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Vanessa clutched her partner’s arm. “Nobody’s done anything to you, right?”
Mitch gently shook her off. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
The look on Vanessa’s face said it all: that wasnotan answer.
“You’re in quite a predicament,” Stella said. “You’re bringing in more clients than ever, but Lister will want more from you. She’s just using others to push your boundaries for her.”
Vanessa bristled. “I don’t think you should go there by yourself anymore.”
That was something they would have to hash out later. Right now, Mitch cared more about the information Stella possessed. “How close are we to bringing her down? The longer we wait, the more people are being hurt.”
“It’s tough,” Stella admitted. “I’m sure you’ve spoken with Margaret about it. Once they need more factual evidence, you’ll be sent in with wires. That’s one of the most dangerous times, you know. If you’re caught with a wire… oof. I’ve seen shit.”
“Will we be able to take down some of the clients as well?” Vanessa asked. “They should be held accountable for what they’re physically doing to these women.”
“Ah, well… that’s more difficult,” Stella said. “First, you have to prove that the clients knew that the victims were not consenting or otherwise under duress. Then there’s the fact that many of them aren’t even American… it’s complicated, you see. That’s why the FBI wants to cut the head off the monster. Take down the whole club and its madam, and you take away another source of strife for these victims. Make an example out of Lister and show that money and local power will not stop authorities from doing their jobs. At least… well, that’s how we wish it goes. I’m not a full-time agent anymore. I’m just back in the gig for the sake of this case.”
Vanessa did not take her eyes off Stella. “You must be good at your job if a woman like Agent James is knocking on your door to come out of retirement.”
“As I said earlier, I’m best at undercover work. It helps me in my civilian career more than you know.”
“I’m sure.”
“One of the last jobs I did before leaving the FBI was something not much different from this. A club up in Seattle had similar allegations, and my partner and I went undercover to bring them down. We did.”
“Tell them the part where you fell in love with your partner,” Jade said with a roll of her eyes. “It wasn’t me, by the way. We met after that.”
Stella waved her off. “You get the picture.”
“This is the last one, though, right?” Jade continued to goad her. “You promised.”
“Hon, I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore. Of course this is the last one!”
Mitch leaned in toward her partner. “I think I’m in okay hands.”
Vanessa showed no signs of believing that. Instead, she gripped Mitch’s hand beneath the counter, a silent plea for them to have more discussion about this unspoken behind her lips.
I hate what this might do to us.The more the days went on, the more Mitch questioned her sanity every time she entered Club Night. Because not only was she always putting her safety on the line when she could be doing activities sheactuallyenjoyed…
Yet she was intrigued by the mind of Candace Lister. The woman who appeared a paragon of self-restraint.
She was anything but, wasn’t she? Mitch could exploit that.
Chapter 11
ForasmuchasVanessa detested the holiday, she was grateful that Thanksgiving took her away from the bay and closer to normal life. Not that she was familiar with what that felt like.
Since rejoining the real world with Mitch a few years ago, they spent every major holiday with the Cruises, a family of five if Mitch was included. Her younger brothers and sister were barely contained by her mother Penny, a woman who couldn’t be more different from Mitch if she tried. Because no matter how much Vanessa analyzed the woman’s features and mannerisms, they were nothing like her daughter’s. Mitch once commented that she took more after her father, a man long gone.
Vanessa knew a few things about that. Namely, what it was like to suddenly lose one’s father after counting on him for more than life.
Yet even if Vanessa had never known trauma and fear as she had in her youth, it still wouldn’t prepare her for a new life having Thanksgiving and Christmas with a lower-class family like the Cruises. Years ago, their original house had been burnt down in one of California’s many terrible wildfires. Thanks to Mitch and Vanessa, a new house had been built near Sacramento, on land Vanessa had procured through one of her many investments.I would have lived on it myself if it weren’t so close to civilization.There was a time when privacy out in the woods was the most important thing to her safety. Now? She gifted any land she procured to those who needed it more than her.
Still, it was strange to drive to the Sacramentan suburbs and live as this family did.
Vanessa’s money had built a five-bedroom house that allowed all of Penny’s four children to have their own rooms if they were ever home together. The boys were now in college, though, and the youngest girl was the only one still loitering around the house on any given day. Mitch’s “room” was the glorified guest room, a boudoir she had no say in decorating, not that she cared. That was where Vanessa and Mitch slept while visiting, though, and Vanessa was unimpressed by the lumpy queen-sized mattress and the polyester fibers wrapping around her body. It was enough to make her bring her own sheets and comforter that Thanksgiving, something that made Mitch shake her head.
The rooms were cramped. The showers simple and the storage space nonexistent. There was no yard, aside from gravel and a small flower bed by the deck that housed one Adirondack chair and no grill. The tall, soulless fences separating the Cruise’s house from their neighbors were the wrong kind of imposing. Vanessa often got out of her car in the driveway and wondered how people lived with such little stimulation. Mitch always thought thissodramatic.
