Desperation in Death

“They don’t give you a choice. They speak to you, these girls. They all speak to you, every victim you stand over and for. But you hear these girls in your head, your heart. How could you ignore them, pretend not to hear? You wouldn’t be who you are if you could, or did. It costs you, of course it does, but turning away would cost so much more. We fell in love with strong, courageous women, women dedicated to facing down the monsters in the world, whatever the cost.” - Dennis Mira to Eve Dallas and Roarke, Desperation in Death

Desperation in Death
Desperation in Death US Hardcover
Book Number	55
Release Date	September 6, 2022
Publisher	St. Martin’s
ISBN	978-1250278234
Publication order
Previous	Abandoned in Death
Next	Encore in Death

Plot Summary

New York, 2061: The place called the Pleasure Academy is a living nightmare where abducted girls are trapped, trained for a life of abject service while their souls are slowly but surely destroyed. Dorian, a thirteen-year-old runaway who’d been imprisoned there, might never have made it out if not for her fellow inmate Mina, who’d hatched the escape plan. Mina was the more daring of the two—but they’d been equally desperate.

Unfortunately, they didn’t get away fast enough. Now Dorian is injured, terrified, and wandering the streets of New York, and Mina lies dead near the waterfront while Lt. Eve Dallas looks over the scene.

Mina’s expensive, elegant clothes and beauty products convince Dallas that she was being groomed, literally and figuratively, for sex trafficking—and that whoever is investing in this high-overhead operation expects windfall profits. Her billionaire husband, Roarke, may be able to help, considering his ties to the city’s ultra-rich. But Roarke is also worried about the effect this case is having on Dallas, as it brings a rage to the surface she can barely control. No matter what, she must keep her head clear—because above all, she is desperate for justice and to take down those who prey on and torment the innocent.

Spoiler warning! This article contains plot details about an upcoming episode.

Timeline

Story Date: late June, 2061

Pre-Day 1 through Day 0

Chapter 1

• Dorian Gregg describes the prison that is The Pleasure Academy, and how long she’s been there. During one of the “classes,” Intimacy Practice, she meets another girl, Mina, who was also abducted and brought to the Academy and together they form an alliance with the intention of escaping (Mina says “If there’s a way in, there’s a way out.”).
• Mina finds out that one of the girls killed herself, and she heard Auntie (aka Iris Beaty) tell another staff member they would use elevator 3 to take the body down to the tunnels that night, and to the crematorium.
• Mina’s plan is that Dorian will steal a swipe card from the matron/guard so they can access the elevators and Mina will make herself sick and get sent to the infirmary, where she will unlock Dorian’s room door from the computer and use gum (stolen from the nurse while she’s out of the room cleaning Mina’s puke off her shoes) to put over the door latch so Mina can escape the sickroom. Mina stresses the urgency because if they don’t get out, they will be auctioned off soon, according to Auntie.
• They take the elevator to SB (sub-basement) and then have to play the worst maze game ever since the tunnel goes both ways and it's dark. They hear the staff coming and then see a ladder. As they’re climbing up, Dorian slips and falls, banging her knee and twisting her ankle. Once they are out of the tunnel, they see they are near abandoned buildings, rusted out cars, busted-up planks, and a lot of trash.
• Dorian can’t run because of her injury, but they hear the bad guys coming, following the trail of blood. Mina runs out to lead them away from Dorian, who is hiding, calling out for Dorian to run so the bad guys think they’re together. Dorian hears a shout and a scream, but is unable to stand and passes out trying.
• Mina has been impaled by the piece of wood she grabbed, and Auntie isn’t sure if Dorian got away (and will therefore go to the police), so she has the nurse splash Dorian’s blood (from the last blood draw) on Mina and exchange her pants for the ones she arrived in (her school uniform). The head of security then drives the body to Battery Park and tries to make it look like a mugging gone wrong, pointing the blame at Dorian.

Day 1

Chapter 2

• Dorian wakes up in a lot of pain and disoriented with no memory of what happened other than that somebody hurt her and she needs to get away.
• Using a piece of wood, she hobbled her way towards the lights, planning to steal some ice packs and blockers, find a hole, and sleep.
• Meanwhile, Lieutenant Eve Dallas is standing over Mina’s body on the north edge of Battery Park and is extremely skeptical of the mugging setup. She identifies the body as Mina Rose Cabot, 13, from Devon, PA, and Peabody sees that there has been an Amber alert on her since the previous November, when she didn’t return from school after soccer practice.
• Eve calls the lead detective on Mina’s missing person case, Sharlene Driver, and passes along the bad news. Driver has come to the same conclusion as Eve – it’s a snatch, not a runaway – and based on the French manicure and other pampering, she thinks it’s for porn or sex slavery.
• Peabody checks with McNab, who used to work Vice. Eve requests a list of pedophiles in and around Devon and New York – ones who focus on girls eleven to fourteen.

