by Sophia Reed
We looked at each other, and as if by mutual agreement, started getting ready to sleep. We set alarms on the clock radios strewn about the room (no smart phones, no laptops, nothing that could make outside contact and the streaming had all been by screen we didn't control). The alarms were set for the dark hour before the green hour of the night before we tumbled together onto one bed like a pack of exhausted kittens.
And slept.
26
Cole
Helicopters took us to Los Angeles. The mercs met us there. Decker came separately but she came. If it all went down in a way that didn't implicate me or Annie, she'd call in her cohorts. It would be official and she'd be the agent who worked on an "anonymous tip" and brought down a trafficking ring.
If it went the way I thought it would, at some point somewhere within Los Angeles or the surrounding areas, bodies would be found. Inexplicable. Probably of very rich people.
Very rich, and very dead.
27
Annie
"How much security is awake and around at night?"
I was struggling into a t-shirt and my running tights that had been provided for who knew what reason. I had decided not to bother with shoes. We were going to be in the house, not going outside, though if something happened and we found an unguarded, unalarmed exit, my feet getting cut up on stones and thorns was the least of my problems.
There'd been talk of two staying behind and me and someone else going in search of information, looking first for the home office Bevington was sure to have. The two staying behind would be there to fend off security if they showed up. Only that was feeling pointless.
"Most of the time security is outside," Nikki said. "They patrol there. At night sometimes one stays outside Bev's room. They're not around in the house."
I thought about that. "Because the exterior is locked?"
That just got me a curious look from everyone but Lettie, who was squinting. "You mean are we locked into the house?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, they don't care if we're in the house itself," Mia said with a yawn. "But we kind of stay here. Because security – sometimes they take advantage. Who are we going to tell?"
Bevington. And it was unlikely he'd do anything on their behalf. He'd discipline or even kill his guards maybe, but because this was his property. Not because they'd hurt or raped a girl.
So the doors to the outside world were locked and probably set with an alarm that went to wherever security stayed. Definitely not to a police station.
Which meant within the house itself we could move around.
That more than anything made me start thinking the girls here were exactly what they seemed to be: Sexual prisoners, not moles, not rats. They were trapped and they weren't from walks of life where breaking in and out of locked rooms was the norm, or going up against people who had the complete freedom to hurt them with impunity.
It answered a lot of my questions. Taking them with me to Bev's office was still a gamble but one I was willing to take. They were part of this.
We were out the door in minutes.
The house was vast. As huge as Cole's compound was with the underground labyrinth, this was far more enormous. Mia was the one who went out to forage, and she only took food. She went stealthily at night to avoid the guards and maybe because there was an element of fun, or of getting back at their captor. She only took food because there was nothing else to take. Books were considered too noticeable by their absence, and there was no way to play movies. She was also the only one to go out. At first that sounded like they'd given up – they were trapped behind unlocked doors and hadn't they even tried to find a phone that worked or an exit that was unguarded? But it turned out Mia had. All those things and more. And that while she might be the only one to forage, the others had been out at night. There were landlines in the house because cell service was uncertain in the hills, but Bevington's office was locked up.
There just wasn't anything useful to find.
Until now. Because they hadn't given thought to finding information about Bevington to bring him down. That made sense. They wanted to get away. Not investigate.
I thought that meant we could go directly to his office and not wander the house unless we wanted to. Mia knew where Bev's office was.
The house was creepy. I unlocked the door to Bevington's office with a nail file, appalled to discover his lock was nothing more than a normal interior door lock. I'd been popping those open on my sister's bedroom doors since I was 12.
Bevington's office was just an office, though the office of someone rich enough apparently he could load it with laptops so if he wheeled away from his desk, he didn't have to go back to it to reach another laptop. It was a wanton display of money. What did I expect from someone who bought humans? But Cole had bought me and he was still working for mankind with his pharmaceuticals and his charities.
There was a landline on Bevington's desk. I looked at it. It was one of those office systems still in use, cord and everything, the kind used in hospitals and sprawling offices, with extensions and buttons and lights, the ones that blinked when a line was on hold. That lit up when a line was in use. If I made a call on it, other extensions in the house would show it was in use.
And I add have proof yet. Sometimes the minute I'm undercover I'm looking for a way out. It's a type of claustrophobia I can usually control.
It was harder this time. Everything about Bevington was ugly.
Also, I had a life I was more invested in getting back to.
So do your job and go home.
Bev's desk produced a laptop. I sat and started going through recent online searches and orders. "He watches a lot of porn," I said.
Someone in the mostly dark office laughed. Mia went through one of the file cabinets, discovering information on the house we were in – rented from some agency though she couldn't tell if he'd meant to buy it or not, or if he had other properties. This one was pretty empty. Even the desk was a standalone in the room, one desk, two chairs.
I took the desk, ignoring the snoozing laptop at the moment in favor of the file drawers. Lettie took a different file cabinet. Nikki took the laptop.
