“Fuck that,” she muttered and stormed over to her computer. Hadn’t she been working this story for months? She knew more about Klemens and his sleazy businesses than Aden did. He hadn’t even been sure there was a slave network until she’d told him. He’d seemed upset once he found out, though. She’d give him that. Of course, then he’d immediately gone all high-handed me-Tarzan and shuffled the little lady off to the tree house where she’d be safe. Well, double f**k that. She’d worked this story alone so far, and she could keep doing it. She didn’t need almighty Aden’s permission to do her job.
Checking her calendar, she saw it was the eleventh of the month, and the slavers maintained a surprisingly strict schedule, for bloodsucking bottom feeders. The newest shipment of girls would have come in last night. They’d be penned up in one of several holding houses, awaiting the next online auction, which would be on the thirteenth. The number of women to be auctioned varied. It could be as few as five or as many as twenty. It just depended on the gleaners and how much merchandise they could round up. Sid’s problem would be determining which of the houses the women were being held in. If she could figure that out, she could do some recon and maybe gather enough evidence to take to the police. If she could only persuade them to conduct a raid while the women were still being held prisoner, they’d have no choice but to open a wider investigation. Granted, she’d brought the police evidence before, and they’d never moved on it. She suspected they’d been bought off, though she’d never been able to prove it. But she kept trying, and maybe this time her report would fall to someone who wasn’t in the slavers’ pay, someone who would follow up on her information.
And if that went against Aden’s preferences for keeping the human authorities out of it, then too bad. If he’d listened to her, it never would have come to this.
Sid settled down to work. Because the slavers were so organized in other things, she’d been working on a system for figuring out which house they’d use in any given month. It wasn’t perfect, but so far, she’d been right about sixty percent of the time. Eventually, her odds would go up, but with any luck they’d be shut down before that happened.
She’d calculated her best guess and was gathering her stuff for a little field trip when her phone rang. She almost didn’t answer, too focused on her plans for the afternoon to be interrupted, but then she caught Will’s name on the caller ID.
“Fuck,” she whispered. Was it Wednesday already? She briefly considered letting it go to voice mail, but decided that was just too cowardly, so she picked up the phone with a breathless, “Hi, Will.”
“Hey, sweetheart. Everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure, why?”
“You sound out of breath.”
“Oh, that. I dropped a file and was crawling around under my desk,” she explained, appalled at the ease with which the lie tripped off her tongue.
“Can we make it an early lunch today? I’ve got a meeting.”
It was the perfect excuse to cancel, but she couldn’t do it. She didn’t have many friends since moving to Chicago. Or rather, she had them, mostly from college, but they were spread all over the globe. Will was one of the few who always made an effort to stay in touch, something she herself was woefully remiss in. Besides, who knew? Maybe they would get married someday.
Sid contemplated that last thought and shook her head. Nope. She just couldn’t see herself settling into her mother’s routine for the rest of her life. And that’s what life with Will would be. Not a bad life, but not the one Sid wanted, either.
“You there, Sid?”
“Yeah, sorry. My brain took a short trip without me. Early lunch is fine. Where and when?”
“I reserved 11:30 at Naha. That work?”
Sid checked the time on her computer. It would be tight, but she could do it. And she’d still have plenty of time this afternoon to check out the slavers’ house.
“Works great. I’ll see you there.”
“Looking forward to it.”
She disconnected, smiling at Will’s sign-off. No brooding, alpha male bullshit from Will. He was beta all the way. Had she ever seen him angry? Did he ever get angry? He must, right? Everyone did eventually. She sighed and slumped back to her bedroom to change clothes. Ripped Levi’s and scuffed Chucks weren’t going to cut it at Naha.
SID TOOK A BIG bite of her Naha “famous” half-pound burger and chewed with great relish. She caught Will watching her with a lopsided grin.
“What?” she demanded.
“How a bitty thing like you manages to chow down the way you do—”
“First, I’m not a bitty thing. I’m nearly five-eight, as you well know. Second, no woman wants to be told she chows down. As for the rest of it, there’s no reason you couldn’t have ordered a burger if you’d wanted one, so stop looking at my lunch like a starving dog, and eat your damn halibut.”
“Testy. But I had steak yesterday, and I’m trying to cut back on red meat, now that I’m getting older.”
“Oh for God’s sake, you’re going to be thirty, not sixty. Get over it.”
“Wait ’til it’s your turn. Speaking of birthdays, I assume you’re heading home this weekend for your dad’s big bash?”
Sid blanked for a moment. Her father’s birthday party was . . . oh, God, this weekend? She was mortified and feeling more than a little guilty that she’d forgotten.
“You forgot, didn’t you?”
“Of course not,” she insisted, thinking that she and Will knew each other entirely too well. “It’s on my calendar.”