Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two (12 page)

“Do you know where they stage the auditions?” I said.

Ms. Culare shook her head, but I saw her eyes clear that time, and didn’t doubt her answer.

“No,” she said. “I don’t. Like I said, this was only just recently brought to my attention.” She looked at me then, her eyes hard. “One of the parents came here. Looking for her daughter. A parent. Can you imagine?”

I couldn’t really, but I didn’t bother to say so.

“How long had it been since she’d seen her daughter?” I asked.

“Four days, she said,” Ms. Culare answered me, again staring out the window.

Sighing, I leaned back in the chair.
 

“You know whoever they are, they probably won’t use your name again, right?” I said. “I mean, that’s the kind of scam you can’t repeat, when it involves stealing kids.”

She gave me a cold look. “I am aware of that, Ms. Reyes.”

“So what do you want me to do, exactly?” I said. “These kinds of gigs are usually organized crime. A lot of the time, it’s foreign. Russian. Lithuanian. Whatever. I don’t exactly have the firepower to single-handedly end sex slavery...as much as I might want to.”

The woman flinched at the term, but again her eyes met mine.

After another pause, she opened a drawer in her desk, and pulled out an envelope.

I’d seen a fair number of envelopes that shape in my life from jobs like this, but not one quite as fat as the one Ms. Culare now tossed in my direction.

“I want you to find out who gave them the names,” she said crisply. “They work here, whoever they are. I don’t want someone like that working for me...ever again. I want them in jail, if possible. If you can’t do that, at least provide me proof of their involvement, and I’ll handle it in my own way.”

I was already shaking my head, though, leaning deeper into the chair.
 

“You must know how difficult that would be,” I said. “As soon as they see me sniffing around, they’re going to bail...or put a hit on me. Or you,” I added meaningfully. “Did you miss the ‘organized crime’ part of what I said just now?”

The woman’s brown eyes didn’t waver.
 

“I’ll double it, if you find out where they took the girls,” she said. “A city. A country...I don’t care. Anything that might help the authorities find them. Anything that might help their
parents
find them. I know it’s unlikely you can keep the agency’s name out of it entirely at this point, but at least we can be shown to have tried to help. I won’t have my agency’s name and reputation hijacked for...”

Her poised expression wavered.

“...This,” she ended coldly.

I watched her, doubtful, but she was definitely getting to me.
 

More so because I could tell this was personal for her.

Hell, maybe it was for me, too.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take the job.” I looked at the money she’d thrown at me, tempted, then pushed it back towards her, remembering Gantry’s warning about field work. “Give me a few days. I may have to change my mind, depending on what my initial digging turns up.”

But Ms. Culare shook her head, pushing the stack of bills right back towards me.
 

“No. Take it. We can discuss terms of termination, when and if that happens.”

I hesitated. Looking at the fatness of that envelope a second time, I considered arguing again, then shrugged. “Okay.”

Pulling the wad of cash towards me, which I definitely didn’t want to count, at least not in front of her, I barely managed to stuff it into the sparkly purple handbag Jake forced me to bring. I could see from Jake’s eyes that he would have been more than happy to hold the envelope for me, but if I was stupid enough to do that, I had no business accepting money from anyone.

“All right, Ms. Culare,” I said as I finished, my voice still somewhat doubtful. “You’ve got yourself a detective...for today, at least.”

Ms. Culare nodded to me perceptibly. Her dark brown eyes had gone back to that stunning view out her sixty story window, a view that encompassed many of the wealthier neighborhoods of greater Seattle.
 

For another flicker in the sunlight under that uncharacteristically blue Seattle sky, I saw the anger rise back to her perfectly made-up face.

Seeing the look that stood there, plain as day, it occurred to me that maybe she hadn’t always had this much money and power.

In that same set of seconds, I felt like me and Ms. Culare were in perfect understanding of one another.

I spent the next few hours or so going through the basics of the agency.
 

Ms. Constance Culare set me up in a small room adjacent to the desk of her assistant, who proceeded to bring me boxes of employee records, boxes of client records, coffee, fruit juice, cucumber water for Jake, shoot schedules, events calendars, lists and records of international business partners....and whatever else I asked for.

Well, once I’d signed a confidentiality form about fifteen pages long while her very sleek-looking, African-American lawyer stood over my shoulder and explained particulars.

Even the lawyer looked like a model.

Once I’d gotten my head around the basics, I started setting up interviews.

I figured I could do a lot of those in the next few days, after I put Irene to work on her usual thing with the employees, clients and business contractors of the Culare Agency itself.

By the usual thing, I meant criminal history in the United States and elsewhere, bank records, family history, business ties, friends and acquaintances outside their work with the Culare Agency itself, any legal or other complaints filed against them, lawsuits, proximity to other cases of missing girls, employment references and history...and anything else that might give a solid ping in this kind of missing persons search.
 

