I heard his footsteps just behind me. I cut right just outside of his room and pressed my back against the wall. I knew I’d have just one chance, just one swing of my arm. It was a zero-sum game—if I didn’t hit the mark, he’d beat the shit out of me.

  Just as I saw his knee emerge from the room, I whipped my arm around like I was hitting a top-spin forehand—with all the power of a Serena Williams, or back in my day, Steffi Graf.

  The trajectory was perfect, and as I’d hoped, he wasn’t expecting it, so his arms weren’t raised. The fork skewered his left eye. He belted out a wail that probably had the dolphins in the Pacific Ocean in a tither. He reached up for the fork. I grabbed his shoulders for leverage, then cracked my foot off his groin. He made a sound like he had a punctured lung. His lone functional eye rolled to the back of his head, as blood drained down his face from his other eye. I grabbed his arm, spun into the bedroom, and flipped him across the mattress. Slithering to the floor, he screamed like a prepubescent boy—maybe he didn’t like the taste of his balls in the back of his throat. He curled up on the floor on the other side of the bed. I went over to the box, lowered my butt and legs, and pushed it through the house. Once at the back door, I shoved up my sleeves, picked up the fifty-pound box, and waddled to the trunk of the car.

  Five minutes later, I passed Hustler Casino, thankful to put Gardena, California, in my rearview mirror.

  11

  Ivy

  Saul stuck his head in the bathroom just as I was trying to apply some mascara.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, eyeing him through the reflection in the mirror.

  “You’re not moving,” he said with a smile on his face.

  “Because I’m looking at you. I don’t do this makeup thing very often, you know, so I have to focus.”

  He stepped into the bathroom and kissed the nape of my neck. Goose-bumps alert! I pressed my shoulder against his head. He then stepped behind me, held my hips, and gave me soft kisses from my shoulder to my ear.

  “Oh my,” I said. “Are you trying to recreate the scene we made in that St. Croix hotel?”

  He didn’t respond. Well, not verbally. Another part of him was very responsive. My entire body was tingling. “Stop teasing me,” I said, halfway between a giggle and a dream state.

  “Who said I’m teasing?”

  I saw his eyes in the mirror over my shoulder as he ran his hands up my torso. My heart fluttered. This type of interaction used to scare me. Now, I leaned into it…so to speak.

  “Saul, I thought we had this important Chamber of Commerce dinner to go to.”

  “The what?”

  He was acting like a lion that hadn’t been fed in a month. In reality, he’d been fed quite well—just last night, in fact.

  “Okay…well, it’s for your little law firm. So, I’m game if you’re game.” I dropped the mascara in the sink, turned around, and wrapped my arms around him. We kissed as though one of us had just escaped danger. That was my old life, though, when I’d spent far too much time trying to elude perverted deviants and killers. Ever since I’d opened my heart to Saul—not just on the surface but at a deeper level than I’d thought possible—I felt a joy and happiness about life. And, at the same time, there had been a dramatic decrease in run-ins with the miscreants of the world. I’d read an article recently that basically said what you believe—what you surround yourself with—will be what you receive. After so many years of pushing people away, of finding countless reasons not to open up and give myself to another person, I was reaping the rewards of falling in love with Saul.

  We shuffled into my bedroom and fell onto the bed, our lips and hands not losing a second of time. And then came the buzz.

  “Whose phone is that?” I asked, coming up for air.

  He snorted out a laugh.

  “What?”

  He looked at my lips, then used his forefinger to touch them. “I love your lips,” he said.

  My lipstick. “I think that means I look like a clown.”

  The buzz sound again. “Whose phone is that?” he asked this time, lifting his head off the bed.

  We sat up. He
reached for his phone, and I grabbed my purse from the bedside table. “Not my phone,” he said, tossing it back on the table.

  “What about the awards dinner? Aren’t you up for Best New Law Firm?” I asked, fishing through my purse for my phone. He’d opened a one-man shop just over a year earlier and had done quite well for himself.

  “We can make a dramatic late entrance.” He started unzipping my little black dress. I was told by my friend Zahera that every girl needed a little black dress. Right now, Saul didn’t agree with that notion.

  “Got it.”

  Saul was strumming his fingers along my spine and kissing my neck. “Got what?” he murmured. Clearly, his mind was focused on planet ecstasy.

  I was reading a text message from Stan, my detective friend with the San Antonio Police Department.

  “Hmm,” I said.

  Saul sat up next to me. “Okay, I know when to take a hint.” He winked at me and zipped up my dress. “Go ahead—tell me the sad story about one of your latest parent-clients whose sixteen-year-old child hasn’t been seen since lunchtime.”

  “Funny.” He was recalling a similar situation a while back when one panicked mother had called, begging me to do everything in my power to locate her “little darling.” Her son happened to be a two-hundred-fifty-pound offensive tackle for the high-school football team. As it turned out, he’d skipped school to smoke weed with his fellow offensive lineman. I did get a thousand bucks out of the short-lived gig, but Saul said he hoped we would never become such helicopter parents. I tried not to remind him that his pushy mother flirted dangerously close to that line now, and he was thirty years old.

  “Seriously,” he said, standing up. “What’s up with the text?”

  I tapped a finger to my chin.

  “I know that look, Ivy. Does this have to do with the Amber Alert?”

  I shifted my eyes up to his. “Kind of.”

  “Kind of?”

  “Okay, well…yes. Kind of.”

  He let out a chuckle.