Then again, if he were watching, he could’ve grabbed Irene when she ran off to check her stash.
I parked and hurried up the front stoop. I slammed into my apartment and bolted the door behind me. It was quiet and empty, but my bedroom door was still shut.
I banged hard then tried the knob. Locked tight. “Irene,” I shouted. “I need to know you’re in there.”
“Go away,” she said.
Relief flooded through me. I leaned back against the wall and sighed, getting myself together.
That reaction surprised me. My job was all about danger—I put myself in the line of fire all the time, and asked my men to do the same. But the idea of Irene getting hurt, especially after I’d only just found her again, that threatened to drive a wedge into my chest. I needed her right now, needed to bring her back to this world and get her settled, and I couldn’t risk losing that, not again.
Once I calmed down, I knocked at the door again, softer this time. “We’ve got to talk,” I said.
“Go away,” she said, her voice muffled by the door, but closer now. “I’m not in the mood to talk.”
“I know what’s on those sticks.” I rattled the bag next to me, like she’d know what the sound was.
The door unlocked and she opened it a crack. Her face was skeptical, but curious. “Seriously?” she asked.
“Come out,” I said.
She followed me to the kitchen table and sat down like a wary cat ready to spring up and run off at any moment. I dumped the bag and I caught her frown as she looked over the sticks.
“Where’s my money?” she asked.
“Give it to Linc,” I said. “I’ll reimburse you. How’s two thousand sound?”
She made a face like she was about to argue, but curiosity got the better of her and she snatched up one of the sticks from the table. “All right, whatever. So what’d you find?”
“They’re profiles,” I said, sitting down cross from her. I tapped on the table with my fingers.
“Profiles,” she said, frowning at me. “Are you joking?”
“Not at all.” I picked one up and waved it in the air. “They’re profiles of girls that the Healy family’s been trafficking. Girls from Ukraine, some from Russia and Thailand, places like that. Girls they’ve bought and sold.”
Her face slowly fell into horror as she stared at the sticks then dropped the one in her fingers. It clattered onto the table and joined the others like a gravestone.
“You’re joking,” she whispered.
“Now you know why Ronan wanted you dead,” I said. “He thought you knew.”
“I had no clue.” She shook her head quickly. “I would’ve burned the whole lot of them, or thrown them in the river, or something. Oh my god, they’re girls.”
I realized with a start that she could’ve known some of the people locked away in those spreadsheets. She’d lived on the streets long enough that she had to have dealt with some of the girls turning tricks for the Healy family, and most of them were from someplace else, someplace far away from the city. Poor girls with no other options, sold some lie about making a new start in America, ripped away from their poor origins and sent into hell to sell their body for eager, pathetic men. These sticks could’ve represented friends, people she cared about, and I hadn’t even thought about that.
“We’re going to use these against them,” I said softly, leaning forward to look into her face. “You get that, right? This can hurt them.”
“Hurt Ronan,” she said, sounding like she was somewhere else.
“Badly, maybe even bad enough to take him down, him and the whole operation. There are names in the profiles, dates and places and addresses, and I have a feeling that we’ll dig up a lot more once we start looking into them.”
She sucked in a shuddering breath. “Goddamn it, Cam,” she said. “Ronan’s going to kill me, isn’t he?”
“No,” I said. “He’s not coming anywhere near you.”
“But I really can’t go anywhere until he’s gone.” She stared down at her hands then stood up suddenly and walked away from the table.
I followed her. She faced me, arms crossed, and I gently touched her shoulders, drawing her close. She let me hug her, hold her tight, and she didn’t cry—but I felt her body shake and tense, like sobs wracked her chest.
“You’ve been through too much,” I said softly. “And now I’m going to ask you to go through more.”
“How?” she asked, looking up at me.
“We need to figure out how we’re going to use these against Ronan and his people,” I said. “And I might need your help to do it.”
“Why me?” She shook her head. “I barely know them.”
“You worked for them,” I said. “You know some of their people. We can use that.”