Page 85 of Nightfire

She finally raised her eyes, expecting to see scorn and disgust. Instead Harry Bolt looked thoughtful. He met the other man’s eyes again, tapping the desk with a pen. Both of them turned to her again but she saw absolutely nothing in their gaze to show they’d understood her. Nothing.

How could that be?

“Do you know what the Meteor Club is?” she blurted out.

“Yes, of course,” Bolt answered, mind obviously elsewhere. “So two of those Russians were the ones who attacked Chloe?”

Amazing. She had just told these two men she was a prostitute and they simply ignored it. She’d stoically thrown away her pleasure at being treated like a lady when she told then where she worked. Her chest had become tight, her breath shallow, but at their reactions, the tightness eased.

“Yes. Their names are Lyov and Ivan. They are thugs. Violent men. They beat up two of my friends at the Meteor. One had to hospitalized. She was taken across the border for medical care. We never saw her again.”

“Hold on.” Harry Bolt never took his eyes off her as he picked up a cellphone and pressed just a couple of buttons. “Yeah,” he said suddenly as someone picked up at the other end. “Something has happened. We’ve got a lead on the men who attacked Chloe. Russians, she was right.” He listened. “Uh huh. As soon as you can. Hurry.”

He switched off. “So, why is it that they attacked my sister?”

“These Russians. They’re making some big investment, as I said. Something big is coming. The owner of the Meteor, Frank Sands is always trying to make a good impression on the Russians, wanting everything to be perfect. Chloe—she talked to us. Listened to us. Made us feel…better. She has a special way, you know?”

Bolt nodded grimly. “Yes, she does.”

Consuelo wanted to rub her damp palms together, wanted to look at the floor again, but she did neither. She straightened her shoulders and looked Chloe’s brother right in the eyes.

“Chloe held group sessions. I don’t think it was really therapy, but I wouldn’t know. She listened, mostly. But all of us felt better afterwards. Felt better, felt cleaner. And then we had to…go back. Back to the Meteor.” Her voice became hoarse. She coughed to clear it. “Each time, it was harder. And I guess we started rebelling a little. It wasn’t Chloe’s fault. She didn’t say anything to us about what we should do, how we should behave, but it was just—some of us couldn’t go on. Our boss, he was furious with us. He’s trying to make a good impression on the Russians. He doesn’t want any problems at all. Susie—one of us—said she was going to quit, that Chloe wanted her to quit. It wasn’t true. Chloe never said anything like that at all. She never gave us advice, never pushed in any direction, she just listened. But what Susie said was enough to make the Russians mad.”

“So that was it?” Bolt asked. “The reason why they attacked her?”

Consuelo nodded. “To get her to back off. Stop making waves.”

“Son of a bitch.” The man’s face grew even grimmer, white brackets appearing around his mouth. He looked briefly at the other man, who looked as if he wanted to hit someone, too. “Those men are going down. The top Russian, too.”

Her moment!

“This might help.” Consuelo dug the thumb drive out of her purse and slid it across the large, shiny desk. “I…took it off the head Russian, a man named Nikitin. I don’t know his first name. It must contain something valuable. He kept it in his jacket pocket.”

“Intel, eh?” Bolt carefully examined the device. “Russian manufacture. I guess that’s not surprising.” He turned and plugged the thumb drive into his computer and watched the screen carefully. He manipulated some keys. Consuelo knew nothing about computers. It was forbidden for the girls to have computers.

Bolt made a sound of frustration. “It’s encrypted. Looks like a strong encryption, too. That’s a pretty strong degree of protection. Take some doing to crack.”

Consuelo barely understood him. All she really grasped was that maybe what she’d brought wasn’t useful. She’d paid such a steep price for it. She blinked back tears. “You can’t read it?”

Oh God, she’d been counting on this. Counting that because of the thumb drive, they’d help her disappear. She’d left the Meteor forever, there was no going back. But if there was no going forward either, what was going to happen to her?

“No, not without some work. And we’d need to find a cracker who speaks Russian.” Bolt spoke absently, then looked at her. Though Consuelo was used to hiding her emotions—all whores learned that or they couldn’t work—she found she couldn’t right now. What she was feeling was right there on her face.

She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think.

“What’s wrong?” That deep voice was suddenly gentle.

She twisted her hands, then stilled them. She looked down at herself and was horrified to see that the modest white cotton blouse was fluttering over her left breast as her heart pounded with panic.

She looked at Bolt and at the rough-looking man, Barney.

“I can’t go back,” she whispered. “I brought that to you as—as payment, because they say you help women disappear. I had no idea that Chloe’s brother worked here, but I thought that if the Russian had information, it must be valuable. I can’t go back. I can’t—" Her voice broke and she stopped talking, breathing shallowly in her panic. “I can’t go back. I can’t go through that again. The Russian—he put a cloth over my face, poured water over the cloth and⁠—"

The other man, Barney, all of a sudden stood up. “You were fucking waterboarded?” he roared and Consuelo shrank back.

She’d long learned to recognize men’s moods, she had an animal instinct for it. And this man had turned dangerous.

She stiffened, turned her face blank.