Ramon didn’t mix with the other attendees at this auction. The character he donned was a man as aloof as he was wealthy, quietly so. So instead of playing social butterfly, he stood off to the side, with a wall at his back, water, not alcohol, in hand, with what he considered the best view of the venue. Movement at two o’clock caught his attention. Lance Kramer, the man who’d contacted him in the fetish bar and clued him into this auction, was headed toward him. Kramer appeared a lot cleaner, more the businessman than he had during their first meet in the bar. What had Ramon’s complete focus was the man following Kramer, a man who appeared completely unaffected by the people present and the pending sale.
Sergio Torres. In his forties, the man sported just enough silver woven into his jet-black hair so as to appear suave. Not a great deal was actually known about Torres. He’d appeared on the scene in Tijuana five years before, a man with no traceable past but one who’d managed to accumulate a great deal of wealth. He represented himself as a businessman, a family man with a burgeoning import-export empire, as well as a shipping line that was also becoming a major player.
There’d been whispers that Torres liked to export drugs and people from his country, although that was all there had been so far—whispers.
Those who’d met the man reported his manners were flawless and that he appeared every inch the well-educated, sophisticated gentleman. He liked women in astounding variety and numbers, but no one so far had been able to prove his ties to the sex-slave industry or to the gang Los Principes.
If he played his cards right, Ramon would be the first United States federal agent to infiltrate Torres’s inner circle. He let his persona claim him as he prepared to meet the evening’s host.
“Sir, this is the gentleman I told you about.” Kramer’s appearance wasn’t the only thing about the man that differed from their first couple of meetings. It would seem the man could speak in proper sentences after all. “Señor Estevez, may I present Señor Torres.”
Ramon gave the man a polite nod. “Señor Torres, thank you for the invitation to your…event.” Ramon enhanced his accent, the words, in Spanish, rolling easily from his tongue.
“You’re most welcome, Señor Estevez.” Torres answered him in English. “I hope you will find the options available to you this evening to be of interest.”
“Mr. Kramer assured me that my time would be well spent tonight. If I am pleased with the experience, I will most definitely be back.”
Torres waved his hand, and Kramer left them. “We are about to begin. I’m inviting everyone to peruse the selection before bidding commences.” The man lowered his voice. “My people tell me you’re a man whose interests are many and varied, a man to be respected, a man with many useful connections. Therefore, if there’s a particular item you fancy, let me know. We’ll negotiate, the two of us, and you shall have your choice without having to go through the bidding process.”
“My people assured me that you were a good man to do business with. I am pleased to see they told me the truth.”
Torres nodded in acceptance of the compliment. Then he held out his hand, inviting Ramon to precede him up the few steps to the curtained-off raised platform against one wall. At the man’s nod, the curtains parted.
They were in cages, twelve of them, all naked. Though the women were awake, Ramon wouldn’t characterize any of them as being alert.
Blondes, brunettes, one redhead, these women were not what Ramon had believed he’d see. Only one of the twelve was Hispanic. These women were undoubtedly all here against their will, but they hadn’t come here across the border, seduced by a coyotaje. They weren’t young girls. They were women. Torres was a scumbag, but he wasn’t, unfortunately, the scumbag Ramon had been hunting.
He walked the line of cages, examining each woman, his face a mask that gave nothing away. His persona held, and for this space of time, he was not Ramon Estevez, federal agent, man of conscience. He was Ramon Estevez, a Dom with dark tastes, a man whose soul was as black as that of the man following him.
One woman caught his eye, and he didn’t at first understand why. Petite, brunette, she huddled in the corner of the cage holding her. As he approached, her hazel eyes met his. Ramon saw the haze of drugs, yes, but he saw something more. The woman looked as if she’d taken the final blow she could take, as if she huddled there, hopeless and simply waited to die.
The pain in his chest nearly brought him to his knees. He imagined his sister in her final moments might very well have worn the same expression as this young woman here, though this woman was indeed a woman grown.
“You have a discerning eye,” Torres said. “I’ve tasted her, of course, as I’ve tasted them all.”
Ramon had to work at holding onto his sangfroid. There were welts just visible on her, and he imagined her back and buttocks would bear the testimony of Torres’s “taste.”
This bastard wasn’t the scumbag I was after, but he is now.
“These twelve are all I’ve brought forward for tonight’s sale. I have more, a few more, with more merchandise arriving on a regular basis.”
“That’s good to know.”
“So, do you want this one, or—”
“I’ll take her.” Then he turned his icy gaze on Torres. “What is your price?
“Thirty thousand.”
Urgency filled him, and he very nearly accepted that price. Only years of training himself to focus on the job held him back. “Twenty.”
“Twenty-five.”
Did he dare challenge that counter-offer? Ramon never flinched. “Twenty-three.”
