by Sophia Reed
Right before the girls disappeared.
The first attempt I made with Cole was to pose as a University student studying Criminal Justice. Which I was, both those things, but I passed myself off as a airheaded co-ed willing to do just about anything for extra credit. The persona was a cliché anyone should have seen through, but the Judge saw what he wanted to see. And wanted to fuck. He didn't get he chance to either assault me or carry me off to his trafficking buddies. Because Cole had kind of jumped the gun, then, when he sent in help, and the only one we took out was the judge.
He'd been taken to a nice cabin in the Sierra where he was supposed to answer questions about the other missing girls and how the ring worked.
Instead, I'd recently learned, he'd hanged himself. There were worse things that could have happened – like Cole getting busted for kidnapping a judge and no one listening to what the judge was – but information would have been great.
The second time I went undercover as a young, almost homeless girl picking up cosmetics with a five finger discount so she could look halfway decent for the job interview she had the next day.
Instead, poor helpless me, I got caught and then I got hauled in front of the next judge and almost disappeared except that Cole had trackers implanted in me. That time we took out Samuels, the bad cop who'd "sold me" to Cole in the first place, because Samuels had gone from bad to worse. He seemed to be something like middle management in the ring. We took out a handful of others, too, though none of them were all that high up the hierarchy.
But we didn't break the ring. That time I'd panicked. After all that time working undercover at Seattle PD and still I panicked. Because I'd been undercover with drugs and the people who sold them and that didn't scare me like the people who sold people did.
"You're thinking awfully hard," Cole said. We were within camera distance of the compound and I hadn't noticed Cole emerging from his thoughts.
Shit. "You started it, Sir," I said, trying for teasing. Or bratty. Or something.
It didn't fly. He thought I needed to be super aware. He thought the humor was disrespectful.
"Pants down, bend over."
I hesitated, my eyes going just for a second to the guard building. Because he had a whole new crop of guards who had never seen Cole discipline me, never seen me even partially undressed.
"That's two," he said, and then he grabbed me, ripped the shorts down to my knees, pulled me across his body and held me tight with one arm around my belly. The other hand began slamming into my already painful ass.
I couldn't help it. I twisted and begged. "Please, Sir! I'll be good!" It sounded idiotic. And it had no effect. He gave me thirty strikes, alternating between sides.
"Go inside and wait for me in the bathroom."
My stomach dropped. He was going to clean me out before breakfast. I took a breath. "Yes, sir." I trudged off to the cell, an entire beautiful suite, but still a cell. Security electronically opened the locks when I got there.
They'd been watching.
They'd seen.
The door automatically closed behind me. I heard the locks fall into place. My face burned with humiliation as I made my way inside, stripped off my running clothes, and knelt on the hard bathroom tile, head up, gaze down, hands open and accepting on my knees.
2
Cole
Breakfast was subdued. Annie sat across from me in a simple sundress which I ordered her to pull up to her waist. The tablecloth on the showily long table in the dining room hid her from view, but she could feel the cold hardwood chair under her punished ass and I saw her twitch every time the new cook came into the room. I sat at the head of the table, with Annie to my left. The wall behind her was mirrored and between the seat back and chair seat I could see her red, punished ass.
After the run and her poor performance, after her bratting and assumptions, I'd taken her in the bathroom. I'd found a routine I considered healthy for her, which she hated. Or maybe loathed would be a better word. It put her directly into submissive behavior most of the time, though this morning it had mostly made her seethe.
On days when she needed a reminder of her submissive state and the not-quite-a-contract between us, I made her kneel over my lap in the bathroom while I slowly inserted suppositories, alternating between vitamins that got left in place to dissolve slowly, and those that cleaned her out. Sometimes I gave her enemas, commercially prepared Fleets, or with a special attachment on the shower head, or over my lap again with a red squeeze bulb.
Most of the time she fought like a wild cat, hissing and growling and trying to throw herself off my lap. I'd finally had an O ring and restraints installed in the bathroom. Because she hated that most of all: Being held in place, facing the mirror, ordered to keep her eyes open and watch what I did to her.
I smiled to myself over my whole grain toast. She hated every minute of that routine and it wasn't getting any easier for her, which was good. It humiliated her and hurt her at the same time it was safe.
And then as a "reward," I gave her fish and broccoli for breakfast.
"Stop playing with your food." I didn't look up from my tablet where I was researching the next of the judges in the trafficking ring. Despite what we were doing being good and necessary, despite Annie's job in her "other life" being that of deep cover narc, I hated risking her like this.
What if someone truly hurt her? What if someone killed her? What if something happened and she never came back to me?
Unfortunately, none of that was paranoia. So far we didn't even know where the girls were being taken. Despite the tracker inserted deep inside her, I had no proof I'd always be able to follow her.
"You're not eating either, Sir," she said, her tone just far enough flat out sulky that I didn't order her up to bend over the table.
"I'm thinking and working. You're sulking. Those things are different."
