Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) by Alexandra Sokoloff Page A

off? Anything at all?”
    Her anger flared up. “You think I wouldn’t have told you—”
    “I know,” he said.
    She pressed her fists to her forehead. When she spoke again it was more calmly.
    “No one’s confined here, but there’s a curfew. Janet says that the girls were all here at ten p.m. There’s a security alarm and she set it downstairs.”
    “So . . .”
    “So Jade got the code somehow and used it.”
    Piece of cake for someone like Jade, Roarke knew. A quick mind could be turned to criminal pursuits just as easily as it could be to problem solving in a mainstream profession.
    The question was about the timing. She’d been at the shelter for over two weeks, and according to Rachel she’d seemed content enough to stay. And as Rachel said, she wasn’t being confined against her will. So why the sudden need to leave?
    If not for the express purpose of killing DeShawn.
    Roarke had never believed in coincidence, although this case was messing with his head about it.
    “I need to talk to Ramirez’s other girls,” he said.
    Rachel stiffened again, and the anger was back in her voice, more deadly this time. “They’re not Ramirez’s girls. They never were, even before that fuck was dead.”
    “You’re right,” he said, and he meant it. “I just don’t know their names.”
    She softened slightly. “Shauna and Tyra. They don’t know where Jade is, though. It’s the first thing I asked them.”
    Roarke was sure she had. And he had no idea what he was going to ask a couple of street girls that could possibly get them to open up or say anything of use to him.
    Rachel was watching him. “Are you here because . . . Do you think she killed DeShawn?” she asked softly.
    Roarke felt the words like a hammer blow to the back of his head. He stared at her. “How do you know about DeShawn?”
    Rachel gave him an oblique look. “The girls have been talking about it.”
    “ They know?” He couldn’t believe it. He himself had learned of the death only hours ago.
    “People on the street . . .” She shrugged.
    Roarke understood. The network. It was almost telepathic, the way word got around.
    “Did you know him?” he asked.
    “DeShawn Butler? Oh yeah. I knew him. Of him, anyway.” Her voice was full of loathing. “He sold Shauna to Danny Ramirez. The way I heard it, she was better off with Danny. If you believe there’s some kind of variation in the levels of hell.”
    Roarke didn’t know what he believed. At a certain point it was all hell. “Can I see them?”
    Rachel led him downstairs, to a room he had not been in before, a big basement hangout. Rumpus room, they used to call them. It was typical Bay Area retro: long, low, thrift store couches and overflowing bookshelves and a television surrounded by uncased DVDs. There was even a beanbag chair.
    Two teenage girls were sunk into adjacent mismatched sofas. The older, whom Rachel called Tyra, was a mixed-race girl with caramel-colored skin, big pouty lips, big lashes, big silver hoop earrings . She moved with a sultry sulkiness, and when her midriff top shifted Roarke caught a glimpse of a tattooed cross over most of her stomach. She may have been seventeen.
    The other, whom Rachel introduced as Shauna, was small and plump and dark, with wary brown eyes. The most striking thing about her was that she was clearly no more than thirteen. For the millionth time in his career, Roarke wondered what kind of man had so little conscience that he could use children like this for sex.
    Rachel left him with the girls without leaving the room; she took a seat in front of a computer station on the opposite side of the basement space, unobtrusive but present.
    Roarke settled himself on the wide arm of a chair facing the two teenagers.
    “I understand you ladies know something about DeShawn Butler.”
    The girls were silent. Roarke looked pointedly to Tyra, the older of the two. She shrugged. “Heard he wuz dead .” And then for a moment her eyes were