"I need to phone Hacker." I got my mobile out of my rucksack and dialed as Marmalade glanced back at me and meowed once. "See, I told you I could have conversations with him." I grinned at Brad.
Brad crouched down next to Marmalade "Should your mum just stop worrying and set the wedding date? Meow once for 'yes' and twice for 'no.'"
Marmalade burped.
I laughed as Hacker picked up. "Yo."
"Yo. How did it go at Marie's house?"
I told him about the altar we'd found.
"Glad I wasn't there. That black magic is powerful stuff."
"We didn't find any evidence of Chantal or Liza, though."
"Just because you didn't find it, doesn't mean Marie's not involved in it. And she'll know you've been in her house."
I rolled my eyes. "How will she know? We didn't leave any trace."
I imagined Hacker shrugging as he answered, "She can see things that can't be explained. She can do things that can't be explained."
"So, what, you think she'll put a curse on us because we were in her house?" I said.
"Yep."
"Great! I've got enough problems without being cursed, too. So what do you think she'll do to us?"
"Anything's possible. Make your teeth and hair fall out, give you a bad illness, destroy your relationship, even cause death."
Shit. I'm too young to die!
No, I will not be cursed. I'm uncurseable. Yep, that's it. I'm totally uncurseable.
"The state of my hair at the moment, I think maybe she's cursed me already."
"Did you wear my chicken's foot for protection?"
"Yes. Will that stop a curse? You know, just in case she has done one," I asked, my voice coming out more anxious than I anticipated. "Not that I believe in them, of course," I added quickly.
"It should do."
See, of course I couldn't be cursed if I was wearing it. The only problem was, Brad hadn't been wearing one. What if something happened to him instead?
I pushed all thoughts of me as a toothless hag and Brad as a flesh-eating zombie wearing a top hat and tails out of my mind. "Have you found anything on Emily Jacobs?" I asked.
"Not yet. I'm still looking."
"Check out the records at the Second Chance Clinic to see if she was a patient there. I think she may also have been a prostitute."
"Will do."
I heard his fingers clacking over the keyboard.
"I'll phone you back when I know something."
"Yo." I hung up.
Brad walked toward me and stretched out his hand, tucking away a stray curl from the non-singed part of my hair. He ran a finger down my cheek, sending a hot shiver down my spine, not to mention other parts. "I'm not going to give up until I make you officially mine."
I knew that. Brad never gave up when he wanted something. And that something was me. So what was wrong with me? I loved him with all my heart. Why was I so afraid of getting married and making it all so official? Was the thought of losing him, or that something bad might happen, really enough for me not to take the chance? But what if Hacker was really right about those curses? What if Marie really put a hex on us to destroy our relationship? The way I was going, I'd probably do a good job of that on my own.
I tried to say something but my mouth had suddenly gone on strike, which was a miracle in itself.
His lips brushed mine, then he whispered in my ear, "Are you hungry?"
Oh yeah, I'm hungry all right!
I wanted to ravish him on the spot. Thoughts of me licking chocolate sauce and whipped cream from all over his body pinged into my head. Food
and
sex, what a fab combo.
My phone rang.
Damn.
"It could be Hacker," I said.
He gave me a sexy, lopsided grin. "There's plenty of time later. The night's still young." He picked up my mobile from the breakfast bar and handed it to me.
"You were right," Hacker said. "Have you got the list of initials and dates in front of you?"
"Give me a sec." I pulled it out of my rucksack and stared at it:
MP - 28/01
DL - 15/02
CT - 01/03
EJ - 27/03
LS - 0787 5567893
"Emily Jacobs had an appointment at the Second Chance Clinic for a consultation about a termination on the twenty-sixth of March," Hacker said. "There's no record of any other treatment for her, but she suddenly disappeared on the twenty-seventh of March."
My breath caught in my throat. "Who reported her missing?"
"I hacked into the police report and one of her friends by the name of Cassie Knowles reported it. She's also a prostitute. Emily's never been seen since and the police have no leads."
"Shit."
