Undercover with a SEAL
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For the past two months, she’d been watching and listening and learning. But the mob bosses who employed Vitaly were extremely cautious. They rarely showed their faces, and they never did anything to hint at illegal activity—not counting the whorehouse upstairs.
She occasionally served drinks in the back lounge where the lap dances happened, but she’d never waited on the mob bosses where she could get a chance to eavesdrop on their conversation.
She had also never set foot above the ground floor of the bar and didn’t intend to, either. In all honesty, she was scared to death of getting sucked into the inescapable downward spiral that was the sex trafficking industry.
“You haven’t given me a good reason not to call the feds...yet,” Ashe said, jarring her from her thoughts. “And I happen to believe trafficking in underage girls is about the worst form of exploitation there is. I have zero sympathy for anyone engaged in it.”
“Neither do I,” she muttered.
“Well, then?”
He hadn’t moved a muscle, but a promise rolled off him to have answers out of her tonight, come hell or high water. She studied him closely. He’d shown genuine concern for her in the club and had even subjected himself to bodily harm to save her from that thug. Plus, he seemed prepared to listen to her. So heck...maybe she should take him up on his offer. Because thus far, she’d had zero success on her own finding out anything about Max.
Decision made, she released a long, slow breath that made her entire being feel as if it had deflated. It seemed as if she’d been holding that breath for months. Had she really been living under so much tension and stress? As good as it felt to trust him at least a little, she wasn’t prepared to give up all her secrets to this man she barely knew. So she chose her words carefully. “Someone I know used to hang out at the Voodoo, and then we lost touch. I’m trying to figure out what happened.”
“A girl?” he asked quickly.
Oh, God. He thought she knew one of the trafficked girls from Eastern Europe who were virtual prisoners upstairs without identification documents or knowledge of the English language or American laws. Not to mention many of the girls were drug addicts who were paid for sex with heroin or crack.
“No, no. Nothing like that. A guy. I’m hoping I’ll run across someone who knew him and may know something about why he was there and where he went.”
“Ahh.” Ashe’s expression shuttered abruptly, and he leaned forward to reach for his wet shirt.
Good grief. He thought Max was her boyfriend. Cripes. He must think she was a weirdo stalker chick working at the Voodoo to chase down some poor guy who’d fled from her and intentionally left no contact information.
She winced as she bit the inside of her lip to stop herself from correcting Ashe’s mistaken impression. It was for the best. As hot as he might be, she had no time in her life for a dalliance that might distract her from finding her big brother.
Her gut howled at her that Max was in trouble and until that internal scream was silenced, she was off the market for men.
Ashe shrugged into his damp T-shirt. “How long do you need to find your...friend...before I call the feds?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been there two months and haven’t caught a lead yet.”
“And you’re sure he’s still alive?”
Her spine stiffened in denial at the notion of Max being dead. It was what the cops thought. All this time with not a hint of him, no credit card hits, no banking transactions, no sightings...
“I know he’s alive,” she declared.
“How?” Ashe asked the question evenly enough. As if he was willing to hear her reasoning.
She sighed heavily. “I feel it in my gut, okay? I know that sounds lame, but I would know if he were dead. And I’m telling you he’s not.”
He stared at her for a second and then nodded briefly. Really? He believed her? No scoffing comments about how stupid it was to rely on a gut instinct? On how the facts said she was wrong? Wow.
He spoke gruffly. “Two weeks. I’ll help you look for your boyfriend during that time, but that’s all you get. It’ll take the law that long to gather evidence, get the warrants and set up a raid. Innocent girls are suffering every day there.”
Oh, God. She’d never thought of it in those terms. In her panic to find Max, she’d had the power to save those girls and hadn’t. She was a horrible human being! In that context, giving her two weeks was frankly damned generous.
“Don’t have the cops wait on my account,” she said grimly. “When they’re ready, they should shut the place down. I’ll tell you this, though. The Voodoo is the tip of a much bigger iceberg.”
Ashe gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean by that? What iceberg?”
Chapter 3
He leaned forward, watching every nuance of Hank’s body language intently. Now they were getting somewhere. What the hell wasn’t she telling him, though? He sensed lies in her words as sure as he was sitting here.
