Page 5 of Logan

“All right, Hollingsworth. What’d you want?”

Taking out the picture Sebastian had given me from my pocket, I slid it over to her. “His name is Clay Dahler. This is the last known picture of him, but he should be about twenty-three now. Rumor is that he may have been spotted at your club.”

She didn’t even bother looking at the picture, and I snatched it back before she could tap the ashes from her cigarette on it.

“I might recognize that name, but why should I tell you?”

Smoothing out the picture to make sure it wasn’t damaged, I carefully stored it back in my pocket. “Because if you don’t, I’ll bring the DEA down on you. That patron out there who spoke to me was obviously tweaking, and they probably weren’t the only one.”

Her fist clenched hard around her cigarette holder, and she slammed the end of the long thin stick into the surface of her desk. It was made of metal, and actually managed to splinter the wood.

“I don’t deal drugs in my club.”

“No, you just deal other people’s flesh. But you and I both know it doesn’t matter whether you do something or not. The only thing that matters is if I can make a case that you do. If there’s one person on drugs here, then there’s probably more, and if there’s enough, then I can probably make a case that you’re dealing.” I held up my phone so she could see it, with the correct number to my contact at the DEA already punched in and my finger hovering over the send button.

I waited, letting my silence communicate that my next move was her choice.

“Fine,” she sighed as she pulled her cigarette holder out of the desk and brushed away the wood splinters left behind. “Someone named Clay Dahler did come to my club looking for work, but it was five years ago. I only remember him because he used his real name. Most people in this line of work go by an alias.”

Five years ago, Clay would have been eighteen. Assuming the same pedophile ring I was hunting down took him, then the timing suggested he had grown too old for them and been kicked out.

But if that was the case, why didn’t he go home?

Why was he still missing?

I almost slapped myself for asking that question, even if it was only in my head. The boy—a man now—had been held captive by traffickers for four years. There was no telling what state he was in, physically or mentally, and he probably wasn’t thinking straight.

Plus, the traffickers had probably filled his head with lies about his family, either claiming they had giving him up, or wouldn’t want him back. I’d seen it before. It was a common tactic for keeping young victims under control.

I took a deep breath to get my emotions back under control, and nearly choked when I inhaled Dinah’s secondhand smoke.

“All right. So, he was here. What happened?”

She shrugged, looking far too nonchalant for someone who had literally stabbed her cigarette holder through the table a moment ago. “Nothing happened. He wanted a job, but I turned him down. Eighteen isn’t old enough to work here legally.”

We both knew what she wasn’t saying. Whether or not her workers were of legal age didn’t matter to her. The real reason she’d turned him down was that he didn’t look old enough to pass for twenty-one.

I was starting to piece a timeline together in my mind. He’d gotten away from his captors, either by escaping or being kicked out, and gone looking for work. Out on the street with no papers or official documents, getting a proper job would have been difficult, so he’d probably turned to the only work he knew.

“So, you turned him down. Then what?”

Tapping out the last ashes from her depleted cigarette, she stored the holder back in its drawer in her desk. “Look. The kidwas scared. Obviously running from something, and from the way he was acting, it seemed like the people he was afraid of weren’t far behind. I advised him to keep running and put some more distance between himself and whatever was haunting him. He used a computer here to book a bus ticket out of the state.”

She paused, obviously enjoying my frustration and impatience.

“The ticket was booked for San Francisco.”

“San Francisco,” I repeated. It was the opposite direction I’d expected Clay to go. He had been kidnapped in Maryland, and I’d hoped he’d headed in the direction of home, even if he never actually returned.

Instead, he had fled in the opposite direction as far as the continent would allow.

If he had a passport, he could even be in another country by now.

I couldn’t get ahead of myself. If he’d left the country, there was nothing I could do. My jurisdiction on this case ended at the border. Technically, because the case wasn’t on the FPA’s roster, even hunting Clay down to San Francisco was beyond my authority. I’d have to pursue him on my own time.

Luckily, I had plenty of vacation and sick days built up, so Mason shouldn’t be too mad if I suddenly took off work for a while.

“Is there anything else?”

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