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foreign cities, as dancers or models or actresses, with promises that they could make a fortune. Russian and Ukrainian girls were particularly in demand.
    She nodded. “They sell you to rich men in Turkey and Italy and the Emirates. But I was sold to this Ukrainian bastard who lives in London. Because he likes girls from his home country.”
    “How much money did you make from the deal?”
    She looked down and didn’t answer. After a long moment, she said, “I was his sex slave. Sometimes there are as many as six of us living in his house. But I think I must be his prize possession, because he takes me with him when he traveled to show me off.”
    “He trusted you not to run?”
    “He kept my passport. So where can I run?”
    “He beat you.” A statement, not a question.
    Her nostrils flared. Her face flushed. At last she nodded. “Only where others could not see. My back and my stomach and my thighs. I have to wear one-piece swimming suit.”
    “Why?”
    “Why he beats me?” She fell silent again. Then, in a whisper that was barely audible: “Because he can. Because it excites him.”
    I felt something cold and hard in my stomach.
    “How did you get to José María Soler?
    “Kuzma took me with him to Barcelona. At this party I meet Soler. Later, when Kuzma is talking his business in another room, I give Soler a note. I say I am prisoner and I need to escape and I do anything he wants if he will save me from this monster. Later that night a man comes up to me and takes me out a side door without anyone notice and put me in car and drives me to Soler’s house.”
    “And what did you have to do for Soler?”
    “Nothing.”
    I looked skeptical.
    “Nothing at all. For what I should lie about this? Soler was negotiating with the Ukrainian government to get me back home to my mother. He said it would take a week or two.”
    “And you think he was telling you the truth?”
    “I talked to people from the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid. Soler was not lying to me. And now, you take me back to this monster!”
    She looked like she was about to cry. I could see that the vulnerable little girl had just broken through the hard shell. She said in a small voice, “Help me.”
    I nodded. Put a hand on her forehead and said, “I will.”
    *   *   *
    About three hours later I was driving a rented, up-armored Range Rover along Kensington Palace Gardens, talking to Benito on my cell phone. Hands-free, because it’s safer.
    “Yes,” Benito said, “I spoke with the consulate in Madrid. It all checks out, what the girl said.”
    “Excellent.” I’d come to a traffic light. I glanced down at the Heckler & Koch MP5K on the passenger seat and picked up the long curved magazine. It was full. Thirty rounds.
    “So what you gonna do now, my friend?” Benito asked.
    I inserted the magazine into its well and slapped the cocking lever forward. Something final about that well-oiled click.
    “Plan B,” I said as the light turned green.

 
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    BURIED SECRETS
    JOSEPH FINDER

    Available June 2011 From St. Martin’s Press
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Part One
    There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes, die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burden so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the grave. And thus the essence of all crime is undivulged.

    — EDGAR ALLAN POE ,
“THE MAN OF THE CROWD” (1840)

1.
    If this was what a prison was like, Alexa Marcus thought, I could totally live here. Like, forever.
    She and Taylor Armstrong, her best friend, were standing in a long line to get into the hottest bar in Boston.