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LaDerrick chuckled. “I didn’t figure. Especially since you’re ‘newly married.’”
I grinned wickedly at him. “Don’t worry. I’ll have fun correcting her after we have the house to ourselves.”
LaDerrick left, meeting my transport on the elevator.
LaDerrick nodded at Bryson as he passed, saying, “Have fun with that.”
Bryson grimaced. “Is she bad?”
“She’s just lovely, friend,” LaDerrick drawled.
Then the elevator doors were closing between them.
Bryson turned to me with a grimace. “Holiday pay, bruh.”
I snorted. “You get paid well enough as it is without getting holiday pay. And what holiday is it, anyway?”
He pulled out his phone and then said, “It’s National Chocolate Chip Day, and according to Google, it’s Genovia’s Independence Day.”
“Genovia?” I frowned. “Why does that sound so familiar?”
“Genovia is the place that teenager off of The Princess Diaries is a princess for,” he said.
I snorted. “Ahhh.”
He walked into my house and I called him toward the linen closet.
Like the others, he took a good look around, but didn’t say anything.
The door to my linen closet opened and closed behind us, and we found Crimson’s mother, Idabell Lancaster, leaning against the linen shelf looking pissed as hell.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
Idabell glared. “To see my daughter.”
“You haven’t been to see your daughter in well over fifteen years,” I said. “Try again.”
“I missed her. Realized that I’d messed up.” She continued to lie.
“You found out that we were investigating, and you wanted to know what we knew,” I said. “Who were you going to see? The costume designer? Stefan?”
Idabell’s eyes widened. “No.”
But her vehement denial was too quick. Too stilted.
That was exactly what she’d been there to do, trying to get ahold of Stefan.
“How often did you keep in touch with him?” I asked. “Are you still helping them?”
Idabell pinched her lips closed.
I went down to my haunches right in front of her before saying, “From what I’ve been able to find so far, you’ve helped traffic over ninety-seven children in the span of twenty-nine years. You are one of nineteen people I was able to uncover in the Singh Circus organization. If you want this to end with you alive and in prison, talk. If you want this to end with a bullet in your brain in my linen closet after I’ve tortured the information out of you—and I will, I have zero compunction forcing you to talk in whatever manner I need to—then feel free to remain silent.”
“Who are you?” she hissed, losing the shy act.
A shy woman she was not. I knew the kind of evil that lay beneath those eyes that looked so much like Crimson’s it hurt.
“I’m the man who’s going to clean this disgusting filth up, then build an empire on your rotting corpses,” I snarled.
She swallowed hard, her eyes a bit wild.
“I haven’t heard from Stefan in a while. I thought he’d turn up, but he hasn’t. So I wanted to see where he was, get the lay of the land, and make sure that he wasn’t talking when he shouldn’t be,” she said, finally understanding the danger she was in.
“Do you have any other contacts at the circus?” I asked.
The information Keene had looked like he’d ferreted them all out, along with my help, but we couldn’t be positive.
“No,” she said. “That’s why I’m here myself.”
“And what makes you think Stefan talked?” I asked curiously.
“Because he’s forced to check in with me every week, no matter what, or I’m supposed to come looking for him,” she said.
“Why?” I asked. “What does you having that information do? Who do you go to if you can’t get ahold of him?”
“It used to be Ansel,” she said. “Now, we all just keep up to date on each other’s lives. To make sure that one of us isn’t talking when we shouldn’t be.”
“And who is ‘we?” I pushed.
She closed her mouth.
I slowly pulled a sheet down above her head, then pulled the knife from my pocket and cut a thin, two-inch slice from the length of it.
She watched with worried eyes.
“You’ll share,” I said as I stood up and tied the top of the sheet to the top shelf where I had some anchors built into the studs of the wall to hold the shelves in place.
“I can’t.” She was already shaking her head.
I double looped it from the anchor, then bent down and reached for her hair.
She gasped when I yanked it toward me.
I had the twelve-hundred-thread-count sheet wrapped around her throat, and her off her feet, before she could take a full breath.
Bryson watched on with barely a reaction.
When she was on the tips of her toes, and her eyes were so wide they had to hurt, I said, “Last chance.”
She spewed off a list of names.
I knew them all but one.
I handed Bryson the sheet and texted LaDerrick with that information.
Then I said, “Get her out of here, Bryson. See if she has any more information than what we’ve gathered, then take care of it.”