I didn't have to look at her to know she was smiling at that. She pushed the fish around some more.
"I can have cook blend that and give it to you as a smoothie. Maybe with some cod liver oil?"
Her knife and fork screeched across her plate. "I'm not eating it. Get a feeding tube. Get a blender. Let it sit for three days and give it to me. I'm not eating it. What have you found out about Grogan?"
I looked up then. She had pushed the plate aside. Her chin was in her hands and she leaned toward me as if determined to capture my attention.
As if she didn't do that automatically just by being in the room.
"You are dangerously close to punishment."
She met my eyes. That wasn't allowed. During the new dynamic, she was submissive first. This was a learning period, while we both figured out what made her tick. I wanted to keep her off balance. I always wanted the things I did to her, sexually, as punishment, as pleasure – I wanted those things to hurt and surprise. I wanted her to fantasize about them on the nights she spent alone, maybe strapped to her bed, maybe chained to mine. I wanted her to want and to dread them. I didn't want her getting used to anything. I didn't want anything to feel less than major.
I still both wanted her defiance and wanted her to obey.
But this was off the table.
"Annie." My voice had every bit of warning I could imbue it with.
"No." She said it angrily, one hand tightening into a fist beside her plate. "I'm a grown woman, Cole. I'm not playing a game right now."
My hand tightened automatically into a fist of its own. That meant she thought what we'd done in the desert this morning was play.
It was not. I meant to have her as my submissive, I meant now that she'd admitted to me she was a masochist, that she would keep coming back, to not break her but to force her over and over to bend. To accept. To admit.
Not this.
"What did you call me?" My voice was low and dangerous.
Annie bulled onward. "I called you Cole. Because that's your name. Cole St. Martin. Billionaire CEO of St. Martin Pharma. Cole – "
&nb
sp; She emphasized my name.
"I'm not playing right now."
"It's. Not. Play."
She heard the change in my voice one beat too late. She'd been ready to ask about what I'd found out about Judge Grogan. She'd been ready to start making plans, back long enough from her last undercover run at breaking the trafficking ring to try it again.
I'd been ready to share what I had on him. My tablet was filled with reports my IT and research people had turned up. Accusations of misconduct buried so deep it took a lot of digging to drag them into the light. Rumors and innuendos. Newspaper articles that tentatively connected the good judge to something just a little shady.
But I had no intention of sharing any of that right now. Not with her. She'd been pushing me for the last couple of days and it was time to take her through her paces.
3
Annie
Nothing was what I expected.
Well, the warehouse was. It seemed a logical place to move large objects – human sized packages, for example -- without inviting curiosity. It also seemed like a logical thing to do, to warehouse the girls you meant to sell. Because face it – we were nothing more than product.
I was uncuffed.
"Boss doesn't like to be kept waiting," Chad said and the light in his eyes said he was definitely looking forward to turning me over to the boss and watching me get punished.
I didn't get a chance to see Theo's eyes. I wondered what he was thinking. If he was a weak link, I wanted to know it.
I could use all the friends I could get right now.
But once again nothing was what I expected. Truth is, trafficking rings are kind of mythical. We know they're out there. We know human trafficking exists. There are law enforcement agencies that fight against it.
But stop to think about it and all kinds of non-politically correct images come to mind: Women smuggled out of the country, heiresses and the like, stuffed into wooden shipping containers by something called "white slavers." Okay, totally not politically correct, but at least as an undercover narc, I had no idea how they really operated. Luxury jets and handcuffs? Under the guise of being a federal marshal and captured fugitive? Husband and wife, the husband constantly with his arm around his wife because he just can't keep his hands off her (or his knife out of her ribs)? There were ways to control someone even out in public. Drugs and the story the person was ill. Threats to loved ones. Threats to the girl herself.
There were stories that made their way through law enforcement circles as well as becoming urban legend. Stories about truckloads of girls found. Someone stopping an eighteen-wheeler and finding the trailer packed with girls. Most of the time even in the cop shops there's no follow up story as to how that all came about and most of us are too busy to even remember to follow up on it. The things we see in our own jobs are enough to lend verisimilitude to the stories. Sometimes I'd wonder about how anyone ended up with an entire trailer full of girls. Maybe it made sense if they were immigrants, all of them coming to the country together and snatched at the same time, possibly by the person who brought them, promising them a new life and leading them into hell.
That was a good guess. Other than that, no clue.
Or maybe I was the only one clueless. Looked like I was about to find out.
And nothing was straight out of central casting or my darkest imaginings.
"You've all certainly taken your time getting here."
They'd dragged me into the warehouse, because by then kicking and struggling wasn't really an act. I was breathless by the time we got inside, and sun blind. When we plunged inside the warehouse, it was dark. Slowly my vision adapted, seeing first that the windows at the far end of the big, empty warehouse space were weirdly done up in priscilla curtains, all frothy waves of see-through ruffles. There was a tall chair standing in front of it, almost like a throne if that wasn't too crazy to think of.
