Page 46 of Dirty Daria
“What the hell are you doing, Quinn?” I ask her even though I already know what she’s doing. She’s reading the paperwork connecting her to David’s first kidnapping attempt.
“Is this true?” she asks, her bottom lip trembling slightly.
I nod. Shit, I hope she doesn’t cry.
“So, David was going to kidnap me and sell me to be used as a sex slave?” she confirms.
“Yes. But, Quinn—”
She bursts out laughing, interrupting me before I can say anything else. I laugh slightly, just because she is, before sobering enough to ask, “Why are you laughing?”
“Well, it’s funny.” She wipes under her eyes, clearing the tears that formed there. They aren’t sad tears though, far from it.
“How is it funny?”
“Think about it.” She sits at the foot of the bed and leans back on her arms. “This is a whole huge thing that you, Mack, and Reed are all caught up in. Something you don’t want me to be a part of, but I’m the beginning of it.”
“Well, yes. I mean, I guess that’s one way to look at it.”
“So, whether you all want it or not, I’m in this with you.”
“Sort of.”
“No sort of about it, Dar, I’m in it.” She sits up straight. “Now, I’m going to make us a new pitcher of piña coladas and you’re going to tell me everything.” She stands and heads for the kitchenette, turning back once to say, “I mean it, Daria. Everything.”
We settle side by side on one of the hammocks hanging over the water, cocktails in hand, and I tell Quinn everything that I know about David Tremblay and Mack’s investigation into him.
“Wow,” she says. “I mean, I knew some of this. I even thought I knew most of it, but when you put it all together like this, it’s kind of crazy. I swear, Dar, he didn’t give me any impression at all that he was such a creep. Our dates were totally normal, and he never pressured me into anything.”
“I think that’s why he’s so good at it,” I tell her. “Because he comes across as being so normal and mild. He doesn’t use force, just charm. One minute the girl is continuing the date, the next minute he’s got her drugged at a stop sign and is taking her to the drop house.”
“How come he didn’t just drug me the second time we went out?” Quinn asks.
“I don’t know, maybe because you’d already spent too much time with him? The drug we’ve known him to use also eradicates short term memory, so most of the women won’t remember what he looks like. Somehow, Paula Nelson, the one who tried to ID him, was able to get past that.”
“But she still didn’t pick the right guy.”
“No, but she picked one that looked almost identical to him.”
“So, what do Mack and Reed do now? Why don’t they just arrest David and still go after the guys who hire him?”
“It doesn’t work that way with your justice system. You Americans reward people for sharing information. Instead of just expecting it as part of due process. If we were in Russia, we’d have these guys by now.”
“Really?”
“Definitely. But, also in Russia, you have a few major players who control everything. Not lots of little groups like here.”
“Your father being one of them?”
“My father, his arch nemesis, Ronan Sinclair, and maybe one or two other players on their level. Between them and Putin, they control it all and then some.”
“I can’t believe your dad knows the president.”
“He is in the president’s pocket, there’s a difference.”
“You’ve been in the Russian White House.”
“The Kremlin, yes. This is not new to you, Quinn.”
