by Sophia Reed
I was uncomfortable with the amount of information they were letting me have. I'd been taken to Cole's blindfolded and he was planning to help me.
It was a long drive. We left Vegas behind. We drove out of Nevada. We crossed into Arizona.
The driver and the guy riding shotgun didn't talk. They stared straight ahead. That was creepy. At some point we passed out of Mojave desert and into Sonoran. They looked the same. There were just different markers identifying things.
"Tell 'em we're coming." That was the first thing the driver had said in hours.
Shotgun called someone and had a short conversation that consisted mostly of yes, and estimates of time, and that yes, they had her.
During the drive I'd watched and collected the information I was nervous about having. I'd committed the two abductors to memory. The driver was tall, dark haired, a scar on the back of his left hand above the knuckle of his forefinger. Brown eyes, dark brown hair, pretty unnoticeable nose, thin lips. He was in shape but not in great shape. He was average. He could disappear in a crowd.
Shotgun had red hair, which I always find surprising on a man. His temperament was that of a thoroughly pissed off pigeon. He looked like he could fly into a rage, all feathers and incomprehension, and he had beady little eyes. If he'd hissed at me I'd have been less than surprised. His name was Theo, which I knew because the driver, Chad, wasn't smart enough to keep from saying it.
I knew Chad's name because Theo retaliated.
We drove into outskirts of what didn't look like a particularly large town. I got the impression Arizona was a lot like Nevada – a couple large metro areas and a lot of rural. The outskirts passed seedy bars, boarded up churches, and convenience stores that looked like a good place to buy a fifth of bourbon and a vial of crack, and sell your soul before deciding you wanted a bag of chips, too. I rolled my shoulders and tried to kick off the fear. I wanted to notice everything, from the stubby cactus plants moving their way toward town as if determined to take it over to just how old the rusted out beater cars were. The streets we were on had a long way to go before they'd be gentrified.
"I need a bathroom," I said. Probably that sounded like a ruse. It wasn't. I didn't want to escape. I just wanted to pee. Stupid meat puppet. The body went on with the stupidest demands no matter how much the brain tried to fill it in on Danger.
The request made Chad grumble. "We're almost there."
Almost there wasn't going to cut it. "How close?" My voice shook.
"You don't need to – " the driver started.
"Twenty minutes," Theo interrupted. "You sick?" Little ratty eyes stared at me.
I shook my head. "I need to pee."
"Jesus," the driver exploded.
Shotgun just said, "I do too and once we get there, there won't be time. Stop at the Grab N Go."
I didn't think Chad would but he did. Theo opened my door, uncuffed my hands. He slid the cuffs through his belt and let his shirt settle over them. Then he took my arm and said in a low voice, "We're husband and wife. I walk you to the bathrooms. You wait for me or I wait for you like any couple. Try anything funny and we're going to be delivering faulty merchandise. Got it?"
I felt tears behind my eyes. I was in over my head and out of my depth and the thing was it was not having backup or a clue.
We stopped. The Grab N Go looked a lot like the convenience stores that were already out of business. The bathroom was sure to be a treat. Theo unlocked my door and helped me out. My legs were shaking so hard I could barely stand. He didn't say anything, just held onto me until I could walk.
"Thanks" I finally took a shuddering breath and allowed him to walk me into the store, his hand on my elbow. We made an odd couple when I saw us reflected in the door.
Inside the shop was so normal it was jarring. No slot machines because we'd crossed over into Arizona. People hanging around looking at drinks in the cooler. People at the franchised burger spot that took up a corner. People paying for gas. Sunburned tourists in tank tops that didn't show off their assets to their best advantage. Pale people who lived there and already considered this to be a winter season. They wore sweatshirts.
Back corner the rest rooms, through an arch into a tiny alcove with two doors. Once there'd have been a payphone there, because there was still an alcove within an alcove between the two doors, with a low shelf and a second shelf under that where the phone book would have been chained. Even if such things still existed, they wouldn't do me any good.
The bathroom was a pleasant surprise. Clean and smelling of some lemon cleanser or deodorant. I peed and met my eyes in the mirror over the sink as I washed my hands.
Oh, Erin, what have you gotten yourself into this time?
Erin. Lily. Annie. Mark's fiancé. Cole's chew toy. Undercover cop. Fentanyl addict.
I went back out before Theo could pound on the door. He bought three bottled waters, three corn dogs, three small bags of chips and accompanied me back to the SUV.
"What's all this?" Chad demanded. "We having a picnic? We're supposed to deliver her, not entertain her."
Theo shrugged. "I'm hungry. Road trips make me hungry. It's gonna take forever when we get there. Shut up and eat. And let her eat." He hadn't put the cuffs back on me. I was trying to decide if I needed to make a stupid break for it. A fake break. As in Catch me, I'm running! But without them knowing that was the subtext.
When I'd pulled back against him, bucking before he forced me into the SUV, he caught my arm and I saw the gun tucked into the front of his jeans.
Good to know. Not that I didn't assume they were armed. I wasn't too sure of Chad's IQ but Theo wasn't stupid.
