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“And she’s convinced I’m not the disaster bisexual I actually am. Can you believe she thinks I’m straighter than an arrow?”
“Yes.”
That was Vanessa’s cue to barge into the room, dressed in her cashmere pullover and a pair of jeans that suggested she had been almost ready for bed when she got dressed to meet Mitch in the Castro. When she gawked at Stella and Jade, the romantic couple-turned-undercover agents, she must have thought the same thing as her partner.“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Are you all right?” Vanessa went to Mitch, who finally tasted the middling beer that had been in her hands for a few minutes. “What happened?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle. The point is that new friends have been made. By me.”
The introductions were repeated for Vanessa’s benefit. She was still confused by the timeline of events, but by then, Stella had procured her a drink of her own, and nobody had told Vanessa the details of how Stella had to reveal herself as a trained professional in self-defense.
“What gets me,” Mitch said when everyone had settled, “was how quickly the client went down. You and I are no wilting flowers, clearly,” she said about Stella, who had done her part to help Mitch in the private room, “but he was much larger than us and I was somewhat caught off guard. I knew downing that drink would make him tipsy enough to control, but I wasn’t expecting… that.”
Stella exchanged a look with Jade. “The drink was drugged. Duh. Most of them are.”
Mitch could only take so many surprises that night. “You’re kidding. Most of them?”
“For that type of client? Amalie has a special something in her pocket. Makes them a bit slower and more forgetful. Not strong enough to fuck them up, though. That would get her caught. Lister has no idea.”
Something tickled Mitch’s brain. She almost knew why Amalie would do such a thing.
“It’s to protect the girls,” Stella explained. “Even the female clients can be the worst of the worst when you’re a woman who doesn’t want to be there.”
“So…” Vanessa interjected. “That bartender is drugging the people Candace invites to sample her wares?”
“If she can get away with it, yeah. Amalie hates everyone there.”
“What’s her deal, anyway?” Mitch asked.
Stella asked her girlfriend to get her another drink. When Jade left the room, Stella said, “Amalie owes Candace a ton of money. Working at the club is one way she works off the debt.”
“How do you know this?”
“She’s the one who squealed to the police to begin with.”
“Really?” Vanessa was incredulous. “How is she still there?”
“She doesn’t think she has a choice,” Stella explained. “What, do you think she knows that me, Jade, and you two are working on behalf of the FBI? No, and that’s how it has to stay. She thinks the police and other authorities don’t give a fuck, that Lister is too powerful to be touched on her home turf. The fewer people know we’re there, the better. I’ve done undercover ops where one or both of us are playing ourselves, and those are always the most dangerous.” She shook her head again. “I don’t envy either of you.”
Mitch finished her beer without thinking. When Jade returned, it was with water for everyone, including Mitch. She needed it. “I’ve been wondering if she’s doing other kinds of work for Lister.” She thought of the angry woman subjected to the private rooms before her bartending shift.That’s one way to pay off debt.“Do you know how much she owes, and why?”
“Apparently, her sister got aggressive cancer a few years back. Insurance was useless. The family decided to put it all on credit to save her life, but now they’re losing it all. House, businesses, cars… the works. So Amalie approached someone who could get her a private loan, and Lister came through. Amalie, like a lot of women who come to Lister for big, nasty loans couldn’t make the outrageous payments. I don’t know much more in between that and her bartending and hooking at Club Night, but she’s not getting paid for any of it. It comes off her debt. Supposedly.”
Vanessa audibly swallowed the lump in her throat. “How awful.”
“How many of the other girls there are paying off debts or otherwise would rather cut off their own feet than be there?” Mitch asked before she thought too deeply about Amalie.
“Almost all of them,” Stella replied. “There are some who are properly paid what they’re due and willingly work for it. Like Thalia. She’s so into it she has no idea that nobody else is.”
“I’ve gotten the same sense from her. She’s desperate for Candace’s attention.”
“Why would she risk having people there who want to be?” Vanessa asked. “Wouldn’t they figure out what’s going on and say something?”
“It helps keep the heinous shit a bit more underground,” Mitch explained to her partner. “You want most of your busiest people to be in on it, so to speak, because they help cover up the ones being shipped away to Honolulu for a week because they figure it’s better than being dumped in the bay when you can’t pay your loan.”
The room was quiet.
“Look,” Mitch continued, with all eyes on her, “I know what a woman looks like when she’s into it. When it’s feeding into her kink, you know? Thalia is the only genuine one there, but I also know some third-party escorts pick up extra work from Candace. She probably matches them up with men and women they can’t find on their own. Not as easily. So, Candace takes a madam’s cut, and the escorts still make enough for it to be worth it. But the ones who look like they’re utterly dead inside probablywouldrather be dead. They’re the ones being trafficked and r…” Mitch left it at that. Every woman in that room knew which word she left off.
