Always Watching (35 page)

“
Because so many of the
women sold through human trafficking end up in the sex trade,
Devlin,” Crevan joined the conversation. 

“
Hey,” I said, reached
over and squeezed his hand.  “Everything all
right?”

“
Plumbing emergency at the
club,” Crevan shrugged one shoulder.  “Even if I weren’t up to
my neck in this case, I’d be useless.  I told him to call a
plumber.”

“
Ouch,” Devlin
chuckled.  “I guess that advice didn’t fly.”

“
Sure it did,” Crevan
replied.  “I’m not stupid, Dev, and I seriously doubt that
things were quite so dire at the club.  It was a ploy to get
me away from here for a couple of hours.”  His fingers brushed
the ring on my left hand, which he still held.  “Helen?” 
Eyebrows rose.

Behind him, Johnny and Chris entered the
room.  Chris was grinning and smacked Johnny on the
shoulder.  So much for breaking our news together. One down,
two to go.  I sucked in a deep breath and called to my new
husband with nothing more than a look.

He joined us.  “We’ve got some news,”
Johnny jumped into the fray.  “Helen and I got married this
afternoon.”

And what a cushioned blow it was.  I
felt waves of tension radiating behind me.  They quickly
retreated, punctuated by a slamming door.

“
Oops,” Johnny grinned at
me.

“
Johnny, I thought we
agreed –”

“
There’s no way to do this
beyond spitting out the happy truth,” he smirked.  “He’ll get
over it or he won’t.”

“
Congratulations, Helen,”
Chris said.  “If you’ll excuse me for a moment.”

I nodded, knowing full well that Chris
intended to make right Johnny’s abrupt announcement. 

“
What’ve we got here?”
Johnny asked.

“
I think we’ve got some
explaining to do.”  Crevan’s stunned silence weighed heavily
on the room and drew my attention away from the case. 
“Crevan, are you all right?”

“
Shocked,” he said
softly.  “Why…? How…?”

“
I love her and I know
people,” Johnny grinned.  “Aren’t you going to congratulate
us?”

“
Sure. 
Congratulations.  I uh… I’m not sure what else to
say.”

“
I told him that I spilled
the beans about our engagement, Crevan, and Johnny told me that you
told him what I said.”

“
Sorry,” he
murmured. 

“
No need to
apologize.  What did you find on the computer,
Helen?”

I shook off the strange announcement and the
reactions we’d received so far, but not before a moment of odd
realization.  Nobody seemed to be as happy about our news as
we were.  Of course there was no time to delve into that at
the moment.  “The board that Devlin was so baffled by looked
like gibberish.  I think it’s meaningless,” I said, ignoring
the moment of protest on Crevan’s lip before I soldiered on toward
the important information.  “I just opened one of the other
links from the file in question and found a dozen or so additional
links.  The first is selling fantasies from a hot Asian girl
who promises to fulfill them.”

“
You think she’s working
against her will?” Johnny pulled out a chair and sat beside me at
the conference table.

“
It’s a distinct
possibility, given what we know about Eugene Sherman, wouldn’t you
agree?”

“
So let’s figure out how
to trace this woman to an address and find her.”

“
Mmm, that won’t be so
easy, Johnny.  Darkwater Exchange will want a warrant, and
since the ad doesn’t mention a thing about services for a fee,
we’re not going to get a warrant based on this alone.  They
would have access to the IP address of the poster in this case, but
we won’t see that information unless we have legal cause to force
them to reveal it,” Crevan said.

“
Well that just
sucks.  I guess I could call Zack and get his
opinion.”

“
Don’t waste your time,
Johnny.  Crevan’s right.  We’d probably get results
faster by responding to the post and setting up a date.”

“
You’re joking,
right?”

I turned toward Crevan’s stunned
question.  “No, I’m not joking.  Don’t worry. 
Nobody will make you go meet this girl.”

Johnny snickered.  “I’ll
volunteer.”

“
No, you won’t,” I said
with the authority that only a wife has.  “Devlin will do it,
and I’ll go with him.  Just as soon as Chris settles him down,
he and I will review the other posts and decide the best way to
approach.  We’ll set up the appointment and go meet her. 
Alone.”

“
No, you
won’t.”

“
Johnny, I’m not arguing
with you about this.  Think of it as your apology and role in
doing damage control for doing what I explicitly asked you not to
do.  You’re going to communicate to Devlin very clearly that
even though we are married, my friendship with him is
unchanged.  Is that clear?”

“
I don’t agree with
–”

“
Shouldn’t you be off
talking to Sarah Holmes?”

Johnny swallowed hard.  “Are you really
mad at me?”

“
Yes.”

“
Helen.”

Crevan inched away from the table.

“
We’ll discuss it
later.  Please go talk to Sarah Holmes.”

“
I think we should discuss
this now.”

“
The case first,” I
said.  “You can’t make me talk about what you did beyond
saying that I’m very disappointed that you lied to me,
Johnny.  You promised that you’d be sensitive and took great
glee in hurting my friend.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
Go talk to
Holmes.”

“
Unbelievable,” Johnny
huffed.  He slid his chair away from the table and stalked out
of the room.

“
Helen, are you sure you
want to leave things like that with him?  Today of all
days.”

“
Do me a favor. 
Would you go find Devlin and tell him I need his help with this
message to the alleged prostitute?”

Crevan threw up his hands.  “I don’t
get it.  You love him.  You married him.”

“
That’s correct.  It
doesn’t mean that I’m fine with him hurting other people I happen
to love.”

“
Helen, don’t ever say
that to Johnny.”

“
We have a case.  I’d
like to focus on that.”

Crevan muttered something unintelligible,
then, “Fine.  We’ll focus on the case.  God forbid you
open up and speak your mind.”

