“If there’s more of a connection,” Grace says, “I have not yet found it.”
“More? Berna’s alive! They’re posting her for sale. She’s alive!” he repeats.
“Bidding,” she says. “Your Mr. Kreiger is selling the girls, John.”
He turns away from her use of “your.”
“From what I can tell,” she says, “there are only seven people able to access this scrapbook. The ISPs for all seven are distributed among Thailand, Indonesia and Russia.”
Knox shakes his head. Over the past year she has seen Knox display any number of emotions—he’s not shy when it comes to expressing his feelings. But never like this. The closest was a minute before they entered Natuurhonig. He doesn’t speak what he’s thinking.
“Not yet,” she cautions. “Your Mr. Kreiger is useful to us.”
“Stop calling him mine.”
“Strangely enough, the phone call . . . his subsequent actions suggest he may not be directly involved in the knot shop. Just tangentially profiting by agenting their rugs and selling the castoffs. Berna is a liability. They mean to get her out of the city. We can be thankful they apparently have no plans to kill the girls.”
“They might be better off,” he says.
“No, John. You must not think so. As bad as this is, they can heal. They will heal.”
“You can’t know that. None of us know that.”
“Our focus,” she says strongly, “must remain on our objective. We will shut them down. I am not suggesting we overlook the more immediate concern for the well-being of the girls, but we must not allow ourselves to be distracted. One hand washes the other. We are close now.” She hears herself sound so clinical.
She has lost Knox. He’s retreated inside himself.
“Pressing Kreiger for information could backfire for a number of reasons.”
“Who said anything about pressing?”
“First, he may not know the identity of the person who called. Second, even should he know this person’s identity, he may be used as a firewalclass="underline" by the time he gives us what we are after, the person is long gone. We do not know the structure of their defenses.”
Knox broods, ready to take this out on her.
“My suggestion would be to monitor Kreiger closely. I am privy to all of his communications. If we learn of more dealings with the girls, of course we act. Presently, we continue to close in on the knot shop. Ultimately, getting Kreiger will not contribute to the endgame. It may, in fact, prevent it.”
“Shut up. Spare me the ‘Human Trafficking for Dummies’ speech, would you? Jesus! Listen to you! Is there a human being anywhere inside there?” He glares. He seems ready to strike her.
It is as if he has pulled the batteries out of her. Grace the robot winds down. Her eyes flicker once and shut tightly. She fights back the need to cry; she will not give him that.
“I’m sorry. That was . . . I didn’t mean that. I’m upset.”
She manages to nod.
“Seriously. I didn’t mean—”
“The next step,” she chokes out, clearing her throat, “is to trace the e-mail containing the photos—”
“An underling,” Knox says. “You don’t actually believe this guy would be sending the photos himself?”
“The routing may help us. They could have been taken with a mobile phone, for instance.”
“So?”
“So that would do it. With Hong Kong’s help, that might do it. Might lead us back to the nest.”
“The older girls?” Knox asks.
“One would assume it has to do with what we saw at the coffee shop. Kreiger’s stable at Natuurhonig. Perhaps we have it wrong about Kreiger.”
“He’s not putting them up for adoption,” Knox says cynically.
“They are experienced labor. We don’t know absolutely that they are destined for the sex trade. Perhaps we have that wrong.”
“Yeah. When are you ever wrong?” He intends it as a compliment, but it stings her just the same. Runs his hand through his hair. Upends the beer and gulps.
She lays a hand on his forearm, having no idea why she’s doing so. “It is progress, John. Think of it as progress.”
He looks down at her hand and she removes it.
Knox isn’t ten meters out of the wine bar when he hears, “I’ll take my phone.”
It’s Sonia’s voice.
Grace stops and turns to glance back but is smart enough to keep walking.
Knox doesn’t move, his mind on damage control. He processes Sonia’s request. There are a dozen things bad about this. No good can come of it.
He pats the various internal pockets of the Scottevest realizing that she beat him fair and square—which makes it all the more humiliating. He finds her iPhone zippered into one of his many pockets.
“I underestimated you,” he says. He underestimated the slyness of the wily reporter. Was sucked in by their intimacy and partnership, something that clearly escaped her.
At the purse museum she must have slipped her phone into Knox’s jacket. She then used its lost-phone app to follow him to the wine bar. She has observed him with another woman, and she will know by the way they interacted it was not romantic, but professional. That has triggered a dozen alarms in her.
“Have you interviewed her already? Is that it?” he asks. The one way he can see clearly to get around this.
“My phone.” Her hand extends. She’s not taking the bait.
By doing so, she gives him his hold on her. He grabs the phone more tightly.
“That was clever of you.” He wags the phone.
Her hand begins to tremble. Nerves, or fatigue? “Please.”
“The woman—this woman—has replaced the murdered EU worker.” He pauses. “That’s why I thought you might have already interviewed her.”
Her eyes twitch—at least he has her thinking.
“She has been nosing around herself. Has heard of someone who’s come in trying to make competition for these guys. Have you heard about that?”
“I’m not going to fight you for it. You’re a pig.”
“Interview her yourself!”
She gives him her backside.
He calls out. “Here!” He extends the bait, hoping to lure her back.
Her disgust calves off her. She can’t look at him.
“What you’re thinking; it’s not right.”
“Shut it.” She reaches for the phone and he acquiesces. She slips it into her purse. “You could have told me the truth the first time.”
“I am not a cop.”
“You . . . and I . . .”
“Sonia—”
Her eyes glaze over. She purses her lips, shakes her head, discouraged. “Shit.”
“You’re at risk. I can protect you.”
“You probably arranged all that, didn’t you? Set me up so I needed you.”
“Not true.”
“I thought I’d seen it all.”
“You’re at risk!”
“You’re a liar.”
And she’s gone. Words dance on the tip of his tongue, words he must swallow. She turns back. “If I see you . . . at any distance, I will have you arrested—if that is even possible.”
He lets her go. As long as her phone is left on, Hong Kong can, and will, track her. He arranges it with a call to Dulwich, who, in a rare moment of compassion, doesn’t rub it in. It’s Dulwich’s lack of condemnation that leaves the taste of crow. But there are other tastes that linger as well, ones he savored and is sorry to lose. He wants her back. Wants the knot shop closed down, Berna found and peace restored. A week with Sonia in Berlin or Bruges.
She’ll go to the houseboat and clear out what few belongings she’d collected. Or maybe she’ll avoid it altogether. If she returns to her apartment, he’ll have to intervene, but he assumes she’ll have the sense to find another houseboat, or a friend’s place.