Page 27 of Convict's Game

This was what it meant to have a crew. He’d given me a task with set parameters. I wanted to operate outside of those, and he was right there with me.

I pulled out of the warehouse car park to retrace my steps across the city, this time, with a sleeping Tyler in tow.

At Milburne Alley, I watched the building for a while, though the cameras showed no activity since all the vehicles had left. Then I shook Tyler awake and left him as lookout while I scoped out the place. In the darkness, I prowled from room to room, finding nothing. Not a trace of anyone having been here.

Except for the fucking phone Mila didn’t have a chance to take.

When I returned to the car, Tyler was nowhere in sight. I spun on my heel, searching the shadows. A low whistle gave up his location.

I squinted, and he stepped out of a doorway, amusement bleeding through his exhaustion at how easily he’d hidden from me.

In a rush of memory, his skeleton crew name returned to me. “Just like a ghost,” I muttered.

Tyler grinned, and we returned to the car.

“Where next?” He hunkered down once more.

“To the girl I drove away from here.”

He slept again for the drive across the city then woke to play bodyguard while I knocked on Annabelle’s door.

Her mother answered and summoned the kid.

“We’re not here for anything bad. I just need to know everything you know about that place.”

Annabelle hung her head. Since I’d brought her back, she’d changed into pyjamas with pug faces on them, and looked even more of the child she was. “My boyfriend arranged it. I mean my ex-boyfriend. You just missed him.”

“Let me guess, he was angry that you didn’t go through with it, and the money I gave you wasn’t enough.”

Annabelle toed the floor with a fluffy slipper boot. “He was angry, but I didn’t get the chance to tell him about the cash. Mila made me realise what I’d been persuaded to do, and I told him I wouldn’t agree to it again. He threw a fit and broke up with me. I’m glad he’s gone.”

Her tear-lined face said the opposite, but at least she was able to keep the cash. From the run-down street, the dirty house, and the recycling box filled with vodka bottles, the girl needed every bit of help she could get.

I took the ex-boyfriend’s details and left her.

Tracking the jackass down was child’s play, with Tyler having access to all manner of resources that gave us an address. But when we found him in a gaming session with his friends, all the ashen-faced lad could tell us was Salter had come to him at an amusement arcade. He didn’t even have a phone number, only a time and date when he’d had to hand Annabelle over.

Another dead end.

Dawn shattered the sky when we returned to the warehouse. I’d failed. I had nowhere else to search. Even Tyler’s efforts in getting a lead from his multiple contacts came to naught. No one could tell us where an auction might be happening.

I’d gone from complete access to Mila to none. She could be hurt right now, and I couldn’t help her. She might even have been sold. All I could hope for was that she’d find a way out herself. She’d told me she could.

I hated that I’d probably never know.

Aday later, and game night was upon us. The darkest night of the month.

On any average evening, the warehouse was busy. Weekends saw long queues outside the nightclub, but today, the crowd rushed the other side. For the rooms available to rent in the brothel where they could watch the fun happening in the basement below via livestreaming cameras.

I prowled the building, taking no joy from the party atmosphere.

With Shade, I’d prepped the basement, checking the cages, the locks, and the cameras, then I’d worked with the different teams in the building, making sure everyone had what they needed for the busy night.

Half the men and a couple of the women had arrived already, and I needed to prepare for the moment the siren sounded. I strode the busy corridor between Divine and Divide, passing sex workers and dancers who would make bank tonight, and entered the lift. Tyler was already inside and held the door for me.

The haunted exhaustion had gone from his eyes when he scanned me. “You okay?”

I shrugged. I’d been on an emotional roller coaster. High from the release from the hospital, low from the certainty that I’d been a bad person to my crew, then up and down again from meeting and losing Mila. Throwing myself into work had done nothing to ease my worry over her.