Page 1 of Room Nine: Masters of Control

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O’DELL

“Hey O’Dell, she’s back.”

I jump off the couch and run over to the monitors that Dem has had his eyes glued to for the last two hours. “Fuck. What are we going to do about her?”

“I know what I’d like to do with her,” Kerr rumbles from the armchair.

“I saidabout, dickhead, not with.”

He flips me off but otherwise makes no move to change his feet up, head back position. “What’s she doing?”

“Up to the same old shenanigans. Slinking around the house, looking into windows, leaving love notes on the door. Did Soren find anything on her?”

“No, but to be honest, I didn’t ask him to look hard. I really didn’t think she’d keep coming back, and the pictures we sent him weren’t much to work with.”

“I think it’s time for one of us to follow her back to her car and at least grab a license plate or something.”

That grabs Kerr’s attention as he sits up. “I volunteer for something.”

“Keep it in your pants,” I chuckle. “But yeah, get ready to follow her and grab her license plate.”

Kerr is lacing up his boots when Dem says, “What the fuck is she doing?”

He maneuvers the cameras and zooms in on the propane tanks feeding the 20’ x 80’ trailer. The guy we’ve been monitoring for the last three months, Bobby Lash, has been using this piece of shit mobile home as a backwoods office and showroom to meet prospective clients looking for girls of varying ages and ethnicities.

He’s a human trafficker—a piece of garbage that I’d sooner shoot than deal with—but Bobby is nothing more than a stepping stone to the guy doing the wheeling and dealing for this despicable enterprise: Joey DiFallo, son of Vincent DiFallo, patriarch of one of the oldest organized crime families in Chicago.

That’s why we’ve been sitting out here in the middle of nowhere for three months, waiting for the opportunity to catch him—aka the Big Fish.

This assignment has been by far the most frustrating assignment we’ve ever been on. Knowing what he’s doing in that trailer, knowing there are women—even worse, girls—being moved in and out of there consistently, and not being able to move on them has rubbed me and my partners raw. Sitting by and doing nothing goes against our very nature, but we’re trying to keep our eye on the prize.

At least that’s what Townsend, our employer, keeps reminding us.

I pull out our binoculars and go to a different window to use a different vantage point of our femme fatale who has been casing the property and haunting our dreams. Every time she comes here, she’s wearing skin-tight black, and every thick curve she has begs to be dominated and controlled. She’s the sexiest thing we’ve seen in a long time, and that’s not just three months’ worth of isolation talking.

I set my sights on her, realizing about the same time Dem does that something is very wrong.

“Fuck. Are those explosives?”

“I think so,” Dem calls from his perch in front of the monitor.

“Fuck!” I turn and grab a rifle, pulling my comm piece out of my pocket and sticking it into my ear. We cannot have her blow this place up. Doing so will fuck our entire operation.

Kerr is already on his feet, his go bag on his shoulder, an M4 at his side. He nods his head and taps his ear. “Let’s go.”

We’re held up in a house on the hill that overlooks the trailer by a couple acres. It takes under a minute to run down the hill and crouch behind the trees.

“What’s she doing?” Kerr hisses as she runs back to the propane tanks from the trailer’s rear door she’s jimmied open.

I shake my head, signaling to him to take the front of the house while I sneak around the back. I figure we’ll surprise her, she’ll cower when faced with two large, highly trained men, and then promise never to come back without asking questions.

I get to the propane tanks, finding the pressure valve tampered with and a series of fireworks duct taped to the top. Considering she’s in the house right now, I’m betting all the burners are wide open. “Shit, man. She’s definitely planning on blowing up the house.”

“No shit?”

Our gazes connect the moment she exits the property, her blue eyes immediately going to the rifle across my chest. She dashes back into the house, slamming the door shut behind her.

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