She answered, “Vitaly, the owner of the Voodoo, has bosses. Russian mob bosses. I haven’t seen many of them around the joint, but his place is definitely a front for them.”
“What kind of front?”
“I imagine they launder money through the place, although I haven’t seen Vitaly’s ledgers. He keeps all of those on his cell phone, and that thing never leaves his hands or his pocket.” She blew out a breath. “Believe me, I’ve tried to get a look at it. But I’ve never seen him lay his phone down once.”
“Anything else?”
She snorted. “He’s a moneymaker for his bosses. Vitaly gripes all the time about the measly cut of the Voodoo’s income that he gets. The rest is going up his chain of command.”
Ashe frowned. “The mob, be it traditional Cosa Nostra or the Russians, usually takes only a small cut of the profits as protection money.”
“Not at the Voodoo. Someone is taking the bulk of the income and giving Vitaly only a tiny piece of the pie to run the club.”
“Tell me about Vitaly.”
“His last name is Parenko. He’s tough. Smart. Mean. Organized. He actually runs a pretty tight ship.”
“Any mob ink on him?” he asked.
“He has a tattoo on his left arm, up high. It’s a globe with four compass points coming out of it. There are two flags above the globe and a submarine across it.”
Ashe’s jaw flexed. “Are the Cyrillic letters em-cheh-peh-veh on it anywhere?”
Frowning, she thought about his question. “Yes. There’s a little banner under the globe with those letters on it. And some numbers.”
“Russian Navy symbol. And he has no other Russian mob tattoos?”
“Not the traditional ones that cover the whole torso. Now and then someone spills a drink on him, and I’ve seen him change his shirt a couple of times.” She hesitated, her brow furrowing. “He’s got only one other tat. It’s on his left shoulder blade and is small. It’s a shield with a star over it and a sword going down through the star.”
“Jesus,” Ashe breathed. That was the symbol for the KGB, the Soviet Union’s equivalent of a combination FBI and CIA before it had been summarily disbanded in the mid-1990s and replaced with the FSB, the Federal Security Service of Russia. The abrupt disbanding of the KGB had stranded thousands of trained special operatives without jobs, incomes or pensions. Not surprisingly, many of them had turned their unusual skill sets to crime. In under a decade, the Russian mob had become one of the most feared criminal organizations on earth.
“How old is Vitaly?” Ashe asked.
“Midforties. But he’s in really good shape for his age.”
The guy was old enough to have been a young KGB agent in the early 1990s. “Does he ever do anything that strikes you as...paranoid?”
Hank rolled her eyes. “All the time. He does background checks on everyone who works there. Rumor is that he has all of his employees followed randomly—oh, God. What if that guy you jumped is working for him? I’ll lose my job for sure—”
He cut her off quickly. “The guy I took out was moving toward you aggressively. A simple tail wouldn’t have shown himself or moved that forcefully toward his subject.”
She nodded slowly, but doubt still clouded her gaze.
He continued his interrogation. “Any other paranoid behaviors?”
“Well, there’s the time I came into the bar in the afternoon before it was open because I forgot to pick up my paycheck the night before. Vitaly was going over the walls with some sort of electronic device. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me he was looking for bugs. But I thought he meant cockroaches.”
“Have you seen other men around the bar with mob ink?” Russian mob tattoos were a complex art form with traditional symbologies to indicate which gang a man belonged to, his mob rank and even how many kills he had. The ink tended to cover most or all of a man’s arms and torso and was hard to miss.
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“What about the men who take so much of Vitaly’s money?”
“Can’t tell. They tend to wear suits.”
Was her missing boyfriend one of them? She obviously knew what Russian mob ink looked like because she hadn’t asked for any clarification when he referred to it. If her ex was a mobster and caught wind of her stalking him like this, she’d be killed for being such a nuisance. Had that been the purpose of the guy he’d chased off in the alley?
“Look, Hank. You are in more danger than you know. You need to back off looking for this friend of yours and stop working at the Voodoo.”
“Not a chance.”
Dammit. Her reply was emphatic. She wasn’t about to be talked out of looking for her boyfriend. “Did it ever occur to you that this friend of yours doesn’t want to be found? That if he wanted you to know where he was, he would have let you know?”
