Sandra Brown - Lethal

But he hadn’t touched her in that way. Nor would he.

Her fragile, youthful features had made her very popular with the massage parlor’s clientele. Men loved being stroked by her small hands. Many requested her. She had regulars. Her delicacy was a turn-on because it made those who sweated over her feel more manly, larger, harder, stronger.

Like thousands of others, she and her family had been promised that she would enjoy a better life in the United States. She was guaranteed a job in a fancy hotel or a fine restaurant, where she would make more money in one week than her father earned in a year.

Once she had paid off the debt of getting her into the States and well situated, which would take only a few years, she would start earning money to send back to her family, possibly enough to pay for her younger brother to come to the U.S. also. It had sounded like a fairy tale come true. She had bade her family a tearful but hopeful goodbye and had climbed into the truck headed for the border.

The hellish trip had taken five days. She and eight others had been crammed into the bed of a pickup and covered with a sheet of plywood. During the journey, they were given very little to eat and drink and few opportunities to relieve themselves.

One of the other girls, no older than Isobel, had become sick with a fever. Isobel had tried to hide the girl’s illness, but the driver and the heavily armed man who rode with him discovered it during a rare rest stop. The truck departed without the girl. She was left on the side of the road. The others were warned that they would also be abandoned if they interfered or caused trouble. Isobel had wondered many times if the girl had died before someone found her.

And that was only the beginning of Isobel’s nightmare.

When the truck finally reached its destination, she was made to dress in provocative clothing, which was charged against her earnings, and put to work in a brothel.

She didn’t know anyone. Even those who’d been trucked into the States with her, and with whom she’d forged a quasi-friendship founded on shared fear and despair, had been sent to other places. She didn’t know which city or state she was in. She didn’t understand the language that the first leering man crooned to her as he robbed her of her virginity.

Although she hadn’t understood his words, she’d comprehended completely what that act had signified. She was ruined, spoiled goods. No kind and caring man would ever want to marry her now. She was disgraced. Her family would disown her. Her choices were now limited to continuing to “entertain” the customers, or to kill herself. But suicide was a mortal sin, a ticket to damnation.

In essence, the only choice left to her had been what kind of hell she would suffer.

Which is why her eyes, as black and fluid as ink, had looked so wounded and haunted the first time Diego had seen her. He’d been sent to deliver a warning to the manager of the massage parlor, whom The Bookkeeper claimed was withholding payment for the protection provided to his latest shipment of girls.

Diego had spotted Isobel as she emerged from one of the “treatment” rooms, clutching a tacky satin robe around her slenderness, tears streaming down her cheeks. When she caught him looking at her, she turned away from him in shame.

He returned a few days later, this time as a client. He asked for her. When she entered the room, she recognized him. With noticeable despondency, she began to undress. He hastily assured her that he only wanted to talk.

Over the next hour, she related her story. It wasn’t the tale of woe itself but the mesmerizing way in which she told it that compelled Diego to offer to help her run away. She clasped his hand, kissed it, rained tears onto it.

Now, as he approached the bed, she set aside the hairbrush and smiled at him timidly, her eyes no longer filled with wretchedness, but brimming with gratitude.

He sat down beside her, leaving space between them. “ Como está ?”

“ Bien .”

He returned her tentative smile, and for a moment they simply gazed at one another. The moment lasted so long that when he raised his hand toward her, she flinched.

“Shh.” Gently, he laid his palm against her smooth cheek. He stroked her skin with his thumb, marveling at its velvety texture. He looked at her throat, noticed how slender it was, how vulnerable. Around it, she wore a thin silver chain with a crucifix. He watched her pulse beat faintly beneath the small cross that glittered when it caught the lamplight.

The razor in his pocket felt as heavy as lead.

His standard rate was five hundred dollars.

It would be over quickly. One slash and she would be relieved of her misery. She would have nothing more to fear, not even damnation. He would be liberating her, actually. He would be freeing her from pawing men and her crucified god’s harsh judgment. And he would be carrying out The Bookkeeper’s directive.

By killing her, Diego would stay in favor with The Bookkeeper, and this lovely girl would never again have her small, sweet body defiled.

But instead of applying the razor to her throat, he stroked it with his fingertips, touched the crucifix, and in softly spoken Spanish reassured her that she was safe now. He told her that he would take care of her, that she didn’t need to be afraid any longer, that he would protect her. The nightmare that she’d been living for two years was over.

Diego swore this to her on his life.

And by doing so, he was drawing a line in the sand. He’d been ordered not only to kill Isobel, but also to learn who had helped her to escape the massage parlor, and to kill that person as well.

The Bookkeeper had no idea that Diego himself was responsible.

Taking in the beautiful sight and smell and feel that was Isobel, he had a pair of blunt English words for The Bookkeeper. “Get fucked.”

Tori, you might want to, you know, look at this.”

Her receptionist knew better than to interrupt her when she was with a client, especially one as overweight and undertoned as Mrs. Perkins. She gave Amber a withering look, then said to her client, “Six more of those, please.”

Groaning, the woman went into a deep squat.

Tori turned to her receptionist and, with asperity, said, “Well. What?”

The receptionist pointed to the row of flat-screen TVs attached to the wall in front of the treadmills. One was tuned to a syndicated talk show, another to an infomercial where a soap opera star was hawking a miracle-working face cream. The third was on a New Orleans station broadcasting late-breaking news.

Tori watched for several seconds. “You interrupted me to watch an update on the Royale Trucking Company shootings? Unless the fugitive is presently in the women’s sauna without a towel, why is this my problem?” She turned back to Mrs. Perkins, whose face had gone beet red. Tori thought maybe she should have asked for only five more squats.

“It’s your friend,” Amber the receptionist said. “Honor? They think she’s been kidnapped.”

Tori looked quickly at Amber, then back at the TV screen. That’s when she recognized Honor’s house as the one behind the reporter who was doing a report “live from the scene,” as the caption across the bottom of the screen informed the audience.

Astonished, she watched for several seconds before realizing that the audio was muted. “Oh my God, what’s he saying?”

“What’s going on?” Mrs. Perkins puffed.

Tori ignored her and wove her way through the workout equipment toward the wall of televisions. She grabbed a remote and aimed it at the set. After several tries, she got the sound on and adjusted the volume as high as it would go.