“You’re gonna pay for this, detective,” King shouts, his voice muffled by the fabric. “I’ll personally see to it that you lose your badge.”
Mike closes Russell’s laptop, tosses it on the table, and hands over the external hard drive.
“No, I don’t think you will, counselor,” I say. “And the reason I don’t think so, is that I’ll be taking this hard drive with me.”
“Your security cams are dead,” Mike says. “As for the rest of us, no one saw our faces. Not even you.”
“You’re not gonna breathe a word of this,” I say. “Because if you do, I’ll personally see to it that the contents of this hard drive make it out to every prominent news outlet in the country. I suspect if anyone in your secret club learns what was taken from your safe tonight, jail time will be the least of your worries.”
We drop a set of bolt cutters at King’s feet, then make our way back upstairs. As we slip out of the house and into the dark of night, we hear the guards groaning behind the pool house.
Halfway to the vans, I ask Mike, “What happened to the girl?”
He chuckles. “Gave her the keys to King’s Jag.”
For the first time tonight, we let ourselves laugh.
Back in the van, far from King’s property, Jonah turns his phone on.
“Teagan texted a couple hours ago,” he tells me. “She says McKenzie’s back in Hollywood.”
My heart just about detonates in my chest.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I say. “They’ve found her.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Holly
I watch my best friend stare absently into the dancing steam over her teacup. The girl beside me looks like Kenzie. She even sounds like Kenzie. But her natural effervescence has gone flat. If it wasn’t for the familiar outer shell, I wouldn’t recognize her.
“Take your time,” Cal says, notepad in-hand. “Start when you’re ready.”
I rest my arm on the back of the sofa behind Kenzie’s head. At the moment, it’s me, Kenzie, Jonah’s social-worker sister, Mary, and Cal seated around the living room. I can hear Teagan puttering around the kitchen, and the low murmur of male voices drifting up from the basement rec room.
Kenzie clears her throat softly, then says, “Steph told me there was a man who wanted to pay me for my time. All I had to do was go to his house for a few hours. I tried to bring Hollywood with me, but the driver said he only wanted me...”
She pauses to sip her tea. Cal waits patiently for her to continue from his seat on the coffee table across from us.
“He drove me to a big house on a lake,” she says. “I could hear frogs chirping when I got out of the car. He brought me into the house, to a bedroom. It was really clean and impersonal, like a nice hotel room. He told me to wait there and then he left.”
“How long did you wait?” Cal asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes. Then another man—an older man—came into the room.”
“Can you describe him for me?”
“Tall. Maybe six feet. Not fat but not thin either. Just solid. Gray hair. He wore thick rings on his fingers, and he looked like he smelled like brandy and expensive cigars.”
Cal pulls out his phone, swipes at it, then holds up a photo of the reverend he’s been investigating. “Is this the man you saw?”
Kenzie glances at the photo, closes her eyes, and nods. “That was him.”
Cal puts his phone away. “What happened next?”
She swallows thickly.
“Cal,” I say quietly. “Give her a minute.” I can’t stand the thought of her having to relive this while being interrogated.
Kenzie turns to me and offers up a wavering ghost of a smile. “It’s okay, Hollywood. I want to tell him what happened.” She turns back to Cal. “We had sex.”
“Consensual sex?”
I flash another look at him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his tone a bit softer. “Was it consensual?”
She nods. “It didn’t last long. Afterward, he said his driver would pay me and bring me back to the party.”
Kenzie lifts the teacup to her chapped lips. She takes a drink and starts to cough. I take the cup from her hands before the contents can slosh all over her lap.
“It’s okay.” I say the words out of habit, knowing full well that nothing about this situation is remotely okay.
Kenzie takes a deep breath, then continues. “I started getting nervous when we drove past the turn to the first house. I thought maybe I was confused, but the drive was taking longer. A lot longer. I kept asking him where we were going. He said, don’t worry. That’s all he kept saying. So, of course, I was really fucking worried.”
“Was this the same driver who’d brought you to the second location?” Cal asks.
“Yeah, it was the same guy.”
“Can you recall how long you were driving for?”