“Yes, sir.” He clears his throat and stands, buttoning his jacket as he walks me to the back of the bank where we enter the vault.
Two minutes later, I’m staring down at the little white drawstring bag. I peek inside. New ID. New passport. Ten thousand dollars in cash to get me through. I never got an ID or passport for Blue—she never left the house, so she never needed them. But now we need them. And she doesn’t have them. I close the box and walk back out of the room, fully aware that my actions here have been reported to the person who got me these credentials in the first place.
“Do you need anything else, sir?”
“No, thank you,” I say, walking back over to Blue, who is wringing her hands in her lap. She smiles weakly as she rises and then I take her by the arm and we walk outside.
When we’re safely back inside the car and driving north up towards Boulder, she breaks our silence. “You’re not who you say you are, are you?”
“That’s not entirely true,” I tell her back. “I’m the guy you think I am.”
“Porn king?”
“Check,” I say.
“Savior of cold and shivering girls in the rain?”
“Check.” I smile at that one and I can feel her relax a little.
“JD’s best friend?”
“Definitely check.” I look over at her as we get on the freeway, and then quickly look away. “This is real, Blue. All of it. Everything I’ve done with you and with JD. It’s real. So no matter what happens, don’t ever forget that. OK?” I chance another look over at her and she nods. But her expression is somber. Almost sad. “Hey,” I say, grabbing her knee and giving it a squeeze. “Don’t worry. It’s gonna be OK. I swear. I know you’re probably imagining all kinds of things about me right now, but I swear, it’s gonna be OK.”
She looks out the window at the lights of Boulder up ahead. I expected a little more confidence from her, but lying doesn’t gain you trust. And even though all that stuff I just said was true, the lies are buried underneath them. I hate lying to her. Especially about JD. But I have no choice because he knows. If Lanie is dead—and she most definitely is—then I’ve been played. And the people playing me are playing him right now too.
“Where are we going?” Blue asks as I turn onto a street that takes us back out of town, but in a different direction than the one we came from.
“My office,” I answer.
“Oh,” she says softly. Like I’ve disappointed her again.
We drive for ten more minutes before the industrial park where I rent space comes into view.
“You own a warehouse?” she asks, as we pull into the garage after the door rolls up.
I hit the button on the keychain remote and the door closes behind us, the only light in the whole place coming from the green glow of the dashboard. “I do.” I turn the engine off and the place goes dark. “Stay here until I hit the lights.” She says nothing to that, just sits as I get out and feel my way over to the wall and hit the switch.
The whole place flickers to life as I walk back over to the car and open Blue’s door.
“What do you keep here?” she asks as she accepts my hand and gets out. “Besides cars, obviously.”
I have several vehicles. A panel van. Another Jeep, this one very well-equipped. And a little Mazda, for speed.
“Servers. For the business. You can’t just put porn on a regular web host. They won’t let you. So I bought this building and filled it with servers so we can be our own web hosts. Ray does it too, but he keeps his servers in his Denver building. I wanted ours to be removed from where we live. I didn’t want anyone to know where they were.”
“Why not?”
“Attacks,” I explain, as I lead her up the stairs to the living area. “People are always trying to shut Ray down. We do it all by the book, Blue. It’s one hundred percent legal.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
Her accusatory tone hurts more than I’d like to admit. And why should she be on board with what we do? She was held against her will by a pervert who takes pleasure from enslaving girls as baby breeders. It’s not really the same. But it’s not really different either.
“I know that,” I reply. “I do. I just got caught up in the money and the success. But I’ve got my head on straight now. I swear.”
“How often do you come here?” she asks, walking around the apartment, touching the leather couch, tracing a finger along the granite countertop in the kitchen. “It’s pretty nice for an office.”
And here we go. Lie number one, starting from the top. “I don’t go out of town, Blue. So those trips you thought I was on? I was here. Working on the servers and coordinating contracts with other producers.”
“I thought it was JD’s job to get the producers?” She takes a seat on the couch and leans into the plush, overstuffed arm, bringing her feet up and tucking her hands under her cheek, like she’s exhausted and might fall asleep at any moment.
I sit down on the opposite end of the couch, not quite sure if she wants me close or not. “He gets clients. But only the smalltime ones. He has no idea how big we really are.”
“Because you lie to him?”
I don’t know why I’m shocked at her audacity, but I am. “Yeah,” I answer truthfully. “I lie to him. I lie to Ray. I lie to you. I even lie to me.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for the existential struggle you wrestle with over being the bad guy?”
OK. Right to the chase. “It’d be nice if you did.”
“Why should I? If you’re just a liar who sells sex?”
“Because I’m asking you to trust me.”