"And that's not all. Based on that, I made an assumption that the other initials were a list of people who'd also gone missing. Mary Parker went missing on the twenty-eighth of January, Dana Little went missing on fifteenth of February, Claire Turner went missing on the first of March, Lucy Sawyer went missing on the twelfth of April. They all had initial consultations to have terminations at Second Chance Clinic, and they were all prostitutes."
My shoulders slumped. This case had just got even bigger. Now we had seven missing girls in total. Whatever experiments were going on at that clinic, it looked like people were dying as a result.
"Both Chantal and Liza phoned Lucy Sawyer's number on the day they disappeared. If Lucy went missing on twelfth of April, that was before Chantal and Liza disappeared, so why were they trying to phone her if they knew she was missing?"
"They probably didn't know she was missing. There was no date next to her initials like the others. Maybe Chantal and Liza heard from some of the other prostitutes that she hadn't been seen lately, or maybe they found out she'd also had an appointment at the clinic."
"Great work, Hacker. Did you manage to get into the Holbrook Clinic files yet?"
"I'm still working through their security firewalls. I'll let you know when I get in."
"Okay. Yo!"
"Yo." Hacker hung up.
I turned to Brad, eyes wide, trying to take in the enormity of what I'd just heard.
"What?" Brad said.
I told him about all the missing prostitutes.
He ran a hand over his cropped hair and paced the floor. "What the hell kind of experiments are they doing up there?"
"Something seriously bad. I need to get down to Chequer Street and try and talk to Cassie Knowles if she's around, seeing as she reported Emily Jacobs missing. Maybe she knows something that can help."
"Want me to come, too?
I shook my head. "Chequer Street is run by a pimp who goes by the name of Diamond Dozen. If he sees you talking to the girls he might think you're trying to take them over and things could get nasty."
"Diamond Dozen?" Brad tried not to laugh.
I shrugged. "What can I say? He's probably watched too much TV. If I blend in as one of the girls, he probably won't even notice me asking questions."
"You're going to dress up as a hooker?"
I nodded. "Yep."
He raised an eyebrow. "Nice."
I play-swatted his arm. "I mean, we don't know how far this thing goes. Diamond Dozen could be involved in it, too. What if he's sending his girls to the clinic when they get pregnant and taking some kind of payment for procuring new specimens so they can carry out their experiments?"
"Can I watch you get dressed?"
I rolled my eyes. "If you watch me, I'll never get out the door."
At eleven thirty p.m. I was trotting down Chequer Street in my hookerish outfit. It was too cold for a skirt that masqueraded as a belt, so I had on a tight pair of black leggings, a glittery, low-cut top, a short faux leopard skin jacket, and the highest pair of stilettos I owned. I'd backcombed my hair so much it looked like my head had just exploded. Still, the good thing was you couldn't even tell now that one side was shorter than the other, unless you looked really hard.
Chequer Street was getting busy with working girls and seedy clientele. Prime time for finding Cassie Knowles. Some of the girls chatted in pairs at the side of the road, while some of them hung back, lounging against shop windows, ready to do business at the hint of a punter. Cars pulled to a stop now and then, the drivers haggling over prices or extras.
The first girl I met was in her mid-twenties: lots of makeup, a skirt so short you could see what she had for breakfast. She was looking up and down the road, hand on hip, and didn't notice me as I approached.
"Hi." I smiled at her. "I'm looking for Cassie Knowles. Do you know her?"
She looked me up and down, chewing gum loudly. "Are you Diamond's new girl?"
"Yeah, he said Cassie was going to show me the ropes."
She blew a bubble with her gum until it popped, then she jerked her head, gesturing farther down the street. "See the girl in the leather dress?"
I glanced past her and nodded.
"That's Cassie."
"Thanks."
"No problem." She turned her eyes back to the road.
Cassie was leaning on a lamppost, rummaging around in her bag, when I caught up to her. She had long blonde hair and tired eyes. The night was cold but her dress was strapless and short. She was all skin and bones, and there was nothing much holding up the dress except willpower.
"Hi, are you Cassie?"
She pulled out a packet of cigarettes, lit one, and regarded me warily. "Yeah, who wants to know?"