The person standing in front of it, silhouetted for now, the person who'd spoken, was a woman.
You hear about women feeling betrayed by that. Shouting, "How can you turn on your own kind?" But I had a pack of sisters and not one of them was at all like me, and all of them had always been more than happy to turn on me. It wasn't like I was going to like anybody who was doing this, no matter which sex they were.
She was tall and rangy, her arms muscled. As I blinked away sun tears, I started to see better. Theo dragged me around to the far side of the throne arrangement, so the sun wasn't in my eyes, and I started being able to see her better. Probably he'd moved me out of the sun so she could see me clearly, without any kind of glare from the sunlight, but there was something weird about the redhead's behavior. I'd hit him in the nuts with a car door and dropped him to the ground and run. I didn't think I'd mistaken the Now you're going to get yours look in his partner's eye but his own behavior now could only partly be explained as letting her get a look at me.
He was letting me get a look at her. Why? And what did he think I'd do with it?
Commit to memory. But he didn't know that.
… it was vitally important that he didn't know that.
"Bring her closer," the bitch queen said and Chad was the one to comply, dragging me up to where the woman stood. At first I'd thought she was wearing something preposterous like a leather catsuit or something. When I was standing right in front of her I could see she was actually wearing long running tights and a very form fitting t-shirt. If I had her figure, that's what I'd wear to run, and probably a hell of a lot of the rest of the time, too. I didn't doubt she was a runner. She had the lean, muscled look of a runner, with natural muscle in her legs.
So here my endurance was worth zip.
You're not supposed to be escaping.
…you sure about that?
"What's your name?" She stepped up into my space and took my face in her hand, turning my head this way and that.
"Erin Trace. There's been a mistake. You see, my friend has this Corvette and he said I could borrow it, he told me where it would be in the parking garage and so I just thought – " I ventured a little laugh and it sounded convincing enough, the way it quivered, because all of me wanted to quiver. "I thought he'd parked it there and I – "
"Didn't notice there were no keys?"
That was a stupid question. Hot writing a car that had a locking mechanism for the steering wheel was a waste of time. Which she knew.
She was still studying my face, as if making certain of something, but there was a waiting now.
"There were keys," I said. "Behind the visor. That's how come I thought it was his."
"Did you now."
Shit. The sound of her voice. And I hadn't checked the registration. Then again, Erin was totally making up the friend and what she'd thought so oh well.
"Yes, ma – miss." My shoulders kind of climbed all the way up around my ears. I wanted her to let go of my face.
Which was what she did, and instantly I wanted her to take hold of it again. Because the alternative was worse.
"The owner of the car is a woman," she said. Her hair was cut brutally short and worn sleek like a cap. It made her very green eyes and sharp cheekbones all the more prominent. She looked like an evil sorceress out of a bad fantasy movie.
I felt myself shaking like a leaf. She'd be able to feel it too. "I told you. I thought it was my friend's car. It wasn't." I gave a little laugh and looked around at my audience. Chad looked unimpressed. Theo wasn't even looking at me. "Obviously!" I spread my hands like Silly me and tried to take a step back from the woman.
Who looked away from me like I hadn't said any of that. "Let's see what she can take," she said.
That's when Chad and Theo both moved in. Instinct took over and I tried to bolt. I didn't make it more than a couple steps and Chad had me in a headlock.
"Release her," the woman said. "I won't have her harmed."
My heart hammered with agreement at that sentiment.
"I will have her hurt, however. Chad, get Evie."
Chad disappeared promptly into the warehouse, leaving me with visions too terrible to contemplate shifting rapidly and replacing themselves with even worse imaginings, over and over in my head.
Until Chad came back with Evie.
She was almost six feet tall, black hair, obviously contact-blue eyes. Red lips, drawn into a rictus type smile.
She carried a cane.
Chad and Theo had to drag me to the shackles that waited in the center of a beam of high intensity sunlight. I was crying already by the time they strapped my wrists into the restraints and used the winch to pull me up until my feet only just brushed the floor.
My clothes were cut off me, with zero elegance, zero ritual. Just stripped, easily touched.
The crying wasn't fake. And I couldn't stop it.
Evie took her time when I was dangling, my toes rubbing over the floor as my body swayed in the restraints. Her smile was terrifying, the pleasure of someone choosing the single cookie they wanted to have with their afternoon tea. Or the best kitten from the litter.
Not someone who carried a crop in her hand, rhythmically smacking it into the other hand. "Someone has already played with her."
The woman in the running tights looked delighted. "Then by all means, show us what you've got. And what she can take."
The first strike was way too hard for a cold start. It didn't wrap. It didn't bounce. It hit exactly where she meant it to hit, and I discovered the cane was one of my least favorite, a stingy thin thing that resolved from the wasp sting into a burn into an ache that set my ass on fire.
The tears were constant now.
The second strike laddered up from the first. The third and fourth and fifth bit and stung and ached all the way up to the danger spot where hitting above marked the person wielding the cane as too stupid and too careless.