Saved

by Angel Payne

  Sage and Rayna were led past more guards and then trundled inside through a back door. The room they entered was small and musty, walled off from the rest of the hut by corrugated aluminum walls. A few strings of old Christmas lights and a half-dozen kerosene lamps were the only light sources in the space, which didn’t help her disorientation as one of the guards spun her around and threw her to the hard-packed dirt floor. He grabbed Rayna and did the same to her. Without their arms to fling out for balance, they both landed in painful heaps, their knees and shoulders taking the brunt of their falls. For a few seconds, Sage even forgot the throbbing in her face from King’s blow.

  “Careful, you idiots!” King cuffed both guards on the sides of their faces. Watching the guy direct his masochism on someone else was satisfying in a sick way. “We’re not renting those two tonight. Sales will be final on them. The blond is already scuffed up, so take care.”

  Sage watched in grim triumph as the two men glared at King’s back. She wished one of them would point out that it was he who’d scuffed her up in the first place, but they both pulled the wuss card like the cowards they were.

  A shaking cry whipped her attention back down and to the side. She joined Rayna in returning the stares of five women who were caked in gaudy cosmetics, raw fear, and little else. One of the girls, a strawberry blond in a low-cut red leather minidress and matching boots, scooted toward Sage.

  “Dear merciful Lord. You’ve got a shiner the size of Kalamazoo, girlfriend. And that rag must be wretched. Let me—”

  “No.” Rayna grabbed the woman’s wrist. Red Mini’s heart was in the right place in wanting to dislodge the gag from Sage, but Rayna set the woman straight in a somber tone. “The bastard is using it as punishment. Take it off, and he’ll give her worse.”

  “Who is he?” A curvy chestnut brunette trembled hard as she curled against the wall. King’s magical makeover team had dressed her in a black tube top and a cheetah-print skirt that wasn’t much bigger. “Wh-What’s going on?” Tears coursed down her face, taking trails of her makeup with them. “Why is this happening? We came here to help people! We were on our way to Myanmar. We just wanted to serve. Now wh-what’s going to happen to us?”

  “He said ‘renting.’” The matter-of-fact statement was given by a woman in a royal-blue version of Red Mini’s outfit. Aside from the dresses, the women were literally twins. “I think we can draw the logical conclusions from that term.”

  “Oh my God!” The brunette sobbed harder. “I-I can’t! I can’t!”

  Another woman, black-haired and in a lemon-yellow halter with pink shorts, crawled over to her. “Yes, you can, Mandy. Listen to me. You do whatever it takes to survive, you hear me? Just do whatever they say. Don’t make them upset.”

  “You d-don’t understand,” the brunette rasped back. “I’m…I’m a…virgin.”

  One of the guards sidled in closer. “In that case, waan jai, maybe I’ll bid on you myself.”

  “Hell yeah, baby.” His friend cracked an oily grin. “Teo will be good to you, honey. He’s popped the plug on three virgins this year alone.”

  The first guard shrugged. “Eh, it’s almost getting boring, ya know?” He slid a sideways glance down at Sage. “If I was making the big baht, I’d wanna buy something like that to take home and tie up for myself.” After looking to make sure King was still in the other section of the hut, he grabbed Sage’s hair and grinded her face against his crotch. “I have a million ideas for how to break a tiger like you, gorgeous. Again and again and again…”

  Sage instinctively tried to yank away, but she was crouched, bound, and about half the henchman’s size. Teo grunted and kept her locked against his burgeoning bulge, rolling her nose along the khaki fabric that smelled like sweat and urine. Okay, this was not where a single one of her bondage fantasies had ever led.

  Think of home. Think of home. He’ll get bored in a minute and stop. Think of—

  “Oh yeah, baby. You’re a sweet little e-raan. Nice little slut. Open your mouth for me. Suck those balls right through my pants. Yeeaahh…”

  Behind her, Rayna remained thankfully silent, but the other five women let out gasps of horror and protest. Sage knew they meant well, but the louder they sobbed, the harder the bastard toyed with her. She reached inside, frantically scrounging for her mental disconnect button.