I ate my corndog and chips, drank sparingly on the water, and looked around with interest. The area we were in was run down but established. The building with the store was old, the corners kind of shabbily rounded. Sickly looking willow bushes stood around the edges of the property. People came and went like this was just part of road trip ambiance.
"Can we stop fucking around now?" Chad demanded when Theo finished, but I noticed he'd eaten everything he'd been given.
Theo nodded, took the trash to the bins, came back and slammed the door. He took a good look at me, opened the door again just as Chad started to move. They both swore and glared at each other.
"What the fuck," Chad said.
"I have to put the cuffs back on her."
That was my chance. He slid out of the SUV, left his door open, stood in front of my door and opened it.
I kicked out as hard as I could. Almost sorry, because he had been decent. And then again, no, he wasn't. He was taking me somewhere to be used by someone in the long run.
The edge of the door caught him just right. Shit! I couldn't have done that if I tried, but the edge of it caught him in the crotch. He went down like a stone.
Shit, shit, shit! I threw myself out of the SUV and started to run and for the first time ever, being really damn slow paid off. Because even Chad, having to un-belt himself – or maybe he'd already removed the seatbelt, anticipating that his partner was about to screw the pooch – could get out and catch me.
He did. He caught me before I made it halfway back to the store. We were in sight of it, so the instant he had me he put an arm around my shoulders and kissed the top of my head, then laughed very loudly. At the same time I felt the knife his free hand was digging into my ribs.
"Cooperate, or I'll hurt you in ways they can't find." There was nothing in his voice to suggest he was bluffing.
There was no such place. Before long I'd be stripped naked by somebody for some "purpose" or another.
But apparently there was a place. "I'll shove this up inside you and make you bleed. When a lady bleeds from there, nobody asks no questions."
I didn't care if anybody asked questions or not. I felt nauseated just contemplating how bad he could hurt me without anyone knowing.
Now I wished I'd really been running. Now I wished I really could run. Now I couldn't quite stop my
self from seeing exactly how I'd disarm him and how far I'd drive his own knife into his gut before I pulled it off and cut off his dick.
He pulled me back to the SUV. Theo was breathing again, his color no longer that gray and white. He didn't even raise a hand to me. He just gave me a hurt and betrayed expression.
Yeah, but a corndog wasn't going to make up for what was coming.
Chad threaded the cuffs through the mesh and I rode the last couple miles on the edge of my seat in more ways than one.
14
Cole
After the SUVs disappeared with Annie, I'd tried the running, the session with the punching bag. I tried working, the day spa project that was promising, though John Fleet and I were both busy enough with running our individual businesses we might actually come together to work long after the last of the Brazilian rainforest had burned to the ground.
None of it worked. Being in the control room watching the drone operators search for a trace made it worse. The anxiety ate me alive. I wondered briefly about Annie's ex-fiancé. Had he been that passive or that controlling to be able to wait for so many years of their relationship without knowing where she was. Without knowing if she was all right.
This was agony. Whatever she was going through, it was worse than anything I was even contemplating, but this was still hell.
Regular updates on the hour from my team were interspersed with my showing up in the control room to pace and act like a caged tiger. Scott was with me half the time I was there, offering suggestions, he and his security team doing their own searches. I didn't ask who their contacts were. They'd all been cleared for what was probably higher security levels than people who worked in the White House. I trusted them to know and do their jobs.
The did. And they didn't find anything. Fact was it had nothing to do with high tech. It probably didn't have anything to do with advanced planning and subterfuge at this point. The simple fact was they'd driven off with Annie and no one knew where.
It was that simple. Maybe the simplicity was what made it work. And what made it so much harder to take.
By the end of the day I'd made my decisions. My first step was to call in a small team of mercenaries. I'd worked with them before, on more occasions than the normal citizen has to contact trained mercs. What I wanted them to do was find the most logical places she could have gone and go there. Eyes on the ground. The cars had gone off in three different directions. My security team and my IT people could all plot where those directions led. So could I. The mercs had the magic and muscle to make anyone in those destinations talk.
I wanted to know where she was. The tracker had shown up for half the day and stopped working when she ended up in the SUV. Might be something shielding the SUV. The things were big enough for all I knew they were lead-lined. Or maybe both devices had just stopped working. There were two and they shouldn't both fail but things happen.
She wouldn't even know they'd failed yet. I wasn't supposed to be coming after her. She'd still think she was safe.
Relatively, but I was arrogant enough to at least hope it was something she'd depend on, and human enough to be horrified to know it wasn't. It wasn't, and she didn't know.
The mercs were on standby. I'd give it 24 hours for her to surface again, a good strong signal beeping her location and then I'd send them. That felt like too much time. It made my heart pound and sweat break out on my face. But there was no point putting her through any of it only to pull the plug before anything could have happened. Before she could have found out anything and achieved anything to take down the people doing this.
Annie was beautiful. Warm skin tones, pixy face, big dark eyes, that headful of dark curls that had grown so long. Big tits, small waist, long runners legs. We were dealing with a trafficking ring. They'd value all of that no matter how mad she made them. Rape was a possibility and it made me want to find the nameless, faceless fucks doing this and putting this whole plan into action, but permanently hurting her? It would be stupid from the bottom line standpoint.
