by Sophia Reed
"She still has her cell with her, or she did when she left the courthouse. A few minutes ago it blipped out."
Nerves clawed at my throat. "And the GPS?"
"Sending. I can punch it up on the tablet." She was already reaching to take the thing back.
"Don't bother. I'm coming down to the cave."
43
Annie
We were still in Vegas.
It wasn't good that they didn't care if I saw where we went. That meant whatever staging ground it was for whatever the next step of the journey was, the place changed regularly.
It wasn't good that it was in Vegas proper. Not that I wanted to be dragged into the desert.
It wasn't good that the goons who'd grabbed me were afraid enough of the man who’d ordered me grabbed that they didn't even try to rape me. Not that I wanted to be raped. At all. Ever. But the fear and respect? Bad.
We stopped somewhere in the city but were heading for Henderson where there was a lot of warehousing going on. Distribution wasn't new to southern Nevada as an economic staple, but manufacturing was. Economic development guys kept putting up buildings and then having a glut of them because the companies they expected to desert California and set up shop in Nevada didn't always show up.
There were empty warehouses.
Shit.
They'd destroyed a lot of my clothes on the drive. I ended up in a big gray tee shirt that smelled, and my panties, sandals and nothing else. When I tried to put on the see-through top they told me not to be stupid and threw the tee at me. What did they care if I had a torn up cami and fluttery top? I wanted the cami and the top. I wanted the plastic blades.
Now I had the one in my sandal. And that was it.
The clothes stayed in the van.
I was dragged out of the van as if I'd already done something to really upset these guys. One of them put a hand under my hair and grabbed hard on my neck, driving me in front of him.
I sent up hopeful prayers he wouldn't feel the scab from the tracker or wouldn't care if he did. I didn't have to pretend to be scared because I really was.
He pushed me ahead of him into the darkness of the warehouse.
44
Cole
The tracker showed her in the warehouse district of Henderson where a fire had put several warehouse businesses into bankruptcy and closed the facilities down.
I could make multimillion dollar deals before breakfast without breaking a sweat but this had me going back and forth. She'd agreed to being tracked but she wanted to do this herself.
But she was in a bad place and didn't undercovers have some kind of backup?
No, they probably didn't. But Annie did.
"Can we put a weather chopper in the sky?" Did news stations even use them anymore?
"We can get a chopper painted with a logo," the lead tech said. He was simultaneously watching the others, tracking Annie, determining where she was and what was there, and looking for a chopper.
"Let's do it. Call Barry in here."
"Already here, sir," Barry said from the doorway. He wore a desert tan polo shirt, dark jeans, and from his belt hung a quick draw, open carry automatic. Good. He was ready to go, which meant his men were as well. I'd briefed Barry on the situation back when Annie had to be wired. I'd have required her to be topless for it but Barry – ex-Special Forces, looked like the leading man in a hell of a lot of action movies – turned out to be shy around anything that combined females and sex, and very straight-laced. I wanted to humiliate my sub, not my chief of security. Annie kept all her clothes on and Barry blushed anyway.
"How fast can you have a team together?"
"Five minutes to board a vehicle. We've been ready since Miss Knox went in."
"Good man. Let's get in the sky." I was already starting to jog toward my own quarters to change into cargo shorts and running shoes when he stopped me.
"Due respect, sir. I know you're concerned. She's a pro, though. Are you moving too soon? You scare them, they'll scatter and I know you want this."
What he didn't add was Enough to let her take the chance.
And maybe even, Don't make whatever happens to her be for nothing.
"Agreed," I said without indicating which part. "But we're not moving until she either gives a signal –" provided she still had her phone – "Or until we know she's in, has proof, and something is going down." In fact, if she could take care of it herself, good. She could use the ego boost and even if my business could ride through any storm, that didn't mean I needed the complications. "Good enough?"
And because I'd asked, and because he was good at what he did, he said, "Good," and went to gather his men rather than saying it was all up to me or some other respectful but meaningless phrase.
I felt better just doing something.
I jogged to my quarters to change.
45
Annie
They left me chained to a metal post. Handcuffed, standing, waiting for whoever He was, who they talked about with less respect than fear. I kept feeling that this had gone from bad idea to terrible reality in record time but the truth was I had more or less expected to be where I was, on the receiving end of something unpleasant designed to put me in my place and let me know there was a whole lot more of the same coming.
There was little difference between this and being undercover. It just felt different. Because sometimes when it was drugs, the men didn't care about me. Impossible but true, my ego insisted. Sometimes they saw me as a pleasant distraction when they weren't so strung out they couldn't get it up. Other times they saw my worth as something they could sell if they needed to. Lots of girls who hung on for the fix only became prostitutes after their use got too extreme. When they were using more than they were bringing in it was time to pay up somehow. And then sometimes a girl like me was simply a great front for a dealer. The men could find lots of uses for girls.
Some of the men found girls like me fun to fuck. Some I could put off. Some – Jesse – I didn't mind. And some, usually those who had the sheer viciousness to rise to top dog position and keep it, there was no way to avoid. I thought He was going to be one of those.
