standing outside.
She comes in, holding the strap of her purse tightly at her shoulder, nervousness permeating the air around her.
“Heather?” Seth clarifies, and she nods as he takes the seat behind the desk and I take up residence at the wall behind him, my arms crossing over my chest as I lean back against it.
He gestures toward the seat in front of the desk, and she sits. “Um, first, before I say anything, I need to know y’all will protect me,” she says low, as if she’s scared someone will hear her talking to us. “Alison isn’t the only one who’s suddenly disappeared. She’s just the only one who had anyone care she was missing.”
As Seth assures her we will assign a security detail with surveillance at her home and in her car, I check my watch to see how much longer Astrid has until she’s supposed to be off. She texted me earlier saying she’d be later tonight because there were several more girls to work on. My brow furrows when I see the symbol at the top of my watch showing that my cell is disconnected. When I pull it out of my pocket, an empty battery emblem flashes across the screen.
“Shit, you got a charger in here?” I interrupt Seth.
“Bro, do you know me at all? Take your pick,” he replies, pulling out a drawer in the desk that has a giant charging station assembled with what looks like thirty different ports. I find one of several iPhone cords and snap it into the bottom of my cell, setting it on the desk before leaning back against the wall once more. I had barely plugged it in at home when Seth texted me to get my ass here.
Heather sets her purse in her lap and clutches it to her front. “Dr. Walker, I… I should’ve come sooner. I know that. But when you work for a man like Randy, who makes it perfectly clear that if you cross him, it’s your life that’s endangered, not your job, then it’s hard to find the courage to ask for help. But… but I really like your girlfriend. She’s so sweet and… so innocent in a way, like that baby sister you want to take care of. And I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to her.”
I’m instantly on alert. What does this have to do with Astrid? I thought she was just coming to give details about her coworker and didn’t think she’d get much protection from the police.
“How would something happen to Astrid?” I prompt, forcing my voice to stay calm even though the panic is rising inside me to fly out of here like a bat out of hell to go to my woman this very second.
“Um.” She pushes her hair behind her ear. “I… I guess I need to start from the beginning. Well, actually the end… of Alison. She was our makeup artist before Astrid. But A Secret isn’t just a strip club. It’s an auction-based brothel. There are three levels—the dance club, where nothing scandalous goes on. It’s just like a regular nightclub. The strip club, which is exactly what you think. And then the auction room, where after a girl strips, the members can bid on a night with her, and then they go upstairs and… do what they will. Well, sometimes Randy partakes in his own product—the girls I mean. He still pays them and stuff, but like… let’s just say he’s not a gentle lover. Alison also delved into dancing whenever she needed extra cash. She wasn’t a regular, but when someone would take a night off or we needed an extra girl, she didn’t mind getting that bonus.
“Anyway, Randy saw her, which I don’t think he had up until that night, because he doesn’t tend to venture to the dressing room, and he wanted her. She wasn’t on the auction level, just the strip stage, but he had two of his men escort her to a room upstairs. Now, we don’t know for sure if he took her willingly or if he forced her. All we know is an hour later, they carried her lifeless body out the back door—past the dressing room—and it looked like she had something around her neck while the rest of her was naked.” She pauses to take a breath, and with it, Seth opens up an Imperium Security report, typing quickly to get down the details.
Heather continues, “Her best friend,