Chapter 3

• Peabody tells Eve that McNab recommends using Detective Willowby, who just transferred to Central from the 406; she’s with SVU, mainly crimes against minors, and think Mina fit the Princess category – pretty clothes, makeup, some sparkles.
• Mr. Cabot called Eve, he and his family are driving in from PA and staying until they can take Mina home with them. Eve has Peabody book him a suite, and offers to have somebody meet them there to take the family to where Mina’s body was left, and then to the morgue.
• Eve and Peabody head to the morgue, where Morris tells them it looks like she was holding the piece of wood, but then it was rammed into her by somebody else. He finds the post-mortem kick from Auntie, and the self-induced vomit trace indicating Mina faked sickness to escape. He also confirms her general good health and intact virginity, but tells Eve she was wearing sexy, age-inappropriate, underwear. Mina had grown half an inch since she was nabbed, which is why the school uniform pants were too short.
• Dickhead finds a match for the DNA of the blood that wasn’t Mina’s – Dorian Gregg, age 13 (a few weeks younger than Mina), 5’6” and 110 pounds, Freehold, NJ, mother Jewell Gregg, professional mother status, and father unknown. Dorian’s got a sheet – shoplifting at ten, truancy a couple of times, runaway at nine and eleven, and has a caseworker.
• Harvo finds the frizz fighter in her hair, the brand of school uniform, and that the rest of the clothing is well-made and specifically tailored, but has no labels. The shirt runs around $250, the silk georgette, push-up bra with white lace trim, and matching thong run over $1000, and the hair product $250 for a 16-ounce bottle.
• Eve and Peabody drive to New Jersey to visit the delightful Ms. Gregg.

Chapter 4

• Eve and Peabody talk to Jewell Gregg and some of her neighbors, ascertaining that Ms. Gregg is a child-beating, illegals-using thief, and not that popular with her neighbors. Eve restrains her, and places her under arrest for defrauding the government by continuing to collect her Professional Parent stipend, despite not actually parenting a child, failure to report a missing minor in her custody, removing Dorian’s belongings from her apartment (destroying/removing evidence), and assaulting an officer (Eve). When the Freehold police arrive, they add possession of illegals to the list of charges.
• The neighbors, led by Tiffy Rhimes, all concur that Jewell smacked Dorian around; Dorian never caused any trouble around there, and you’d see her with bruises, or a split lip, or a black eye. The caseworker, Pru Truman, said Dorian was just clumsy and got into fights, despite all evidence to the contrary.
• After one beating, Tiffy asked Dorian if she wanted to stay at her house, in her son’s room since he was away at college studying to be a teacher, but she declined.
• The last time she saw Dorian was in August, when she and her husband were on the fire escape trying to escape some of the heat and get some air. They saw Dorian walking toward the town center with her backpack, but never saw her again after that.
• Back at Central, Eve has Jenkinson fill her in on the goings-on and asks him to take the sergeant’s exam, telling him “You’re the highest-ranking detective in my bullpen, and with the longest tour of duty. It’s about experience, instincts, skill, and knowledge. You have all of what’s needed to make DS. You’ll do what you do now, but with a boost in pay and rank.”
• Roarke visits Eve to check in on her and she updates him on the case. They fight because he’s worried about her, and he offers to host Dr. and Dennis Mira for dinner so Eve can get her consult and Roarke can keep an eye on her, plus any excuse to use the grill.

Chapter 5

• The Cabots arrive at Central, Eve and Peabody interview them but learn nothing new.
• Pru Truman arrives and offers no new information either; Peabody manages to stall Eve long enough to prevent bloodshed, and then Eve calls Truman’s supervisor, has her suspended, and heads home to beat up a sparring droid.
• After a quick exchange with Summerset, Eve heads to the gym.
• Roarke gets home, also in a mood, and watches Eve spar with a big, beefy female in full contact mode from a monitor before deciding she’d be better off getting her frustration out on the droid than on him.
• Eve returns to the bedroom with bruised ribs, a bleeding mouth and a blackening eye, and the news that the droid needs twelve hours to recover. She confronts Roarke about his interference, he tells her he’s her husband, not her pet, and leaves the room as she heads for the shower.

Chapter 6

• Eve looks so bad that she’s forced to use makeup, which doesn’t really fool anybody, and after some small talk with the Miras, including absorbing good energy from Mr. Mira, she and Dr. Mira discuss the case. Mira agrees with Eve that Dorian wasn’t there willingly either, and won’t go to the police or back home. If she’s found by the people who killed Mina, they will kill her as well, and leave the body to be found.
• The conclusion is that it’s trafficking - a production line, very organized. Dennis tells Eve she doesn’t have a choice in her job – that the girls speak to Eve and it would be impossible to ignore them. Eve wouldn’t be who she was if she could ignore them, that it costs her, but would cost her even more to turn away. He tells Roarke he feels the same worry for Charlie, and it hurts him also, but that they both married strong, courageous women who are dedicated to facing down the monsters of the world.
• Roarke and Eve talk the case out after the Miras leave, guessing that the girls are being kept in a retrofitted warehouse with kitchen facilities, guards and other staff, medical staff, cleaning professionals, disciplinarians, people to acquire or manufacture the clothing, launder it, marketing – photography and videos, IT, office workers, banking. They decide to leave it for the night.

Chapter 7

• Roarke runs the healing wand over Eve’s injuries as he tells her she dropped her guard, revealing that he watched her. Eve tells Roarke she saw Stella in Dorian’s mother, that she’s the same type as Meg Roarke as well, and similar to Truman. They split a soother that Roarke manufactured to taste like a Bellini, and he suggests that Dorian file a civil lawsuit against Truman, and Eve sic Nadine on her as well.
• They have sex and fall asleep.

Day 2

• Eve dreams about Mina and Dorian, Roarke wakes her, withholds coffee until she takes a blocker. They discuss clothing, deciding that the fancy tailored white shirt is a kind of uniform and that the underwear Mina was found in is provocative but subtle and classy (or would be if it wasn’t worn by a thirteen-year-old).
• Roarke uses the healing wand on her ribs again and shows her the jacket he picked out for her to wear – it has a removable magic lining, a prototype Roarke is working on, so it’s lightweight and transferrable. It blocks a full stun, a blade, and bullets, but not the face (obviously).

