Page 38 of Wild (Chicago Underground 4)
Without looking at me, he turned and disappeared out the back room door. I heard the front room door clang shut. I stared at the rows of dusty boxes. Hurt Luke? A laugh escaped me. As if I could. I leaned against the stack of boxes and let the irony wash over me. Hurt Luke, when I ached for him. Hurt him while he searched for some other girl.
She probably had a case file in here. All the more recent reports were digitized, but the police department still kept the hand-scrawled, dead-tree documents around, right in this room. What would hers say? Missing persons, maybe. Solicitation, drug-related arrests were all par for the course if she was in the life. Without a name, I’d never find her. If Luke had a file, it would be in some internal affairs lockdown, not here. I didn’t even know Ella’s real name.
I only had a few minutes. My file was a pathetically thin bundle, considering my current fugitive status. There were the solicitation charges Henri had set up for me to keep me in line. There were a few blacked-out pages from the incident where I’d gotten shot. And a note: Full immunity. The benefits of being an informant.
In the back, there was a brief report from when the police had interviewed me over a fellow escort who’d disappeared. It didn’t include the outcome of that investigation, but I knew she’d never been found, because I still got an anonymous postcard every Christmas with a palm tree on it.
I replaced my file and skipped a few files down to dear old Dad’s. Stephan Laurent. It wasn’t a big surprise that he had a file. It meant nothing. I flipped it open.
Suspected for embezzlement. I tsked softly. Couldn’t afford the current year’s Mercedes? Or did Juanita finally nail you for knocking up her daughter?
Where had he embezzled from? It didn’t say, and I couldn’t remember who he worked for or even what he did. My only memories were of roaming eyes and cruel words. How he’d made his money had been the last thing on my child’s mind, and when I was older, I had more important things to worry about than angry conference calls in veiled business-speak behind closed doors, but now the question took my breath away. So much money. No morals to speak of. It could have been anything.
A whole slew of blacked-out pages followed. Unease fluttered in my gut. It meant nothing.
On the last page: Full immunity.
What had he done that needed immunity? Who had he fucked over to get it?
I heard a scratch at the door. I slipped the file into its place and shoved the box back where it belonged, my stomach churning. Would he see the marks in the dust where I’d pulled it out? Was it even Luke who’d come? I trusted Chase well enough, but only a fool let down her guard in the belly of the beast. I clasped my hands together, the picture of innocence; meanwhile the words were emblazoned across my vision.
Above me, a lone lightbulb flickered in a rusted cage.
Then it went out, plunging me into darkness.
Chapter Nineteen
The door opened, and yellow light sluiced around a familiar silhouette before the latch clicked shut. My breath caught in my chest, a heavy bundle of anticipation—and fear.
Luke?
I wouldn’t speak his name out loud, in case it wasn’t him.
Faint squeaking of rubber on concrete put him squarely in front of me. As my eyes adjusted, the slim light from underneath the door lent him a faint glow. I could even smell his soap through the haze of dust between us. But none of those things confirmed his identity as much as the simmering tension that pulsed through my veins when he was near.
It was him. “How’s the sexiest detective?” I murmured into the darkness.
“Were you sure it was me, or is that just how you greet everyone here?”
“Jealous?”
“Pissed, Shelly. I’m pissed. Why are you here?”
Neither pissed nor jealous accurately described what he felt. Something closer to despair. I knew it, the way I knew what every man wanted, their dirty desires marking me, degrading me whether they touched me or not. Allie had called me the man whisperer, but she thought I didn’t understand Luke. I did. Maybe not completely, but enough to know he was like the rest of them. He wanted my body, my mind; he wanted to consume me whole more than any other man.
But he didn’t. It fascinated me, or it had until I’d found out the reason—some old loyalty and Luke too steadfast to ever stray. Mystery solved.
“I had to see you,” I purred. “I couldn’t be apart from you one minute longer.”
“Save the BS for someone who’s paying you.”
I blinked. “Yeah, okay.” Deep breath. It’s not personal, just business. “I need you to come with me to a club Saturday night. That’s where Ella got taken.”
A beat passed. “I’ll go. Alone.”
“Where would the fun be in that? Besides, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t quite trust you after that stint at your apartment.”
“I was caught off guard when I heard you had a warrant out. I had to improvise.”
