Shadows May Fall (24 page)

The apartment was sparse and uncluttered but warm, cozy and spotless. Leona must have been taking care of Mary’s plants in her absence and bringing in her mail that was piled in a basket on the coffee table. Opposite the slipcovered sofa was a thrift store steamer trunk where a small television sat with numerous framed pictures of Mary standing in front of different Hollywood landmarks. Looking at the photos, Lou could see what Leona had meant about Mary reminding her of those corn-fed country girls, all bright and shiny and full of hope. It made Lou feel sad knowing that Mary had gotten caught up in such a seedy side of the entertainment industry and ended up God knows where. In the bedroom Lou found no indication that Mary was into any sort of bondage or kink and her closet was sparse. There was an odd contrast of All-American jeans and t-shirts that any college student would wear, along with sparkle and shine hooker attire. It made Lou sad when she thought this might be the rule, not the exception, for the majority of girls that came to L.A. seeking fame and fortune.

After an hour of digging, Lou and Dillon had come to terms with the fact that Mary had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time by being at Marcus Medina’s sex party. She was just naive enough to have taken a sip of that Kool-aid Amanda Franklin had told them about. As a desperate prayer, Lou took a picture of one of the photos on Mary’s entertainment trunk and sent it off to Niko to cross reference with the girls they liberated from Cuba. The odds were more likely that Lou would win the lottery, get struck by lightning and win the publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes all in one day, but she had to try. Pursuant to Leona’s wishes, they made sure they put everything back in it’s proper place then locked the door after themselves. They found Leona sitting in the courtyard under a giant magnolia tree, thanked her and gave her their cards, in case she had any questions or thought of anything else that might be helpful. Leona Porter thanked them for trying to find out what happened to Mary and told them she would pray for them in their quest for answers. As they walked out of the time warp of Leona Porter’s oasis, Lou and Dillon agreed they would take all the help they could get.

After a quick stop for a shower and change of clothes at the house
where he and the other Aegis were staying, Niko arrived at the McAllister compound just before noon. He was none too pleased that Ana and Connor had spilled the beans to Max about Albert von Massenbach’s involvement in his ambush. There wasn’t anything he could do about it now, other than sit there and take the tongue lashing Max was about to serve up. Oddly, it never came. Max only asked Niko to convey the Russian’s exact words in Rotterdam. From there they dove headlong into sifting through every agent in the region’s dossier and obtaining every bit of surveillance they could get their hands on through back channels. They were scheduled to leave for Las Vegas the following afternoon, and both Max and Niko wanted a fix on whether or not there was another pipeline coming into the U.S. Other than San Pedro. Yuri and Finn had flown to the East Coast a few hours earlier under the guise of checking on the newly ascended agents that were appointed to handle things in their absence. After selling the ploy, Finn’s real objective was to head up north to New Brunswick to tap his resources and find out if that was a hole that they needed to plug. If Black Blood was coming in from there he would find the answers in the port of St. John.

When Lou’s email came in with the picture of Mary Sheehan, Niko forwarded it immediately to Lena in Rio. She was in charge of the survivor’s rehabilitation so she would recognize the girl right away if she were among them. When Connor, Abby, and Frank cleared out, Max took the opportunity to fill Niko in on where Lou was in her cases and her suspicions of Timms and Esterhuizen’s involvement. It was just enough to set Niko’s blood boiling all over again, but it was what Max said next that made Niko take pause.

“I want to apologize for my behavior the other day.” Max said as he closed the laptop and focused on his words to Niko. “You were right to call me out on the situation, and I am sorry for my reaction.”

“No, I’m the one who’s sorry.” Niko had a long time to think about it on the flight to and from Rotterdam. “Sometimes I need reminding we are not actually brothers. I forget my place. I was out of line, completely.”

“That’s crap, and you know it.” Max smirked at him. “You couldn’t be more of a brother to me if we were Siamese twins! I trust you with my life. There is no division between personal and business, and there hasn’t been for centuries. It was my own insecurities that got the better of me, and you were spot on.”

“That may be how it is, but not how it should be.” Niko reminded him. “You are my Dominor, and I serve at your pleasure. You’ve just made things easy to feel the family thing, and we forget that sometimes, as I did.”

“But that is why we have grown into the most respected and cohesive governing body in the history of our kind!” Max corrected him. “Look at the other Aegis. Name one that has all original seated members still intact?”

Niko pondered that a moment and realized Max was right. “None, besides us.”