  Think of Garrett. Think of home. Think of the egrets on the water.

  Who the hell was she kidding?

  She’d never see home again.

  Once King had haggled the highest price for her, life as Sage Weston wouldn’t exist any longer. She’d have a new name, if her owner decided to call her anything at all. The tracks of her life would be erased by the ocean of anonymity. Of slavery.

  She and Rayna had discussed this a thousand times over the last two weeks, yet she realized some fortress in her brain had been holding back the reality of it. This helpless, humiliating instant blew those walls to dust. In the wake of the explosion, her mind screamed in grief and her heart floundered in despair. The effort of both sapped the strength from her body. She was a shell, numb and senseless. When the other guards hissed that King was on approach again and Teo tossed her back to the ground, she barely felt the impact.

  The curious thing was, King’s approach now seemed more the charge of a crazed rodeo bull. His features matched the mien, his mouth bared in a grimace, the whites of his eyes like crazed flashlights.

  “The auction is off,” he snapped. “Get the bitches out of here.”

  “Off?” Teo’s buddy didn’t have such a snarky tone now.

  “Take them back to the cave,” King fired as if the guy hadn’t spoken. “Then wait for my instructions. Reaw-khao! Hurry!”

  “The cave?” echoed another henchman. “All of them?”

  King rammed the heel of his palm up that guy’s nose. “Imbecile! Isn’t that what I just said?”

  The soldier didn’t get a chance to check his bloody nose. Before King was done, shouts erupted outside the hut. A door was bashed in somewhere. Another.

  “Get them out of here!” King dictated. “No bitches in the buildings. They cannot be found. Hide them. Now!”

  Teo and his friends hauled them to their feet. “You heard him, sluts. Move.”

  Sage and Rayna struggled to get upright. “What’s going on?” her friend rasped.

  Sage shook her head in a wordless I don’t know. Her heart pounded. Frantic wheezes erupted from her nose. Rayna and she stumbled behind the other women. They wouldn’t be sold tonight, but that didn’t mean the danger was over.

  The next second, they were slammed back to the dirt. Sage’s head hit the floor. A curtain of silver spots crashed over her vision, yanked by pulleys screaming in terror. No. The screams were human. The Miniskirt Twins and Virgin Girl, accompanied by the women’s frenzied retreat from the door, barreled into Sage and Rayna. Their cries mixed with more voices from outside the hut, seeming to come from the direction of the village. They all sounded male—and pissed.

  The women shrieked again. The reason for their panic was explosively clear. Just beyond the portal, rifle fire and explosives lit up the night. The air filled with thick smoke and acrid gunpowder.

  The henchmen bellowed curses in three languages as they dropped the women in the middle of the room and then ran for cover behind some steel crates. Virgin Girl shrieked and sobbed, piercing deeper pain into Sage’s head. She blinked and tried to focus, but the world erupted in flashing lights and wild, confusing shadows. She half expected the Bon Jovi tune to get switched to an EDM beat. Welcome to Club Violence and Terror. She volunteered her brain as the spinning mirror ball.

  “Stop,” she begged, her senses revolting against the sensory assault. “Oh God, please stop!”

  Miraculously, the world obeyed.

  As suddenly as it had started, the rifle fire went silent. Aside from the soft sobs of the women heaped on top of her, she couldn’t hear a thing. A gust of balmy wind blew over the clearing outsi
de, rustling the tall grasses. Bon Jovi had become Linkin Park. The song was beautiful and passionate, ripping the air like an insane middle finger thrust at the violence that had just occurred.

  “No matter how far we’ve come, I can’t wait to see tomorrow…”

  One of the soldiers dared a harsh whisper. “Teo! You alive, man?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “I dunno. But this is bullshit. I didn’t sign up for this. Let’s get out—”

  “Freeze, assholes.”

  The interjection was low, lethal, and pure liquid steel—yet it could’ve been another rifle shot for the shock it blazed into Sage. Maybe that was it. Maybe somebody really had taken more shots and she’d been hit this time. She was dead and finally in heaven. Yes. That had to be the explanation, because she couldn’t allow herself to believe the truth of it. She wouldn’t allow herself to believe. Dreams didn’t just come true like this, especially in her life.

