Vicki Pettersson - The Taken

“Dennis said you guys snuck into an illegal brothel.”

Her head shot up. “You already spoke to Dennis?”

“I need all the facts if I’m going to represent you.”

“I don’t need representation, ” she spat, twisting the word. “My best friend was murdered while I waited only yards away! Those are the facts!”

“Please lower your voice.”

“Right,” she said bitterly. “Paul Raggio’s first rule of decency and decorum. Don’t make a scene.” Don’t make a mess. Don’t make a real effort when phoning in an emotion would do.

Yet he surprised her by putting a hand on her knee. “I’m trying to help.”

Kit sat back and tried to steady her breathing. When she thought her voice would hold, she looked up. “It wasn’t just an illegal brothel. It was a movable operation. Truckers let each other know about it online.”

Hearing the explanation aloud didn’t make it sound any better. Paul’s answering silence made it significantly worse.

“Look, Katherine-” he finally said.

“Kit.”

Paul gave her his courtroom look, the one solely responsible for her falling out of love with him. “Truckers tweeting about their roadside lays is tawdry, but hardly breaking news, and if I know you, you were going after a bigger fish. What was it?”

“It” was a Pulitzer. At least, that’s what Nicole had said. Make our mark before we’re ancient… or at least thirty.

“Truckers passing time on the road in the most predictable way possible might not be news, but concrete proof that judges and councilmen are passing the same women between them is prize-winning reporting.”

Paul leaned forward, the sweeping angles of his face hardening into calculated thought. “What do roadside hookers have to do with Nevada politics?”

“Good question. Though not one I was even asking. Not at first.” Kit wasn’t interested in politics, but people. What they did and why. Human nature fascinated her, and this had started out as a human-interest story-on johns, their habits, and why they’d even use hookers when they presumably had wives and girlfriends waiting at home. “In order to find out, we put an ad out on Gregslist.”

Paul’s brows lifted high. “And these guys talked to you?”

“Of course not,” Kit scoffed, but that hadn’t deterred Nicole and her. It was too fascinating an idea, and Kit was too curious, to simply let it go. Especially after Nic came up with the idea of posing as a hooker just to get a chance to talk to one of them. “But she didn’t catch any action until she started playing down in age.”

“Gee, what a surprise. Pretend you’re a hooker, get a revved-up guy alone in a hotel room, and then ambush him with a camera and a legal pad. That is a good way to get killed.”

“We’re not stupid, Paul,” she said, back on the defense. “We weren’t meeting a john. Another prostitute answered the listing. She warned us we were encroaching on already staked territory.”

“Gregslist has street corners?”

Kit shook her head, remembering. “You should have seen this message, Pauly. It was full-on text-ese. Whoever this girl was, she should’ve been giggling over school dances, not sexting strangers.”

“Underage?”

“That was our impression.”

Paul leaned back, crossing his arms. “Maybe she’s illiterate. Or just playing the juvie for extra dough.”

“We considered both. But then she sent us this.” Kit drew a printout from the handbag at her side.

His eyes widened at the names on the list. He’d probably been hobnobbing with half of them just hours before.

“And that’s just some of them,” Kit said, pleased she’d managed to surprise him. “She promised more if we met in person, but she wanted to verify we were legit first. After that, she swore to give us names that would make fat-cat heads roll.”

Paul sighed, and shot a glance at the girls straining to hear the conversation. They immediately burst into an uncontrolled fit of giggles. “Do you really have to talk like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like that, ” he said, straightening his jacket like it’d straighten Kit out as well.

“Embarrassing you in front of your groupies?” she asked, tilting her head. “Shall I revert to syllables they can sound out?”

“I’m talking about all of it.” He let his gaze scan her body. “Your June Cleaver dress, Bettie Page bangs. The Hayworth face paint. The stupid car.”

Kit narrowed her eyes. “Watch your mouth, dear . That’s a Duetto.”

He scoffed and flexed. Giggles rose around the room like startled pigeons. “See, that’s what I mean. You weren’t born mid-century, Kit. Get over it. At your age, playing dress-up should be reserved for the bedroom.”

“This isn’t dress-up, Paul.”

“This” was her lifestyle… one that clashed violently with his post-yuppie materialistic drive.

“Makes it hard to take you seriously,” he mumbled, looking pointedly at her peep-toed heels.

“People are going to take me seriously, all right. The whole damned country will take me seriously when I bust this case wide open, vet every name on that list, and find out who killed my best friend!”

He shook his head and huffed out a dry laugh, no longer looking handsome. Again, the girls across from them didn’t notice. “Kit, the men on this list could own you a thousand times over.”

Kit clenched her teeth at the dig. She came from money, a fortune Paul once thought would marry perfectly with his ambitions, and he’d married her before realizing the entire inheritance had been poured back into her family’s newspaper. He’d even encouraged her to sell once he realized newspapers were worth less in the Internet age than the paper used for printing, but there was no way she’d ever do that.

“I’m a newsperson, Paul,” she’d told him. “It’s who I am as much as what I do.”

“Then go down with your ship,” he’d replied. “But you’re not taking me with you.”

And he’d taken himself right out of her life.

“Being rich doesn’t make a person immune to the law,” she said now, another familiar argument.

“There’s no proof that anyone on this list has broken the law,” Paul pointed out.

She knew that. And it would take considerable resources-time, energy, favors, and yes, money-to prove otherwise. For now, Kit had her reporter’s instincts. “I saw something.”

“Tonight?” He leaned in again when she nodded. “What?”

“A man… or his silhouette, at least. He was in the room with Nic. He pulled aside the curtain that overlooked the parking lot. It was like he was looking right at me.”

“Did you see his face?”

Kit shook her head. “No. Only his silhouette. But he was wearing a hat-not just a hat, but a stingy brim, like Sinatra-”

Paul leaned back, letting his hands drop. “Gimme a break.”

“I know the style, Paul,” Kit said, irritated. “Maybe he knew I was there, or just knows of my lifestyle, and he was taunting me.”

“Please don’t repeat that to anyone. I can see the sordid headlines now: Rockabilly Murderer Targets Street Whores.”

“Bravo,” Kit snapped. “You just insulted my life and my profession in one breath.”

“Voice,” Paul reminded her, gaze wandering. The girls across from him straightened, but his expression remained smooth as it traveled the rest of the room.

Kit pulled out her gold cigarette case, mumbling, fighting not to whack it against his pretty head.

“You can’t smoke in here.”

Kit blew a stream of smoke directly into his face, running her tongue along her top lip when he coughed. The girls gave her a nasty look.