I can’t let her slip away again.”
A heavy pat from Rowe landed on his back. “Then we will search them all,” his friend relented with a nod.
“Might as well get started then,” Paine said as he began to lead them towards the pleasure district. “If you had to guess…” He paused to look back at them with a grin. “How many houses do you think are going to fight our request to search?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, his mind running through the different scenarios they might be facing once they reached their destination. “The houses that want to stay in the good favor of the council will most likely comply without issue.”
“It’s the houses that run under the radar we need to worry about.” Rowe let out a sigh. “We won’t be making it back in time to sleep with our wife tonight, will we, Paine?”
“Nope,” Paine shot back, letting the word pop at the end.
“I know I’ve said this already,” Axis said, tossing a coin to one of the vendors for a large chunk of sweet bread, “but I’m glad it’s the two of you that are here.”
Ripping the bread into thirds, he handed a chunk of the brightly sugared bread to the others as they walked. The closer they came to the area sectioned off for the brothels, the sparser the market vendors became. A clear distinction between the marketplace and the pleasure district came in the form of a set of gates.
The larger, more profitable houses were closest to the large gates that blocked the brothels off from the marketplace. Once clear of the large metal doors, the facades of the brothels lining the cobblestone road were decorated with scantily clad aliens trying to entice the onlookers inside.
“I doubt these houses would take the chance of trading in human females,” Rowe said as they walked up to the biggest house on the planet, one known for higher-class sex workers than most of the smaller ones. “The masters here are too profitable to take the risk of getting closed for crossing the council by dealing in humans.”
“Unless they had one of the smaller houses handle the transaction,” Paine said, shaking his head.
“We don’t know enough to make assumptions when it comes to where they might be,” Axis interrupted. “I agree that it would be foolish for the masters of the larger houses to take the chance. If they were caught, it would mean not only the loss of their house and expulsion from the sector but also time on the prison planet.” Axis didn’t voice the fact that they’d most likely die there, the mining planet that prisoners were sent to a sure death sentence, despite their health when entering. “The council would punish them just as quickly as one of the less powerful masters.”
“I thought you just said not to make assumptions…” Paine drawled, giving him a confused look.
“I’m not. I’m simply reviewing the facts of the matter,” he said with a shake of his head. “Although the risk would be there, the bounty a human female would bring in would not be so easy to ignore. Multiply that by three, and the amount of credits those women represent are incredibly enticing…even to the houses that are thriving here. It would be enough for someone to live comfortably for the rest of their life cycle off this dirty planet.”
“Good point,” the paired fighters replied in unison.
Rowe thumbed a smudge of colored sugar off the corner of his mouth as he finished the doughy dessert Axis had shared. “You think she’s in one of those houses then?”
He shrugged before answering. “Like I said, we don’t know enough to make assumptions. What we do know is that the larger houses have more contacts off-planet. With the amount of workers they are moving around all the time, they would definitely be able to sneak by a shipment of females easier than some of the others, as well as pay to keep mouths shut if someone saw something they shouldn’t.”
“Secrets are costly,” Paine added with a nod.
“The point you’re trying to make is that she could be anywhere, correct?” Rowe asked with a grim expression.
“Correct,” Axis affirmed.
“This could take days,” Paine groaned, his eyes scanning the line of houses they would have to go through.
“Let’s hope not.” Axis gestured for the men to follow him as he climbed the stairs to the first house on the path. “We don’t know if the females have days.”
Chapter Seven
Nova had no tears left.
She’d cried