Chapter 8

• Dorian wakes up in the hidey hole she found, an abandoned storefront, still in a lot of pain and scared, but still with no memory of why, just that her instincts had told her to hide. She meets Mouser, a kid with big brown eyes and purple-streaked brown hair, who gives her a piece of a bagel and invites her to join his merry band of thieves and misfits.
• After Dorian verifies that it’s not a shelter and no cops are involved, and learns the rule: “see a kid needs help, you help if you can,” she agrees and follows him out. They get to some tunnels, where Dorian freezes and collapses on the concrete. Mouser leaves her to get help, and comes back with Sebastian to carry her to safety; she’s burning up in addition to her leg being injured.
• Meanwhile, at Central, Eve is remembering how in her dream the girls told her she wasn’t pretty enough, but can’t remember if that’s something her father told her – she vaguely remembers being told she’ll be rented, not sold, that she needed seasoning.
• Detective Willowby from SVU stops by to brainstorm with her, applauds her on getting Jewell charged, tastes her coffee, regrets that Eve’s already married, and congratulates her on kicking Truman to the curb (she didn’t know about her, but has dealt with similar useless caseworkers, although fortunately not many).
• She thinks Dorian and Mina formed an alliance to escape, and Dorian got away, otherwise why try to pin the murder on her? She thinks it’s all psychological abuse and torture – shock sticks, shock collars, deprivation, etc. so they don’t physically damage the merchandise. Since they’re too old for kiddie porn, Willowby calls it the Chicklet sweet spot (11-14, boy or girl, starting to develop) – they get sold for their youth and freshness and then get resold when they’re 16 or so. The “scouts” are either young-looking (or other kids) or posing as authority figures.
• Everything else jibes with what Eve and Roarke discussed – the need for medical, food, record-keeping for outlay, profits, and loss – cost per product, a studio for photos and vids, business manager, IT for the dark web. She thinks the girls would sell for eight to fifteen million each after marketing, and sends Eve some of the marketing material that’s used before auctions – brochures with photos and short vids, info on their skillsets, the price or minimum opening bid for auctions. Besides the virgins, they also market Domestic Slaves, Pets (kids they can dress up and train like pets), Whipping Boys (girls also, for sadists), and Party Favors (purchased to pass around to guests and friends).
• Willowby has been setting up profiles as rich people ready to participate in auctions and wants to work with EDD to complete the job and break this ring.
• Eve fills Feeney in on the case and he offers to help. He has to close a cyber fraud case first – targeting centenarians, including his wife’s grandmother, so he can’t pass it on, but will join after that.
• Eve goes back to her desk to find a shocked Peabody, who has been reviewing the brochures, and kicks her out so she can call Nadine and bring her back from her vacation (she made it without work for 27 of the 36 hours she’d hoped for).

Chapter 9

• While Eve waits for Nadine, she has Peabody run a nationwide search for missing girls that fit Mina’s specs – same age range, good, solid family/neighborhood/schools, no history of trouble, seriously pretty, missing at least two months, and nothing with a probability that a parent or other family member took her.
• Dorian wakes up at Sebastian’s safe house and still can’t remember what happened, but does remember her name. Sebastian calls in a doctor to treat her ankle and knee.
• Nadine arrives, all caught up on Mina’s death, and Eve fills her in on what she suspects is happening, requesting that she put Dorian’s face and other information out as “a material witness to the murder of Mina Cabot” with a tip line so Mina’s murderer will think she’s implicated. She also wants Nadine to research large businesses with shipping docks and lots of comings and goings. Eve also puts a bug in Nadine’s ear about Truman, saying it “could be a big, juicy story on neglect, abuse, and how some – even one – inside the system designed to protect can corrupt that system and lead to the exploitation of those they’re sworn to protect.”
• Eve then gives Nadine an on-air one-on-one interview about Mina.
• Peabody has found nine missing girls so far, but thinks she should include runaways since Dorian was one, and that puts the number up to seventeen. She also thinks there will be more girls who aren’t seriously pretty, but Eve lets her know they will find those girls when they bust the ring, that they also matter – it’s just easier to keep the focus tight. Eve reflects that she wouldn’t have made the cut since she was too gangly.
• Eve starts to focus on the location; she decides it can’t be abandoned, condemned, rented, up for sale, or recently acquired. She also rules out apartment and office buildings – too much glass.
• Dorian is feeling better after Dr. Gee’s ministrations, a shower, clean clothes, and a grilled cheese sandwich. Mouser reviewed the rest of the rules with her: no bullying, no fighting, no stealing from each other, no alcohol, no illegals, and everybody shares what they steal from marks (but they needed to be careful not to get caught). He let her know his mother had abandoned him in a flop and she starts to remember her mother hitting her, then she has a nightmare about Auntie and the shock sticks: “Spare the rod, spoil the child. Follow the rules and you’ll have lovely clothes and good, healthy food. Break the rules, feel the rod.” She also remembered being probed internally, running through tunnels, gripping a hand, and pouring rain.
• She wakes to Sebastian holding her and soothing her, and she finally feels safe. She asks him why he’s helping her, and he explains that good people help others, and that they’re in a small apartment building he came by. He promises not to send her back or make her do anything she doesn’t want to, and she tells him what she dreamed even though it’s still mixed up.
• Eve pulls volunteers for the tip line, asking Officer Carmichael to select four uniforms to assist, and asking the detectives to take two hour shifts.

