Power Play Read online

  Neither of us spoke as we landed and deplaned. I made my way to baggage claim, praying I’d get my suitcase quickly; then I’d grab a cab and get out of there. I knew I was being a coward, but it was all I could do right now. I’d face the music tomorrow.

  Unfortunately, the universe was having a big laugh at my expense because my suitcase was one of the last off. Parker had retrieved his, but instead of leaving as I’d hoped he would, he stuck around, checking messages on his phone while I waited for my bag. When it finally hit the belt, I was there, pulling it off and yanking up the handle.

  “I have a car waiting. I’ll drop you at home.”

  Dismayed, I stared at Parker, but he was pocketing his phone and not looking at me.

  “It’s fine. I’ll take a cab,” I said. Enduring the flight had been bad enough. Adding a car ride seemed unnecessarily cruel.

  This time he did look at me. “It wasn’t a suggestion,” he said, and there was enough steel in his voice that I knew I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  I followed him out of the airport and to the waiting sedan, the driver putting our suitcases in the trunk while Parker waited for me to slide in the back ahead of him. My sense of impending doom had increased with each step I’d taken until now it felt like it would choke me. Tears I couldn’t hold back clung to my lashes behind the sunglasses as I tried to come to grips with the fact that I was about to be fired, and that I had no one to blame but myself.

  Unable to look at Parker, I stared out the window while the driver got behind the wheel. Parker leaned forward and gave him my address, then settled back in the seat as the car rolled smoothly out.

  I felt too small and fragile sitting next to him, my emotions at a breaking point. His knees were spread wide, in contrast to mine, pressed tightly together as every muscle in my body coiled in tension, waiting.

  “Sage, we need to talk,” he said.

  I knew I couldn’t tell him to stop, not this time, so I remained silent. My hands were clenched in my lap and I stared down at them.

  “Last night was…unfortunate,” he continued, “and it’s left us in a bit of an awkward situation.”

  Parker always did have a knack for understatement.

  “You and I have always worked well together,” he said, “and I appreciate the dedication and loyalty you put into your job.”

  Here it comes, I thought, bracing myself. A tear splashed from my cheek onto my hand. I stared blindly at it. What was I going to do? How was I going to explain to my parents that I’d gotten fired? Though knowing them, they’d be glad I was through being “just a secretary.”

  “Sage, I—” He stopped and I held my breath. Suddenly, he leaned closer and before I could stop him, he’d snatched away my sunglasses. I made a desperate grab for them.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “Give me those!” But he held them out of my reach.

  Parker was studying my face, frowning. “Why are you crying?”

  I stared at him as though he were a moron. “Because you’re firing me, obviously,” I said.

  “Why would I fire you?”

  Now I was sure he’d lost his mind. “You’re kidding, right?” More tears slid down my face.

  His eyes softened and he reached into his front pocket for the square of silk tucked there. I sat in bemused astonishment as he wiped my cheeks with what I knew was a hundred-dollar pocket square.

  “I’m not firing you,” he said gently, smoothing away the tear tracks. “So don’t cry, okay?”

  “What?” Surely I hadn’t heard him correctly.

  “Don’t cry,” he repeated.

  “No, not that. The other,” I said.

  “I’m not firing you.”

  I blinked, confused. “You’re not?”

  “I’m not.” He smiled a little, pressing the pocket square into my hand. “I need you too much to fire you for having a bit much to drink, and training someone new would be a total pain in the ass.”

  I laughed through my tears at this, sniffing and swallowing down the lump in my throat. Pressing the silk to my eyes, I dried them as best I could. The fabric smelled faintly of Parker’s cologne.

  “Let’s just pretend last night never happened,” he said. “We won’t mention it again, okay?”

  I nodded. That sounded good to me. “I’d appreciate that,” I said. I knew I wanted to forget the fool I’d made of myself.

  The rest of the ride to my apartment passed in a silence that was only slightly less awkward. I figured it would settle back to normal once we were in the office and had assumed the roles we were accustomed to. At least, I hoped it would.

  Parker insisted on helping me with my bag, walking me all the way to my door. “You don’t feel well and it only takes a moment,” he said.

  I unlocked my apartment door and would have stepped inside, but Parker’s hand on my arm stopped me.

  “Let me go first, okay?” he asked, not waiting for my reply before moving in front of me.

  I noticed both his hands were free as he scanned the living room, then disappeared down the hallway to my bedroom. Confused as to what the heck he was doing, I followed him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, watching as he opened my closet and glanced inside.

  “Just checking,” he replied.

  “Checking for what?”

  His gaze met mine. “Intruders. Viktor, remember? I don’t trust him.”

  Oh yeah. What that guy had said last night. In my embarrassment over what I’d done with Parker, it had slipped my mind.

  After Parker had fully checked out the apartment to his satisfaction, we stood in the foyer. I wrapped my arms around myself, unsure what to say or do, if anything.

  “Take the afternoon off,” Parker said, “and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Okay.”

  He opened the door and was about to step through when I blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

  Parker paused.