“Exactly.” Max got up and paced around the room as he continued. “The fact that we have all bonded like family, that I count you all my family, is why we have grown so strong and governed so well for all this time. I could not have retained this entire region as long as I have without you and the others. You know this is true.” Niko shrugged in reluctant agreement. “So how can I be so foolish not to trust you to tell me when, how does Lou put it so well? When my head is stuffed up my ass?” Max grinned after saying it and Niko had to laugh. “I am in need of some patience, my friend. Would you believe that after everything we have seen, all of my years, I am afraid?”

“Afraid of what?” Niko asked as he regained his composure.

“What is anyone afraid of when faced with the possibility of losing the love of their life?” Max said it. Out loud. He finally admitted to Niko that he was in love with Lou, and it felt like he could breathe for the first time.

“Yeah.” Niko nodded, realizing what a tremendous thing it was for Max to say it out loud. “That would scare the shit out of me too..”

“She told me she missed me.” Max confided as he sat back down. “What?” Niko thought he heard Max wrong.

“This morning, actually the middle of the night. When she came to talk about her case and her concerns.” Max felt that rush again as he recalled the seemingly innocuous event again. “She stopped right there in the doorway, turned around and told me that she missed me while I was gone. Then she sprinted to the house and never looked back.” Max chuckled.

“Whoa!” Niko knew that was huge for Lou. She had thrown down the gauntlet, so to speak. “So what do you plan to do?”

“Then you agree, she tossed me the ball on that one?” Max asked, relieved that Niko agreed with his perception of events.

“Damn right!” Now it was Niko that got up and paced. “That was a major move on her part! Holy crap!”

“I know.” Max dragged his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I need to answer that with something very clear, but not too much! I don’t want to frighten her, or overwhelm her.”

“Right!” Niko agreed entirely. “This is a chess match, not tackle football.”

“Precisely.” Max liked Niko’s analogy. “The critical thing is that she cannot mistake the gesture, as I have with hers. I thought the puppies were a pure gesture of affection, but I was clearly wrong there..”

“Yup.” Niko recalled Lou’s own words on that one. “She thought you were only being sweet.”

“She said that?” Max’s eyes went wide. “What did she say? How did this come up?”

This topic was thin ice for Niko. If Max knew he had shared information with Lou about his feelings, Max would rip his head off. “It was just a passing thing. I used it to get a read on her feelings for you. I think I mentioned how out of the ordinary such a gift choice was for you, and she loved it, but her words betrayed no emotion, just how sweet you were to get them for her.”

“See?” Max blew out a breath. “At least she didn’t say I was a nice guy.”

“No, it wasn’t like that at all.” Niko assured him. “It was exactly the same way you dismiss things. You could see the uncertainty in her face, but she is too afraid to ask anything point blank.”

“I thought perhaps a private dinner in Las Vegas, just the two of us.” Max tossed out ideas. “But inviting her to my room is far too much and might send the wrong message.”

“Totally.” Niko agreed. “Taking her to the strip is a logistical nightmare security wise, with everything going on.”

“I would prefer none of us leave the hotel downtown.” Max had Albert in the back of his mind too. His suspicion of the meeting being an opportunity for Albert to try something as he had with Niko. “Abby and Frank have been coordinating with the hotel people to make sure things are air tight.”

“I think there’s a spot that could work.” Niko was remembering the layout of the hotel, with it’s renovations and what not. “Let me have Abby look into something first, if it’s doable, I’ll toss the ideas at you.”

“Well, can you give me an idea now?” Max asked. “At least so I can mull it over?”

Niko explained his idea to Max and how he needed to make sure the management would be able to accommodate them. Of course, money always made anyone very accommodating but it was short notice. Max liked where Niko was going, especially since it was a variation on his idea. He agreed to let Niko run with it. Lena had responded to Niko’s message telling him that the picture didn’t match any of their survivors. That posed a problem. If Lou’s missing woman wasn’t part of the Cuban group, where was she? The girl could have been laying in a landfill somewhere but just as Lou had a nagging feeling, Max and Niko now had it too. Lena’s email also told them that she and her team had been able to determine that the bulk of the Cuban rescues were from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The rest were from Columbia and Venezuela. There were also two U.S. expats taken from Belize. After Lena had looked deeper into the couple’s history, she found that they were fugitives, wanted by the Federal Government for major securities fraud. They had been on the run for six years. Every last one of the victims they rescued in Cuba had a shady past or were indigent. Either law enforcement was looking for them, or no one was. There was no in between.