I knew it was unlikely we’d get a big, fat, Eastern European mafia ping in all that, unless these guys were idiots or amateurs, but I also knew Irene would prioritize the list based on their access to the girls in question, schedule overlaps and any kind of criminal background, so at least we’d end up with a shorter list.

That left me with looking into the girls themselves.

Getting Jake out of there was like prying a leech off an overfed cow’s leg.

While I went through files and forwarded information to Irene on the laptop that the Culare Agency lent me, Jake spent those hours getting petted by every model who walked in the front door, checked out by every client for a possible campaign or a date, complimented for his face structure, his eyes and his physique, and handed cards by mostly gay male photographers who offered to help him create a preliminary portfolio for free.

I didn’t even have to look at Jake to know he’d be insufferable by the time we got out of there.

Mostly, I was just glad they let me hide in that back room with the door closed to him and his grifting antics.

Jake did lend me his phone, though.
 

The fact that I had to ask served in part to remind me that I really needed to get one of my own, sooner rather than later. Now that I had some cash at hand, I found myself tempted to spend some of it, if only to get set up with some of the basics of everyday life. I still felt like I’d fallen out of the sky only half-formed, after my return trip to Seattle with Nik.
 

I still only really
remembered
the basic necessities for this kind of life when they came up, like now. Like needing a phone. Preferably one with decent GPS.

I also found myself toying with the idea of getting a new place. Of my own, that is.

I knew I couldn’t spend Ms. Culare’s money for that, not until I knew whether I could pay it back, but the idea lingered, anyway.

Sleeping on Irene’s lumpy, pull-out mattress was getting old.

I knew there were other reasons for wanting my own space, too...or my own space with Nik, more to the point. Reasons I didn’t really want to think about, at least not right then.

Jake and I finally got out of there––after I pried Jake off a particularly stunning transexual photographer who stared at Jake like it was his birthday––at around six o’clock.

By then, I was pretty burnt-out from staring at computer screens and reading through bad handwriting in employee files. I was ready for dinner and a good long stint outdoors, and away from florescent lights.

Jake let me lead him out of there, surprisingly enough.

And yeah, I deliberately ignored the light that sprang to the transexual’s eyes when he...or she, I couldn’t quite decide...saw the two of us together.

By then, I’d totally forgotten who I’d seen when we first walked into that building.

I strode through the main, downstairs lobby of the Grim Reaper without looking at anyone, moving probably the fastest I’ve ever moved in that high of spiked heels.

I pushed open the glass doors with a relieved exhale the second I hit the outside air. I’ve never liked office buildings, whether I worked in them or not. I hated the feeling of being a rat in a maze, and the recycled air always made me conscious of inhaling other people’s skin, rat fecal matter and whatever else. I was definitely an outside type of person, anyway...not a sit at a desk and wear restrictive clothing type.

Given my own personality make up, I didn’t know how people could stand to live that way.
 

Then again, I’m sure a lot of them thought the same about me.

I was still standing there, realizing again what a stunning day it was, for Seattle at least, with only a cool breeze blowing between buildings under that blue sky punctuated by giant, cumulous clouds, when someone totally pissed on my happy place.

Grabbing my arm, they jerked me around sideways.

I found myself staring up at a pair of baby blues I unfortunately remembered only too well.

It’s amazing how those eyes could be more or less the same color as Gantry’s, and be like Gantry’s in no other conceivable respect.

He looked as crazy this time as I remembered him from before.
 

Oh, he hid it pretty well, especially in broad daylight, like now.
 

But I had his number now, so the guise looked pretty thin to me as I studied his face. He didn’t mind showing me the real guy, either, I could tell. He was proud of the real guy. He thought the real guy––meaning the murderous sociopath that liked hurting people––was the bee’s knees. He only hid who he was because he’d learned that it helped him get what he wanted.

But with me, now, he wanted me to see who he really was.

He wanted me to be afraid.

But he also wanted to play guy-with-all-the-power. He wanted me to feel like no one would believe me, if I tried to tell them just how psycho he really was.

So he stared down at me with a half-smile, totally composed, despite the iron-man grip he had on my arm. I could feel his fingers bruising my bare flesh already.

I glanced around, as casually as I could, but Jake hadn’t even made it out of the building yet.
 

Still pretty calm, I considered different approaches.

No way he was getting out of here with me. He likely knew that, too, so this was obviously meant to scare me. If he planned to tote me out of here, he would have waited until I got a lot closer to the curb. He would have had a car waiting, and likely chloroform and a handkerchief or something equally serial-killer-y.