by Sophia Reed
I'd made a critical, stupid mistake. Evie had packed the bag and shown me how to do makeup and dress. Theo had carried my bag inside after searching it.
Something tried to click there, but failed, because Bevington had just reached for me. I flinched back away from him, but he grabbed my wrist and dragged me across the floor. My knees hit and because he kept pulling me, stronger than he had any right to be, I half crawled, half staggered on my knees.
At the bed he pulled me up by my hair, threw me onto the bed. "There are security all over this house." His breath was cold and smelled like garbage. "They are loyal to me because I pay them and I pay them well and because I brought them here from poverty." He leaned in close and licked the inside of my ear.
I shuddered and pushed against him but he lay on me now like a heavy blanket. I struggled and felt the knife against my neck and stopped.
It wasn't the worst thing that would have ever happened to me. Another 48 hours at most and I'd be out of this place. I needed the time. I wanted the time in his office to take him down. Then I'd contact Cole. Then I'd find the way to get the information to the feds. Then I could knee Bevington in the groin and break his nose. And his fingers.
But not his neck. The best way to torture Bevington would be to take away everything he had, sell it all off and use the money to support women in every way possible.
Fight human sex trafficking.
Put together rape centers that were counseling and legal representation.
Fuck, put together rape counseling centers that also offered access to mercs. Let the women get back some of their own without dragging in the male patriarchy and its legal system. Women's choice. Which option do you choose? Your choice.
Make reparations to any woman fucked by this man.
His tongue curled into my ear again, then down my neck.
"Get off me!"
He dug the knife into my ribs. "You don't understand, bitch. Your days of telling a man what do are over. They were over the minute you jacked that car. Yes, I know about that. I know how they found you and I know you fought."
He was gleeful. He was a million years old but he was strong and he was armed and he had a girl who had fought her captivity. That excited him.
Fuck. Get it over with. I couldn't bring myself to try and convince him to make it consensual. There were things even a deep cover wouldn't allow me to pretend. The idea that I wanted this husk of a human, this excuse for a man, to touch me? That was one of them.
But get it over with. Get back to the boredom of the long evening. Wait until he'd had his fill of whoever he called for in another 12 hours before the deep black night turned to green and we had a chance to ransack his office and send all the proof out to Cole and from Cole, to whatever authorities could best put it to use.
Feds or mercs. I didn't give a fuck which.
The idea of him touching me was repellant. Revolting. But I was ready. Get it over with, get it done, get him to the point where we could hurt him.
Even if that meant he hurt me first.
He ripped my shorts off me, put the knife which was wicked sharp between my legs and said, "Get your top off."
I did. T-shirt, jog bra. Naked, in front of him, my arms automatically crossing over my breasts. The smell of something wrong in the room, of Bevington, as if his diseased mind could smell.
And whatever was coming from the bathroom off the bedroom.
He pushed me back on the bed. I was doubled over the side of it, ass up, wondering where he intended to rape me, or if he'd take every hole. I wanted to scream. I wanted to take the knife from him but he knew all the places to hold it. Against my ribs too close to my heart. Between my legs not just in vulnerable areas but against the major artery there. Against my throat by the carotid artery, the very surgical sharpness of the blade proving itself by nicking my skin and making me bleed.
I let out a sob that must have been music to his ears. He stepped back and I heard him unzip his fly. Instinct took over and I started to thrash.
As if that was just me needing proof the blade was instantly there again. Against my spine. I subsided.
He pulled himself free of his pants. I could hear him, incoherent mutterings, and then he was on me again, his body weighing mine down, his spit on my face, his breath in my nose, his knife on my ribs.
His cock soft and useless against me.
He started to shove against me, like he meant to rub himself to hardness on my hip, my backside. I could feel all of him, withered balls and the softness of his flaccid member, and horror took me. Rape would be one thing. Rape by this creature would be bad enough.
But if he couldn't get it up? If he couldn't fuck me after everything he'd set in motion?
"You cunt!"
The fist came down at me, the angle wrong. He didn't have the trajectory to really do damage to my face and I moved the instant I knew what he was going to do, but that was instinct, reflex, and in the long run, not going to do me any good.
Because Bevington had just gone red. Reason had deserted him. He was a spitting, furious, raging thing, with no more capability for reason than an enraged animal. He'd been set to rape me and he couldn't get it up and nothing in me had considered this even momentarily like anything funny. Like anything good.
He was going to hurt me and I couldn't – I couldn't just lay there. I couldn't take whatever he decided to do in place of rape. If I had to kill him, that was what I'd do. I had the proof such as it was of seeing his connection to Evie and Raven. If that was all I got, it was all I got. Because adrenaline was burning through me and I fought.