Tears welled up in her eyes, and in spite of knowing that he was right, Ashe felt like a heel. God, he hated it when women cried. Especially when he made them do it. Which wasn’t often. In his line of work, he rarely had time to interact with women at all, let alone get to know one well enough to break her heart.
She swallowed hard. “It’s not like that. We weren’t dating. But I know...I know...something is wrong. Call it woman’s intuition if you like. I feel it.”
She didn’t have to convince him of the accuracy of her intuition. His life depended on listening to his all the time. More times than he could count, a gut feeling had saved his hide in the field.
Whoa. Rewind. She and this guy weren’t dating? For a moment, triumph leaped in his gut. Then who was this man she was so torn up over?
She was lying. She loved this mystery man heart and soul.
Dammit. He glanced down at her hands and noticed that she was wringing them continuously as she paced. Her slender fingers were red, she was pulling at them so hard. Oh, yeah. Head over heels for the missing dude. Disappointment rolled over him. He’d really thought for a minute there that they had some kind of connection.
“Come here, Hank. Sit down and talk to me.”
She looked up at him, stress distorting her lovely features so much that his stomach twisted in sympathy. She moved around the scarred coffee table and sank onto the other sofa cushion. He reached out and captured her hands in his, stilling their restless activity.
“Tell me about your friend.”
For a minute, he didn’t think she was going to answer. But then she let out another one of those great, relieved sighs of hers and started to talk.
“His name is Max. He’s an art and antiques broker. Acquires—well, acquired—pieces for private clients and for an auction house here in New Orleans. He got a commission to find something for someone, and soon after, he disappeared. No one’s seen or heard from him since.”
“What was he commissioned to find, and who commissioned him?”
“The auction house has no idea,” she replied. “You see, he’s an independent broker, and the commission didn’t come through the house. For the last week before he disappeared, he went into the Who Do Voodoo on a daily basis. As if he’d gotten a job there—which makes no sense at all. The day he disappeared, the name of the club was written down in his appointment book, too.”
“Who was the last person to see him?”
“I found the taxi driver who dropped him off there that night. He says he didn’t see Max meet or speak to anyone. He just went inside the club.”
“What does Max look like?” he asked.
“Six feet tall. Athletic. Brown hair. Blue eyes. I have a picture of him if you want to see it.”
“That would be great.”
She jumped up and went into the bedroom. He heard a drawer squeak open and closed, and then she was coming back toward him. Transfixed, he watched her slow, sensuous return. Her body was slender, and she moved like a dancer. She was still wearing those sexy stockings with their hot little bows, but she’d kicked off the high heels and was padding around in her stocking feet, which was almost sexier. Her feet were elegantly shaped, and her toenails were painted a sassy shade of red beneath the black fishnet. Jeez, it had been way too long since he’d had a woman if some girl’s feet were a turn-on.
“Here’s a picture of Max.”
No wonder she was stalking the guy. He exuded breezy, classy charm, and it was just a damned picture. Ashe memorized Max’s face carefully while he snapped a picture of the photo with his cell phone. He took a moment to encrypt the picture so a casual search of his phone wouldn’t show the image. If he was dealing with former KGB types, he couldn’t afford to leave any trace of his real purpose lying around to be found.
Because he was, of course, going to help this girl find her lost lover or whoever the guy was to her. She was completely unequipped to deal with mobsters, let alone mobsters of this ilk. And he was a sucker for damsels in distress.
He placed a call to his SEAL team’s ops center. It was a 24/7/365 outfit equipped to do just about anything a SEAL team could think up by way of support, from pulling in real-time intel, to tapping satellite feeds, to getting oddball-caliber ammo delivered to hellholes halfway around the globe on a moment’s notice. Illegally. And without being detected.
A familiar female voice answered the phone. Awesome. Jennie Finch was one of the best ops specialists in the outfit. “Hey, Jen. I need you to run a name. Vitaly Parenko, which is likely an alias. Former KGB type. Russian Navy submariner. Living in New Orleans now. In his midforties.”
“I thought you were supposed to be on vacation, Hollywood.”
