Green Light (Sam Archer 7) by Tom Barber Read Free Book Online

have gone.
    Beyond
the kitchen counter in the sitting area, Josh was perched on a
chair near the wall, flicking through some papers.
    ‘ No case files, no keys, no phone,’ he said.
    ‘ And no Archer,’ Marquez muttered, looking around.
    Her
fondness for him extended beyond that of a work colleague; she
regarded him as one of her closest friends and with that in mind,
she was worried. Going dark like this was totally out of character
for him. She’d seen first-hand the effect that Vargas’ shooting had
had on him; despite being suspended, she knew he wouldn’t have just
let this go. You’d have to kill Archer to get him to
quit.
    She
looked around the empty apartment, that last thought echoing in her
mind. She knew Arch; with a closed case that full of questions, he
must have found something.
    Or
something must have found him.
    Josh’s
phone suddenly rang, the sudden noise catching them both by
surprise. Pulling out the Samsung quickly, he saw it was the Bureau
and put it on speaker.
    ‘ Blake.’
    ‘ Josh, it’s me,’ Ethan said.
‘ I got a hit on Archer’s car.’
    Josh and
Marquez looked at each other, hope flaring in their eyes.
‘Where?’
    ‘ It just rolled into the Midtown impound. They picked it up on
East 19 th . Apparently it’s been sitting there collecting tickets for
two days.’
    As Josh
absorbed this information, Marquez remembered something she’d read
earlier and pulled out the brown envelope from her jacket pocket.
Rapidly rifling through the pages, she found the sheet she was
looking for and withdrew it, holding it up so Josh could read it,
pointing to an address.
    ‘ Any idea why he’d park in the East Village?’ Ethan asked, his voice echoing around the empty
apartment.
    ‘ East 19 th Street,’ Josh repeated, looking at where Marquez’s
forefinger was resting. ‘That’s where Leann Casey’s mother
lives.’

    Once she
enters the sex trade, the average life expectancy for a prostitute
in the United States is seven years. AIDS and homicide are the two
main reasons for that statistic, but at that moment it was the
latter that the terrified young escort called Cece Mills was
concerned with.
    She was
alone in her West Village apartment, her room-mate out of town.
With her attention split between gathering her things and watching
the front door, she frantically packed her most valuable
possessions into an overnight bag, her ears straining for any
unusual noises coming from outside the apartment.
    At
twenty three years old she was already five years into that seven
year life-span statistic but she knew if she didn’t get the hell
out of there right now there was a more than high chance that she
wouldn’t make it another two.
    Almost
finished packing, she hurried across the bedroom through the open
door and into the kitchen. Ripping open a cupboard, she pulled out
a can of tomato soup camouflaged amongst all the others and
unscrewed the top. After some advice from one of the other girls a
while back, she’d started to store a gradually-increasing wad of
money away, an emergency fund. The cash was rolled up tight, six
grand in total, her life savings which had taken months to build
up, a joke considering she earned $5000 a night for the people who
controlled her.
    Taking the money, she pulled off the elastic band holding it
together then flattened out the half-folded bills and tucked them
into her bra. Pulling out a cell phone, she moved back into the
bedroom and dialled that friend who’d told her to stow the cash.
She had to correct herself halfway through the sequence,
misdialling due to her shaking hands, but she finally got it right
and pressed Call.
    ‘ C’mon; pick up,’ she whispered as she
zipped up her bag with one hand.
    It
continued to ring, no-one answering.
    ‘ Pick up!’
    ‘ Hello?’
    ‘ April, it’s Cece!’ she said hurriedly. ‘We’re in deep shit,
babe.’
    ‘ What’s wrong?’
    ‘ Kelly’s not answering now,’ she said quietly, her