Chapter 10

• Eve visits Tiko at his midtown stall; he tells her he saw Dorian a couple of times around his downtown stall, pegged her for a street thief, and sold her a scarf at cost after Thanksgiving, but hasn’t seen her since a couple of weeks before Christmas.
• Eve goes home and starts searching for missing girls, while Roarke looks for large properties with shipping docks. She finds three that match Mina’s profile in the 90% probability, one in the Dorian category at 90%, two between 85-90%, and four in the 80% range.
• Eve and Roarke break for dinner.

Chapter 11

• Eve and Roarke update each other – Roarke is focusing on buildings; they rule out anything medical or food-related due to inspections. Eve is looking for eight- to eleven-year-old missing children, ignoring looks. Roarke rephrases her categories of Slaves or Pets as “store brand” as opposed to “private label” (high-end).
• Meanwhile, Auntie is visiting her business partner, Jonah Devereaux, the financier and all around villain. She’s dressed up, even though it’s no longer a sexual relationship, and becomes exposition woman – she used to run a high-end escort business (he was a client), but then prostitution became legal and regulated, so she had to start paying taxes (the horrors!) and medicals (“all those annoying screenings”) and founded this lucrative business in its place. She’s let into the house by Raven, a woman wearing a shock collar, all the rage in her world; this is someone she trained five years ago and renamed since slaves don’t keep their birth names.
• Iris muses on the “despicable, ungrateful girls” who she had to write off, and she and Devereaux discuss this, along with the upcoming auction. She’s especially disappointed in the loss of “Trainee 232” (Mina) and blames “238” (Dorian) for it; she knew Dorian posed some challenges, but calls Mina a lying bitch and said she felt duped. She’d already started the marketing for Dorian and had two buyers in mind for her – ones who enjoyed a bit of feisty, a touch of sass, and called her sly, which she said she admired to a point (the point being escaping, obviously).
• Iris doesn’t think there’s any way Dorian can lead the police to the Academy and implies that she has them on her payroll so she will hear if Dorian is caught before her hunters catch up with her. She lets him know that the hall matron and nurse have both been terminated because she “won’t tolerate that sort of incompetence on staff” and they concur that adding the on-site crematorium has paid for itself. They also discuss his current sex slave, Athena, who he is ready to trade in, since she’s 25 or 26 and “becoming a bit of a bore,” and Iris agrees to send him another one to try out.
• Back at home, Eve has found more girls to fit her pattern, and after hitting twenty, starts a second board. Willowby calls to send her info on an upcoming auction and they exchange data about the Chicklets; she also has some pictures for Ripe (15-20 or 22) and one Full Flower (up to about 30 and usually for trades or tagalongs) for sale; both are used as Breeders. After Eve finishes throwing up in her mouth, she looks at the pictures and recognizes Jaci Collinsworth, age 12, missing since April. Willowby tells her the auction is in three days and she’s trying to get in as a bidder.
• Roarke has found 80 properties that hit the highest probability and 20 more that are close, and they agree to one more hour of work before bed since it’s nearly midnight. Eve tells him that the sellers send the buyers a code, which gives the pickup or delivery information, and he says he will bat around some ideas with Feeney in the morning.
• Sebastian sees the media reports and is worried about Dorian since a murder cop is looking for her. Dorian remembers taking a bus to Staten Island first, staying in a basement until she was chased out, and then going to New York, but still having her backpack with her. She’s exhausted so Sebastian reads to her until she falls asleep.

Day 3

Chapter 12

• Eve wakes up, tells Roarke her last dream, which was that Richard Troy was auctioning a bunch of girls, including Eve, that were chained together to a group that included the people Eve had put away as a cop, and a grownup Eve breaks the chains so all of the girls are free.
• Over breakfast, Roarke lets Eve knows he can come into Central later to work with EDD on setting up three fake accounts for the auction, in addition to the one Willowby already set up. They’ll spread them out geographically, and each will have between twelve and fifty million dollar, set up to look like offshore accounts opened just for the auction, but linked to other accounts. Eve decides she will call in Agent Teasdale from the FBI when it’s closer to the actual auction, within about 36 hours, so she can arrest the out-of-state buyers.
• At Central, Jenkinson lets Eve know he will take the sergeant’s exam but asks that it stays between him, Eve, and his partner, Reineke, in case he doesn't pass; he says as long as he can keep doing his job, just adding some more paperwork, he’s good.
• Eve updates her boards with what Peabody and EDD sent her – she has 23 spread across an area within an hour’s shuttle flight of New York and 62 outside that margin, all over 90% probability. She decides the operation she’s looking for won’t specialize in just one or two age groups, so she runs a broader search to include six- to ten-year-olds, just in NY, NJ, and PA, to start.
• She starts looking at the property list Roarke generated, running the owners, but realizes she will need EDD to do the follow-up since there’s so many.
• When Peabody arrives, Eve has an additional eleven girls to add to a third board, from just the last year. Eve thinks they also have fourteen- through sixteen-year-olds, and that somebody else must have escaped along the way; she asks Peabody to run the older group. They decide they will set everything up in a conference room since it’s too much for Eve’s office, and then have Whitney and Mira pulled in for a briefing.
• Whitney updates Eve that Truman’s been terminated from her position at CPS. Eve requests 36 hours before she calls in Teasdale in case she can find Dorian, gain her trust before the feds step in, and offer her a choice of the foster system or An Dídean. He agrees to twenty-four and a re-evaluation if he thinks she’s made enough progress.

