“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.”
“You go in, work your way down. I’ll enter through the front.” She caught his scowl, shook her head. “I’ll go in like I’m following up on Penelope, making sure she’s all right after the trauma of discovering Giorgio’s crimes.”
“It’s still a risk.”
Ashwini smiled. So did Janvier. Then they split.
She walked down the sidewalk and up the steps to the front door of the house, while Janvier went left and over the fence of the house on the corner. By the time she rang the front doorbell, she figured he had to be climbing the side of the house.
When no one answered on the first ring, she leaned on it, acting irritated for the benefit of the surveillance camera trained on the doorstep. Meanwhile her stomach churned, her ability picking up something so horrible that she had to shove it aside or she wouldn’t be able to function. Glancing at her watch at the continued lack of an answer from within, she took out her cell phone and rang Penelope. She heard it ring inside the house before it was silenced. The door swung open five seconds later.
No gold choker or silk top this time, but the thigh-length robe of deep blue was richly embroidered.
“Oh, hi!” said the brunette, her eyes glittering and her cheeks flushed. “Sorry about the wait.” A small laugh. “I was shaving my legs.”
Ashwini didn’t glance down, simply smiled as if she’d swallowed the excuse. “I wanted to check up on you,” she said, wondering what lay in the darkness of the hallway behind the woman who played aide to a sadistic psychopath. “Brooke told us you might be here when we couldn’t find you at the hotel with the others.”
Penelope’s mouth thinned at the sound of Brooke’s name, but she recovered quickly. “Oh, I hope I’m not in trouble—I wanted to be in my own home.” She opened the door a little wider. “You can tell everyone I’m fine. And Brooke?” Bright, hard eyes. “She’ll be okay?”