Hunted (8 page)

Classical music.

Heat warmed the interior of the Saab. Dusk had layered a sweater over her turtleneck and even had on a camel-colored peacoat that they’d given her. She was still cold. Cold to her bones. Mr. Reyer—no, Mr. Ashbourne, her
husband
for any who inquired as the guards had—had also supplied her with a simple gold band to complete the illusion of husband and wife. She twirled the band on her finger. Ashbourne. She had to remember that. Not Reyer. Ashbourne.

“You should try and get some sleep,” he said, his voice low.

Had it only been over two hours ago since they’d left Prague? Thank God the border crossing at Děčín had gone smoothly. The scenery along E55 didn’t change in a blur of shadows, trees and snow. Ashbourne had hardly spoken a word to her since she’d come downstairs, other than “Let’s go.”

She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. They’d made it over the border. That was one more step away. Fears that Mikhail would be waiting at the border crossing, or have someone there looking for her, had twisted her stomach with nausea. She hadn’t voiced those fears, but they had been there all the same. Other than a couple of tour buses, several trucks and the handful of college kids in front of them, the border had been desolate.

She glanced at Ashbourne. Who was this man who could so easily kill and change his appearance? Dressed in dark chinos and black sweater. The man had apparently been wearing a disguise when she met him, or maybe he was wearing one now. How could she know what was real? He was the same, yet different. For a moment, she studied him, saw more than the fact he was only a male. His dark hair, a bit long, brushed the top of his collar. His eyebrows were more defined and arched than the blond ones she’d seen on him when she’d walked into the club’s office. The eyes . . . Too bad the man hadn’t worn contacts. His eyes were the same, straight jet black. His cheekbones bladed. He had a long face, but there was nothing soft or apostolic about it. Well defined and—unforgiving.

Beethoven played on the speakers and fit her mood. Morose and edgy. Her hands trembled and she fisted them on her thighs.

Berlin. Would they make it? Would someone be there waiting? Looking?

The only sound in the car was the tires whirring over the asphalt mixing with “Moonlight Sonata.”

“Been to Berlin?” he asked, his voice as gentle as the wind, yet there was power in the simple tone. She couldn’t readily define it, but she heard it, sensed it.

She just wanted to listen to the music. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve listened to Beethoven?” she asked, not looking at him.

He didn’t answer her.

“So long, I’d forgotten how wonderful, how complex, how moving the sounds of a symphony can be. For months all I’ve heard is whatever band is playing at the . . . club.” Or crying. Or screaming. Or . . .

A car passed them.

“What else have you missed?” The question was asked in the tone one might ask for the time.

“Everything.”

“Such as?”

“Peace. Safety. Privacy. Me.”

A low chuckle danced across the space from him. His laughter whispered over her like warm fog. “I was thinking something a bit more specific.”

What had she missed?

“I don’t know,” she said, shifting in her seat. “I’ve tried not to think about it.”

“Why Dusk?” he asked. He downshifted as a car cut in front of them, his legs moving on the pedals.

The question caught her off guard. She said, watching him, “Mikhail gave me that name.” She swallowed and looked away.

“Does he know your real name?” She felt more than saw him look at her.

She thought about answering him, but remained silent.

“Why did Mikhail give you that name?”

“He didn’t know my real one.” She twisted her fingers together. “He never knew.” And now he never would.

“Did he want to?”

She took a deep breath, remembering the first days, the long endless days when she’d still hoped someone would come to rescue her. The leather of her seat sighed as she shifted yet again. “Oh, yes. He tried very, very hard to get me to tell him my name.”

A moment passed. “But you never gave it to him.”

“No.”

She sat up again and looked at the man who drove the car as easily as he seemed to do everything else.

“I know your name.” He looked away from the road and locked his eyes with her. “Morgan Gaelord.”

Chapter 6

Morgan Gaelord.

She sat frozen for a moment. Had she heard him right? No, surely not. He couldn’t know who she was. No one knew who she really was. She’d been so careful.