Chapter 13

• Dorian wakes up feeling a lot better, wishing Sebastian was her dad, and enjoying her freedom. After her morning ablutions, she heads downstairs to eat, see to her chores, and then maybe go out and explore the city with Mouser or another kid to see if more memories came back. Sebastian shows her a picture of Mina and she has a panic attack and remembers what happened, but didn’t know that Mina was killed.
• Sebastian tells Dorian the story of how he met Eve – through Mavis – and the dead girls from Concealed in Death to try to convince her to speak with Dallas.
• Eve is frustrated with the property search, Peabody brings her news of 17 more abducted children that fit the search criteria and also pizza from Eve’s AutoChef. Willowby stops by to tell Eve how hot Roarke is and give her some details on the auction – buy-in for sellers is $500K and then 20% of the sale goes to the auctioneer. Trueheart lets Eve know that Mavis is here, and Willowby fangirls all over her (after drooling over Trueheart).
• Mavis tells Eve she can get Dorian to her house if Eve and Peabody both swear not to get pissed since Eve doesn’t agree with Sebastian’s child care methods.

Chapter 14

• Unsurprisingly, Eve is pissed. She tries to get Mavis to tell her where Sebastian and Dorian are, but Mavis doesn’t know; all she knows is one of his kids found her, she was hurt, and is now staying with him. When he saw the media reports, he convinced Dorian to meet with Eve on neutral ground so she can fill her in on what happened with Mina.
• Eve agrees and Mavis sets up the meet for after the workers knock off; she will have the nanny take Bella to the park. Roarke comes in to let Eve know the bidders are mostly set up, and she fills him in on Dorian. Mavis comes back from setting up the meet and Eve sends Peabody home with her.
• Eve and Roarke walk over to Mavis’s house, stopping at the playground on the way to visit with Bella and meet the nanny (Eve – Roarke already met and ran him, as did Peabody).
• They tour the house a little – it’s still in too much turmoil for Mavis and her clan to live there but it’s coming along swimmingly.

Chapter 15

• Sebastian and Dorian arrive, everybody butts heads, Leonardo plays mediator, Eve gets the story of the abduction – two men jumped her, she was tranq’d and taken in a van or truck to The Pleasure Academy (aka hell). She’s so mean to Eve that Mavis steps in to tell her to knock it off and apologize. Eve convinces everybody but Dorian to go outside so the two of them can talk without the rest of the audience. She tells Dorian that they tried to frame her for Mina’s murder.
• At Dorian’s request, everybody comes back in, and she completes the tale, outlining the escape plan and what she remembers of it, how she was tortured, what Auntie looked like, a lot of information about the Academy, and agrees to work with a police artist. Sebastian gives Eve the info on where Mouser found her, Peabody arranges time with Yancy for the next day and gives Feeney the info about the site – the tunnels and old wood.
• Eve and Dorian take a walk while Roarke sets up a screen to put on a slide show of missing girls for Dorian to identify. Dorian agrees to go to An Dídean, as long as Mouser can also go, and Eve lets her know Roarke will get her a lawyer after the bust so she can “sue the living shit out of Truman.”

Chapter 16

• Dorian watches the saddest slide show ever and is able to identify several of the abducted girls, including two “Pretty Ones,” one from the “Slave/Pet” area, and the girl who hung herself with her sheets, the one who Mina heard Auntie talking about and how she learned of the tunnels and the crematorium.
• Eve and Roarke take Dorian to An Dídean, where Rochelle and Crack greet them. Rochelle shows Dorian the school, and then Mouser arrives. Eve searches his bag and confiscates his obviously homemade beggar’s license. Sebastian gives Eve a bag with the unwashed clothes Dorian was wearing when she arrived at his house. Eve muses about how many street thieves, B and E men, grifters, and fraudsters he has trained over the years, and Roarke counters with wondering how many lost children he’s saved from abuse and misery.
• Eve riffles through Dorian’s belongings and finds a broken swipe card; Dorian explains that it was Matron’s card that she stole to use the elevators. She sends the clothes to Harvo for analysis and takes the swipe card home for Roarke to play with. She takes a blocker and contacts Mira to help her make the case to Whitney about her circumventing the system, especially since the FBI will be none too pleased about it. Mira requests that she speak with Dorian the following day, wholeheartedly backs Eve’s decision to keep her safe and secure, and advises Eve that Mouser has no relevance to the investigation and doesn’t need to be included in the report, although Mira would like to review his file as well. Mira recommends that Eve brief the commander via holo and take some time to clear her head first.
• Once home Eve sends the commander a text from her communicator letting him know she has found, interviewed, and secured Dorian. She reads Mouser’s file and is horrified by the abuse (there's pictures), but glad his father is locked up. Roarke advises Eve to stand with the board (boards?) behind her when she gives her report to Whitney, since she is standing for the girls.

