On His Honor Page 3

  “You cannot. No one can.” She was visibly trembling.

  “Just tell me your name,” he said softly. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Her face was pale as death, and sobs wracked her frame, but still she said nothing.

  “I’ll go first. My name is John.” True, though he never used his first name, but John was innocuous enough that he could easily use it undercover. “Please tell me your name.”

  “I am called Candy.”

  “But that’s not your real name, is it?” Not with that accent, though he couldn’t clearly place it.

  “It does not matter. There is no help— Please…go. I must return before—”

  “Where would I find Hector?”

  “Stay away from him. He is dangerous.”

  “Why?” So close… He nearly held his breath, sensing in his gut that she could give them the information they needed.

  She clasped the locket at her throat with white-knuckled fingers. “My sister…I am so afraid. We were to meet—”

  Sisters, just as he’d expected. She was involved with the smuggling ring. “Let me take you someplace safe.”

  “No!” Her head shook violently. “If I leave, he will hurt her. We were brought over together, but the other man took her away. I have only seen her once. I must take care of her. She is my only family. There is talk that some will be moved soon. I must find her first.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Istanbul,” she whispered.

  Bingo. Not content with trafficking in Latin America, the cartel was rumored to be spreading its tentacles into the Middle East in recent months.

  “When is this move?”

  Her eyes narrowed, and he backtracked from the too-direct question a simple do-gooder would not have asked.

  “Never mind.” He grasped her arm. “Let me take you away from here. I’ll help you find your sister.” He didn’t like lying to her—though, of course, he actually could take her to her sister, only not alive—but this case was about hundreds, possibly thousands of young women like Candy and her sister.

  “No—you do not see—no!” She wrenched her arm away from him just as a shout echoed from around the corner, snagging JD’s attention.

  He couldn’t draw his weapon here, he’d blow his cover. “Stay there,” he said over his shoulder and began easing his way to the corner to see what was going on.

  Too late he heard the footsteps behind him and whipped around.

  But the girl was already gone.

  His instincts were itching, though. She’d said they were going to move the girls, and soon. He had to find a way to get to Lofton or Holland, some means to learn their weak spots without tipping them off.

  Everyone had a weakness. He would hunt until he found theirs.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “GOOD MORNING, GORGEOUS.” Shopping bags in hand, Avery strode across the verdant grounds of Hotel Serenity and bent to kiss Violet’s cheek. Of medium height, with rich brown hair and melting brown eyes, he had been quite handsome when they first met, but she could see the strains of his lifestyle in his softening jaw, the new thickness around his middle. He was only five years older than her thirty-four, but he had aged markedly since he’d last come out to see her in California.

  “Avery, you don’t have to bring me goodies every day.”

  “Okay.” He shifted the bags behind his back. For her, he could always summon mischief, however harried he was.

  Violet laughed and half rose from the bent willow chair. “Gimme.” With a child’s delight, she peered inside one of the bags. “Yes! Chocolate! How did you know?”

  He snorted. “Like that’s not a required part of any gift. Even when all we could afford was one Hershey bar to split between us, you’d give up a decent meal to have it.”

  They shared a smile swimming in memories.

  “You gonna split that with me for old times’ sake?” he asked as she pried open the box and reverently inhaled the dark, delicious scent.

  “Are you kidding?” She clasped the container to her chest. “Get your own Hershey bar.” With a grin, she proffered the box. “Of course I am. You first, my friend.” After he’d selected one truffle, she chose one for herself and took a dainty bite.

  “Oh, God.” She would swear her eyes rolled back in her head. “Where on earth did you find these?”

  “Second Street. A little shop where they make them by hand.”

  “Yum. Serious yum.” She smiled. “Between Sophie’s amazing food and your goodies, if I don’t start running again soon, my trainer will kill me.”

  “You’re getting antsy.” Not a question.

  “Yes…well, maybe. I’m not quite ready to brave the world yet.” She frowned. “Such a coward.”

  “You’re not. You never have been.” He placed his hand atop hers.

  If she’d felt a little unsettled because he hadn’t invited her to stay with him after all the times he’d begged her to visit, he was here now, faithful as ever, and that was enough. She turned her fingers in his and squeezed. “I’ve lost my optimism, Avery. I always believed that he was out there, my perfect match. That I’d be like my parents one day, that one man would love me for who I am, not because I’m famous, but simply for myself.” She sighed and shook her head. “No longer.”

  “You wouldn’t be you if you weren’t a cockeyed optimist. Don’t you dare change. He’s out there somewhere.”

  “You really believe that?” Violet rose, began to pace. “I’ve proven myself to be a lousy judge of character when it comes to men.” And that wasn’t all she was questioning about her life, which scared her half to death.

  Avery went to her, held out his hand. “You’ll get back on the horse one of these days. Meanwhile, I have an idea—you ready for an adventure?”

  “What kind?”

  “A let’s sneak Violet out of here covered with a blanket in the backseat adventure.”

  “I don’t know… .”

  “C’mon,” he entreated. “I have a couple of hours with nobody breathing down my neck. Let’s make a jailbreak. You haven’t turned chicken on me, have you?”

