Chapter 185: Debt Schemes
"I don’t know you," she said.
"No," said Sean. "But the alternative is staying on the road."
She looked at him for one more second.
Then she got up, and whatever she’d been pretending about her leg was gone now, the movement clean and easy, and she got in the back of the Rolls Royce.
Sean got in beside her.
James closed the door and was behind the wheel in four seconds and the car was moving before the sedan had processed what had happened.
Sean didn’t look back.
He looked at the girl sitting beside him, her hands in her lap, her eyes forward, the fear still there underneath the composure she was reassembling around it.
"My name is Sean," he said.
She looked at him.
"Mia," she said. Just that. Short and direct, the name of someone who had learned not to give more than asked for.
"Okay, Mia," said Sean. "Tell me what’s actually happening."
She looked at her hands. Then out the window as the city moved past. Then at Sean.
And she started talking.
—--------
She didn’t start immediately.
That was the first thing Sean noticed. She said she’d talk and then she sat with it for a moment, looking at her hands in her lap, and he understood that was not hesitation exactly but the specific collecting of someone who had been carrying something for long enough that putting it into words required finding where the beginning actually was.
James drove without being directed, the car moving through the Sunday city, and Sean waited.
Outside, the streets moved past. Sean checked the side mirror once. The sedan wasn’t visible. Whether that meant it hadn’t followed or had simply followed at a greater distance he couldn’t tell yet. He texted James from the back seat.
Take the long way. Check if we have a tail.
James’s response was a single nod visible in the rearview mirror.
Mia noticed the nod. She noticed everything, her eyes doing the constant peripheral assessment he’d clocked when she was on the road, checking exits and angles and the positions of people around her. The specific vigilance of someone who had spent a sustained period of time needing to know where threats were coming from.
"The sedan," she said. Not looking at Sean. Looking at the city outside. "Is it behind us."
"I don’t know yet," said Sean honestly. "My driver is checking."
She nodded. Looked at her hands again.
"How did you know," she said. "About them following me. You looked back before I said anything."
"Your eyes were doing more work than someone running a simple road stunt needed them to do," said Sean.
She looked at him then. The first direct look since she’d gotten in the car. "You knew it was a stunt."
"Yes," said Sean.
"From when."
"The moment you went down," said Sean. "The position was practiced."
Something moved through her expression. Not embarrassment. More like the resignation of someone whose competence in something they’re not proud of has just been acknowledged. "Most people don’t figure it out until they’re already writing the check."
"I’m not most people," said Sean.
She looked at him for a moment longer, that assessment running fast and quiet. Then she looked at the window again.
"I’ve been doing it for two months," she said. "The road thing. They have three spots we rotate. Different cars each time, different girls, so nobody sees the same face twice." She paused. "The money goes straight to what they say I owe. It never goes to me."
"What do you owe," said Sean.
She exhaled. Not a sigh. More like someone releasing pressure they’d been holding somewhere structural.
"That’s the thing," she said. "When I started it was eight thousand. Training fees, they called it. For the agency." She looked at her hands. "I needed money. My mom had medical bills. I saw an ad online, legitimate looking, a modeling agency looking for new faces, no experience required." She paused. "I know how that sounds now."
"It sounds like what it was supposed to sound like," said Sean. "That’s the point of it."
She glanced at him. Something in her expression shifted slightly, the defensive edge of someone waiting to be judged not finding what it was braced for.
"They were professional," she said. "The office was real. Proper furniture, framed campaigns on the walls, a receptionist who offered me water when I came in." She paused. "The woman who interviewed me was in her forties. Nice clothes. She told me I had the right look and that the agency could get me steady work, promotional events, catalogue shoots, that kind of thing. She said there was a training program first. Eight thousand for the full program."
"Which you didn’t have," said Sean.
"Which I didn’t have," said Mia. "But she said it was fine, that was normal, most of their talent started on a deferred payment plan. The eight thousand would come out of my first earnings." She looked at her lap. "I signed."
"And then," said Sean.
"And then the fees kept coming," she said. "Accommodation costs when they moved me to a different location for the first shoot that never happened. Equipment fees. Comp card production. Administrative processing." Her voice was flat, the flatness of someone describing something they’ve described to themselves so many times it’s lost the texture of the original shock. "By the time I understood what was happening the number was twenty-three thousand."
The car moved through the city. James made a turn that wasn’t the direct route, the specific additional loop of someone checking something.
"And the car stunts started," said Sean.
"Not immediately," said Mia. "First they had us doing promotional events. Handing out flyers outside clubs, hostessing at private parties." She looked at the city outside. "Then the events started being different from what they described. Less promotional. More." She stopped.
Sean waited.
"More personal," she said, which covered what she meant without saying it directly and he didn’t push her past what she was ready to say.