Page 102 of Born for Starlight

That left three of us in the room, Bruno, Matthew, and me. Deke was out somewhere, scouting but not on the net.

I let out a long breath and sagged into the cushions.

"We have a problem," I heard Billy say quietly in my ear. "Woman just showed up at the rear in an Escalade. Dressed to kill. I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I'm ninety-nine percent sure it's Angelica's friend Layla. What the fuck, Angelica?"

My heart dropped. Two days ago, I'd have had something catty to say about the outfit. Now all I felt was afraid for her.

Matthew sat down on the sofa by my legs. I turned to him.

"Is she going to be all right?"

"She knows what she's doing."

"Can you send her a text?" I hated how hopeful I sounded.

"No, I can’t. Phones and weapons most likely get confiscated at the door. If they weren’t, a text from me would blow her cover."

So, she'd walked in there with nothing. No phone, no weapon, no way to call for help. Straight into a room full of the men she'd spent six years trying to obliterate, instead, probably serving drinks to them. My stomach rolled again, and I breathed through it.

"Boss." Beto's voice came through the link. "Got a text. It's from our friend, Pedro. He must be one of the inside men Layla mentioned. My guess is he's been embedded for a while as staff. That's why he still has a phone."

I remembered at the fish market, over her coffee, Layla had told Matthew one or two friends would be working the event. Pedro. So, one of the friends had a name.

"What does it say?" Matthew asked.

"Eight o’clock start. Thirteen stock. Auditório. Eleven dogs."

Stock.

"The school auditorium. It’s the outbuilding across the yard," Matthew said. "Ferraz walked me right past it."

Thirteen girls, and somewhere in that outbuilding a man had typed the word stock without thinking twice. Even one of the good guys was so used to this horror, that he used that word.

"Anything else?"

"No."

Matthew looked at his watch. "We roll at eight thirty."

"The hell with eight thirty." Jase, hot in my ear. "It starts at eight. You want to stand around for half an hour while they sell kids?"

"Nobody will be taken tonight." Matthew's voice stayed level. "House rule at these things. Once it starts, the doors stay sealed. Nobody leaves until it's over. Not buyers, not staff, nobody. The girls don't move until the end, which means the girls are safest after it starts. At eight thirty every buyer is inside that room with the doors locked, and so are we. We take all of it at once."

"Eleven guards," Bruno said.

"Which is why Simon and Billy come off the roof. With them we've got the numbers." Matthew glanced at me, then away. "I don't just want tonight. I want the men who run these. All of them. This is the closest anyone's ever gotten."

"And the buyers?" I asked.

"Hopefully, Layla hasn’t just been hired by Costa. She’s been hired by somebody higher. She points them out, we take them, we squeeze them for the network. The routes, the money, the names above the names."

"But what about the buyers?" I asked again. "The scum sitting in that room to buy children. What happens to them?"

Matthew looked right at me.

"They’ll be taken care of."

He was lying. I could see it on his face.