"My name's Amber Fox. I'm trying to find out what happened to your friend Emily Jacobs."
She took a long draw and turned her face away to blow out the smoke. "Why?" Suspicious.
"I've been investigating the disappearance of Chantal Langton, and I've discovered some information about the Second Chance Clinic. Several prostitutes who were using the clinic have disappeared. Emily's one of them. I think there's something going on over there and I need to find out what before even more people vanish mysteriously."
"You a cop?" She glanced around the street nervously.
"No, I'm an insurance investigator."
"Good. If Diamond catches me talking to a cop, he won't be happy."
"You reported Emily missing to the police, didn't you?"
"Hey," a middle-aged guy who'd pulled up at the curb shouted out the window. "How much for both of you?"
"Sorry, we're busy," I said, turning back to Cassie.
"You don't look very busy. How much?" he said. "You can be busy over here." He drew quote marks in the air as he said the word
busy
.
Ew, what a creep!
Cassie glanced up and down the street nervously, whispering to me. "I should take this guy."
I held up the palm of my hand to him. "I
said
we're busy." I made shooing motions to him. "Go on, run along." I turned back to Cassie and opened my mouth to speak.
"Okay, how about just one of you?" he butted in again.
I turned back to him and gave him the benefit of my sweetest smile. "Do you like sex and travel?"
He gave me a lecherous grin. "Yeah, who doesn't?" He was almost drooling at the thought.
"Well, fuck off!" I said.
"Suit yourself!" He finally got the message and wheel-spun up the road.
"So," I prompted Cassie again, "you reported her missing?"
Cassie glanced down at the cigarette, twirling it in between her fingers. "Yeah, I don't think the police were interested." She snorted with disapproval. "Why should they care about a hooker, right? To them we're just the lowest of the low."
I grabbed her arm and looked into her blue eyes. Eyes that had probably seen things I couldn't even imagine. "I care."
She regarded me for a while, trying to work out if I was genuine. Finally, she pulled me into a dark shop doorway. "I haven't seen Emily for about six months. We shared an apartment together, you see. She just went out one day and didn't come back. All her stuff's still there." She shook her head. "There's no way she'd leave all her clothes and personal stuff. No way."
"She had an appointment at the Second Chance Clinic to have a termination, didn't she?"
Cassie took another drag on the cigarette. "Yeah. She was pregnant. A broken condom one night with one of the punters. A lot of the girls use that clinic, so she went to see some doctor there."
"Do you know the doctor's name?"
She chewed on the corner of her lip, thinking. "Er…I think it was something that began with an S."
"Scott? Andrew Scott?"
"Yeah, that's it. So she went to see him and then when she came back he said that he was going to refer her to another clinic for the actual termination. He said this other clinic had better facilities or something and it still wouldn't cost her anything."
"What was the name of the clinic?" I asked, even though I knew what she was going to say before the words were out of her mouth.
"The Holbrook Clinic. She said this new clinic was going to ring her and make an appointment for the termination."
"And did they ring her?"
"I don't know. I went out one morning to get some milk and when I came back she was gone." Her eyes sparkled with tears. "What do you think happened to her? Did this clinic do something to her?"
I sighed, dreading to even think about the possibilities. "I don't know yet. Did you know Mary Parker, Dana Little, Claire Turner, or Lucy Sawyer?"
She smoked while she thought. "No. Who are they?"
"They were also prostitutes who used the clinic. They're all missing."
Her forehead crinkled with concern. "God. Maybe they use the patch over on King Street. I don't know a lot of the girls over there." She paused for a moment. "I didn't think this clinic had anything to do with Emily going missing. If I'd known, I would've told the police about it. Oh, God. I should've done more. I should've pressed the police to do something, but I knew from the way they acted they just weren't interested. But if a lot of girls have gone missing, they'll
have
to do something now, won't they?"
I nodded at her. "It's not your fault, Cassie. I'm going to find out what happened to her and the other girls if it kills me." I handed her my card. "If you think of anything else, or you want help to get off the streets, just give me a ring, okay?"