“You drive a hard bargain. Sold.”
Ramon understood in that moment that twenty was likely the figure Torres had in mind in the first place, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered, now that Ramon had done what he’d come here to do, was gathering the woman and getting them both the hell out of here.
“We’ll put her in a dress and give her just a bit more sedative. That will allow you to get her to your destination with a minimum of trouble.”
He wanted to protest that but had no choice. He met the woman’s gaze once more. She closed her eyes, the only way she could deny him that connection. Ramon hoped that was a good sign, that she had just a bit more fight left in her.
He had the feeling that, before their time together was through, they were both going to need that.
Chapter 18
Christopher Lyons stood back, giving Robert Jessop room to work. A phone call late at night, followed by a nocturnal helicopter ride had brought his friend from Lusty to Houston. It had been a tense hour, beginning with Ramon’s arrival here at his private residence. Now it felt as if everything had slipped into stasis. Chris’s gaze took in the other occupants of the guest bedroom in his apartment above The Lyon’s Den.
His Daisy sat perched on the edge of the chair that had been drawn close to the bed. Her hand lay over the hand of the young woman, a stranger to all of them, who lay unconscious upon it.
Standing off to the side, his arms folded over his chest, Ramon Estevez had his attention focused on the bed, waiting, Chris knew, for the woman he’d brought to them to awaken.
Chris’s thoughts went to his other mate, not currently in the room but undoubtedly busy. If he knew Rory, the man was busy in the kitchen making coffee for those who stood vigil and chicken soup for their unknown visitor.
Robert relaxed the stethoscope he’d been using around his neck. He nodded toward the small bottle that Ramon had given him, the bottle, his friend claimed, that held the drug the woman had been given. “If that was the only drug they gave her,” he said, “she should awaken soon. If not, we’ll need to get her to a hospital.”
Since Robert had made that announcement when he’d first arrived, he wasn’t surprised to hear it again. Judging by the look on Ramon’s face, neither was he.
Chris didn’t doubt for one moment that, in a contest of wills, the good doctor would win, hands down, even against their combined efforts
. Not because Robert was a Dom with a more forceful personality but because he was right.
The woman’s safety and wellbeing came first above everything else.
“The bastard wanted to assure my good will. I don’t believe he’d allow her to be permanently incapacitated.”
A soft moan and Ramon’s arms dropped to his sides as he took a step toward the bed. Chris divided his attention between the woman and his friend.
Her eyes fluttered then opened, and she blinked. Panic exploded on her face, and she scrambled as far away from everyone as she could get, pressing herself against the headboard.
The drug would have left her logy. She must have a very strong survival instinct to be able to overcome that.
“It’s all right. You’re safe here.” Daisy’s voice caught the woman’s attention.
She didn’t pull back when Daisy reached for her hand. Chris took that as a good sign. The woman looked from Daisy to Robert and then to Chris. When she turned her attention to Ramon, her eyes narrowed, and confusion edged out the panic.
“I’ve seen you before.”
“Yes. You were in the custody of a man named Sergio Torres. He intended to sell you to the highest bidder. I’m a federal agent, and I was there, undercover.” Ramon handed his badge to Daisy, who gave it to the woman. “I was able to get you out and bring you here.”
“What is your name?” Daisy asked her.
She looked at each of them again, looked at Ramon’s badge, and then she looked down at her body. Chris understood her sigh of relief. Daisy had helped Ramon get her into one of her own very plain cotton nightgowns. While normally he teased Daisy that they were vile garments, he was grateful, in this circumstance, she had one to offer. “Marcia. Marcia Crane.”
“Miss Crane, I promise you I’ll do everything I can to bring Torres to justice. He’ll pay for kidnapping you.”
Chris would have thought that Ramon’s promise would bring a look of relief to her face, but Marcia didn’t look relieved. She looked on the verge of tears.
“No, you don’t understand. I…I did this to myself.” Her words seemed to pull that feistiness they’d all seen right out of her. “I made a mistake. And after Dr. Broderick died, there was no one…” Her sentence dropped off. Daisy handed her a tissue and continued to sit, stroking her hand.
“Letting yourself get upset won’t help you, Miss Crane. I’m Dr. Robert Jessop. It’s going to take a few hours for all of the drug you were given to work its way out of your system. You need to relax and just rest.”
“Then I’ll be free to go?”
“Until we apprehend Torres, I’d feel better if we could sequester you somewhere safe,” Ramon said. “I don’t want to take the chance that your paths might cross. Unless you want to go home…” Ramon tilted his head to the side. “That’s a Mississippi accent, isn’t it? Is there someone we can call for you?”
“Whoever it is, we’ll get them here for you.” Chris fully intended to see to this young woman’s needs. She was an innocent, despite her recent confession, and she was under his roof.
