Page 29 of Sirens
“A passageway,” Maggie said quickly, “hidden chutes and all. Not on any updated blueprints, but they were in the original ones—ones that never got filed with the city.”
“Hidden chutes?” Trent raised an eyebrow, trying to keep his professional composure despite the nonsense of it all. “What is this, Clue?”
“Look, I know how it sounds, but hear me out,” Maggie insisted, leaning forward as if to bridge the gap between disbelief and possibility. “Madame Katz, she had this reputation, right? And if my hunch is correct, she shanghaied at least thirty-three sailors back in the late 1800s. Smuggled them right out of her brothel through these secret passages and sold them to ship captains. Poor men just fell asleep after paying for a little sex and woke up on a ship halfway to Shanghai.”
“Right…” Trent drawled, the corners of his mouth twitching. He found himself intrigued despite his best efforts to remain detached. “And you uncovered all this playing Nancy Drew at midnight?”
“Need I remind you,” she replied, the ghost of a smile touching her lips, “it’s investigative journalism.”
“The press,” Trent muttered, half impressed, half exasperated. “When I moved to Townsend Harbor, I didn’t think I’d be policing journalist sleuths with a penchant for trespassing.”
“Technically, we’re not sure if it’s trespassing yet,” Maggie shot back, her eyes gleaming with a mix of defiance and excitement.
“Technically, you have the right to remain silent…” The three occupants of the car bitched and booed as he recited the Miranda rights for the body camera…okay, and a little bit just to kick the hornet’s nest.
“Come on, McGarvey,” Maggie pleaded, her gaze locked on his. “Can’t you see this is bigger than a slap-on-the-wrist midnight escapade? We’re talking about history here. About justice too long denied!”
“Plenty of historians aren’t charged with high crimes and misdemeanors,” Trent countered, though the edges of his resolve were starting to fray like well-worn denim.
“Hardlycrime.” Maggie waved him off, dismissing his concerns with a flick of her wrist. “Think of it as…an educational field trip that was just a little less…authorized than others.”
“Field trip or not,” Trent grumbled, pulling out of the parking spot, “you can’t break into a building that isn’t yours.”
Maggie scoffed, rolling her eyes. “You’re such a cop.”
“And you’re such a…what, a renegade historian? Indiana Jones or Lara Croft?” Trent quipped, feeling the strange pull of her enthusiasm and the heat of her proximity.
“I mean… I don’t hate it,” Maggie said, a smirk playing on her lips. “It’s a sexy job, and someone’s gotta do it.”
“Sexy doesn’t get you out of consequences,” Trent pointed out, but even he had to admit, there was something about this whole night that felt less like routine police work and more like the opening scene of a rom-com he’d accidentally stumbled into.
Sexy heroine included.
“The hell it doesn’t!” Myrtle said. “How do you think I escaped prison time after clocking those mounted police at Columbia University? Fascist pigs didn’t seem to mind that I’d burned my bra that night!”
Trent swallowed a laugh and did the safest thing, which was ignoring Myrtle altogether.
“Did you find anything in this alleged secret passageway?” he asked, putting the car in drive.
“Alleged?” Maggie grimaced at him. “Someonedragged us out of there before we could explore the whole thing.The original blueprints show it leading from Madame Katz’s bedroom down to the basement, with an exit to the alley. But it’s not on the new plans.”
“And you think Katz used it to, what, smuggle sailors out of her brothel?” Trent glanced at her skeptically.
“Exactly! It explains how she could abduct them without anyone seeing. The harbor was just a block away.” Maggie’s green eyes shone with enthusiasm.
Trent frowned. “Seems like a stretch.”
“I know it sounds crazy. But I’m telling you, something sinister was happening there. Katz had a lot of blood on her hands.”
Despite his reservations, Trent felt his curiosity stir. A hidden passage and a killer madame from the 1800s? It was quite a story. An investigation that had every one of his senses keyed up.
And Maggie herself was proving even more fascinating.
Trent snuck a look at her animated face and cascade of red hair. She was a troublemaker for sure…but he was having trouble remembering why that was a bad thing.
Maggie’s phone buzzed in her pocket, and she pulled it out, her expression shifting from playful to worried as she read the message. “You can’t take me in. I haven’t made it home to give Roxie her medications.”
“Roxie?” Trent raised an eyebrow, momentarily distracted from their standoff.