I didn't think I was going to like the Him who was coming. The way they talked about him I felt like Andromeda chained to the rock, waiting to be fucked and devoured by a sea monster. Or something else. Maybe like I was in a fairytale, waiting for the ogre. Whatever, it felt bad.
That was about the time I realized something was more wrong than just nerves. Just that one thought. It felt bad. Cops can be as superstitious as athletes. I'd learned to trust my gut over the years. If something feels hinky, run. If it feels like you might have been compromised, get out. I never had been (go me, it was more luck than anything else) but one of my colleagues was. Somebody rumbled her and it would have wasted everything we went through getting into that gang to try and help her. Probably it would have ended up with both of us dead, too.
So I'd played dumb. It was the best move for both of us. She was a cop? Well, fuck, somebody do something! And they did. I didn't have to be a part of it but I was there as they beat her unconscious and left her with a note to the cops.
She regained her ability to walk and most of the sight in her left eye. She left the force though and although she told me there were no hard feelings and of course I couldn't have done anything else, I never heard from her again. I didn't blame her for the animosity. I'd have felt the same. But if I hadn't played it that way, we'd both have been dead, not injured.
I didn't know what this gut twinge was but it said very clearly that something was fucked and badly and I needed to get out. If we ruined the operation, well, fuck, my dying for it wouldn't help anyone. That had always been a very real possibility with PD, but it didn't have to be here. Get out and turn in what we had. If it all came out about Cole in the process, he'd told me a couple times he could deal with the shitstorm. Money made him harder to take down. Hopefully he was right.
Time to get out, then. On
ly there was the small problem of being cuffed to a post. My hands were in front of me. I had no idea how much time I had. I also had no idea if there were cameras up in the rafters. I was inside an abandoned warehouse, the windows filthy but not blanked out. The structure was a lot of concrete and metal, the tilt up type of construction, and I had no way of knowing how long the chip worked or if it still was. They'd taken my phone, of course.
Too late to worry about cameras. Or not enough time. Something like that. My thoughts went on spinning after whatever was wrong as I dropped to sitting at the post, my legs wrapped around it so my feet and hands were in proximity. Of course I couldn't see either but I could feel the sandals and I pried the one heel open, found the blades inside. Instantly sweat on my hands made me drop everything. There'd be no putting them back so if this didn't work, I had the choice of hoping for the best – that the He coming who everyone feared was an idiot who wouldn't notice my stuff on the floor and my one naked foot – or trying to throw the stuff where it wouldn't be noticed which was stupid. I couldn't throw anything with my hands restrained the way they were, and the plastic meant everything was light. It wouldn't throw, it would just scatter and drop a foot away.
Blade in hand I started working on the handcuffs. In the movies everyone knows how to pick the lock on handcuffs. In real life? It's long and slow and tedious and really damn hard to do when you can't see the cuffs, the hands, or the pick.
I kept at it and after what felt like weeks had passed, I heard a click. One wrist was free. I instantly pulled both hands around the post and stood.
To the ironic applause of the man who now stood behind me.
I grabbed for the blade, kept purchase on it, and turned fast toward him, bent at the waist, legs bent, blade choked up and pointing upward, a much more controlled way to use a blade.
And then I stopped. And stared.
"Bravo! Annie Knox. I wouldn't have expected anything less from you."
Officer Samuels stood in front of me. The asshole bad cop and my watcher when I was deep cover.
The jackoff who'd sold me to Cole St. Martin in the first place.
46
Annie
"Samuels." Was there any point to saying something like Why am I not surprised?
No. There was no time, either, because he rushed at me then, knocking the blade aside, tackling me down to the concrete. The air whooshed out of me. I couldn't get my legs up to push him off, couldn't get the blade turned in my hand, couldn't get his knees off my arms so I could move or breathe.
I couldn't breathe. Having the air knocked out is terrifying and he was kneeling on me and I couldn't breathe.
He smiled down at me, still slim, weasel-like, his eyes dark and his hair greasy. It all made sense now, the judges trying to shut down Cole not because he and his friends were having kinky fun but because he and his friends were raising funds to stop the sex trade, at least in our little area. He'd raised so much money for it and donated his own, Cole alone had to be responsible for a good number of rescues and probably the disappearances of key players.
Of all the stupid times to feel embarrassed, I realized probably Cole had done more good already than I'd even dreamed of with my tiny caper.
I never stopped struggling. I was still getting air, just shallow and unsatisfying mouthfuls. He was holding me down, grinning as he watched me struggle for every breath.
"Hurts, doesn't it? What if someone knelt – right – here –?" as he carefully placed his knee in the center of my breasts and a little down, right where the diaphragm needed to expand to allow me to breathe again.
I stabbed him in the leg. If my hand had been on the inside of his legs where they surrounded me, I probably wouldn't have been able to move it enough to inflict damage, but he had been straddling me and kneeling on my biceps and he'd moved the knee that had controlled the hand with the blade.
My dream was if I had gotten to the inside I'd have been able to slice open the major vein or artery or whatever it is located by the groin, the one that makes people bleed out in a couple minutes.