"His name is Llewellyn Price Bevington," she said a moment later.
"I think I understand why he always uses his last name," Mia said.
We found deeds for land. We found financial transactions none of us understood. We found records from his checkups. We found –
We found his checkbook, with large amounts paid to Raven Holdings, LLC in Arizona and more money to a similar sounding venture.
I found his business information. Bevington worked in real estate, handling very expensive houses. That explained the enormous but virtually empty home we were in.
But it was Lettie who found the cache of photos of girls no longer in the harem. We all went still, gathering around the desk where she laid them out. The girls in the photos weren't dead. But the images showed exactly how badly Bev had fucked them up before he let them go on to whatever horrible fate awaited them. Nothing that would reduce their value. The beatings would heal. So would black eyes and broken fingers. It made sense that someone malignant who would buy or steal human beings would also treat them like this. But seeing the evidence of it in photographs hurt.
And there was one photograph, blurry and out of focus, as if the subject had moved as it was taken. I thought I was looking at a round, nearly perfect female butt cheek. Nearly perfect, but forever altered. Because I'd thought that everything healed. Everything done inside this house would fade and the women, sold again into maybe something not quite so terrible, maybe into something impossibly worse, and maybe killed, they'd go on, beautiful and broken.
But the brand, if that's what I was looking at, that wouldn't even be meant to heal.
I shuddered and spread the photos out using an edge of my t-shirt, not leaving prints. I kept them in order and I kept the order in my mind. I didn't want him to know I'd seen them. All around me, all fo
ur of us were being careful without my having had to say it.
The photos were close but not quite what I needed. There was no way to even prove what the photographs were for. The irredeemably human part of me wanted to believe there was some shame or remorse there. That he took the photographs because he wanted to remember what he'd done and stop himself from doing it again, the same way someone might leave themselves a record of overindulgences when trying to diet, or to stop drinking.
It wasn't even the cynical part of me that couldn't believe that. Just the part that had been around people too much. Not even the cop. Just the human who had sisters who didn't like her and a father who put his own beliefs over everyone else's, a human who had been around a quarter century and seen more of the human but beastly side than she wanted.
I ground my teeth. Too soon. Even with the photographs I couldn't get out just yet. I needed proof I could take with me because nothing here was more than hearsay. I needed to link the girls to Bevington, irreversibly. What he was doing was his own dirty little secret. I was willing to bet my own middle of the night arrival at this private enclave wasn't the first after hours delivery. He fully believed in his right to do what he was doing, but he wasn't stupid: Filthy rich clients who could buy properties like he sold, properties that had made him his fortune, weren't going to buy from a human trafficker who dealt in such filth and horror.
Just for a second, while the other girls poked around and Nikki positioned herself without anyone asking as a look out (and a good idea, too), I stood swaying, wondering why I'd never heard of anyone with a fortune buying other people and setting them free. Sure, there'd be a media frenzy at the idea of buying and selling humans, but buying and setting free? Or hey, how about this – billionaire donates millions to the health and welfare of –
And I thought about Cole. I thought about Cole and what he'd tried to do for Kie, the little psychopath who had almost killed me but who in the end, had almost had happiness. She was out there somewhere and I didn't know if her life was better or worse, but she was at least free to make her own decisions.
There was Marilyn, Cole's pain slut chew toy. He'd let her go when she up and decided on another life, one that didn't include his extreme sadism and her own extreme masochism.
There was Ariel, so worn out and hurt by life she'd curled up in Cole's underground labyrinth and gone to ground like a hurt creature. The sex she and Cole had was brutal combative. Ariel didn't want to die but she hadn't wanted anything to do with life, either. But he'd let her stay there, safe from everyone but him. He'd brought in therapists. He'd brought in companions. He'd kept her fed and exercised and let her paint and write and heal. And one day she'd walked out of there.
There was me. Hooked on fentanyl and on a life that kept me in the driver's seat at all times. There was nothing so very wrong with that. The control freak nature, not the fet. I'd had my own life when I met Cole and the idea had been to heal the addiction and get back to it.
Only I'd found something better. Something more authentic.
There was good in the world. Because of that, I still had to do what I could to fight the dark in the world. I thought when I got out of this, I'd still go back to school. Back to Cole. Back to the new life I'd been building. But there'd be something from this experience, something from the horror of Bevington and the photographs of abused women that I would carry with me.
A darkness to remind me always to seek the light.
Paralysis broke. I went back to his desk, staring at the pictures. Those were the key if I could document them being here, in this place, among his things. I looked fast around the desk. Leather day planners. An expensive desktop. Two laptops stacked on top of each other.
The laptops had cameras. I could get stills and undoubtedly Bevington's office would allow for email. I wanted photos of the four of us, of my injuries and anyone else's, of the girls now missing, of the deeds and information in the checkbook that connected Bevington to Raven. Once I had the shot I'd send them to Cole. Send them to myself. Send them to the police or the feds or the LA Times. As long as word got out.