  “Drop your weapons, boys. Slow and gentle. You know the routine, don’t you? Lie flat on the ground with your hands where I can see them. Perfect. Now aren’t you two prettier’n a couple of hogs all fat and ready for the fair?”

  In the end, it wasn’t all the words that finally convinced her. It wasn’t even the pig joke, which was so “him,” as well. It was his laugh. That little soft dry chuckle that she couldn’t ever remember right, even in her most vivid dreams. Oh God, that laugh. Yes. This really was happening.

  Garrett.

  She tried to get out some semblance of it around the gag, but her heartbeat was a dervish of delirium. She struggled just to get air in, meaning she started inhaling the dirt floor. The stink of it was a horrid contrast to the sheer beauty of hearing his voice again. Tears seeped, turning her cheeks into mud baths. Her brain raced. Her senses swam.

  Desperately, she tried again. “G-Gahh—”

  “Nice work, Hawk Man.” The soldier who spoke loomed in the doorway before entering, his huge strides eating up the space. A smile tugged at Sage’s lips. Zeke. They’d kept the A-Team together.

  “Well, you didn’t bring me along for my pretty face.” This time, no laugh punctuated his dark tone. She watched him swing a leg over Teo and then wrench the henchman’s wrists back and fasten them in heavy plastic cuffs. His movements were precise and clean, even angry, which was oddly comforting to her right now. “I’ll take these fuckers outside. You see to the women.”

  “Nnnaaaaa!”

  Great. The moment she’d been dreaming of for over four hundred days, and she sounded like a freaking Muppet. Desperation turned her into a wriggling ball as she tried to right herself and get to her feet. He couldn’t leave again! She couldn’t let him! The terror was illogical, she knew, but she couldn’t stop its visceral hold on her mind any more than she could hold back a monsoon. “Nnaaaa,” she cried again. “Gaaaawwwet!”

  “Hey.” A pair of hands as reassuring as the voice descended on her shoulders. Sage recognized Zeke’s hulking form immediately. He crouched beside her, trying to help her up. “Hey hon, easy, easy. You’re safe now, okay? We’re gonna get you to safety. I’m with the United States Army. My name is Sergeant Zeke Hayes, and—”

  “Uh mow!”

  For a long second, the burly man looked like a six-year-old who’d just de-masked Spiderman. “Holy…shit.” He scrubbed a hand down his face before breaking into a full bellow. “Hawk! Get back in here. Now.”

  Chapter Three

  Okay, so Zeke had been right in grilling him before the mission. It was harder to keep his head in the game on this one, especially as they’d arrived and surrounded the hut—especially because he knew what they’d find inside. Or at least prayed they’d find.

  Turned out their timing was better than perfect. They’d gotten here in time, and the women were safe. That didn’t mean he had to stick around and help Zeke with the head count. He was glad to be out of that cramped room with all of those women crying in relief—and ripping his gut out in the process.

  But now the asshat wanted him back in there? Zeke had to know this wasn’t the easiest fucking thing for him. Which meant that whatever the reason for the callback, the beer tab was on Z tonight.

  “This’d better be good,” he growled, stomping back into the Quonset hut. “Your panties have been twisted more times today than—”

  A fist in his gut would’ve been less painful. And joyful. And terrible. And incredible.

  Zeke had just helped the woman to her feet, though it was doubtful she’d continue standing on them. She looked weak as a fawn and shaky as a newborn colt.

  She also looked exactly like Sage.

  He gulped painfully as he glared at Zeke. His friend didn’t even bother to look back. Z was too busy cutting free the zip ties that had cut purple welts into her wrists. When the woman winced from the fresh flow of blood to her hands, the cavity in his chest filled with pain too.

  Forget the beer tab. Zeke was going to pay for his whole three-day bender after this. He didn’t bother asking the guy what kind of a sick joke he thought he was pulling, because Zeke knew—knew—that some pots didn’t get stirred. So if that wasn’t his friend’s purpose, what was?