Chapter 17

• Eve briefs Whitney, who has her justify her actions, and Roarke goes through the security at An Dídean, including sending the schematics, so Whitney can see how safe it is. He scolds Eve for not keeping him in the loop, telling her she’s left him a lot of cleanup. He says he will follow up with Mira as soon as this call ends, and tells Eve to get all of it into a report since she’ll be calling in the feds soon, and find “the location of this hellhole” and a name.
• Eve second-guesses keeping this case and breaks down crying. Roarke comforts her and tells her he will spend an hour on the swipe card while she writes up her report and then they will break for dinner, and then look for the building.
• Devereaux is testing out his new sex slave, who he named “Luna,” admiring her beauty and musculature. He gives her the rules (obey, obey, obey, and call him “master”), letting her know he doesn’t want to mar her beauty but she is his to do with as he wishes, including hurting and killing her, and he’s definitely looking forward to “sharing” her. [What a charmer!] He tells her he likes enthusiasm and then proceeds to rape her, take an ED pill (because you know, almost 70), and rape her again, before testing her oral skills and deciding to send Iris flowers and “something shiny” to thank her.
• He selects a bracelet for Iris from his vault and calls to thank her. She lets him know there is no sign of Dorian, saying despite the waste of time and effort, it’s probably for the best since she was an obvious troublemaker and a defective product. She updates him on the auction plans, saying she thinks it will be profitable enough to open an academy in England; he says he’s been toying with a manor house in the Lake District, although it needs a lot of work and a considerable investment. Iris tells him they “acquired” a new “trainee” that day, a “Pretty One,” and they agree that they both lead fine lives. After they hang up, Devereaux figuratively twirls his mustache, reflects on how perfect his world is, and does a little exposition about his (narrow and staid, i.e., normal) parents dying when he was young and leaving him a huge inheritance.
• Roarke opts for wine instead a soother for Eve, and they dine on her beloved spaghetti and meatballs while updating each other. Roarke tells her the card swipe is high-security level, usually used in prisons or highly sensitive facilities. He says they have about 20% of the card, the lower right corner, but the data is secured under several layers and encoded. Roarke Industries manufactures cards like that, as do other companies (no way to identify without the top portion), so he will start reviewing non-government customers – financial institutions, private labs, high-end resorts, security-minded individuals and businesses with deep pockets.
• They decide the academy has deep pockets and is run like a prison, with various levels of security, and also that the matron whom Dorian stole the card from must have high clearance. They reflect on the tunnels and the on-site crematorium, and Eve is steady again, thinking about how she hates that they co-opted the name “Academy” and how much she’d like to punch Auntie and her partner in their throats.

Chapter 18

• Roarke found the name and other info for the matron Dorian stole the card from – Marlene Williamson – including her employer, Red Swan Productions. Eve tags Reo to request search and arrest warrants, gives McNab and Peabody the employer to research, and calls Dorian to verify the ID as they head to Williamson’s apartment building, which, to nobody’s surprise, Roarke owns. He confirms that no, it never gets old saying “Hey, that’s my place.” They get Williamson’s schedule from the night manager, who tells them he hasn’t seen her in a few days, although that's not unusual (he sometimes sees her in the morning just after he leaves his shift, since they have similar schedules).
• Eve gets her warrants and they enter Williamson’s apartment after Roarke disables the alarms, smelling and then seeing dead flowers. They check the AutoChef and see that her last meal was the night the girls escaped, and learn that she dined well and was a creature of habit; Eve strongly suspects murder (Roarke terms letting children escape “grounds for termination with prejudice”). Eve finds the records she kept on all the girls, although they are encrypted, so she gives them to McNab.
• Roarke finds another safe, this one with about $200,000 worth of jewelry, all simple and elegant, and about half a million dollars in cash. Eve knows she’s dead so they haul everything into Central for Feeney, McNab, and Roarke to work on decrypting her files, she orders a guard on the apartment just in case, and she stays behind with Peabody to continue the search and check the building security feeds.

Day 4

Chapter 19

• Eve and Peabody don’t find anything in the apartment about the academy. Eve says Williamson worked as a prison guard at Attica before this, and muses that they probably recruit from prisons and juvie centers, and do psychological evaluations to make sure they’re hiring sadists and sociopaths. Peabody says she will do a run on people with that employment background who transferred to Red Swan over the past five years.
• Back at Central, Eve checks in at EDD, noting that they added Callendar to the team. One of the girls Williamson had detailed notes on was Jaci Collinsworth. Eve sees that Mina learned fast to play along and look for a way out and was rated ten out of ten, with an estimated value between twelve and fifteen million, Dorian was rated nine out of ten and worth an estimated twelve million; Williamson received 10% of each sale, and $1000 was deducted from her pay for each failure.
• Peabody has found two Red Swan employees that match the criteria – Maxine Pryor as a security guard and Cecil B. Doggett as a recruitment officer (scout).
• McNab lets her know they found the building, Reliable Delivery Services, and Roarke sort of knows Devereaux, through the foundation his parents started when he was still a boy; they donate generously to some organizations he also supports. Feeney says it will take about an hour to get the building blueprints.
• Eve realizes she will need more cops and starts pulling them in, even though it’s after 4:00 a.m. She tags her bullpen, Lowenbaum from SWAT, Reo, and Willowby, and then wakes Whitney up to brief him and request air and water support since the building is so close to the river.
• She starts searching the society pages to see if she can get information on Devereaux, and sees a picture of him from more than twenty-five years ago with Iris Beaty wearing a ruby swan pin in hair: “Iris Beaty flaunts her past as the notorious madam of Red Swan with a diamond-and-ruby hair-clip. Will she rub elbows with clients enjoying the rarified air of the Met Gala? Discreet as ever, Ms. Beaty won’t name names, even now that sex workers are licensed and legal.”
• Callendar comes in to tell Eve she has also found her – she wrote a book called Flight of the Red Swan, about her high-class escort service back in the twenties. Her information lists a bogus address in France, some farm she supposedly retired to. Callendar looks for more swan references.
• Peabody has found five more Red Swan employees – all ex-cops or ex-military. They recruit the ex-cops as scouts and the ex-military as security. She also found a videography company called Cygne Rouge in Provence, France, and the defunct escort service. Callendar finds an ID for Iris Swan in France, so Eve will alert the authorities there, in case that’s her European location. Roarke has uncovered a couple of business accounts for Devereaux, each with over 200 million dollars and Iris Swan as signatory. He also has the unofficial blueprints for RDS, acquired legally through the architect with a warrant, and the ones for Quiet Rest, a funeral home and crematorium where some of the tunnels lead.