  “A blanket? Seriously? It’s too hot.”

  “I have a/c. And I brought the Rover, not the Jag, so you’d have room to stretch out.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Are you turning into a full-fledged recluse on me? ’Cause if so, I’m calling the paparazzi myself.”

  Alarm shivered through her. “Avery…”

  “Oh, honey, you’re worse off than I thought. If you don’t trust me, of all people…”

  Had she become that suspicious of everyone? If she couldn’t trust her best friend, who could she trust?

  She refused to go down that road. “Of course I do.” She sighed. “It’s just been so great to feel this safe.” Hotel Serenity was as advertised—better, even, since Zane had gone above and beyond and had made arrangements with the owner, Sophie Carlisle, for Violet to have the place all to herself.

  Violet awoke each morning in this magical place Sophie had created—her quarters were the amazing aerie that was normally the honeymoon suite, an entire floor atop the former carriage house, with killer views of downtown Austin and Lady Bird Lake. A mockingbird serenaded her with its repertoire as she enjoyed her own nest in the treetops, and each night the moon silvered her bedroom. The food was amazing, the service discreet and there was the added kick of a tranquility room on the grounds, complete with massage anytime she wanted it. Violet’s heart was still sore, but every day the pain receded. And the respite from her normal breakneck pace was sinfully delicious.

  “And you don’t think I’ll protect you?” He wasn’t teasing anymore. He was hurt, this man who was the only o
ne she truly did trust outside of her family.

  She took a deep breath. “I know you will. So where will this adventure take me?”

  “Maybe…my house? I didn’t plan ahead, but—” His cell phone chirped with a voice mail. She appreciated that he turned off the ringer when he was with her. He glanced at the screen and frowned. “Damn.”

  “Go ahead and listen.”

  He did, and a change swept over his handsome features. When he finished, his strained expression said it all.

  “Go on,” she urged. “I’ll be fine here with my goodies.” Even though the notion of getting out had begun to appeal to her more than she’d expected. Maybe she was getting a little antsy in her ivory tower.

  He bent to kiss her cheek. “I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “It’s great to be successful, but…”

  Violet placed one hand on his jaw. “You’re preaching to the choir, you know.” She smiled past her disappointment. “Now shoo—I have chocolate to pig out on and, thanks to the demands of your business, no one to hang around and give me puppy-dog eyes to beg me to share.”

  “I’ll try to make it back later.”

  “I’m fine, I swear.”

  “Sorry, kid.” But his mind was clearly elsewhere already.

  Violet hugged her dearest friend and watched him go.

  And admitted to herself that she was lonely.

  She squared her shoulders, gathered up her goodies to take them to her quarters. She mounted the steps but paused halfway up, gazing out at the lake, at the beauty of the day she was missing while she cloistered herself here. The grounds were beautiful and she’d desperately needed the peace when she’d arrived, but she’d seen nothing of the wonders of Austin Avery had described.

  Was he right? Was she really ready to emerge? A part of her was restless, but another part shuddered at the notion of attracting the paparazzi’s attention.

  She glanced back at the house. Maybe after she put all her goodies away, she’d see if Sophie had time to visit, instead.

  * * *

  “OKAY, SO WHO WANTS TO GO FIRST?” VICTAF head Doc Romero’s piercing gaze scanned the group gathered around the conference table at task-force headquarters in an anonymous office building in northwest Austin.

  “Internet chatter’s picking up,” offered Doc’s right-hand man, Bob Jordan.

  “How would you know? You figured out how to turn on your computer yet?” teased Trini Sanchez, the group’s newest member, on loan from Immigration.

  Some grins, a couple of raised coffee mugs. Balding, paunchy Bob was everyone’s favorite uncle and the go-to guy for anything you didn’t want to bother Doc with, but his aversion to technology was legend.

  “Bite me,” Bob retorted. “I can read reports.”

  “As long as someone prints them up for you,” quipped Vince Coronado who, like JD, had come to VICTAF from the Austin Police Department.

  “Okay, okay,” Doc said. “So brief me. What’s the chatter?” Though he was asking for the sake of the group—there wasn’t so much as a dust mote that Doc didn’t register. VICTAF was his baby, and while most cops would have retired by now, at sixty-two, Doc showed no signs of slowing down or handing over the reins. JD was glad about that, personally. Imagining VICTAF without Doc—or Bob, for that matter—wasn’t something he cared to contemplate. He’d been psyched to be invited to join the prestigious inter-agency group, and he’d been here longer than many of the others. Most rotated in and out within a couple of years in accordance with Doc’s original design, but JD had found a niche where he’d felt like he was making a difference, and Doc had encouraged him to stay.

  But sometimes that difference seemed too minuscule to count. Like now. This human-trafficking case was driving them all buggy.

  “First of all, investigation of this recent crime scene isn’t producing much in the way of promising forensic evidence,” Bob said. “And we’re running out of time. Word is, Popovic is planning to deliver a shipment of Middle Eastern women and children next.”