  Zeke gently helped the woman lift her head. They’d zip-tied a filthy rag into her mouth, and his friend started exploring how to best cut that free as well.

  After two seconds, Garrett barely noticed the thing.

  She looked past it, directly at him. No. She looked into him, just as she always could. Just as she always would. She cut him open from sternum to scrotum, filling every vital organ in his body with life again, blinding him with that brilliant green light that had haunted his dreams and been a relentless ghost in his soul.

  She was a ghost no more.

  Shit. Holy, heavenly shit.

  He didn’t remember how his legs carried him or how many steps he took. It only mattered that he yanked the knife out of Z’s hand, palming it himself. He had to be the one who set her free. He needed to be the one who saw her face when the last disgusting piece of her captivity got peeled back.

  He cut the tie with a savage jerk. She reacted with a little cry, but he knew he hadn’t hurt her. The sound was one of need. Of release. Of love.

  When he pulled the rag free from her face, tears ran through the dirt underneath. In wordless wonder, he cupped both sides of her jaw and kissed each tear until he got to her lips. She sighed against his mouth, opening to him, inching her shaking arms around his neck.

  “My heart,” he said against her lips.

  “My hero,” she whispered back.

  Garrett stiffened and swallowed. The words entered his gut and twisted it like scarab beetles. Hero? Right. Some champion he was, buying the story from the CNO hook, line, and fucking sinker. No skeletons in the van merely meant the rebels had moved the bodies as some kind of a sick fuck you to God only knew who. There was no sense in jeopardizing extra American lives to look for two charred corpses. The region was unstable and unsafe now.

  Goddamnit, he’d believed every line they’d fed him. He’d settled for saying goodbye to her photo on a tripod as they tossed flower petals off a cutter in the Sound, instead of demanding they all look harder, deeper, further for her.

  Never again. He vowed it now with every cell of his being. He’d never again give up on her. The angels had given her back to him, and he sure as fuck wasn’t blowing the chance. He’d never again let her go, and he’d never again rest before knowing she was safe, secure, completely protected.

  He began making good on that oath that moment, clutching her close and claiming her mouth with a kiss so deep and consuming, they both dragged air in harsh, heavy breaths afterward.

  He kept her pressed against him, still barely comprehending it was her heart beating beneath his, before murmuring, “Welcome back, Sage Weston.”

  Sage pulled back a little. She tilted her face up at him, her chapped lips tremulous with the question that tumbled off them. “Welcome back…to wh
at?”

  “To life, sugar.” He brushed her lips softly with his own again. “To life.”

  * * *

  Several hours later, he watched another degree of that life dance across her features as she laughed into his cell phone. She held the phone on the side of her face that hadn’t turned five shades of blue yet, causing Garrett to Zen-breathe his way out of another surge of fury. She’d shrugged off the injuries, unwilling to tell him how they’d gotten there, telling him that she’d shared all during Franzen’s debrief and didn’t want to go through it again with him.

  Garrett told himself to be patient. He’d woken up in a grimy hotel room today about to masturbate in his sleep with her wraith. Tonight, ensconced safely in the US Embassy’s guest quarters, he was about to climb into bed with her very warm, very alive self. Be grateful, you nut sack. And patient. Very patient. That includes what’s about to go down here. You have no idea what she’s been through. She may not want your dark-blue balls up in her business yet, got it?

  He turned from her, trying to focus on something a little less arousing than the sight of her in his old Pike Place Market T-shirt and a pair of utilitarian white panties. The task was not easy. The combo was sexy as fuck, no matter how basic its inspiration. She’d literally had nothing with her when they’d gotten here and had been too tired and hungry to wait for clothes to be scrounged up, other than the underwear. He’d assured the embassy staff they could wait for a while and had shuttled her up to his room. She’d rushed for the shower, spending the next twenty minutes moaning in ecstasy beneath the hot spray. Garrett had paced the bedroom, fighting an erection that could’ve raised a barn with the nails it could pound.

  Concentrate on something else.