Page 75 of The Vigilant

“It didn’t sit well when I went to the site and you needed an access code to create a profile. The code on the card I had was expired. They are one-time use. But I put out word through my network to keep an eye out for those cards.”

Robyn’s network consisted of maids and janitors and bellmen and greeters and Uber drivers—anyone who could easily be invisible but who also could observe everything.

“The reports started filing in from all over the city, which made one thing clear: not every girl who got a card went missing, but in every instance after that where a woman went missing and left all her things behind, there was one of these cards,” she said, shifting her weight. “One of my girls found a card in the Airbnb she was cleaning and asked the woman where she’d gotten it; that’s how we found the connection to the White Pearl and Kang.”

“And Mara?” I probed. “Why’d you pick her to do this? She was new.”

“She volunteered. She said she’d bought weed off Kang in the past and he’d flirted with her, so she knew he’d take the bait,” she said and added with a sigh, “I wanted to send someone else, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Said she couldn’t stand by when she could stop men from preying on women.”

“So, her task was to get close to him, get one of these cards, and figure out what was happening to the women.”

“Yeah,” Robyn continued. “It took a little bit. Kang might act like a fool, but he’s not exactly an idiot, and we both started to suspect he might be more involved with the site than just handing out cards.”

“What do you mean more involved?”

“Kang has a programming degree. Mara said some of the comments he made…it seemed like he might’ve been the one to develop the app.”

My hand fisted at my side.

“Whether he did or not wasn’t critical to me, not like finding the missing women was. Finally, Kang signed her up on the site. She had a separate cell phone that I gave her to communicate with me, and she was able to send me screenshots of the site and her profile. I had a feeling we were onto something, and I worried that passing messages would get too risky, so at our last meeting, I installed a wireless mirror trace on her phone that she could activate so I could watch everything remotely.”

“You were following her the whole time.” The whole time we were looking for her.

“She told me about Sutton, and I gave her a choice, Tynan. She never had to do any of this.”

“But she wanted to.” Sounded like someone else I knew.

“I told her she had to get Sutton out of the picture or it could put the both of them in danger.”

“That’s why she said the things she did.” Sutton’s throat bobbed. “Why she pushed the exact buttons she did.”

I grunted and then took a slow inhale.

“You want something for the pain?” Rorik asked.

“No.” I didn’t want any more of that shit that clouded my brain.

“I was tracking Mara through her phone when she went to the club that night. User923X had been messaging her, saying they would meet soon.”

“The same one who messaged me,” Sutton added, like I’d ever forget the username of the man who saw her naked.

I didn’t register the sound that came from my chest until I saw Rorik’s brow lift, intrigued.

“Where did they take her?”

“They have a secret passageway that connects through the neighboring buildings to an apartment building a couple blocks away.”

“So, you’ve known where she is this whole time?” I asked even though it wasn’t her fault. There was no way she would’ve known Sutton was stubborn and undeterred when it came to finding her best friend.

“I did,” she answered, the ripple of tension through her fingers telling me everything I needed to know.

“But not anymore…”

“I messaged and told her I’d pull her out that night at the club, but she insisted she wanted to stay. She didn’t want any more women to go missing,” Rob said. “She was moved to the apartment building, but then nothing happened. She couldn’t leave, but she was also pampered. Fed. Facials. Massages. Vitamins. But no sign of the man she’s been communicating with. She told me they kept telling her that she would be ready and presented to him soon.”

Her hand flexed and released, now at her side. I gave her a hard time about recruiting Mara because I knew how much Mara meant to Sutton…and I knew the kind of things Robyn was involved in in the city. The risks her girls took. But I also knew that Rob would gladly give her life to protect any of them when it came down to it, so the fact that Mara had stayed and was now in danger could only be crushing her from the inside out.

“Presented? Like some kind of auction?”

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