“Mmhmm,” I say with a nod, pretending to be following along.
“Basically, I mean he’s not trying to pull any tricks in keeping me from being able to figure out where your Liv’s cell phone is, from what I can tell,” he goes on. “Between triangulating the location of her phone, provided it’s still on, and figuring out where this Will guy is sending his emails from, this is child’s play. You sure this guy is doing something shady? Take a left at this light.”
“Not everyone is as skilled as you, Felix,” I say candidly, and Felix rolls his eyes as we take yet another turn down the winding streets. What I meant was that plenty of criminals did just fine without the help of technology, and even so, sometimes a light touch did the trick just fine. That, and his question made me uncomfortable — because no, I was not sure.
“Anyway, I triangulated the signal, and I’ve just about —voila! Got an address for you.”
“No dramatic pauses,” I say with an arched brow.
“56 Rue Alfred de Vigny in the Parc Monceau area,” he says, and I feel my mouth grow cold at the name of the address. It’s a respectable area of Paris, to be sure, but that makes the significance of that address no less familiar and dangerous.
“Uh...Max?” he asks, tilting his head and pushing his thick-rimmed glasses up his nose. “You alright? You look a little tense,” he says as he eyes my tightening knuckles on the steering wheel.
“No, Felix,” I say slowly, taking a breath and resisting the urge to carve a path of destruction through traffic to reach our destination faster. “I’m afraid this little excursion of ours is about to get complicated.”
We speed towards the Parc Monceau, tires screeching as I take sharp turns, and Felix grips the safety handle of the car, trying to keep his computer steady. “What’s the big deal? You’ve got your missing students, they’re probably doing drugs with some locals in a fancy apartment or something.”
“I recognize that address,” I say, my voice tense with the anger I’m holding back. “Felix, you did some digging on my past, didn’t you?”
The question throws him off, and he stammers a few syllables before I cut him off.
“You know some of my background, I have no doubt. You’ll also know a thing or two about the Russian mob’s activity in Paris, I’m certain. What you may not know is that this address is where the Bratva established a base of operations to run their human trafficking ring here in France.”
Felix paled as we turned onto Rue Alfred de Vigny, and he licked his lips nervously. “B-but that’s impossible,” he stammers, “the Russian mob hasn’t had a sex slave ring in Paris for years — I mean, I keep an ear out for this kind of thing, just for safety’s sake and all.” He looks uneasy, but I don’t bother casting him a glare. I know I’m not the only person Felix has been helping from among the Parisian underworld’s denizens. He’s a pencil-neck and a coward, but he’s not a particularly predictable man, and he knows his skills are valuable to those willing to pay the right price. Despite his close calls with death in the past.
“Police databases have some kind of files on every ring that’s active in Paris, and they’ve got agents deep undercover, but there’s nothing on a Bratva slave ring based out of Paris. I’m sure they’ve been inactive here for ages.” He pulls up a few more spreadsheets, scrolling through them while chewing his lip. “Right, see here, it says there was some kind of internal coup that ended the trafficking activity from within a few years ago. The slave ring’s ended, Max.”
“You’re right,” I say as we pull up at that old, familiar building, and I gaze up at the faded stone. “Because I’m the one who ended it.”
I turn off the car and step out, Felix fumbling to put his laptop away as he unbuckles his seatbelt and staggers out of the car, now casting nervous glances up at the building before us. The sky is overcast, gray clouds rolling overhead very quickly as wind blows above us. Felix follows me to the back of the car, where I pop the trunk.
“Well,” Felix says, wringing his hands, “okay, so if we know she’s here, and you think...well, what you think, then shouldn’t we call the police and have them investi-”
“No,” I snap, whirling around to look the man in the eye, my expression stony. “Felix, these girls are my responsibility — mine. It was me who took them from the comfort of their hometowns to come train in Paris. It was me who offered them everything when they never thought they’d get the chance to glimpse this thorny flower of a city. It was me in whom they put all their trust to guide them as they tried to make their homes here for the next few years. And it was me who saw the unbridled potential in them to be something more than they or their parents or their old teachers ever could have begun to imagine,” I say, and I mean every word of it.