She sat quietly, fisting her hands, unclenching, fisting them again. Autopilot.
Just breathe
. She just had to breathe. It was what she always did. Just breathe . . .

The landscape blurred.

“H-how?” she finally asked softly, then cleared her throat. “How?”

He glanced at her for just a moment before turning his attention back to the road. She licked her lips and waited. He couldn’t know. He couldn’t.

“When someone is reported missing, we run checks.”

Oh, God.

“You, unless I’m very, very wrong, are one Morgan Gaelord.”

She flinched. No. No. He couldn’t know. If he knew, chances were Mikhail also knew, or could discover.

Couldn’t he?

She had to think, but her mind couldn’t wrap around it all, there was simply too much. Could she lie? What good would that do? They’d only have to run her prints to know her identity for certain.

He said nothing else, just passed a truck then another. The road was busier than she’d have guessed this time of night.

Morgan. No one had called her Morgan in a very long time. Simon had been the last, but that had been six months ago, before her descent into hell. Morgan. Not Dusk. She felt fractured, broken, as if a mirror had been shattered and she was left looking at various reflections.

“No one’s called me that in a long time,” she admitted, picking at the hem of her coat.

The strains of violins and cellos faded as the man turned the volume down.

“That is your name. Mikhail never called you that?”

She took a deep breath. “I’d really rather not talk about this if you don’t mind.”

For a moment he didn’t say anything, then he repeated, “Did Mikhail ever refer to you as Morgan?”

She glared at the man driving her to Germany, the man she was forced to trust lest she end up broken and beaten, buried in an unmarked grave. “Mikhail only knew me as Dusk.” But now? “How did you find who I was? Can he?”

Ashbourne shrugged. “Depends on how hard he wants to look. But if he doesn’t already know your name, chances are he won’t find out your identity now.”

What did that mean? As if hearing her unspoken question, he continued in that low soothing voice. “When crimes cross international boundaries, Interpol will issue certain notices, color-coded. Yellow notices are for the missing.” He paused, as if trying to figure out how much to tell her. “The people I work for run each yellow notice that is posted, and in some cases we pull them if we find the person fits certain criteria.”

She frowned. “Is that legal?”

He arched one dark brow and gave her another quick assessing glance. “It’s not normal, but once the woman’s location is verified, all records are destroyed before we go in and extract a target.”

Extract a target? She shook her head.

“So you’re saying there is no actual record—notice—of Morgan Gaelord reported missing?”

He nodded. “That’s right. When we learned a woman fitting your description was seen in the presence of Jezek, we removed the notice.”

She took a deep breath. Listened to the almost muted music, to the whirr of tires on asphalt. If he knew of the notice, what were the chances Mikhail knew?

“Now then, Miss Morgan, I have a few questions. To start with, how hard do you think Jezek will search for you?”

The gun to her head
. . .
A cold deserted graveyard. The loose dirt and gravel biting into her knees, her legs as she stared into the open grave.

She swallowed.

He glanced at her again. “Were you one of Mikhail’s girls?”

She cocked a brow at him. “Weren’t we all?”

“He had . . . ” He tilted his head. “Special girls.”

She sighed, wishing they’d remained silent. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

For a moment, he gave in to her, then said, “You might not want to speak of it, but everything you could tell us might help another girl.”

She just looked at him, the way the dash lights gave a soft glow to his harsh features, the bladed nose and hard jaw as unmoving as his eyes. Cars met them, the lights slashing across his face, a flip of a switch. Light and dark, savior and mercenary.

The man was one big contrast. He’d been fine in the run-down flat, but he’d had the limo and now they were driving the Saab. He looked like the type that would have a Porsche stashed away somewhere. Mysterious came to mind. He could blend into any surrounding. He fit the image of the diamond dealer, the hip wealthy renter of the flat, the concerned and worried husband . . .

Nothing with him added up.

He wanted to help another girl? Why not help them all. If Interpol was helping, why didn’t someone
do
something?

