Page 3 of Into the Night

“It is now,” Moran curtly said. “I wanted to talk to Ms. Cruise, and to you as well, Ms. Richards, about an important matter.”

“Couldn’t this have been brought to our home?” Vanessa snapped. “We all would have beenmuchmore comfortable in my office instead of this…” She looked around the room as if it were infected with tetanus. “Hovel.”

Moran winced. Mitch was probably the only one who saw it. “Actually,” he began, “it looks better if someone on the outside saw me bringing you in. Much better than that same someone catching us going to talk to you in the comfort of your own home. I know the hour is late but hear me out – I’m a night owl. ‘Arresting’ your partner for solicitation, even if I let her go with a warning, will do wonders for our plans.”

“Stop talking like you’re a cryptic AI gone haywire,” Vanessa said. “I don’t have the patience. Tell me right now why I don’t tell my lawyer to go back to bed.”

Moran raised an eyebrow. “You’ve already called a lawyer?”

“Of course I did! The bartender at the lounge told me you took away my partner. So I called my lawyer! Do you think I’m bluffing? I’ll have your badge before you shit your pants.”

Mitch couldn’t help but smile. She loved it when Vanessa defended her so earnestly.

“Call off your lawyer. Nobody here is arrested. It’s a ruse in case things go south shortly enough. Trust me, you’ll be glad we did things this way.”

“You better start talking about what you’re up to before I callanotherlawyer to help the one I keep on retainer!”

“Ms. Richards,” Moran said with a patronizing movement of his hand, “we’re launching an undercover investigation into a local known entity, and we think you can help us.”

That shut up Vanessa, but only because she looked more confused than ever. Her stunned silence required Mitch to continue the conversation. “You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“I would love to be, if you let me talk!”

Both Vanessa and Mitch fell into a huffed silence – more so Vanessa than her girlfriend, who admitted she was interested in seeing where this went. “Go on,” she said.

Moran tugged on his collar as she cleared his throat and flung a manila folder onto his desk. “Ms. Richards, you are surely familiar with Candace Lister, one of this city’s many fine hospitality magnates.”

“Of course. We’ve crossed paths a few times.” Vanessa furrowed her brows. “Wait. Is she the ‘known entity’ you are investigating?”

“Ms. Lister has her fair share of nightclubs around the Bay Area. Most of them follow the law without missing a single crossed T or dotted I, but there is one in particular that we’re interested in. Are you familiar with Club Night?”

“I’ve only heard rumors about it. I didn’t think it was real.”

“What rumors have you heard?”

“Don’t play games with me, detective.” Vanessa leaned against the back of Mitch’s chair, laying a protective hand on her shoulder. “Get to the point.”

Moran sighed. “Night is not a club that appears on Google Maps, nor does it have a proper business license with the city. That’s not why we’re investigating it. If that were the case, we would have gone in already and shut it down. We’re more interested in what it offers some of the men and women of this city… and the business types who come here to do work by day and find themselves someone to ‘play’ with by night.”

Mitch almost admired the detective’s ability to say that with a straight face. Vanessa was not as likely to let it go. “There’s nothing illegal about those nightclubs. Surely, this is a farce.”

“We’re not interested in shutting down clubs that follow the law, regardless of what people morally think about them. I want to take out the sex trafficking ring we know Ms. Lister is running out of Night.”

Vanessa was finally silent for a moment. “There’s a fine line between what consenting adults agree to in private and… what you said.”

“Yes. The latter.”

“Do better than that.”

The manila folder flipped open. Although it was not shown to Mitch and Vanessa, the former caught a glimpse of a profile someone had put together on Candace Lister, one of San Francisco’s biggest humanitarians.It’s always the ones you most expect.“I can’t reveal my sources, but we have had more than one woman come forward claiming they were trafficked here from other places, both domestic and abroad, for the sole purpose of offering sexual services out of Night. Women who were either brought here under duress or with false promises of other kinds of work. Obviously, we are not going to stand for that in this city. Or, at least, I’m not.”

“Say you’re right,” Mitch said. “Say Candace Lister is running a brothel full of trafficked women out of this nightclub. What does this have to do with us? We’re not in her circle.”

“You could be,” Moran insisted. “It only takes one meaningful connection for us to get our contact in there.”

Mitch wasn’t sure she heard him correctly. Vanessa, however, was on him like a leech on a leg. “Are you asking us to go undercover into Lister’s nightclub foryourinvestigation?"

Moran grinned. “Hey, you’re the one who said it. Not me.”

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