Chapter 20

• Eve and her team worked out the logistics of the raid, including coordinating with France, with Devereaux’s Long Island home, and the various locations of the scouts. She told everybody who’d been there all night they needed to take boosters, including herself, and take ten. She and Roarke agree she’s ok, and they will both rest after the takedown is complete. He brought her fresh clothes, including a new jacket with the removable magic lining, so she showers and changes. While she’s showering, Roarke has breakfast catered (“the Roarke way”), and brings her a sticky bun. Mira brought Jamie, because Feeney asked him to run the screen for the briefing, and Mira wants him there for when they get the victims since he’s closer in age to them. Eve tells him that’s fine but he’s not in on the takedown itself and Mira tells her she also called in two other therapists to help with the girls. Whitney and Tibble come in, and Tibble updates Eve on his last two hours, spent in holos with France, while Whitney did the same regarding the scouting suspects outside of New York.
• Jamie starts putting up pictures – first the victims, then the perps. Uniform Carmichael recognizes Doggett from a run-in his father had with him in Baltimore when he was twelve – not a good cop. Peabody goes through the rest of the scouts, and the guards, then Eve takes over with Beaty/Swan and Devereaux, and shows the blueprints. Lowenbaum will cover the exits with his team, the e-team will give them eyes and ears and cut comms, shut down elevators, etc. as needed, and they will have both air and water support.
• Feeney cuts in to present a portable holo of the blueprints, and they cover timing and responsibilities, with the priority being the safe recovery and rescue of all abductees. Whitney and Tibble outline the plans for the non-New York locations, Willowby and her team will coordinate interviewing the abductees with Dr. Mira and the other therapists, then release them into the care of families where possible, and Child Services otherwise. Eve will have Dorian and a child advocate in Observation to ID Beaty and other staff when they get there; Mira thinks that will help her and Reo thinks it will help nail down the legal case.
• Everybody suits up, even Eve, who is already wearing her magic-lined jacket (see YANNIs), and as they head out Eve gives Nadine the Academy’s address to thank her for getting her Dorian, but tells her no live feed, and she needs to be across the street and not to approach anybody. Afterwards, she can come into Central for interviews and release the feed.
• Jamie gives her numbers and positions of people, Callendar drops a package off at RDS, leaving a bug behind and McNab hacks into their internal camera system.

Chapter 21

• The raid goes well, Eve comments on the large amount of weaponry (shock sticks, collars, batons, and stunners) required for a bunch of kids. Willowby requests and gets permission for more SVU help and reports one injured officer – took a baton hit to the arm, broken, but otherwise clear. Eve meets up with one of the girls she remembers from her boards, Lottie Crug, who won’t calm down until she promises to get her together with Carrie Wheeler, another girl she recognized, and one who’s already been freed. Eve takes down Beaty, giving her a jab in the face for Mina as Beaty punches her, grazing her chin. Eve stomps on her designer heel, for Dorian, and then gives her an uppercut for the rest of the girls.
• Mira’s clearing the girls, medically, so they can be taken into Central and Eve sends Peabody back as well, to start processing. Eve and her Long Island team get in a jet-copter that Roarke pilots to hit Devereaux. Feeney and McNab are along to disable the alarms and comms, Lowenbaum has a couple of men with him to neutralize outside targets, and she has a couple of uniforms with her to take him down inside the house. McNab lets her know there are two people in the kitchen, two in the smaller dining room, and two on the second floor.
• Devereaux is having breakfast, letting Amara know that she pleased him so well last night that he needs good, rare, red meat [umm… thanks?]. He then reveals his evening’s plans for her (more rape, this time a gang bang for his friends) and drops a piece of meat for her to eat as if she was a dog. He tells her good doggie and then she stabs him in the throat with his steak knife as her collar is ripping pain through her. Eve and Roarke arrive, Eve talks Amara into dropping the knife rather than using it on herself and holds her while she weeps.