“Why can’t you just close them down?” she asked him, wondering again how places, how whorehouses could still exist. Not the kind where women
wanted
to work, but the kind where they were
forced. Imprisoned.
But sex had sold since the dawn of time.

Both brows winged up. Those arched brows and his features made her think of some vampire. Not that he was pale or had fangs. It was the deep widow’s peak, the arched brows, the aristocrat.

He looked at her again and she thought him a man of the shadows. “Close them down? Bloody close them down?” His words were quiet, considering. “Gor. Do you have any idea what you were even into?”

She crossed her arms. She was the one forced to do the johns however they wanted several times a day. “Prostitution.”

“And do you know who runs prostitution rings?”

She stopped, having never asked herself that question. She’d always seen Mikhail as the bad guy. Her anger and hatred had gone no further than him, focused solely on the one evil face she knew. Unless she counted Simon, or herself. But Mikhail was the one all her emotions had been centered on. There had been nothing beyond him.

He glanced at her again and said, as if reading her mind, “Jezek is only a midlevel boss. He answers to someone.”

She sat there, looking at him. “Mafia?”

“Organized crime. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Eastern European states have become a hotspot for drug trafficking, prostitution, slave trade, skin trade, guns, black markets, whatever term or bloody vice you’d like to use.” He slowed behind traffic, then speeded up when the truck in front of them exited. “You don’t just close them down. It’s a global web. Asia, Europe, the U.S.”

“Everywhere?” she asked, sitting back in the seat, chills racing through her. She’d never get away. They’d never let her leave. Never let her escape.

Something in her voice must have alerted him. He looked at her and said, his voice as precise and clipped as she’d heard it, “They won’t get you. You’ll have to lay low, follow advice and instructions. We’ve been doing this for a while. Several countries have anti-skin-trafficking groups. We’ve saved several girls.”

She watched as his fingers curled around the stick shift. “Granted, not as many as we’d like, but one is better than none.”

There was something in his words, something she caught. Anger? Resentment? Something. She was too tired to dwell on it. Sitting back, she looked at the blacktop in front of them, the sleek taillights of some sports car glinting red in the night.

“I just wish it would all go away. I’d wake up tomorrow at home and it would all have been a dream.”

His deep in-drawn breath made her wonder if he was getting frustrated with her, if he was getting angry. She didn’t know this man, had only seen what he was capable of. An apology sat on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t utter it.

“It won’t go away. I’m sorry. It does help to talk of it. I know you don’t believe that, but it is the truth.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You’ll have to sooner or later. Might as well be now.”

She glared at him, then quickly lowered her eyes.

“You can answer my questions to my satisfaction, or answer questions with several others present. It’s up to you, but questions will be answered.” The ring of finality was not lost on her. Had she actually thought she could deter him?

“Will you leave me alone if I talk to you?”

He shrugged.

“Fine. What are your questions? I’ll answer the ones I can.”

“Were you one of Jezek’s girls?” His fingers drummed the smooth steering wheel.

She closed her eyes, trying to calm herself. Distance herself. She used to be good at it. But sometimes distance only brought you right back to where you began. “Jezek has lots of girls. He likes harems. He likes to come home and see all the girls waiting for him, with as little clothing as possible. Just for him. They’re like . . . like things. Pretty things just for him.” She remembered the smell of his house. “He uses incense. Lots of it, so much it’s sickening. He has it specially made or something. A musky, fruit scent.”

“In Italy. A perfumer there creates it just for him.”

It didn’t surprise her that he knew. Not really.

“The first days were the worst. The very worst. But he liked me, tried to train me. One of the other girls there tried to tell me what he liked, what he didn’t . . . ” She waved her hand, as if that would push the memories away. “I hated him. Hated her. Hated everything.”

“He kept you in the brothel?”

She shook her head. “No, not at first. He said I was too pretty. I deserved better.” Her memory sucked her back to the finely furnished room, the silks, expensive works of art. Mikhail dressed in his favorite linen Armani, the way he’d caressed her cheek. She took a deep breath. “He wanted me to be his special lady. We were at some mansion outside of Prague. Some old estate.”