Ashe sighed in response. God knew Jen had helped him and his guys out enough times to rate using his team nickname. He often asked for her specifically to run point in ops on his missions because she was smart as hell, had a knack for anticipating what he was going to need and had it waiting for him by the time he asked for it.
“Are you running an op I didn’t hear about?” she demanded, a shade indignantly.
“Something like that.”
“Why didn’t Perriman brief it to us here in ops?”
He grimaced. “Perriman doesn’t know about it yet. I want to get my ducks in a row before I brief him.”
“Oooh, you’re gonna be in big truh-ble when he finds out you’re working during your shore leave.”
“Don’t rat me out, okay?”
“If you’ll promise that I get to watch the fireworks when he finds out, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
“Deal,” he said.
“Okay. Vitaly Parenko doesn’t exist before the year 2005.”
She must’ve had her computer searching for data while they bantered back and forth. “What does that mean, he doesn’t exist?” he asked.
“Your guess that the name is an alias is correct. You got a picture I can work off?”
“Not yet. But I’ll get you one. Speaking of pictures, I need you to see what you can find out on another guy. Name’s Max. Lemme send you the image now.”
While he pulled the phone away from his ear to send the image to Jennie, he glanced up at Hank. “What’s Max’s last name?”
“Kuznetsov.”
He put the phone back to his ear. “Last name Kuznetsov. Went missing around—”
Hank supplied, “June tenth of this year.”
“—June tenth.” Almost three months ago. The trail had to be getting damned cold by now. He relayed the other information Hank had shared with him to Jennie and ended with, “And I need you to check out a strip joint called the Who Do Voodoo in New Orleans. Parenko nominally owns the place, but someone else is pulling out most of the cash it makes. And be quiet about it. I don’t want to tip off the Russian mob that I’m poking around.”
“Would I do it any other way?” Jennie challenged him.
“Nah. You’re the best.”
“Get me a picture of this Parenko guy if you can.”
“Roger that. Gimme till tomorrow night.”
“Okay. I’ll work on this other stuff in the meantime.”
Ashe disconnected the call to find Hank glaring at him. “Who was that? You didn’t just drag the authorities into this, did you?”
“Nah. That’s just Jennie. She researches stuff for me from time to time.”
Hank’s expression fell. Yeah, he knew the feeling. He’d felt a spark of interest for her, too, until he’d found out she was willing to risk her life to track down some ex-boyfriend she was still carrying a torch for.
It was for the best that she thought Jennie was some sort of romantic interest of his. If nothing else, it made him look a little less pathetic for having been interested in her when she was still in love with this Max guy. Too bad her heart was given elsewhere. He sensed that the two of them could’ve been good together. Really good.
He asked in resignation, “You gonna be okay tonight, or do you need me to crash on your couch?”
A combination of heat and alarm raced across her lovely, mobile features. She really was a pretty girl beneath the cheap, gaudy makeup. The kind of genuine pretty that would age with grace and grow more elegant with time. Her skin was smooth and soft and fair. It matched her light-haired, blue-eyed Nordic looks...
And she was not for him.
He rose to his feet and moved swiftly to her windows, checking the locks before he headed to the door. “Lock this after me. I’ll stand outside until I hear the dead bolt thrown home.”
She nodded, and if he wasn’t mistaken, a note of fear pinged in her gaze. She wanted him to stay but wasn’t going to ask it of him. He didn’t know whether to label her brave or just stubborn. Probably a little of both.
Knowing Bastien LeBlanc, the guy would spend the rest of the night hanging out in this neighborhood, keeping an eye on it. Hank would be plenty safe tonight. Bastien had been on the teams with Ashe for years and was a hell of a soldier, not to mention a loyal friend. Since Ashe had asked for help, Bastien would lend a hand and more.
“Be careful, Hank. You’re in way deeper than you know. Please reconsider and don’t go back to that place.”
“Thanks for your help earlier and for your concern. But I know what I’m doing.”
No. She didn’t. But it was an argument he wouldn’t win with her. He was going to have to go around her and just hope she forgave him for it.
Chapter 4
Hank stood at the bar, yawning. The combination of jumping at every sound outside and jangling nerves leftover from her intense encounter with Asher Konig had added up to a basically sleepless night for her.