Because without something big happening I didn't have a couple more minutes. Damned if I was going to let Samuels rape me.
Made sense, I thought again, my head reeling as I shoved myself away from him, slashing the arm he put up to fend me off. He'd sold me to Cole St. Martin who had acted as if this was normal.
Probably was. He might do good in some instances, but Cole St. Martin was a sick puppy. Even if all he wanted was to secure my consensual non-consent by dangling the promise of my recovery from opiates at me, he’d still "bought" me.
He was getting ready to rush me again. I could see it in his eyes even as he covered his bleeding forearm with his other hand.
I scrambled up and backed away from him. He was grinning.
That was the only warning I had before I ran into the men standing behind me. Guns drawn.
Samuels stood and motioned at me. "Take off the t-shirt."
I didn't bother to respond.
He had apparently become enamored of people listening to him more than they ever did at PD because he screamed then. "Take it off and walk over there and put your hands through the cuffs." He was pointing at a rack meant for some industrial purpose but they'd drilled through one of the beams and hung chains and cuffs. "I'm going to whip you and then we'll have some real fun and then the hospital will take care of you right before –"
"Fuck off," I said. It took everything I had to not let my voice waver.
He screamed again, grabbed the gun from one of the minions and pointed at me, jacking a round into the chamber.
I took a breath. "You're not going to shoot me."
"Give me one fucking good reason."
The idiot voice in the back of my mind said, Because that would be even more cliché than what you just said. But he might be a cartoon villain, he was still armed.
"I'm worth too much, Sams. I'm a cop, down on her luck. I'm under 25. I'm new. I'm fresh. I bruise up easy. I'm strong enough to recover for a long fucking time. You're not going to shoot me because you fucking want to rape me then –"
"How am I supposed to sell something like you, huh?" He turned the gun all movie style sideways like he thought he was gangsta and I marveled that he'd ever been a cop.
I laughed. He shot me that way, he'd break his wrist. He probably needed that hand for jacking off to porn. I couldn't imagine a willing female for him. "So you pump me full of fet before you sell me. I know how this goes, Sams."
"Don't fucking call me that."
I rolled my shoulders and went quiet for just one second. Was that my imagination? Or did I actually hear a helicopter?
If I did, was there any way, any possibility that it was coming for me? It was way too soon for St. Martin to become concerned enough to pull the plug.
Unless the GPS showed where I was and he got concerned.
Conflicting emotions. Trust me, I know how to do this warred with Damn, I hope so.
"So, Samuels. Are you the head of the food chain here? Or just a player like them?" I gestured at the men standing behind me. I was all about big talk and bluster and buying time and there was no doubt they knew it.
But Samuels wasn't kingpin. I was pretty sure of that. He was bragging too much, and he was Samuels. He was a fuckup, even if the losers here feared him.
Problem was, I thought he was probably top of the trash pile in Vegas. If we didn't get any farther, that would suck. But if I could get Samuels taken in, I could testify. After all, he sold me. That wasn't hearsay or just being a witness. That was being the victim. Get Samuels and his men put away, at least we'd break the chain here.
I wanted to go farther up that chain, but stopping this part of the ring? That would matter to a lot of people.
He was so busy bragging and threatening and waving the gun at me, it was one of his men that asked another, "You hear something?"
And by then it was too late. Because I had. I'd heard the chopper pull away, hav
ing determined where I was or maybe there were no vehicles around other buildings.
Or maybe Cole St. Martin had the same weird feeling that I did – like somehow, magically, he could feel where I was.
Only they were not breaking in, this cavalry I hoped was here. And Samuels was advancing on me, gun out, face looking more and more like he'd had a little too much of whatever he was undoubtedly selling on the side. He was getting close and yeah, I was armed and I'd taken down more than one yahoo with a gun when I didn't have one.
Only Samuels had been my watcher. He not only trained the same as me, he actually trained me to some extent.
I watched him like I'd watch a particularly deadly snake I'd spotted too late to run from. Like I was hoping it would slither on past.
Samuels wasn't slithering. He was stalking.
"You think you're valuable?"
I laughed though I didn't mean it. I was scared now. His pupils had contracted to little dots of insanity. Some kind of amphetamine racing through him. He'd always been unstable, I thought, and always been unpredictable. Now he was deadly.
He made a sudden movement with the gun and I flinched back, stumbling into the arms of one of his men. It knocked him off balance. Not because he wasn't twice my size. But because he jerked forward, trying to catch me. Trying to hold me still so Samuels could shoot me.
Or grab me. Or whatever he meant to do.
He fell backwards, dragging me with him and the bullet passed over both of us, hitting something metal behind us and ricocheting off.
I screamed as I fell onto him and used him to avoid getting my breath knocked out again. The instant I could move I went up and levered myself down again, planting an elbow in his sternum, driving the air out of him, then moving fast, already uncertain why I hadn't been shot, I kneed him as I threw myself up, grabbing his gun. He wrapped around himself, unable to make a sound or even get enough air to pant through the pain.