I turned on the bed, upright with him pressed against me, struggling under his weight. He shoved me down, his hands on my wrists, the knife still clutched in his right hand. I ignored it for the moment, intent on wrapping my legs around him in an attempt to keep him off me. When that pressed him closer, I started to wedge a leg between us, meaning to lever him off me.
His face was inches from mine, his eyes mad, when he lunged past me, catapulting up over me so his chest, as withered and nut brown as the rest of him, flashed past my eyes.
He'd gone for a panic button and hit it before I knew what he was doing. Damn! I had zero time to get the knife away from him and even if I did, I wasn't sure what good it would do, there were at least six guards on duty, they'd surround me and –
And the door was open, and they were already at the bed, pulling him off me but not to protect me.
To protect him.
To do what he demanded of them.
Sir, maybe you should get dressed.
Grab her!
You know what I want – do it now.
Hands on my ankles as I tried to throw myself to the far side of the bed. Hands on my ankles dragging me back to them. Hands on my arms, dragging me upright. Holding me, spinning me, throwing me face down on the bed.
"Don't do this! Don't do this! Oh, my god, please, don't you understand what he is!"
But of course they did. To some degree all of them were, too.
Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up. Save your strength.
The smell in the bathroom, stronger now, because someone had gone in there to do something, something my mind rejected, something I didn't want to think about, something I was in a panic to stop, there were no bars on Bevington's windows because of course in the event of fire, save the old fuck, of course save the old asshole, but what were they going to do, what were they doing –
You know what they're doing you know what you've been smelling hot metal and someone has raked through whatever the source of heat is not charcoal not a brazier because inside that can kill the fumes and oh my god
Shut up, shut up, shut up, do something this can't happen I can't he can't do this I can't take it
"Please!"
It came out a scream. But the guards had already fastened my wrists and ankles to the restraints, arms to chains and handcuffs that spread from the bed posts, legs to the legs of the bed, so I was bent over
the bed. Face down.
Immobilized.
Prepared.
As Bevington brought the red hot brand into the bedroom.
28
Annie
He laughed.
He showed it to me, the metal glowing and putting off heat, too close to my face, so horribly close to my face I didn't move, didn't blink, didn't breathe.
Didn't vomit, though there was bile in my throat.
Five times he passed the metal close enough to the flesh of my backside I felt it and tensed and bit down, my jaw locked. Five times he took it away. The last time he gave it to a guard to "Warm it back up a little."
The sixth time, with the brand newly hot, he pressed it into my ass where my right cheek meets my thigh.
Screaming was completely useless.
I couldn't have stopped.
29
Annie
"I think she's waking up."
"That won't do her any good. Do we have any morphine? Anything? What did he give you when you had the migraine?"
"You don't know if she can use that."
"Fine, Advil. Will arnica work on burns?"
"I have aloe. And burn cream."
"You need to disinfect."
"Are you nuts? The pain would kill her. Anyway, it's a brand. It burned away any bacteria."
"Until her skin – "
"Not now, Mia. It'll hurt too much. You said aloe?"
"And ice. In a pack."
"Is she waking up?"
I don't think so. Sweetie, if you can hear me, just go back to sleep. You don't want to be awake right now."
She was right.
30
Annie
I woke up at the black hour because all the alarms were going off.
The first thing was the pain. The second was the nausea. I made it into the bathroom despite a leg that felt like it was stretched thin, the skin made of crackling blistering breaking fat, like overcooked bacon.
There had been a smell like that.
The memory made me vomit again. This time soft cool hands pulled my hair back and held it for me. When I subsided, flushed with one hand and lay my head on the cool of the closed lid, the hands pulled my hair into a low ponytail and secured it. They went away, came back with a glass with about two inches of golden liquid in the bottom.
"What is it?" My voice sounded as burned and blistered as my ass. I'd screamed myself unconscious.
"Ginger ale. We didn't give you anything earlier because we didn't know but we have some painkillers."
I vaguely remembered hearing them.
"Just the Advil. I'm an addict." I turned my head so I could see her.
Mia considered me. "You're not jonesing."
"I'm in recovery." I would always be in recovery. I would never risk that.
She tightened her lips in a rueful smile. "Too bad. Advil's only going to take the edge off."
"Much as I'd welcome oblivion, I need to be aware. What time is it? Do we have time to get to his office again?"
She looked at one of the clock radios that had been brought in. "Yes."
I liked the flat, blunt statement.
"But are you going to be able to?"
Even if I had to go through another day with Bevington, I had to do this tonight. It was the only way I would get through another day. Four of us versus six or eight armed guards wouldn't work.
So get the proof.
And get hold of Cole.
And let him use the trackers and come get us.
And pray that was still going to work.
31
Cole
We had a signal. Faint, flickering, but there. Planes had gone up once we determined Los Angeles. Over the canyons, the radios turned off as the FAA shouted we didn't have flight plans and weren't identified.
