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After another pause, the investment banker said, “You don’t know where you got this, Phillip, but her company’s awash in debt and she’s personally on the hook for four hundred and twenty-five million with balloon payments coming due in three months.”

Luster whistled. “Four hundred and twenty-five million!”

Bree’s heart had pounded. There it was. Frances Duchaine was under big-time financial pressure. It could explain the human-trafficking allegations. It could explain why she’d take the risk.

By the time she reached her hotel, Bree believed in her gut that it was all real, that the instincts of whoever was paying her were dead on, that Duchaine was the worst kind of criminal, a creature who ruthlessly preyed on human foibles, desires, and weaknesses.

But who is paying me? And why?

She put those questions aside as she changed her clothes, ordered room service, and settled down at her laptop to write her report for Elena Martin’s eyes only. Bree forced herself to be cold while she wrote; she noted which statements were facts supported by documents and which were conjecture, and she was succinct in her conclusions.

“While I have no concrete proof yet of Duchaine’s ties to sex and human trafficking,” she wrote, “it is clear now that her personal and business lives are indeed threatened by crushing debt and looming payments due, which could easily have created the need for her secret life of crime.”

Bree marked the report Urgent and e-mailed it to her boss just as her dinner arrived: a medium rare New York strip steak, steamed broccoli and mushrooms, sweet potato fries, and a glass of red wine. She finished her meal and was carrying the rest of her wine back to the desk when her phone rang.

Phillip Henry Luster.

“Hello, Phillip,” she said.

“I hope you believe in the law of attraction because it has just been proven once again,” he said, the din of a bar in the background.

“Okay?”

“I just met one of Frances’s victims, though he doesn’t know he’s her victim, of course. His name is Brad Jenkins and he’s from Louisville, Tennessee. He’s twenty-three and very sweet and handsome but not handsome enough, you know?”

“You’re saying he fits the pattern.”

“Plus or minus,” Luster said. Jenkins had been spotted by a Duchaine representative in Nashville three years ago. Like the others, he had been lured to New York with vague promises of a modeling career with the fashion designer, only to be told that his looks weren’t quite up to snuff. They recommended a lower-jaw advancement, a nose job, and veneers, for which he now owed close to one hundred thousand dollars.

“Let me guess,” Bree said. “He was approached by someone named Victor after Frances left him hanging.”

“You’re clairvoyant,” Luster said. “Brad now works for Victor as a gigolo.”

“Can he give me Victor?”

“Better than that. Brad said Victor has been working on Brad’s behalf with none other than Paula Watkins, who has agreed to reconsider his portfolio at a special gathering Wednesday evening at Paula’s place on the Upper East Side.”

“Define special gathering.”

“Victor, who will be there, told Brad that the gathering will include other aspiring models whom Paula and Frances are considering for international work. And there will be talent agents from overseas.”

“International work. Talent agents from overseas.”

“Exactly my thinking,” Luster said. “This could be it, Bree. The sex-slave auction.”

CHAPTER 45

BREE FELT AS JITTERY and excited as she used to when a big case came together and the possibility of arrests was visible on the horizon.

Would Watkins be this bold? Have a sex-slave auction right in her own home? “How big is this place?” she asked Luster.

“Two adjoining brownstones Paula opened up and renovated—quite a space,” he said. The noise of the bar in the background diminished.

“How many people can it hold?”

“I was there once for a party of fifty and it felt roomy.”

“So the place could accommodate more,” Bree said.

“You can’t get in there,” Luster said. “They’d turn you away at the door.”

“But not you,” Bree said. “You could get in. Be my fly on the wall.”

“Not without an invitation, I couldn’t.”

“You’ll be Brad’s date. Someone in the biz looking out for his well-being, eager to meet Victor, perhaps as a customer.”

“I don’t—”

“You got Brad’s phone number, I assume?”

“Well, yes.”

“You’ll ask him, then?”

The fashion designer hesitated, then said, “Oh, why not?”

“Last question: Would you wear a wire?”

“A wire?” Luster said and chuckled. “Bree, you just gave me goose bumps.”

Luster said he’d text Bree if his young friend agreed to bring him along to Paula Watkins’s special gathering. Bree figured the odds were against Luster getting inside. But you never knew unless you tried.

After they hung up, Bree stood and paced the hotel room. She glanced at her watch. Eight thirty. Alex’s flight had left Boston at eight, which meant they couldn’t talk until at least eleven.