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“No one is going to get hurt.”
“Something’s wrong. Something’s… off. I don’t know. I just have a really bad feeling.”
“Good. Don’t take any risks. Trust your gut.”
“How can it be good that my gut tells me something bad is going to happen?”
“Fight or flight,” he said. “Your body’s preparing you to face something heavy.”
“Not me. I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about all of you.”
“What do you want to hear from Ludlow?” he asked.
“What really happened. Someone has to know how those women… He has to have answers.”
“Answers you’ll print? Silvio will kill both of you if those accusations end up in your paper.”
“Sersha warned me about that. She writes in hypotheticals.”
“Hypotheticals are good. They don’t bring the cops to anyone’s door. Is that what you want? Just to put the maybes out there.”
No, that wasn’t what she wanted. “This has changed, it’s become… bigger. When I started investigating, I thought we had one psychopath targeting these women. But it’s not a crazy serial killer…”
“It’s a planned and executed strategy.” Involving organized crime. “You could call the feds but…”
“That just puts us all in danger. We have no concrete evidence of anything.”
“The cops might’ve got it from the Carlyle.”
“The cops found what Silvio wanted them to find.”
Gathering her into his arms, he held her against him. “Protecting the people you care about isn’t a failure. Justice doesn’t have to be cops and jail terms. Stopping the operation is a win.”
“Has it stopped?”
“I’ll ask Silvio. Make a deal. You write your story without the Manzani name showing up and he quits kidnapping women for his videos.”
“And releases whoever he has now. If Yvonne is out there—”
“You don’t know this woman,” he said, easing her back to meet her eye. “Why does she mean so much to you?”
“Because if she’s dead, it’s because I caused trouble.”
“They’d have killed her anyway, Genny.” He stroked her cheek. “The moment they took her, she was dead.”
“Doesn’t feel that way.” Tears blurred her eyes. “It feels like I caused this mess.”
“You didn’t.” He bowed to kiss her. “You’ve saved so many women. Silvio would’ve just kept on going. Think about the future women, not the past.”
“That’s all I can think about.”
A tear fell and he caught it on a kiss.
“You are good, Imogen Stratford. The best of people. One of the things I love about you.”
She blinked, clearing her vision. “You love about me?”
He kissed her again. “I love about you.”
