“Who was the woman?”
We were on I-15, headed south. Olivia didn’t know the Hacienda’s exact address—she never drove there herself—but she said she would recognize the area when she saw it again.
I glanced at her in the rearview mirror—she sat awkwardly with her wrists still tied behind her back, the same posture she’d had ever since I pulled her out of the trunk ten minutes after leaving Stephanie’s—but didn’t answer.
“Are you going to at least tell me who you are? Like, why do you care about any of this?”
“Why do I care that men are getting scammed out of their life savings and that women are being abducted to become sex slaves?”
Another glance at the rearview mirror showed her grinning.
“You didn’t even know about the women until last night. So that means all you cared about was the scam.”
My fingers, tightening on the steering wheel. I loosened them without a word. She was right, of course, but I didn’t want her to see it.
“I can’t believe Allister is dead.” Olivia was staring out her window at a plane hanging low in the sky as it made its descent into Harry Reid International. “I know you probably don’t believe it, but I loved him.”
The rush hour traffic was predictably heavy, and I stayed in the left lane, passing the slower-moving vehicles.
“Do you think it’s easy for me to look the way I do? That might sound conceited, but I’m being serious. Ever since I was a little girl, people would tell me I was pretty. They’d tell other girls my age they were pretty too, but there was something different about how they said it to me. As though I was extra pretty. And then I got older, and people started looking at me differently. The boys I used to be friends with all wanted to be my boyfriend, and men . . . I could always tell that the men were watching me when they thought I wasn’t paying attention. I’d turn around and they’d look away, act like they were checking their phones or whatever. By the way, you’re going to want to take the exit coming up on the right.”
As I merged onto Route 160, Olivia continued.
“My mother was beautiful too, but . . . she wasn’t as beautiful as me. I knew it, and she knew it, but we never actually talked about it until I’d reached high school and I was getting stares wherever I went. My mother told me that there was a power in my beauty and that not many women knew how to harness that power in the right way. Many women, she said, squandered that power, and she didn’t want that for me.”
I glanced again at the rearview mirror.
“Is there a point to any of this?”
“I’m trying to explain to you.”
“Trying to explain what?”
“How I ended up here. Why I’m sitting in the back of this car with my hands bound like some criminal.”
Her tone edged on the border of outrage, and it almost made me laugh.
“You don’t think you’re a criminal?”
“I’m an entrepreneur, just like Allister was.”
“If you say so.”
“Allister wasn’t lying about my SAT scores. I did have a perfect score. I got all A’s in high school. I could have gone to any college in the country.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because look at me. No matter what field I went into, no matter how well I excelled, I wouldn’t be taken seriously. By some, sure, but not by the majority of my peers. All they would see are my looks, and they’d think that that’s how I managed to get to where I was. Don’t you see now how it’s a burden? I could find the cure for cancer and the only thing people would notice in the news articles would be how I looked.”
“Wow,” I said. “How terrible for you.”
“Allister loved me for who I was. He respected me for who I was. Yes, okay, the first time he saw me he was attracted to me based purely on physical desire. What man wouldn’t? But pretty soon he realized there was so much more there. And unlike other men, who just wanted to fuck me, he actually wanted to help me become something more.”
I still wasn’t quite sure where Olivia was headed with this. I’d thought she was just talking for the sake of talking, but maybe not. I eyed her again in the rearview mirror.
“Allister wasn’t the top of the chain, was he? Who’s above him?”
She stared back at me in the rearview mirror, those dark eyes flat and emotionless.
“I’ll never tell. Not you, not the police, not anyone.”
“Because of loyalty?”
“No. Because of power.”
I thought about telling her that I was sure I could make her talk. That I’d been trained in making people talk to the point they begged for death. That it wouldn’t take long at all for her to tell me whatever I wanted. But then I remembered my goal when I’d started this whole thing—to not hurt or kill anyone if I could help it—and I also remembered my promise to Stephanie.
Olivia leaned forward slightly again to survey the highway.
“We’re almost there. Make a left up at this light.”
Minutes later, we were on the edge of the desert. The businesses and houses had all dropped away. A road stretched out in front of us, leading into nowhere.
I eased the M3 to a halt.
“What is this?”
“This is how you get to the Hacienda.”
“You’re joking.”
“Several years back, a company purchased over eight hundred acres of land to put in a subdivision. The company built a model home toward the base of the mountain. Allister had toured the home and loved how it was so isolated. He purchased the entire eight hundred acres, plus the house.”
“Bullshit.”
“Don’t believe me if you want. But the girls are kept at the house at the end of this road.”
“If the house is in the middle of nowhere, why not have these parties there?”
“They did, a few times. But the house isn’t as big as the ones close to LA. Besides, most VIPs live in LA and they don’t want to travel farther than they have to. Occasionally customers will come out to view the girls in person, but mostly it’s just online.”
“Customers,” I echoed flatly. “You make it all sound so legitimate.
“I told you: I’m an entrepreneur.”
“Uh-huh. And how do I know you’re not lying to me? For all I know, you’re leading me into a trap.”
“You’re right, you don’t know.” She smiled at me in the rearview mirror. “Tell me—last night when you found me in the SUV and I was crying hysterically, did you believe it?”
“That you would tell me everything as long as I spared your life? Not really.”
“Hmm. I guess I overplayed it a bit, didn’t I?”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because the same thing applies now. I don’t want to die. I’m too young. I’d rather take my chances with the law.”
“You think you’ll manage to survive that?”
Olivia grinned back at me again, this time with an extra edge.
“Of course. I have friends in high places.”