“We know that only a small amount of the blood Lou discovered in that warehouse came from South America.” Max’s jaw clenched as he spoke.

“Which means there absolutely has to be other harvesting operations somewhere.” Niko stated, knowing exactly where Max was going with his statement. “We don’t even know where Salazar dumped the bodies of the used up victims.”

“I think we can assume he tossed them somewhere in the Caribbean Sea.” Max was speculating. “Or the Atlantic, take your pick.”

“For all we know there is a mass grave somewhere.”It made Niko sick to say it. “Underneath a tobacco or sugar cane field.”

“We need to think outside the box here.” Max scrubbed his hands over his face. “From the video of your raid in Cuba, there are a lot of moving parts as far as equipment is concerned. If there is another set up stateside, it would have to be secluded but well supplied and funded. We need to go through all our records and look at all our people, Stewards, Agents, everyone. Weed out anyone with any elitist attitudes, then the ones that are way too squeaky clean. There will be no middle ground here. Whoever is involved will either feel like they are untouchable or too insignificant that they would never attract any suspicion.”

“That makes sense but finding their location for this sort of an operation is going to be tough. There are a lot of options out there and something like this could be hidden behind anything from a dental office to storage facilities.” Niko couldn’t even begin to think of where to start looking. “We went to Cuba looking for Salazar for entirely different reasons. Finding the blood operation was a side note and out of left field.”

“So we start looking in left field.” Max growled. “But within distance of shipping channels. Trains and ports are where we need to focus. Even if they are moving the stuff via long-haul trucks, they have to get it in and out of the country somehow. We can’t even assume that San Pedro and Long Beach are clean after we shut down Timms. He had connections here. We may have eliminated the facilitators when we cleaned out the corrupt agents here, but there was money behind the operation. We need to find it.”

“I’ll get Frank to look through financials.” Niko said as he pulled out his phone.

“Start with all the old families in the east and the south.” Max suggested. “I suspect Finn will find something in New Brunswick, but I don’t think Louisiana is as clean as Richelieu and Jackson believe it is.”

“There is always the Gulf to consider too.” Niko tossed out a significant location that they needed to address. “Houston and Beaumont are bigger than Long Beach in terms of volume.”

“True.” Max agreed. “We can use Joe for that. Call him in.”

Lou’s step-father, Joe McAllister had the perfect position to look at the ports in Texas. His shipping companies had major bases all over the region, and the country for that matter. Max was annoyed with himself that he hadn’t thought of bringing Joe in sooner. All that mattered was finding the routes, tracing them back to the source and shutting them all down.

By the time
Lou and Dillon reached Spank Me productions, keeping track of everyone was getting difficult. They interviewed everyone on their list for the Gentlemen’s Club, except the six that had vanished from the face of the earth and the two women that cross-referenced as Spank Me production employees. Although Tawny Marks had a missing person’s report filed on her like Mary Sheehan, that is where the similarities ended. Tawny’s mother had only filed the report because Tawny was the primary source of her mother’s income. Mrs. Marks filed the report nearly three weeks after Tawny went missing and the investigating officers had written it off as Tawny having wised up. The girl had only moved out of her mother’s Section Eight housing less than a year ago and moved into a fleabag motel around the corner from the Gentlemen’s club. According to Jinx, the extremely helpful Transvestite bartender of the club, Tawny moved to save money on transportation and because she thought that her mother’s boyfriends kept dipping into her wallet. Jinx didn’t have the heart to tell the girl that her mother was doing the dipping. Jinx described Tawny as probably being brain-damaged from repeated beatings over the course of her life. In some warped way, it explained why she was always available to Josh Rawlings when he wanted her for his rough parties. It was sad to think of how the girl was conditioned to equate affection with getting smacked around. The bartender informed them that Tawny’s only friends that he knew of were on their list of missing. Big surprise. What really was a surprise was a new name that Jinx gave them for an associate of Rawlings that hadn’t popped on their radar yet. He knew the woman only as Vanessa, or Lady V as Rawlings affectionately referred to her. Jinx described the woman as a V.I.p., who only came into the club a half dozen times in the five years that he had worked there. He was able to give them a detailed description because he told them she had exceptional taste and oozed class. She was a lady, not one of Rawlings girls. After listening to Jinx’s description of the mysterious Lady V, Lou felt the hairs on the back of her neck perk up, feeling this could very well be their femme fatal. She called in a Department sketch artist to meet with Jinx after he assured Lou he could describe the woman right down to the name of the nail polish she wore. They left the Gentlemen’s Club with a glimmer of a lead, finally.