April and Charles were going through every database they could hack and Decker was feeding them sites to try, ones she had access to, even as she searched. Whoever had Annie, we were trying to find out who even as we searched to pinpoint where.
She was close. Probably everything would be fine until morning. Probably we could down the planes and try to work with the auspices of search and rescue.
As if they wouldn't ask why the person we were searching for was tagged like a pet, and why we couldn't locate them. What the panic was all about.
It we had to, we'd go that way. Private search and rescue might not ask too many questions.
For now the planes were up and a signal was coming back.
Annie was here somewhere.
32
Annie
This time being in the office didn't feel like winning. It didn't feel like we were close to being out. I no longer imagined leading three victims and myself from the remains of Bevington's burning house, all of us emerging into morning sunlight. Maybe he hadn't been able to get it up, but he'd raped me just the same and that rape had changed something. I no longer saw success as waiting and biding my time.
I wasn't sure I saw success at all.
He hadn't been in the office since we had, not as far as I could see. Tonight we split up. Mia and Nikki watched out the lavish windows Bevington had that looked out into lush Pacific gardens and the door, that led back into the hell we were trapped in.
Lettie worked with me, the two of us locating more quickly the information we'd seen before, the wire transfers to Raven, the information on reaching her. The photographs on the desk. The laptops were on, just sleeping, and we brought them up and photographed the information, checking each photo before sending it.
Cole – proof. A man named Bevington, Llewellyn, in house in Southern California foothills above LA. Buys "harems." Proof of wire transfers to Raven and Evie in Arizona. They sold me. His house probably under another name. four of us. Please come.
I typed the attachments that he should receive. I waited for an answer, watching the clock. Time was running out.
None came.
33
Cole
"Sir? Mr. St. Martin?"
"What?" My voice was strained and snapping. The tech was interrupting. Decker was explaining the search.
For once a tech didn't back down. "There's a message alert."
So the fuck what? Fleet, about the day spa. Or –
I took the laptop. I didn't recognize the email address. I recognized the subject line. Erin Trace. If someone had her, if someone had figured out who and what she was?
I didn't hesitate to bring up the email but there was an eon of time to dread what the message would be.
It was from her.
Not relief. Some kind of dread. Fear that something had gone wrong. Not right.
The message blurred in front of me. I blinked, making my eyes focus.
She was in the very hills we were searching. The timestamp was minutes old.
She was alive.
34
Annie
"That was too close."
Lettie was right. But I felt like giggling. Or having hysterics.
We got back to the room moments before the guards showed up. There wasn't even time to throw ourselves into the beds and pretend we were sleeping and no reason to, as it turned out. The pair of them, the ones from the shower room, had less than no interest in what the hell we'd been doing.
"He wants two of you."
That was the one who had assaulted me. Standing there in the doorway, enough brawn to make sure no one could slip past them. Everything inside me tightened with the desire to kill him.
I'd kill his partner for good measure.
At the statement, all of us looked at each other. "Any two?" Mia asked, bolder than I'd seen her. "Or does he have specific requirements?"
Nikki had curled into a ball on the bed, arms around her knees. She looked like she as trying to disappear. Mia sat calmly observing the men.
It was Lettie and I who both stood, as if unwilling to be seen on a bed with any sort of suggestion behind our being there. Or as if we were going to operate from
a place of power. We didn't have the power in this situation, but standing made us feel better.
The guard who spoke wasn't the one who had assaulted me. "Don't be stupid," he said. It seemed like a sort of general warning. "He wants the new bitch and you." He pointed at Lettie.
We looked at each other. Too soon for any kind of exchange of ideas just through a glance, but it seemed likely Bevington had made a bad choice.
Then pain flared again from the brand on my ass and fear raced up my spine. If he touched me, if he did anything to me, the pain would be so horrible I wouldn't be able to react. Even with Lettie there, what could she do? I'd never even seen her in a stress situation. She might instantly collapse. She might instantly give in to whatever he wanted.
Dread coiled up in my belly.
Lettie reached over and took my hand. "We need to get ready." She waved a hand at her clothes, which definitely weren't sleep clothes, though that didn't seem to occur to the guards. "He won't like it if you bring us down looking like this."
A tiny fraction of the dread backed down. She'd phrased that exactly right. Not We can't come down looking like this or He'll be angry if we come down looking like this, both of which put the onus on us. The guards, especially this pair, didn't give a shit what Bevington did to us as a result of being angry at how we looked. Instead she'd put it on them without doing so directly. He won't like it if you do this suggested his anger at them without coming out and saying so.
The guards exchanged a glance that suggested they had been together long enough for a limited amount of telepathy, then answered as if of course they knew that and of course they'd meant we were to go with them as soon as we were ready.