That wasn't reassuring. But Annie had been in these situations before, undercover for PD. I hadn't. She was a masochist, which they wouldn't know, and while there was no way in hell I thought she'd enjoy a single thing they did to her, because all of it would be meant to break her, not to help her grow, I did think she could compartmentalize it and withstand it.
Otherwise she wouldn't be wherever it was she was right now.
And as for me, I was just arrogant enough to now wonder if my role wasn't after all the harder to endure.
15
Annie
Pain still radiated through me when they took me down and dragged me in front of Queen Bitch again. She threw me a long t-shirt that fell short, puddling on the floor at my knees. I couldn't stand. My entire body seemed to radiate flames from the beating.
"Put it on," she said. Her voice was cold and devoid of emotion, like what had just happened was of no consequence.
Undercover in narcotics, I was used to being considered of importance because of my sex. Or because I looked good enough to entice buyers. It was all physical and while it lead to money, I'd never felt like a whore.
I had a price tag on me now and that was my only worth.
That, not the beating, came close to breaking me. Months of addiction and months of battling my attraction to the lifestyle Cole represented. All that time spent feeling horribly guilty because Mark was so sweetly adoringly willing to wait, not understanding that Mark was going to wait until hell froze over before giving up on me because breaking the engagement meant he'd lost some strange battle of wills I'd never known we were fighting. All of that and still I'd felt I had worth.
Now, I felt like nothing but something that could scream or give pleasure. Or both, I guessed.
There was no gaggle of girls, all beaten and filthy and being forced to strip and shower on command, there were no invasive and public medical exams, there were no transport trucks and trailers stuffed with women.
There was just me. I had presented the opportunity and human predators came out of the woodwork and swooped down on me. If Erin Trace existed, she'd certainly have had her flaws. She'd been busy in her young life, according to the painstakingly assembled story. A bit of narcotics misuse here, petty theft there, one B&E, questioned on more than that, thrown out of drunk and disorderly scenes where all police wanted to do was disburse. Then the liberating of someone else's wheels.
Did Erin Trace deserve what she was going through and what she was going to be going through? Fuck, no. No one did.
"Put it on," the woman said. For all that she'd ordered me stripped and beaten she seemed discomfited by my nakedness.
Then she ought to give me more than a t-shirt, though I understood the psychological impact of giving me only a t-shirt. Even knowing better it would make it hard for me to run. I'd be afraid of being exposed. As if having someone see what every woman had under her clothes was more important than escaping what would in the long run undoubtedly be death.
I put the t-shirt on. I didn't need to make anything worse. It was long enough I could bring it between my legs, into my lap, and sit cross legged. I wasn't going to kneel to the woman unless someone forced me to.
"You can call me Raven," she said.
She didn't look like a raven. She looked like those naked cats, the ones with no fur, whose elegant bone structures and sweet faces are offset by the fact that they're freaks of nature and in some way horrible.
I didn't answer because none seemed required.
"What's your name?"
"Erin Trace." Though her team had undoubtedly already given her the entire fake history. I was confident it would stand up.
"Erin, you're in a bit of a pickle here." She sat down on the thing that looked like a throne. The sun had moved, so the room was normally lit. We could see each other, as if we were two women having a weird conversation, if one left out the fact of armed guards, a dominatrix with a cane, the beaten woman brought to the plac
e in shackles and wearing nothing more than a t-shirt.
Bit of a pickle. Yeah, that fit.
I let the panic out. "I didn't do anything! I thought it was my friend's car! I told you that, I thought it was Ray's and he said I could borrow it and he always leaves the keys behind the visor and that's where I found them. It was a black 'Vette and I thought it was his! He said I could borrow it!" I was starting to cry again and my friend, whose identity would actually check out, who really didn't own a Corvette but who did exist at least, he was starting to feel like the catalyst behind Erin's problems.
I was becoming irrationally angry at him.
I was becoming extremely rationally afraid. Even though nothing had changed.
Next second, everything did change.
"Get her ready to travel." That seemed to be directed to Evie, who was already heading toward me, now holding a Taser. "You two think you can make a delivery on time?" But she only seemed mildly annoyed with Chad and Theo. They had, after all, delivered the goods. I was like an improperly tracked Amazon order.
"She tried to run," Chad said. He looked sulky and stupid and I wouldn't have minded shooting him. He had the dull meanness of a real bully. I didn't think he was smart enough to be a psychopath, but he was more than garden variety mean. There was something in those eyes that enjoyed hurting. I'd been safe so far because Raven wanted me unharmed.
For what reason? Because I didn't think I'd like that. Trafficked women ended up in brothels, but they also got sold to sick fucks.
Cole could be considered a sick fuck. I had considered him that. I didn't let myself think about it.
Chad didn't look like he cared if Raven ordered me trussed up and delivered to the dump. I thought to him I was a job, and a job was a job. He didn't care about time involved or convenience, though he'd cared about sticking to the timeline of the one of getting me here. I considered that a certain type of evil on its own. To care so little about what you were doing except as it impacted you, when the thing being done was hurting someone else.