Chapter 22

• Roarke and Feeney are pulling in all of the auction information from Devereaux’s computer, including past auctions, and will proceed with the current auction, except for the part where they actually hand the women over. Eve is going to request Teasdale’s assistance, using Willowby as NYPSD liaison. She has Devereaux’s blood on her shirt from when she held Amara but decides not to change. Yancy contacted Eve to let him know Dorian nailed Beaty and several other staff members. Roarke drops Eve off at Central while he flies the rest of the way to his office.
• Central is chaotic, with everybody wanting to flip on everybody else, starting with one who was friendly with Williamson and ready to bolt after the murders. Reo gave that person twenty years on-planet in exchange. Beaty’s lawyered up, so Eve has Callendar run the lawyer, Sampson Merit, figuring if she had him on tap, she must have something over him.
• Eve wants to have Dorian identify Beaty first, and then the other kids can do that if Mira thinks they’re ready. She goes to the conference room and recognizes many of the hundred girls in the room from her boards. Mira tells her the longest they’ve kept any of them has been two years, and one was taken yesterday, a nine-year-old walking back from her piano lesson in Columbus, OH, who was rescued from the infirmary. Eve asks Mira if Lottie and Carrie are ok to identify staff, and Lottie’s all in.
• Whitney tells Eve that the raid in France rescued forty-two victims and arrested eight suspects. One officer was injured and is in serious condition, but all other injuries are minor. He has contacted Agent Teasdale and she’s ready to consult with Eve. Yancy tells Eve how great Dorian did with the IDs, and she asks him to take Dorian through another one to buy some time.
• Peabody says they turned another one, Philomenia Horowitz – APA Carlyse gave her a hard twenty and Peabody got to be bad cop since Willowby looks like a kid. Peabody was especially outraged at Horowitz because she has teenage daughters of her own, and still took the job training “Domestic Slaves.” Eve figures Devereaux was also doing some blackmailing on the side with the auction data.
• Callendar found that Beaty’s lawyer goes by “deepdaddy” online, at least when he’s trolling kiddie porn sites and participating in auctions. Eve and Peabody start interviewing Beaty, letting the objecting lawyer know that his client was arrested on a site where 136 minors were being held against their will, with evidence of physical, mental, and emotional abuse, as well as child trafficking, abductions, and murder clear and present. Merit starts to object again but Reo comes in with an arrest warrant for him on charges of child trafficking, child abuse of a sexual nature, fraud, conspiracy to commit the abduction of minors, and enforced imprisonment of minors. After officers take him into booking, Reo lets Beaty know that her accounts have been frozen, so good luck hiring another lawyer.
• Reo offers Beaty twenty years, on-planet, if she names names, which of course she takes and does. She tells them Devin Kunes murdered Mina, but she brought about her own death, literally running into the spear of wood when Kunes got it away, after she injured three others. She calls The Pleasure Academy a “training facility, self-contained – to educate, instruct, improve those selected to serve and service.” When she gets to Devereaux, Eve shows her the pictures of him dead and for the first time we see that Beaty has an emotion (even though she just finished selling him out).
• Special Agent Teasdale comes in to review the federal charges, of which there are many, thus erasing Beaty’s happy little dream of a cushy twenty years, and Eve lets Beaty know that Devereaux also ran the auctions and collected those fees. Eve invites Reo to her house on Sunday afternoon for a barbecue, and then heads over to break Kunes.

Epilogue

• Eve arrives home, tells Summerset “not now, Satan,” and then he proceeds to tell her he saw Nadine’s report and that he’s grateful for her. She tells him she's grateful for Roarke having a strong moral compass, which is because of him. Eve lets Roarke know she invited everybody to their house for a cookout on Sunday afternoon and that she had a conversation with Summerset, so Roarke decides he needs to look closely and thoroughly at her to make sure she’s not an imposter. He does and she's not. The end.

Character List

List of Main Characters Appearing in this Book

• Eve
• Roarke

List of Secondary Characters Appearing in this Book

• David Baxter
• Detective Carmichael
• Uniform Carmichael
• Ryan Feeney
• Mavis Freestone
• Nadine Furst
• Galahad
• Jenkinson
• Leonardo
• Ian McNab
• Charlotte Mira
• Morris
• Delia Peabody
• Reineke
• Detective Santiago
• Lawrence Summerset
• Troy Trueheart
• Jack Whitney

List of Recurring Characters Appearing in this Book

• Bella Eve
• Dickie Berenski
• Callendar
• Crack
• Harvo
• Jake Kincade
• Jamie Lingstrom
• Lt. Lowenbaum
• Dennis Mira
• Rochelle Pickering
• Cher Reo
• Officer Shelby
• Agent Miyu Teasdale
• Chief Tibble
• Yancy

List of Minor Characters Appearing in this Book

• Iris Beaty
• Frank Bestor
• Bets
• Ethan Cabot
• Mina Cabot
• Oliver Cabot
• Rae Cabot
• Lottie Crug
• Jonah Devereaux
• Detective Sharlene Driver
• August Fuller
• Amara Gharbi
• Thomas Grantly (Mouser)
• Dorian Gregg
• Jewell Gregg
• Devin Kunes
• Officer Marshall
• Sampson Merit
• Nurse Parks
• Raven
• Tiffy Rhimes
• Rohan
• Sebastian
• Pru Truman
• Carrie Wheeler
• Marlene Williamson
• Detective Zela Willowby

List of Peripheral Characters Appearing or Mentioned in this Book

• Abigail
• Athena
• Mr. Brewster
• APA Carlyse
• Chi-Chi
• Jaci Collinsworth
• Mary Kate Covino
• Andrew Dawber
• Alice Ann Dobbs
• Officer Dubock
• Angela Delinski
• Cecil B. Doggett
• Edwin
• Sheila Feeney
• Dr. Gee
• Cyril Gum
• Hank
• Evan Hawkins
• Philomenia Horowitz
• Howl
• Ivanna Liski
• Officer Jonas
• Karlie
• Nydia Lu
• Aster McMillian
• Wilfred Meadows
• Nick
• Maxine Pryor
• Meg Roarke
• Liberty Stone
• Richard Troy
• Ms. Vera
• Wade C. Younkin

YANNIs

• Roarke adds a new “magic coat” jacket lining to Eve’s jacket. She wears it at least twice with no one noticing or her mentioning it. When heading to the final op, Eve wears a vest even though she has a magic lining in her jacket.
• Dorian remembers Mina finding out about the tunnels due to the girl who hanged herself as being not long after she got there and the guards complaining about “how cold it was for this time of year” (Chapter 16). Since she didn’t meet Mina until Mina had been there “six months and ten days,” it would have been after that and thus in May, but then they were friends/allies for a few weeks before Mina overheard Auntie, so either late May or early June at the earliest (Chapter 1). Also, Mina said they would escape that same night, although in hindsight that seems like a poor plan since they’d want to escape on a night they weren’t taking a body to the crematorium. Finally, since the girl who hanged herself was Trainee 264, and Mina said she was one of the newer trainees, it had to be well after winter since Mina was 232 and Dorian was 238.