“Yuck,” I said. “If that’s your fantasy, you can wash the sheets.”
“I’ll take that as a no, then.”
“Besides,” I went on, “you know full well where I was heading when I left home this morning. What kind of sick and twisted mind paints that kind of a scenario from a visit to my father?”
He laughed. “Hey, for all I know, your father has hidden depths.”
I glanced across at the alleyway. “Yeah, I rather think he’s plumbing new ones right now.”
Sean’s amusement snuffed out. “Tell me,” he said.
I described the scene outside the hotel, giving him as clear a picture as I could manage of the man with the buzz-cut who’d put my father into the Lincoln. Out of habit, I’d kept a mental note of the number of turns and lights since we’d crossed the bridge, so I could direct Sean to my current location with some precision, even if I couldn’t tell him exactly where here was.
“Well, if your old man has a self-destruct button, looks like somebody pressed it,” he said when I was done. “And you’ve no idea who these guys are or what he’s up to with them?”
“No,” I said. “But the longer he’s in there, the worse feeling I get about the whole thing.”
“Okay, Charlie, listen to me. Sit tight and wait for backup. I’ll be with you as fast as I can. Do not go in until I get there, all right?”
“All right,” I agreed, but the reluctance must have shown.
“Promise me,” he said, and I knew from his tone he’d hold me to it.
I glanced at the open mouth of the alley again, just as movement caught my eye. A shifty-looking guy walked out, turning up the collar of his cheap jacket. He glanced both ways when he reached the open street, furtive. There were no passing cars and I didn’t think stepping out into traffic was what had him worried.
“I shouldn’t have let them lift him in the first place,” I said, hearing the stubborn note. “If he’s not out in twenty minutes, I’m going in after him—alone if I have to.”
“Don’t worry,” Sean said, his voice calm and steady. “You won’t be alone.”
CHAPTER 5
I didn’t have to go in alone.
Sean arrived inside the time I’d allotted, riding the black Buell Ulysses he’d bought at the same time as my own bike. He’d left the office fast enough after my call that he hadn’t even bothered to put on leathers. Instead, he was still in his suit. Apart from a helmet, his only nod to safety was some thin leather gloves that would have shredded in seconds if he’d hit the road surface in them.
He slotted his bike in alongside mine and flicked up the visor, his eyes hidden behind a pair of classic Ray-Ban Wayfarers with dark green lenses. His smile was all the more brilliant because I couldn’t see his eyes.
“Status?” he said as he killed the engine.
“The Lincoln pulled out about five minutes ago.”
Sean stilled, frowning as he slid off the shades and helmet and hung the lid over the Buell’s bar end.
“And you’re still here because …”
“My father wasn’t in the car when it left,” I said. I jerked my head towards the alley. “I hung around over there so if they made a move I could see which building they’d gone into. Got asked twice if I was ‘working.’” My mouth twisted. “I think it must be the leathers. Anyway, two guys came out—Buzz-cut and the driver.” The tension in my hands was somehow connected to my throat. “My father wasn’t with them.”
Sean touched my shoulder. “Thank you for waiting for me,” he said. “I know what it cost you.”
I swallowed. “Maybe I’m just too much of a coward to go in alone,” I said stiffly. “At least if you’re with me, then if it comes to it you can be the one to break all this to my mother.”
Sean set the bike on its stand, climbed off. “What exactly are you expecting to find?”
I followed him, unzipping my jacket. “It’s a brothel, Sean,” I said. “And you knew that as soon as I told you where I was, didn’t you?”
He’d already started across the road. I fell into step just quickly enough to catch the way the corner of his mouth quirked upwards, little more than a flicker. “I had a pretty good idea.”
“So why didn’t you say anything?”
He sighed, and the flicker became impatience. “What would that have achieved, Charlie? Your father’s the most priggish, moral bastard I’ve ever come across. You said he didn’t go entirely willingly. You’re a bright girl. You put it together.”
“They left him here,” I murmured, feeling my eyes start to hollow out and burn. “He didn’t want to come, but now he’s stayed. He would only have done that if they’d … forced him.”
I shouldn’t have left him in there. I shouldn’t have let them put him into that damned car in the first place. At the time, part of me had been still too angry with him to care. And now …
“Not necessarily,” Sean said. He glimpsed my face and stopped, half turned towards me. “You know the real reason I’m here?”
I shook my head.
“The real reason,” he said, “is how could I live with myself if I missed out on a chance to catch the great Richard Foxcroft with his pants down?”
I threw him a disgusted look and stalked on. We turned into the gloom of the alley together, stepped apart and slowed slightly, wary. At the far end, past the Dumpster, I caught fast glimpses of passing cars, their paintwork glinting in the sunshine. Bright colors, movement. The alley felt stagnant by comparison, hushed and lonely as the grave.
We both did a casual sweep as we walked into that place, watching for watchers, even overhead. Either there weren’t any, or they were better at concealment than we were at spotting them. Sean paused and reached inside his jacket. When his hand came out, it was holding a cheap Kel-Tec P-11 semiautomatic. He passed it over to me.
I turned the unfamiliar handgun over in my hands. It was old but serviced, the action well oiled when I worked it. The magazine was fully topped off with hollow-point nines.
“What’s this?”
“Unregistered,” he said, succinct. “So I’d leave your gloves on if I were you.”
“Jesus, Sean! If I get caught with this—”
He flipped his jacket back to reveal what looked like a matching piece sitting just behind his right hip. The thought that he’d risked carrying two illegal guns through the middle of the city brought me out in a cold sweat. They’d throw away the key.
“Face it, Charlie,” he said, “if we get caught in a brothel, we’re probably screwed anyway. Just remember the trigger’s going to be a lot stiffer than your SIG, so watch you don’t pull your first shot.”
“I have fired one of these before, Sean.”
He flashed me a fleeting smile. “Yeah, sorry.”
He didn’t need to ask which door my father had been taken through. There was a line of them, peeling and dirty, but only one had a clear path to the base of it to give away its regular use. The door was steel plate, if I was any judge, with a facesize inset panel at head height.
“I think I’m better suited for this, don’t you?” he murmured.
Without argument, I backed round to the side of the Dumpster, out of sight of the doorway but only a couple of meters away. I held the gun down flat alongside my leg, where its outline wasn’t obvious from the street, my trigger finger alongside the guard.
In the four or five paces it took Sean to reach the door, his whole demeanor changed. Suddenly, his shoulders had more of a bow to them and he’d added a slight shuffle to his gait. He was a big guy who usually moved with lightness and a lethal dexterity but now, with his collar and tie sloppily loosened, he just looked clumsy.