  “I mean, it was unprofessional of me and a stupid thing to do,” I said. “And I just wanted to say that I was sorry.” I still held the pocket square he’d given me, clenched in my hand, as I waited for him to say something.

  “There’s no need to apologize,” he said. “If anyone owes an apology, it’s from me to you. You were worried about the girl, and I upset you, which I didn’t intend.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded.

  “Just forget it, all right?” he asked with a small smile. “I already have. See you in the morning.” Then he was out the door and gone.

  Chapter Ten

  I slept the afternoon away, and when I woke around dinnertime, I felt much better. The headache was gone, thank God, and I was starving. I decided some fresh air and exercise would help blow the rest of the cobwebs from my brain, so I changed into shorts and a shirt, grabbed my purse, slung the strap across my chest, and headed outside.

  There was a favorite Chinese place of mine three blocks away, so that’s where I went. A half hour and a stomach full of beef and broccoli later, I felt human again. As I was digging in my purse to pay, I saw the envelope Tania had given me.

  Hmm.

  I knew Chicago pretty well, but had to pull out my laminated pocket map to find the address she’d written on the back of the envelope. It wasn’t in that great a part of town, but it was still light outside. I figured I’d be able to catch a bus there, deliver Tania’s message, and get home before it was full dark.

  The bus driver looked at me a bit strangely when, forty minutes later, I was passing by him to exit the vehicle.

  “Are you lost?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No. I’m visiting a friend.”

  He shrugged, but the skeptical look on his face didn’t make me feel any better. Too late to turn back now.

  The streets were darker than I thought they’d be at this hour, but a lot of the streetlamps were broken, so that was probably why. The tall brick buildings on either side of the street were showing their age and then
some. I watched the taillights of the bus as it lumbered away from me, spewing gray exhaust, wondering if I’d just made a bad decision. Maybe I should catch a cab home and visit Tania’s sister tomorrow?

  But there were no cabs in sight, and the cars that did pass had me taking a few steps farther back onto the sidewalk. Eyes stared out at me from behind tinted windows or no windows at all. I swallowed, my palms suddenly sweaty.

  I’d memorized the path to the address from my map, so I headed that direction. It was only a couple of blocks from where the bus had dropped me off. I skirted quickly by dark alleyways that gaped like empty maws as I passed, threatening to gobble me up. I could hear dogs barking a street or two over and I prayed they wouldn’t come in my direction. Being chased by rabid dogs wasn’t high on my To Do list. Of course, walking through parts of Chicago I’d only seen on the news wasn’t either, yet here I was.

  After what seemed an interminable walk, passing a few people who I avoided making eye contact with, I was finally in front of the right building. The paper said apartment 3C, so I went inside and started up the dilapidated stairs. An incandescent light flickered tiredly over the stairwell, illuminating the gloomy interior, and I could hear through the paper-thin walls—a television tuned to a game show, a baby crying, two people yelling at each other.

  For a girl who’d grown up in Lake Forest, this was definitely out of my comfort zone.

  Standing in front of 3C, I took a deep breath, raised my hand, and knocked. I heard nothing from inside. I tried again, knocking harder. This time, the door opened a scant inch and the sliver of a woman’s face peered through the crack.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Niki? Are you Niki?”

  The woman shook her head. “Niki doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what to do then. Tania hadn’t said anything about her sister moving. “Do you know where she moved to?”

  “Who are you?” she asked again.

  “My name is Sage. Niki’s sister Tania sent me to find her.”

  “How do you know Tania?”

  “I met her in New York,” I said. “Her…boyfriend…is doing a deal with mine. Do you know where Niki is?”

  “They took her, a few weeks ago,” she said. “Accused her of being a snitch to the police. They made an example of her.”

  A sense of foreboding crept over me. “What happened?” I was afraid I already knew the answer.

  “They killed her.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. “I-I’m so sorry,” I stammered, at a loss as to what to say. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “They wanted all of us to know so we did not start getting ideas about rebelling.”

  I swallowed, trying to wrap my head around all this. “Rebelling against what? I don’t understand.”

  “You need to go now,” she said, trying to shut the door, but I shoved my foot in the crack. “Please tell me what’s going on,” I said. “Maybe I can help you.”

  “So they kill me, too? No thank you.” She tried to force the door closed again.

  “Tania trusted me,” I persisted. “Is she in danger? Tell me that much at least. Please. I want to warn her.”

  That seemed to give her pause. I held my breath, waiting. The eye surveying me blinked once; then the door shut and I heard the rattle of a chain before it opened all the way.

  “Fine,” she said curtly, allowing me inside. She peered past my shoulder at the empty hallway as though to make sure we were alone, then closed and locked the door before turning to me, looking me over intently from head to foot.

  Her face was strained, the lines around her mouth making her seem older than she probably was, which couldn’t have been much past her early twenties. Her hair was long and dark like mine, our height about the same.

  She led me to a couch that had seen better days, the cushions tired and flat. One leg was missing so a telephone book was propped underneath it to hold it up. I gingerly sat, hoping it would hold my weight. She sat next to me.

