Buying Beth

“What the fuck are you wearing?” Simon hisses, and for the first time in a long while I’ve achieved my happy place.

I’ve taken his calm from him.

Fucker looks livid with me as I stroll right into his office.

I’m surprised to see Andrew here as I walk over to one of the chairs by Simon’s desk.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I ask as I slap Andrew’s shoulder.

Rubbing his eyes, Andrew grouches, “Fuck if I know. This is your shit show, I’m guessing.”

“If you dare sit down…” Simon says to me in a cold voice.

“Gentlemen,” Lucifer says as he walks into the room. He looks like he’s just been on a vacation. He’s completely relaxed and not showing a single sign of it being three-thirty in the morning.

“Matthew,” Simon says to Lucifer, calling him by his real name.

“Boss,” I say.

James follows right behind him, heads to a chair and slumps down into it.

“Let’s all be seated and get this started,” Lucifer says.

Grinning right in Simon’s face, I lower myself into his plush office chair and scoot around until I find that perfect, comfortable spot.

Simon’s eyes are on fire as he looks to Lucifer and then back to me. I can see a small vein on his neck beginning to stand out.

I think the prissy fuck is about to have a stroke.

“Johnathan,” Lucifer starts as he sits in a chair facing us. “You seem to have fallen into a dirty world that has been darkening the corners of our city.”

Lifting my eyes, I ask, “What do you mean?”

Simon takes over. “While this is more speculation than I’m used to, I was able to gain CCTV footage surrounding your area of town. From the surrounding traffic light cameras, I have a better understanding of who took the girls from your bar.”

Turning his screen around, he shows a video of a white van driving along the road leading to my bar. The picture changes and then shows the same van at the light about a quarter of a mile away from it. My bar is on a long stretch of road with nothing else out there except for old, closed up industrial plants.

“This van was traveling on the street at the time intervals you gave me. No other vehicles came during that time except for a pickup truck that stopped at your bar.”

I look at the video of the pickup truck. “His name is Jack. He doesn’t have any part in this.”

“Agreed,” Simon says.

“So, what the fuck happened?” Andrew asks as he yawns again. “The girls have me getting up early for soccer practice this morning. Let’s hear the meaty bits.”

Simon and I quickly do a rundown of what happened three nights ago at the bar. We start from my point of view then Simon shifts it back to the white van.

“Here’s the interesting piece of the story,” Simon smiles. “The information you pulled from Yuri added pieces to the Russian puzzle we’ve been working on, but the white van adds a whole corner of the puzzle we didn’t know was taking shape.”

Lucifer asks, “How did we not know they would be doing a slave auction in my city?”

Raising my eyebrows, I look over at Andrew and James. This is news to us all, and from the pained frown on Simon’s face, I take it he’s not too happy about the answer he’s about to give.

“It’s a floating market. They’ve been doing this in Europe for the last century. They move their chattel from city to city. They often pick up their merchandise from the cities they plan to have an auction in. Their pickups start anywhere from a month ahead of time to a couple of days. It depends on the influx of what is being called for.”

“What are they selling?” James asks.

“Women and children. Never men. Females range from three years old to thirty. The male children no older than eleven.”

James looks like he’s turned green. He’s not the newest member to our family, but he’s from a different side of the criminal underworld. Previously, he worked as a very skilled cat burglar. I’m not sure where the ability to use a sniper weapon came from, but for both jobs, he is the one person I trust to get them done. He’s way too good with a mile of distance and a rifle to be a civilian, if you ask me. But he hasn’t dealt with the shit side of life like this. Things like these usually don’t come up on his side of the family’s business.

Rolling my neck in a circle, I hear it click twice in loud pops. “So what they don’t sell they take with them to the next city?”

“Yes. According to my sources, they move into an area a couple of days ahead of time. Either the Russians, or the local crew, target pickups days or weeks beforehand. Everything is planned ahead of time, if possible, from what I can see. They spend time with the local boss of the area, and then leave a nice cash incentive. Sometimes they’ll go back to the same city, if they did particularly well.”