  “What’s motivating his change of merchandise? He usually handles Hispanics. And why bring them through Texas?” asked Mack Lawrence of the Department of Public Safety. “A lot easier for Central Americans to blend in.”

  “Sad statement,” interjected Vince, “but thanks to the overall paranoia about the Middle East, there’s an increased appetite in the sex-slave trade for women from that region.”

  Expressions of disgust, from hardened jaws to shaking heads and narrowed eyes, traveled the room, but this group had seen too much to be easily shocked. You had to have a cast-iron stomach to survive in the world they walked in.

  Sometimes, though, JD thought, man’s ability to enjoy the suffering of his fellow beings, to profit from misery, made him damn sick.

  “We still think he’s using Jorge Lima to get them in and out?” asked Trini.

  Doc nodded. “Or whatever name he’s going by now. Why mess with a winning formula?” The Brazilian had proven elusive to both his own country’s law enforcement and U.S. agencies. He’d created a pipeline that shifted constantly but never ceased operations.

  Assorted muttering made its way around the room.

  Doc shrugged. “Lima’s not in our purview, though. We have to focus on what we can do here at home.”

  “The money laundering,” JD stated.

  “Yep,” Doc answered. “The money laundering. The cocktail waitress at Danger Zone, the one that gave us the intel then disappeared—any progress on finding her, Vince?”

  “Nothing worth talking about. Since we have to stay under the radar at the club, I’ve been playing it low-key, asking around. I had a young patrolman go in, pose as someone whose eye she caught, trying to get her phone number so he can see her again. The bar back he talked to said she wasn’t sociable. That she left after her shift and didn’t really get friendly with anyone. No one seems to know where she lives, and she didn’t show up for work yesterday. The bar guy says she’ll play hell getting her job back. We’ve talked to her family, but she left home at seventeen and they don’t care if they ever see her again. In other words…we got nothing.”

  “Keep tugging that line for a while. It’s the best lead we’ve had,” Doc said.

  Around the table, faces echoed his frustration.

  “I may have something,” JD offered.

  Doc lifted an eyebrow.

  “I was there last night, at Danger Zone, and I met these two women… .”

  General hoots and catcalls. “No surprise there, Romeo,” snickered Vince.

  JD rolled his eyes. That whole bit had gotten old years ago, but if he let them see that his rep as a ladies’ man bugged him, they’d never leave off. So, instead, he played it up. “Not my fault you’re boring old married farts. Women like me…it can’t be helped.” He actually did get along well with women, always had, but he preferred to think it wasn’t his face but the fact that he genuinely liked them back.

  “I’m not old—or married,” piped up Trini.

  “And Chloe doesn’t seem to think I’m too boring,” intoned Vince.

  JD couldn’t refute that. Vince was part of the Montalvo/MacAllister clan by marriage if not by blood, and it was rife with happy couples. Somehow JD had been adopted by them when Jesse Montalvo had been his supervisor at VICTAF. He had attended many a family gathering since then, seeing for himself what a good marriage could do to smooth out life’s rough edges. Vince’s was one of them.

  “Yeah, but Chloe’s a shrink, and with you she’s got a lifetime project,” he quipped.

  Vince laughed.

  Doc cleared his throat. “Okay, people. Back to business.” He turned a stony look on JD. “So you just, what, decided to drop in on Danger Zone without clearing it with anyone?”

  “
You can ask me that after the other night? You saw what they did, those bastards.”

  Doc only looked at him over his reading glasses with an expression that made JD feel all of fifteen, trying to defend actions he knew pushed the boundaries. “So, what happened?” Doc asked.

  “The first girl was just one of Lofton’s teasers, girls he hires to bring the guys. Sort of a cross between saloon girls and hookers, but they’re careful not to get busted. He must pay them well, since they’re so closemouthed.”

  “So why is this one going to pan out?”

  JD relayed what Bella had told him before he’d seen the other girl. “Her loyalty is being strained. She’s got the hots for Lofton, and Sage called her out on it.” Avery Lofton and Sage Holland were co-owners of the club. “She thinks Sage wants him for herself.”

  Bob looked cheerful. “Jealous women make great CIs.”

  “Sometimes,” Vince said. Confidential informants, as they all knew to their peril, were unreliable by nature. “Until one takes her man back, and the case goes south on you.”

  Heads nodded all around the table.

  “But she’s not the one who got my attention. I spotted a girl whose sister is one of the vics from the other night, I’m damn near positive. She was back by those doors, the new ones Vice thinks are being used for more than private dances with clients, but…”

  Around the table, people straightened in their chairs.

  “But…?” Doc prompted.

  JD exhaled in a gust. “I lost her. I had her off by herself, but her pimp came searching for her. When he got too close and I turned to deflect his attention, she took off.”

  His frustration was echoed on other faces.

  “She’s a key to this whole case, I know it. Scared to death of her pimp, Hector, and worried sick because her sister didn’t show up to meet her. She talked about being brought over from Istanbul and a move that’s going to happen soon.”

  “Got a name?” asked Vince.

  “Not a real one. Says it’s Candy, but that’s her pross name, I’m sure. She’s a dead ringer for a girl from the other night, so much so they could be twins.”