The bartender was just filling her tray with beers when she felt his presence. It raced across her skin and sank into her awareness like hot sunshine before she could register dismay that he was back. What the hell was Ashe trying to do? He was going to mess up everything!
It was a busy Saturday night. Football season had started and Vitaly had installed a bunch of flat-screen TVs a few weeks back. The customers could toss back a brew, watch football, and get a lap dance from an underage girl. What more could a guy want? It also meant Vitaly would be watching the bar closely. He wouldn’t fail to notice that the patron who’d shown an interest in her last night had returned tonight. Crap, crap, crap. She had to ignore Ashe and hope he caught the hint and ignored her back.
She studiously avoided even looking at him until it dawned on her that she might be avoiding him so much that her body language would draw Vitaly’s attention, anyway. Damn. She hated trying to outthink her diabolically smart boss. What to do?
Her dilemma was interrupted as she passed close to the doorway into the lap dance lounge.
“Psst,” someone hissed.
Startled, she glanced at the door. The usual bouncer wasn’t there. He’d probably gone to the bathroom for a minute.
“Psst.”
She stepped close to the door. A girl stood there, dressed in a pair of skimpy satin boxer shorts and an even skimpier tank top that her large breasts all but spilled out of in multiple directions. The girl’s mascara was almost clown-like on ridiculously long false eyelashes, and a generous helping of mascara was running down her cheeks.
“Have you been crying?” Hank asked in alarm. “Are you all right?”
The girl patted her cheeks absently as if they had no feeling in them. “Oh. That. Huh. Can’t feel my face...” Her voice trailed off. Then she asked abruptly, “Have you seen the blue man?”
Hank frowned. “What blue man?”
“In the bowler hat. He’s all blue and his suit is melting. And his tie was purple, but it turned green...”
Wow. This girl was high as a kite on something. Hank ducked inside the lap dance lounge, backing the girl up, out of sight of the main bar. She leaned close to whisper, “Do you need me to get you out of here?”
“Out?” The girl stared blankly. “What? No. You got more juice? Need my juice.”
The girl looked plenty juiced up already. “What’s your name?” Hank asked.
“Sveta. You likey? Call me Jane. Or Grrmblahhumbugama...” Sveta dissolved into laughter. Assuming that was her name. Hank whipped out her cell phone and took a quick photo of the girl.
“Do you want to take a walk with me, Sveta? Maybe outside? To clear your head?” And call an ambulance and the cops?
“Wanna go to my room. Sleep.” And all of a sudden, the girl drooped like she was on the verge of passing out.
“Umm, okay. Let me help you.” Hank wedged her shoulder under the taller girl’s armpit as Sveta sagged.
She’d taken maybe a half dozen awkward steps beside the staggering girl, guiding her toward the back of the lap dance lounge and the emergency exit to an alley, when a sharp male voice bit out from behind them, “What are you doing down here, Sveta? You know that’s against the rules.”
Crap. Vitaly.
The girl whimpered and shrank against Hank’s side. “She was on her way out into the bar in search of a drink,” Hank explained lamely.
Vitaly moved swiftly to Sveta’s other side, pulling the girl toward the stairs that led upward into the bowels of whatever went on up there. “I’ll take her from here, Hank.”
“I can help you get her upstairs.”
“No!” She started at the harshness of Vitaly’s tone. “You are never to go up there. I don’t want you getting near any of what goes on up there. You understand?” He stared at her intently over the nearly unconscious hooker’s head.
“Uhh, sure,” Hank stammered.
“You stay away from that place.”
She frowned, confused. The guy almost sounded concerned for her. Like he was trying to protect her from upstairs, not urge her into it. He all but lifted Sveta off her shoulder, muttering under his breath in Russian to the hooker, “C’mon. Let’s get you some candy. Let’s find you a sugar daddy to love you, baby. Does that sound good? Say goodbye to the real world, baby doll...”
He and Sveta disappeared around a corner in the stairs.
“Hey? Whatchoo doing back he’uh?” another male voice demanded from behind her.
The bouncer. Back from the restroom or wherever he’d disappeared to.