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"Are you using her to get revenge against Grant? You have to tell me these things."
"Grant is a sonofabitch who’s had it in for me and my family for decades."
"Yeah, I know. He was all butthurt because your uncle got off years ago when he was Assistant DA. He's still gunning for you."
"Some people can't let the past go."
"So, are you using the stepdaughter to get back at Grant? Throw her in his face or something?"
"No," I said. "It's not like that. We go a long way back." Then, I tried to change the subject from Celia. "So did you find that information I asked you about?"
He sucked his teeth thoughtfully for a moment. "As a matter of fact, I heard that the Bureau's looking at Spencer Grant as part of an investigation into a sex ring operating in the DC area. Seems he developed a preference for young things when he first worked as Commonwealth's Attorney in Alexandria. There were rumors, but nothing stuck. A task force has a few leads and they're moving forward with the case."
"What?" I said and turned to him, a surge of adrenaline going through me. "He's a pedophile?"
"Apparently, he likes them pubescent and just illegal. There's some modelling agency that provides vulnerable young things from Eastern Europe, the old Soviet Union, who don't know what to expect when they get to the US. These creeps lavish these girls with booze and money and have their way with them. Get them gigs with the big agencies."
I frowned and wondered if he'd ever done anything to Celia. Then I shook my head mentally. Celia had been a virgin. He'd made her sign a chastity contract.
Maybe that was to protect him more than her…
"That fucking bastard," I said, anger coiling inside me. "He's been involved with trafficking young Russian girls?"
"Yeah," he replied. "He's just slimy enough to have slipped out of reach."
"What a fucking hypocrite. He's condemned my family all this time because of our ties to the Russian mob, and he's using them for his own perversions? He's all kinds of evil," I said, remembering how he'd hurt Celia and Graham when they were kids. "I'd like to take him down, too. Believe me. Seeing him in prison would be the cherry on top of the Sergei Romanov ice cream sundae."
"One mission at a time," Millar said. "We need you on the Romanovs. That's your world."
"Grant's stepdaughter is an old friend. He was a bastard to those two kids, beating them bo
th. What a psychopath."
"He's a real case, if what the task force thinks happened is true. Like I say, they're building a case against him."
I nodded. "What do you want from me?"
"I want you to lie low for a week or so until the stuff with Stepan settles down. Can you take a vacation or something? When you get back, we could make a show of picking you up, bring you down to the station, then have you released on bail."
"I could go to Quantico for a week, but it's really inconvenient." Then I thought I could kill two birds with one stone—get out of town and investigate what I could about Spencer and his time in Alexandria chasing after pretty little Eastern European girls who thought they were coming to the USA to become rich and famous…
"We either pick you up now or later, but it would be best to let things die down a bit before we take you in, get everything in place. It would be good to have you stay in lockup for a while. Make your bones with the Russians, so to speak."
"I'd rather not, but I survived Hell Week, so I think I can survive a week in lockup."
"I'll see what I can arrange."
Then, we parted, Millar driving off in one direction and me in the other.
As Millar suggested, I left Boston for a week, spending time in Alexandria. If I had to lay low, I wanted to achieve something during my off time, and that something was to track down intel on Spencer Grant and the possibility he was a fucking pedophile pervert who trafficked in Russian immigrant girls. The thought he might have harmed Celia in some way made my blood boil and I could think of nothing else.
While in Alexandria, I called on contacts I had in Virginia, tracing Spencer's past before he’d met Celia's mother and moved in with them. I tapped a private eye friend, asking him to do some snooping into Spencer's background for me. Bill O'Donnell had worked for DC police in their cyber-crimes unit and was now retired, but had a PI business on the side. An aging man with a big potbelly and a shaved head, he had an easy smile and laugh.
I liked him the first time I met him years earlier.
"What can you tell me about these kinds of scum?" I asked when we met at a bar in Alexandria.
"What can I tell you? Too much, most of it will make you puke your guts out. Often, pedophiles belong to ultra-secret networks that operate on the dark web. They're difficult to infiltrate, but this modelling gig is almost too easy. It makes everything above board, look legit. They appear to be just a group of men helping to fund a modelling agency looking for new talent. If you want to dig up dirt on a suspect, I'll have to have more to go on than just a name."
