Brooke nodded. “The women d-don’t know ’bout him.” A pained inhale. “Don’t hurt them.”
“Don’t worry. They won’t be punished for his crimes. And Brooke—thank you. What you’ve just told me changes everything.”
Brooke’s smile was a shadow, her eyes closing.
Leaving the sleeping woman after freeing her hand, Ashwini walked out to where Janvier stood waiting in the hospital hallway . . . and staggered, would’ve gone to her knees if Janvier hadn’t caught her.
“A minute,” she said, holding on to him, letting his heat warm up the ice in her veins.
“As long as you need.” Arms steel and voice rough, he pressed his lips to her temple.
She wished she could stay in his embrace forever, but she’d made a promise to Felicity, to Brooke, to all of the victims.
Pulling away after that single precious minute, her nausea and pounding head at a more manageable level, she kissed him once before returning to the horror. “Penelope,” she said, already dialing the data team. “She has access to a property.” Rattling off everything she knew to the tech who answered, she put a rush on the information. “Find the aunt and you’ll find the house.”
She’d barely hung up when Carys’s name appeared on her phone. “Two girls are missing,” the woman told Ashwini. “They had a call-out last night, told another girl they were going to be rich, maybe even bag a sugar daddy who’d get them into a Quarter house.”
A knot formed in Ashwini’s gut at the eerie similarity to the line Felicity had been fed. “It’s only overnight,” she said, trying not to leap to a deadly conclusion. “That unusual?”
“Yeah, if Bridget and Marta were overnighting, they would’ve told us. It’s how we look out for one another.”
“Send me their photos. Is there anything else you can think of that might help us find them?”
A pause. “You actually going to help? You’re taking me seriously?”
Nonplussed, Ashwini said, “Why wouldn’t I? You don’t seem like the kind of woman who’d lie.”
“I’m not, but cops don’t take hookers missing overnight seriously.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“Yeah, you’re a hunter.” It sounded like a compliment. “Ransom said you were solid.” A crackling rustle in the background. “Okay, I talked to the girls, as well as a few of the guys who work that area, and the girls were picked up in a black SUV, tinted windows. But it wasn’t a guy inside. It was a woman. I wrote down the description—brunette in her late twenties, good condition. One of the girls noticed she had a nice mani—”
“Gold with diamantés?”
“Yeah, you know the bitch?”
“Yes, I know the bitch.” Hanging up after making sure Carys didn’t have any other useful information, she turned to Janvier and told him Carys’s news. “Penelope knew what Giorgio was the entire time. I fell for her sweet ‘we’re all loyal to one another’ act.” So, she thought, had the brave woman in the hospital bed; Brooke’s only crime was that she’d loved a monster.
Even Dmitri had put only a light watch on the cattle, more to make them feel safe in the hotel where they were currently staying than to lock them in. It would’ve been simple for Penelope to slip out. “I bet you she’s been luring women for him, playing chauffeur. That’s why no one ever saw Giorgio with Felicity.”
Janvier’s eyes blazed.
Not needing him to speak to understand the cold rage in his bones, Ashwini added the information about the black SUV to what she’d already given the data team. It wasn’t much, but if Giorgio or one of the women had a black SUV registered in his or her name, it might give them another way to track the bastard.
The property information came through three minutes later. Turned out the aunt had two properties, both tied up in a complicated legal framework that made actual beneficial ownership unclear. “We’ll take the one on the Lower East Side,” she told the tech, she and Janvier having reached his bike. “It’s closer to the hospital.”
“Naasir says he can handle the one on the Upper West Side,” came the response. “Illium’s going with him.”
“Tell them to call if they find anything.” Hanging up, she shared the address with Janvier, and the two of them roared out.
Her phone had another message on it when she checked it after they parked a block down from the three-level freestanding house that had belonged to Penelope’s aunt. “The vehicle’s registered to Marie May,” she told Janvier as they got off the bike. “Guild’s put out an alert.” It would go out to cops, Tower personnel, any hunters in the vicinity.
Janvier, having hung their helmets on either side of the handlebars, stared down the street. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
Following his gaze, Ashwini saw it. “Son of a bitch.” A black SUV with tinted windows was parked directly across from the house.
No way in hell was that a coincidence.
“We can’t wait,” she said. “He’s already had those two women for hours.”
“Front or back?” Janvier asked, sending in a request for urgent backup.
She looked at the building. “You know that climbing thing you do? Can you get up to that third-floor window, figure out a way to get inside?”
Janvier followed her gaze to the closed but not particularly secure-looking window. “Child’s play.”