“Good to meet you, Dasha.”
“Beautiful day.”
“It really is. Thanks for meeting me.”
“Of course. That tip about that whorehouse you gave me panned out.”
“What tip?”
She laughed. “You didn’t even realize, did you?”
“I guess not; no.”
“You mentioned a whorehouse you investigated. Well, you were right. It was filled with girls.”
“Holy shit,” I said, shocked. “I was in there.”
“I know. I’d lie low for a few weeks if I were you.”
“What are you talking about?”
She smiled at me again. “Cassidy, what do you know about the Barone crime family?”
“They’re the biggest mob family in the Midwest. They control this city, basically.”
“That’s right. But what about their enemies?”
“The Russians.” I shrugged. “That’s it, really.”
“Wrong. There’s one more group, a group of people dedicated to stopping certain barbaric practices.”
“What do you mean?”
“They call us the Spiders.” She looked out across the park. “We adopted that name. It suits us, I guess. We’re black widows, women killers. We kill to save the innocent from those bastards.”
“You’re part of a gang? I assumed you were one of the girls.”
“I was, a while back. But someone saved me, and now I save others.”
“And you call yourselves the Spiders?” I started to get my voice recorder from my pocket.
She held up her hand. “Don’t record.”
“Please, you have to let me. This is so important.”
“I’m telling you too much, mostly because that tip was so good. We saved a lot of girls.”
“At least tell me I can use this in my article.”
“You can, but I wouldn’t. You’ll become a target almost instantly.”
“I’m not afraid.”
She looked at me seriously, frowning. “You should be afraid, Cassidy. Very afraid. That’s why I came today.”
“To warn me?”
“To warn you,” she confirmed. “Lie low. Don’t pry into anything for a little while, at least until this blows over.”
“What did you do?”
“Like I said, we saved some lives.”
“I can’t let this go. This is too big. There’s another gang of women out there saving sex slaves. It’s just unreal.”
She stood up. “It’s real, Cassidy. We’re not winning, but we will be soon. You need to take care of yourself. We’ll take care of everyone else.” She began to walk away.
I stood up. “Wait. Please. Tell me more. How can I contact you again?”
“You can’t,” she said, waving. “Good luck, Cassidy. Don’t ignore my warning.” She continued walking, and I watched her go, staring at her back.
My mind was practically reeling from that short meeting. I had assumed she was just another interesting informant. From our single conversation on the phone, I could tell she knew a thing or two, so I had guessed she had been a slave at some point.
But she was so much more. If she’d been telling the truth, she was some kind of freedom fighter. Not just her, but a whole group of these girls who were fighting for the freedom of sex slaves, fighting against one of the most powerful organized crime groups in the whole country.
That was so freaking badass.
I couldn’t help but feel nervous, though. She came to this meeting only to warn me, she had said. We’d set the meeting up at the end of our conversation, and I was guessing if my information had fallen through, she would have skipped. But she had come, and to tell me to lie low.
I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know how to lie low, not now that I knew something so huge.
There was just no way I could back down now.
The Spiders. I sat back down, taking deep breaths. I wondered how many people in the city even knew about these people. I had never heard of them, and I’d read almost everything about sex trafficking in the city that I could possibly get my hands on. Nobody had mentioned any Spiders anywhere.
I had an incredibly important tip here. I couldn’t let it go; this story was just too important.
As I stood up to head home, my phone started vibrating. I pulled it out of my pocket and frowned at the number.
This had been a weird enough day already. I figured it couldn’t get any weirder.
“Hello?” I said.
“Jessica.” That voice. It hit me like a bite of ice between my teeth.
“Rafa,” I said. “Uh, hi.”
“I was thinking about you.”
“Were you?”
“I was thinking about our unfinished business. Have you been thinking about the way I pressed you against that door?”