  “I’m Hanna,” she said. “You want to know so badly, then I will tell you. There are several of us. Not just Tania and Niki. We were born in Donetsk, in the Ukraine. It is hard there, not many jobs, especially for women. We heard of a way to come to America where we could work as maids to pay for our passage. Many came, but it was a lie. They made us prostitutes, the cartel, here in Chicago. Told us they would kill us if we did not do as they said. So…we did.”

  It was hard to wrap my head around. The idea of being forced to become a prostitute or die seemed as foreign to me as the name of the city in which Hanna said they’d been born.

  “Couldn’t you leave?” I asked. “Run away somewhere else?”

  “To where? We had no money, no food, did not speak English. We did what we had to do to survive.” Her chin came up at this, defiant.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s hard for me to understand, but I want to help you.”

  Hanna shook her head. “There is nothing you can do. The men who control us, all of us, they are powerful, evil men.”

  “Why don’t you come with me?” I asked. “I can take you to a place with people who can help you. They won’t find you.”

  A panicked look came over her face and she shook her head. “I cannot. There is no place to hide. The police—they turn a blind eye. They are like police in Russia, get paid by the mob bosses to look the other way.”

  “Not all of them are like that,” I said, thinking of Ryker. But she just shook her head again.

  “I cannot.”

  She seemed resolute, so I just nodded. “Okay. But take my phone number, okay? In case you change your mind. Just call me and I’ll help you.” I jotted my number down on a scrap of paper from my purse and gave it to her.

  Hanna hesitated, gingerly taking the paper from me. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because,” I said. “I’d like to help you any way you’ll let me.”

  “All right.” She still looked skeptical, as though she had no intention of ever calling, but didn’t want to be outwardly rude, either.

  I stood to go and she did, too, walking me to the door.

  “Be careful,” she said as I left. “It is a dangerous neighborhood for a woman alone.”

  Yeah, tell me something I didn’t know.

  The envelope felt like it was burning a hole in my purse. I wondered what I should do with it. It was sealed, and though it had occurred to me to open it, I hadn’t.

  I quickly found that it was impossible to get a cab to stop, when I actually saw one. They passed me by like I was invisible. I had to actually call for a cab, but I was told they wouldn’t be there for fifteen minutes.

  Spotting a bar on the next corner, I told the cab company I’d be waiting there. Really didn’t want to just stand on the street corner to wait. Somebody might get the wrong idea. The bar’s lights glinted in the night, and I headed for it.

  The bar was called Johnny’s and I walked quickly, keeping my head down and a death grip on my purse. Now that the sun had set, more people were coming out of the shadows to loiter on the sidewalk. The streets seemed a hundred times more sinister after Hanna’s story and knowing Niki was dead, her murder a “message” to the women the cartel controlled.

  A car was idling in the street as a man leaned in the window to talk to the driver. I’d never seen an actual drug deal taking place before, but I was pretty sure that’s what I was viewing now.

  Johnny’s was in no better shape than the buildings that surrounded it and I wrinkled my nose in distaste as I approached the place, my steps slowing. It was on the corner with several cars parked in front and I could see more in the lot at the back. Neon signs proclaiming the various logos of popular beers glowed in the windows.

  I stood on the corner, trying to see inside but it was too dark, and wondering if my plan to wait there was really something I wanted to do. As I watched, two men went in and I caught the sound of people talking and music before the door drifted
shut.

  I made up my mind. There was no way I could go in there, even just to wait for my cab. I’d be an absolute fool to do so.

  I turned around, wanting to put some space between me and the seedy-looking bar, and abruptly stopped. A man stood right in front of me, flanked by two more guys.

  It was obvious the man in the middle was the leader, the other two his sidekicks. He was the biggest, sported a short goatee and mustache and had massive tattooed biceps. A thin gold chain looped around his neck, and I mentally compared him to 50 Cent. A black cap sat off-center on his head and I somewhat hysterically wanted to tell him that wasn’t how you wore it.

  He also looked like someone who could hurt me real bad, real quick.

  “Well, lookie what we have here,” he sneered. “Whattsa matter, sugar? You lost?”

  My stomach lodged in my throat as panic sent my heart rate skyrocketing. “N-no,” I stammered, backing away from them. “I-I was just leaving.”

  “Not so fast,” he said, following me. “We’re heading in to Johnny’s. I know you wanna come with us.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said, taking another step back. “But, uh, thanks for the invitation.” Fight or flight took over and I turned to run, only to realize I’d been surrounded.

  Four men now grouped around me and baseball cap guy, the one who’d kept me talking, grabbed hold of my elbow. I winced as he dragged me along with him toward the bar.

  “Let me go!” He ignored me. I dragged in a breath to scream, then saw the glint of a knife blade in the hand of the man who flanked my other side—sidekick #1.

  “Scream and it’ll be the last noise you make,” he said.

  I clamped my mouth shut.

  Oh, God, what was going to happen to me? Panic and adrenaline rushed through me in equal measure, my limbs trembling with the need for an outlet. Both men had an arm by now and they dragged me inside the building.

  Cigarette smoke immediately clogged my lungs and made my eyes water. The room was dark, even by bar standards, and baseball-cap guy and sidekick #1 herded me toward a dark hallway in the back.