Then wipe the photos off the computer and go back to bed.
"Hey!" Mia hissed from across the room. "I hear security. They're downstairs starting to meet about the day."
The idea that they had briefings was – sickening? Or just sick. So today Bevington is going to want the new girl, naked and waiting…
We all froze, listening. "Time to go," Lettie said. To my expression she said, "We have enough time to put everything back and then let's go."
Which was exactly what we did. We set Bevington's office to rights, the way we'd found it. I didn't have time to use the laptops to get photos, but I would the coming night. Now I knew what I needed I could come do directly this. My heart pounded a little at the idea of at least another 24 hours in this place, but even if I'd sent the photos to Cole tonight and gotten confirmation he had them, there'd be the question of how to get out.
By the time security came to the door, knocked peremptorily and stuck their heads in to count bodies, we were under the covers, eyes closed, tremors running through our bodies.
Tonight, I told myself as sleep claimed me. Tonight we would get everything we needed to take him down.
We were awake again earlier than any of us wanted, and the previous day repeated itself: the food, the workouts, the showers, the classes. But in between we exchanged information.
He called for me midafternoon.
We hadn't been allowed to sleep in, so our abbreviated night had caught up to all of us. We yawned our way through desultory workouts and through coffee and through normal daily prep. The showers weren't forced. We showered in our room. That had been, it seemed, the novelty of the new girl.
Go, me.
By midafternoon in the somnolent heat I was almost asleep, the classes not due to start for another blessed 90 minutes, when the guards came.
They didn't give any instructions other than he wanted me brought to him. He was in the living room. He wanted me there. End of discussion as far as the guards were concerned.
Maybe it was the late night and nagging exhaustion. Maybe it was feeling too much like things were going to change, so soon, we'd get the information out, and then we'd get ourselves out, and everything would be great.
Whatever it was, I didn't ask the guards to wait while I got ready, which I thought they would have more than willingly done, and I didn't put on makeup the way I'd been shown. Or at all. I didn't dress up or down. I had on the shorts I'd been wearing and a t-shirt, bare feet because there was nowhere to go and so shoes didn't seem necessary.
His rage was the first thing.
"They're supposed to prepare you. That idiot bitch! She knows what I want. What am I paying her for?"
I'd only just stepped free of the guards. They were two I didn't know, both men, both large, both dark. I hadn't seen a single female here except the harem, which didn't surprise me, even with Raven and Evie being the ones to procure Bevington's meat. This pair of guards would have looked comically cast as villains had there been anything comical about the situation. They were almost generic. Committing them to memory meant looking for scars, for moles, for birthmarks, for things other than facial hair or hair cuts. Committing them to memory meant looking for things that wouldn't change. I'd seen six different security men since coming here. So far, they were all distinct in my mind, especially the one who assaulted me in the shower room.
These two were doing nothing more than their job. Transport the new girl from the harem room to Bevington's bedroom. That was all they were told to do and all they did. In my opinion that made them every bit as culpable as Bevington himself. Just doing my job would never be an excuse.
I listened as the two of them moved away, despite Bevington already beginning to rage at me. I wanted to hear if two sets of footsteps actually moved off away from the door and out of earshot.
They did.
Bevington was very arrogant and very
sure of himself. Unless he had mad martial arts skills – or a weapon – I thought his confidence was overrated.
"You wanted to see me?" He'd said he didn't want to be called Sir. I'd be happy to oblige.
The room was sunny, the sun coming through filmy curtains. Heavier curtains were open, letting in the light, but I could see where they could blackout the room when he had his migraines.
I thought he deserved migraines.
Everything in the room showed his money. The huge four poster bed, of rich dark wood, with leather and chains and handcuffs hanging from it. If I was going to get what I needed here before I tried to make a break for it, I wasn't going to enjoy the next hour or two.
I gritted my teeth. There was an expensive desk beside the windows, with very little on it. An umbrella stand beside it held a variety of canes, from natural wood to those made of manmade materials. I had no doubt the desk in here was used more often to stretch girls across for their canings than for any kind of work. Did he role play? Headmaster and naughty schoolgirl? The uniform I'd been given probably meant yes. The innocent girl framed by her peers, sent for her reckoning with the headmaster, he who wielded the cane. Whatever else was in the desk I didn't want to know.
What I didn't like was the smell in the room. There was something metallic or like the inside of a mechanic's garage. It almost registered on me but Bevington interrupted.
"This is how you come here?"
I blinked, almost said I didn't understand, and realized I was not made up and was wearing shorts.
"I – I thought – " I didn't think. But telling him that would be a bad idea. Bevington thought he should be top of everyone's minds in this house and not for the reason he thought, but yeah, he should be. It would be safer.