After a moment of quiet, I heard the swish of Jade’s clothing as she came closer.
“Your Luke,” she said. “He searches for someone. Another girl in the life.”
My breath caught. All this time, Luke had been religiously following the rules. All this time, he had been going after Henri to find some other girl, some other prostitute. Not me. It shouldn’t have mattered. Shouldn’t have been a surprise—since when had I been anyone’s end goal? Since when had I been more than a way to pass the time? A stepping stone to the girl he really wanted. Yes, that was me.
I stood. “I will do you this favor.” I hardened my voice, infusing it with whatever influence, whatever face I held in my own right. “But don’t go to Allie’s house. Don’t ever bother her again.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I swear I don’t know anything,” Ella insisted, falling back onto the bed.
She hadn’t strayed from that line the entire time, probably because my interrogation technique amounted to some variation of Come on! Please?
I sighed. This was getting us nowhere. If Jade had lied, if she’d been wrong… But I didn’t think so. It made too much sense and hurt too damn much to be wrong.
“It would be easier to believe you,” I said, “if you told me anything useful. Who you are, what your name is. How did you end up in that hotel room?”
“This is stupid. I didn’t see any crime.”
But I could feel her relenting. My breath quickened. “Just tell me.” I played my trump card, since I had already figured out she had a weakness for sacrifice. “This is my ass in trouble too, remember?”
She flung her arm over her eyes—defeat. “Okay. So I’m with some friends, going to this party downtown. You have to be twenty-one to get in, but my friend hooked up with this guy who makes fake IDs. He was the one who told us about it, actually.”
I sat down cross-legged on the bed beside her. “Go on.”
“So we get there, and you know, it’s crazy loud. Everyone’s drinking a lot, smoking weed, and other stuff. I’m just standing around, and these guys kind of cornered me. At first I liked it. I guess I was flattered, but then I started to get scared. I didn’t know how to make them leave me alone. People were only a few feet away, but no one looked over, while those men were just…herding me along.”
Closing my eyes, I could almost see her uncertain smile, feel her nervous energy, smell the pungent smoke. I had been there myself, the teenager with too much curiosity and money for her own good. I’d been hit on, fended off the drunk and slightly violent, only to scamper away breathless. I had always been lucky on my wild excursions, like some sort of cosmic payment to balance out the unluckiness I found at home. But I already knew the ending to Ella’s story, and whatever had gone down, she hadn’t been blessed with the same unnatural immunity. She was too young, too inexperienced, like a tight bud just bloomed, unknowing of the world around her but more fragile than ever before.
“We ended up in this room.” She moved restlessly as she spoke. “It was kind of like what happened in the hotel room, except everything was dirtier and… Well, I guess that was the main difference.”
“There aren’t many differences in fucking men, but that’s an important one. That and tipping, so you can see why I prefer them rich.”
“I don’t want any sort of guy, rich or poor. Can’t I just stay here? It seems safe. I could…I don’t know, be the maid or something.”
Boy, what a visual. “I don’t think Philip needs that kind of temptation.”
“He doesn’t even like me,” she scoffed. Then, aggrieved, “I know, I know, they don’t have to like me to have sex with me.”
That brought a brief smile to my face. She was learning. “So how’d you end up with Henri?”
“They took me out the back, where there’s a bunch of men standing around a limo. The guys are pushing me forward, like here, we did it. This scary dude from the limo—I guess that’s Henri—he says, ‘Take her.’ The men pull me inside, but not before I saw them shoot the guys from the club. I was so freaked out, just like half crying and half screaming. Henri is cool as snow, asking me all these questions. What am I doing in a place like this. How have I been. First I thought he was going to take me home. Then when I realized he wasn’t going to help me, I thought he was going to… You know.”
Yeah, I knew, but it wasn’t like Henri to gangbang underage chicks in a nightclub. Even acquiring a girl that way seemed too lowbrow for him. Most escorts in Chicago would have killed to work with Henri for how much money he would make them. And status, because there was nothing a hooker longed for more than respect. Face, Jade would say.