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“How do you know?”
The man whimpered sorrowfully, “Because they made me do it. I never… I never wanted any of this to happen. I just wanted to keep my job. This place is all I’ve ever known.”
“Who made you do what?” Luka pressed, getting impatient even though the poor guy was clearly doing his best.
“I used to own this place, you know. I’m Cal. It’s my restaurant. But over the years… it got so hard to make ends meet around here. Vegas is outgrowing me. I had to sell,” he lamented.
“Who did you sell to?”
“This Russian guy… Rurik. He made me an offer: he would buy the place and let me stay on as an employee… but only if I helped him lure in girls,” he admitted. “Not a lot of women come to Cal’s Corner, though. And they wanted this specific girl with red hair and blue eyes. Real pretty.”
“Kira,” Luka growled.
“Yes. That’s her name. When I saw her on the street out front I had to offer her a job on the spot. She accepted. The owner said he’s been paying her very well, you know, to keep her coming back for more.”
“Why?”
“So she would get caught in the trap,” said Cal. “I heard the owner telling his lackeys they found a ‘buyer’ for Kira. They were talking about making the trade when she suddenly stopped showing up for work. They tortured me for information. They thought I’d know where she went. They thought I had tipped her off. God, I wish I had…”
“What did they do?” Luka pushed.
Cal winced. “They took me to her house. I stood on her doorstep in the rain. They… used me to draw her out.”
“Like bait. And of course, she trusted you,” Luka hissed.
Cal hung his head. “Yes. I had a gun to my back. I would never have done it otherwise.”
“Did it work?”
“Kira opened the door. I-I told her I was sorry. Then they took her. They took us both. Someone hit me in the head real hard. I woke up here in this chair in the dark,” he explained. “But I could hear something—that van they picked me up in; it was driving away. I heard them peel out in the back parking lot.”
“Where the hell did they go?” Luka asked, getting to his feet.
Cal blinked up at him. “I’m not sure… but I have an idea. For the past month, this customer has been coming in straight off the road, smelling like gasoline. He might be a trucker of some kind. Anyway, he comes in and doesn’t order anything. He just sits and watches for hours. Sometimes he went back here to talk with Rurik.”
“And you think he’s Kira’s ‘buyer’?” Luka clarified.
Cal nodded angrily.
“What else can you tell us?” piped up the lighter-haired trainee.
“Well, the guy always parked in the reserved lot. He had an Idaho license plate. I remember it because it said ‘FAMOUS POTATOES’ on the bottom.”
Luka looked at the trainees and said, “Stay with him. Wait for support to arrive.”
“Where are you going?” asked one of them.
“North,” he answered simply, already darting out the door.
He jumped into his car and took off toward the north of the city, weaving like a madman through night traffic. He made another call, this time to Vadim and Ivan, who were near Reno for a routine mission at the Koshki Ranch. He ordered them to drive southeast, in the hopes that between the three of them, they would manage to ambush Kira’s sex traffickers en route. He wanted to catch up to them before they crossed into Idaho, where the Sokolovs’ resources began to dwindle, and it would be much more difficult to bring Kira home safely.
As he drove out of the city and down the dark, lonely highway, Luka’s head was filled with brighter memories of Kira. He pictured her swishing up to the service station in her cocktail waitress uniform, bashfully smiling at him, teasing and flirting with him. He saw her flushed and breathless with pleasure on the loveseat. He could almost feel her falling asleep in his arms.
He couldn’t let that be the end. He needed to build a lifetime of memories with her. He would stop at nothing to save Kira and bring her home.
Finally, after what seemed like an endless drive in the darkness, Luka saw the flashing stop sign that comprised the junction of several desert highways, near the ghost town of Crystal Springs. This part of the state was preoccupied with so-called extraterrestrials. There were billboards for UFO-related experiences and locations. Personally, Luka had always thought there was more than enough bullshit happening around him on planet Earth; he had little desire to fuck with the universe at large. He had enough to worry about.
As he approached the red light, he caught a glint of it bouncing off the back of a big, dark green van. It was just a half mile or so ahead of him, going north.
