Deadly Exchange. Lisa Harris

on.”

      She shot him a half smile. “I won’t, but this...this is a reminder that these women had become nothing more than commodities.”

      “Why don’t they just go to the police themselves?” he asked.

      “Because prostitution is legal here, they are given contracts, but then they have to pay them back and the terms are impossible.” She caught his gaze. “The girl that was recently found dead? She was convinced she couldn’t go to the police because they weren’t to be trusted and nothing we said could change that. I don’t want that to happen to Mercy.”

      He followed her as she walked through the living room toward one of the bedrooms.

      “This is Mercy’s room,” Kayla said. “She shares it with one of the other girls.”

      A couple of the dresser drawers weren’t completely shut. There was a pile of clothes on the floor between the two twin beds, and the closet clearly had been gone through.

      “Mercy doesn’t have a lot of things, so while I’m not 100 percent sure, it looks to me like she left in a hurry. Her suitcase is gone, along with her toothbrush and other personal things.” Kayla turned to Levi. “She had to have known someone was after her. And when they couldn’t find her, they went to plan B.”

      “But why didn’t she call one of you?”

      “I don’t know,” she said.

      “Has she been acting strange? Jumpy?”

      “No...nothing that I noticed.”

      “Where might she have gone if she were scared?”

      “Normally, she would have called me or Evi.”

      “What about other friends in the city?”

      “I don’t think she has many. Most of the girls don’t make friends. They’re slow to trust. That sense of survival isn’t easy for them to shake.”

      “So we have to figure out where she might have gone,” he said. “Because if we do, we’ll have a chance at finding her and your father.”

      The floor creaked above them.

      “What’s up there?” he asked.

      Kayla shook her head. “There’s an attic you can access via a staircase in the back of the house. We’re planning to remodel it and make it into a fourth bedroom eventually, but for now, it’s just used for storage.”

      “Mercy could be hiding up there.” Levi started for the steep staircase. “Or it’s become the perfect hiding place for whoever trashed the apartment.”

      He ran up the stairs, hoping he was wrong and it was Mercy. But Kayla had hinted at what these people could do. As far as he could tell, murder wasn’t just a threat. It was a line they wouldn’t hesitate to cross if they didn’t get what they wanted.

      He stepped off the staircase and onto the attic floor. A figure lunged forward at him, swinging a knife and winging Levi’s upper arm in the process. He took a step back, knowing he had to assume that the intruder wanted to kill him. He could see it in his eyes. Hand-to-hand combat had completely different rules from a shoot-out, and he had no weapon. And while the best defense might be to run, he wasn’t going to risk Kayla’s life in the process. His only option at the moment was to subdue the intruder.

      The man faced him from the center of the dusty attic that contained a few dozen boxes, mattresses and a few pieces of furniture. He was taller by a good three to four inches and at least twenty pounds heavier, giving Levi another disadvantage.

      There was no time to think, only to avoid the man’s next lunge. Levi ducked to miss the move, but from the determined look on the man’s face it seemed clear he hadn’t expected them to show up. With the only option to fight or lead the intruder into a possible encounter with Kayla, Levi grabbed a small coffee table, braced it in front of himself and charged.