THEY SEARCHED THE WAREHOUSE. The main floor first, a vast open space clogged with empty boxes and broken furniture, detritus. The manufacturing floor, dusty and abandoned.
Just off the main room was a bathroom. Traces of white powder on the sink. Cocaine. There was a small office, too, bottles of high-end booze and a futon bed. Dirty sheets. More cocaine. Condoms.
“Someone’s been spending time here, anyway,” Stevens said.
Windermere nodded. “So where the hell are the girls?”
Stevens walked back out to the main room. Studied the floor, the walls. There was a discolored patch of wall, freshly repainted. Stevens walked over and pressed on it, felt it give. A fresh panel of drywall, about four feet wide. Stevens traced the outline of the panel, pulled it away, found a heavy wooden door behind, a big padlock.
“Shit,” he said. “A key. Bolt cutters. Anything.”
“Watch out.” Windermere pushed him aside, raised her Glock. Stevens ducked away, heard the gunshot, the splinter of steel. “Boom,” Windermere said, reholstering her gun. “Who needs keys?”
They cleared the shards of lock free and unlatched the door. Then they looked at each other. “Ready, partner?” Windermere said.
“Hurry,” Stevens told her. “For God’s sake.”
She pulled the latch clear and swung open the door. A dark passage. A basement stairwell. Bingo, Stevens thought. Here’s the mother lode.
The stairs were creaky. They were creepy. The basement smelled of must and mildew and stale urine and worse. Stevens took the steps slow, kept his hand at his holster. Hit the bottom and stopped cold.
“Holy,” he said. “Holy shit.”
A low ceiling. Dim lighting. More boxes. And girls everywhere.
Teenagers, all of them, every girl in a short dress and heels, heavy makeup. They huddled together beneath bare lightbulbs, the last of the Dragon’s human cargo. Stevens stared at them, couldn’t move at first, couldn’t help them. Just stood there and thought about his daughter, and felt suddenly, overwhelmingly, tired.