Cross the Line (Alex Cross 24)

The woman with the beauty mark made a tsk noise, said, “You know nothing.”

“I know Stavros is dead,” Bree said. “I know Bogrov is in handcuffs.”

That set off a lot of chatter among the women.

Bree waited for a few moments and then spoke directly to Ms. Beauty Mark. “I am DC Metro Police chief of detectives Bree Stone. I’m telling you the truth. You are no longer in danger.”

Ms. Beauty Mark’s upper lip curled, “We know the better. You get some, maybe, but not all. I’m telling you the truth. This is so much the bigger than you think. So, smart thing for me? For us? We don’t talk to no one. A lawyer comes. They always come.”

“I know what you’ve been through,” Bree said. “How you were told you’d have to work for four or five years to pay off your debt for being smuggled into America. I know some of you rode in refrigerated cars and saw people freeze to death and that you were brought here to be sex slaves. Am I right?”

Many of the women would not look at her. None of them replied.

Bree almost quit, but then she gestured at the mansion and said, “All this? That’s the FBI’s business. I’m here for other reasons, for someone who may have been a friend of yours. I’m here for Edita Kravic.”

That caused quite a few of them, including the woman with the beauty mark, to raise their heads.

“Why for Edita?” she said. “You see her?”

“I’m sorry,” Bree said, seeing the yearning in her eyes and coming closer. “Edita’s dead. She was murdered.”

The woman acted as if she’d been slapped, and then her hand flew to her mouth and she began to sob.

Bree went over to her. “You knew Edita?”

“I’m her sister,” she said through tears. “Her baby sister, Katya.”

Chapter

86

Katya Kravic dissolved into misery. Bree stood back as her friends came over to console her. When Katya finally calmed down, her eyes puffy and bloodshot, she lit a cigarette shakily.

“Can you help me?” Bree asked.

“Can you help me?” Katya said. “All of us?”

“I’ll try.”

“They’ll throw us out of country,” Katya said. “We’re not supposed to be here. At least not on the immigration computers.”

“A lot depends on your cooperation,” Bree said. “The more you cooperate, the more likely a judge is to look at you favorably.”

Katya thought about that. Spoke to one of her friends, who nodded.

“What do you want to know?” she said.

“Tell me about Edita.”

Katya said her older sister had come first, almost eight years ago. The agreement Edita had struck with the Russian broker was similar to the terms Alex had heard from the woman he and Sampson rescued from the refrigerated trucks at the tobacco-shed massacre site.

In return for five years of her life, Edita got false documents and a way into the United States. She was moved up and down the East Coast for two years before finding a permanent position with the Phoenix Club.

According to Katya, the club was not a high-volume brothel. Members paid a fifty-thousand-dollar initiation fee to join, and ten thousand a year in dues thereafter. In return, they got access to the club, its facilities, all the booze and illicit drugs they wanted, and the company of the women.

“What happened when Edita’s five years were up?” Bree asked.

“They gave her back her passport and even gave her a green card, and then they said she had a choice,” Katya said. “Leave, make a new life. Or become part of the management.”