“
I already did
that.”

“
No,” Crevan said. 
“You didn’t say anything, Helen.  Not really.  You remind
me of my father when you use barbed words to shut everyone up so
yours is the only opinion left standing.  I can’t think of any
truth that would hurt more than that does.”

“
It’s not the same.”
 I stared hard at the computer screen, ignored the eyes fixed
on me.  “It is
not
the same, Crevan.  You trust him
implicitly.  You shouldn’t.”

“
What the hell does that
mean?  Goddammit, Helen, look at me.”

He waited.

I resisted.

“
Helen.”

I glanced to my right.  “Johnny doesn’t
tell you everything.”

“
Well he tells me a hell
of a lot more than you do.”

“
Fine.  Everybody
says more than I do.  Will you please go get
Devlin?”

“
Answer one question
first.”

“
What?”  I met his
demand with a defiant glare.

“
Do you love Devlin the
same way you love Johnny?  Is it more like the way you love
me?  If you’re not sure, maybe you should figure it out, or
should’ve figured it out before you married my best
friend.”

Tears sprang to my eyes.

“
Will you please talk to
me?”

“
I love
Johnny.”

“
I believe you,” Crevan
said.  “I loved Belle too.  At least I thought that’s
what I felt.”

“
It’s not like
that.”

“
You love Devlin too,
don’t you?”

I nodded.

“
Different than the way
you love me, or even your old friend David Levine.  Am I
right?”

My lips rolled inward. 

“
Is it different than how
you feel about Johnny?”

“
Of course it is,” I
rasped.  “I’ve never felt that way about anyone in my life,
Crevan.”

“
Then don’t let this come
between you.  It’s your wedding day, Helen.  Let me work
on this message with Devlin.  Go find Johnny.  Get this
thing straight between you.”

“
We’ll be all right. 
It’s not like he doesn’t know.  He blurted out the news to
Devlin after I asked him to let me break it to him in a much kinder
way.”

“
You’re right,” Crevan
said.  “He does know, Helen.  Maybe he knows something
you can’t even see.”

“
Like what?”

“
That you’re more
concerned about how Devlin feels than how Johnny does.  Maybe
that’s what you should think about.  I’ll be back with him in
a few minutes.  Don’t do anything stupid while I’m
gone.”

Something stupid would’ve been preferable to
the path we were all on.  Of course, there was no way of
knowing that now.  I twisted the very old gold band on my left
ring finger.  It was once worn by Johnny’s mother.  His
parents were the reason he’d never married.  Johnny once told
me that he hadn’t found anyone he felt that deep connection with,
the one his father told him to find before marrying anyone.

And then he met me.

The chair beside me rolled away from the
table and Devlin slumped into it.

“
Are you all right?” 
I stared at my hands.

“
I’m confused,
Helen.  I know we talked about how you feel about him, but you
guys looked like you might shed blood just a couple of days
ago.  Now you’re married?  How do you go from that
extreme to another so fast?”

“
I told you.  It was
a misunderstanding, Devlin.”

“
If you say
so.”

“
I want you to help me set
up a date with one of these women from the Darkwater Exchange links
on Sherman’s laptop computer.  I thought we could use her line
of work to spring a little surprise arrest on her.”

“
All right,” Dev
said.  “How about this?”

He pulled the laptop in front of him,
created a user account and quickly typed a message into the
board.  A box popped up immediately

This user is no longer accepting
replies.

“
Shit,” I muttered. 
“Try one of the other links.”

We worked our way through the entire folder
without any success.

“
Maybe they’re too
old.  The messages,” Dev said.

“
Or maybe word has spread
that the pimp is in custody and they need to lay low until she’s
wiggled her way out of her current jam.”

“
That first one,” Devlin
glanced at me quickly.  “Do you remember her name?”

“
Fantasia.”

He typed in a search and found a newer
thread with messages posted by someone using that name. 

“
What’re you thinking?” I
asked.

“
The dates on all those
messages, they were the day before we arrested Melissa
Sherman.  Or whatever the hell her name really is.  That
thing you said about the pimp, it got me thinking that maybe the
girls aren’t the ones who create these threads.”

“
So the fact that there
are new ones might mean that somebody is still out there calling
the shots,” I followed his train of thought quickly.  “It
lends credibility to the size of the operation.”

“
Alleged operation,”
Devlin was typing quickly.  “We won’t have confirmation of
that until we get one of these women to talk.”

“
What’s that phone number
you put in the message?”

“
A disposable cell I
picked up a few months ago.”

“
Do I want to know why
you’ve got one?” I asked.

Devlin grinned unabashedly.  “Didn’t I
tell you I never put all my eggs in one basket?  Here’s
proof.  Now all we have to do is wait for our girl to respond
to the message.”

Before I could comment, Chris rushed into
the conference room.  “Helen, I need you right away.”

“
Is it Holmes?” I shot out
of my chair and rushed across the room.

“
Much worse.  Johnny
hasn’t even started questioning her yet.  Joe Collangelo’s on
the phone.  We’ve got a much more pressing problem at the
moment.”

Chapter 30

Johnny stood with his arms braced at the
corners of his desk bent over, staring at the telephone.  The
voice of someone I had not met floated through the speaker. 
Unfortunately, I had no idea what our current governor said
before.  All I heard was the tail end of a blistering
conversation.

“
What in the hell were you
thinking, Johnny?  Yes, we’ve had some phenomenal successes
but something like this undoes all of it.  When I put you in
charge of OSI, it was because I trusted you to use sound
judgment.  Not this.  Never
anything
like this.  I’ve got
Terrell Sanderfield raising holy hell with the press, and here I
sit.  Clueless to the whole damn thing!”