A slight smile ghosted across her face. “You’ve a good ear, Special Agent Estevez.” Then her melancholy returned. She turned her attention to Chris. “There’s no one and nothing for me back in Mississippi. I took an opportunity…one I realize now I never should have taken. A scholarship.” She laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “I was getting a ‘free’ education, but the cost turned out to be far too steep. That wasn’t a scholarship. It was a deal with the devil.”
“A scholarship?” Christopher looked at Robert. He wondered if the drug Marcia had been given was still interfering with her cognitive abilities. “I’m afraid you’ve lost us.”
Marcia licked her lips, and Daisy handed her the glass of ice water on the table to her right.
“Just a small sip,” Robert said.
Marcia nodded and took that small sip. She handed the glass back to Daisy. “Thank you.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, and Chris understood she was reaching for the last of her strength. The bit of adrenaline that had likely flooded into her when she’d opened her eyes to so many strangers—so many men—had likely worn off. She would need to rest soon, and they’d let her.
“I answered an ad and applied to a private college, for admission via a scholarship. It was a long shot. I really didn’t expect to hear back from them. But I was chosen. When the man who interviewed me explained that I had to perform ‘community service’ as a condition of the scholarship, I was fine with that—even after he explained the emphasis was on the word service and that sex would be involved.”
“You were expected to have sex in return for the education?” Robert asked.
“Please don’t judge me. An education was my only hope of getting out of the low-paying, go-nowhere job I was stuck in. I knew that, but I couldn’t afford the price of tuition. At the time, it seemed like a fair trade. I even thought…the man I was sent to—Torres—he seemed so kind, and I thought he really cared for me. I thought I cared for him, too. He asked me to leave school, to come and live with him, and he even…I thought he meant to marry me. I was stupid. I had no one to talk to about his offer, not after Dr. Broderick died. So I said yes.” She lay back against the pillows and closed her eyes.
“Marcia needs to rest,” Robert said. “You can finish questioning her in the morning.”
“Just one more question, doctor, please?” Ramon had taken a half-step closer.
“I’ll hold you to that,” Robert said.
Ramon looked at Marcia, and Chris saw only kindness on his face. “Miss Crane, what school offered you that scholarship?”
“It’s a private, all-girls college near Waco. The Claymore College.”
* * * *
It had certainly been an unexpected start to his morning. Rich’s cell phone rang just as he was entering the lecture hall for his first class of the day. He pulled out his phone, intending to simply send the call to voice mail. He usually turned it to vibrate the moment he was at school, but a traffic accident along the way had made him late. He did that now, even as he registered who was calling him.
The number lit up on his phone’s screen was Christopher Lyons’s number. Since students were still filing in, and he was curious, he answered it.
“Good morning, Christopher. What can I do for you?”
“We have an urgent situation here, Rich. Can you get on Skype?”
“I’m about to start my first class. I have a break in an hour. Can it wait until then?”
From the sound of it, Chris covered his phone and spoke to someone else. Then he came back on the line. “All right, an hour, then.”
Rich had looked at the cell phone for a moment after Chris disconnected the call, wondering what could be so urgent. But the sound of the chatter from his students had brought him back to the moment.
Now he was in his office with a full hour before his next class. He opened his laptop, connected to Skype, and sent a message to Christopher. In under a minute, the Skype connection was live.
Rich wondered what Ramon Estevez had to do with whatever urgent matter Chris wanted to discuss because the man he’d met at that social evening at The Lyon’s Den was sitting next to him.
“Are you alone?”
Since it was Estevez who asked that, Rich realized something was up. And because he could read between the lines as well as anyone, he nodded. “My office door is closed, and my laptop is online courtesy of my own personal Wi-Fi hotspot, which is a secure connection. What’s up?”
Rich had often read the term “poleaxed” in fiction, but he’d never truly understood the power of the experience until now. As he listened to Estevez—apparently Special Agent Ramon Estevez with the FBI—detail his previous investigation, and then this new subsequent one based on his activities of the night before, a fine fury began to burn inside him.
He’d known something had been wrong, but he could never have guessed how wrong. “How is Miss Cran
e doing? I didn’t have the opportunity to meet her, but my gut was telling me something wasn’t right. I couldn’t believe she’d just up and quit. According to my predecessor, Dr. Broderick, she has a sharp mind and a hunger to learn.”
What had he just said to make both men appear startled? “Dr. Broderick was your predecessor?”
Something in Estevez’s expression alerted him that perhaps more was going on here than what could be seen on the surface.
“He was the head of the English Department here until about month or so ago.”
“How did he die?”
Rich didn’t question the fact that Estevez knew the man was dead. “Automobile accident, I was told. I don’t have much more than that. It occurred about a mile from the school, at an underpass.”
Chris and Estevez exchanged a look. “I’ll have the state police re-open their investigation,” Estevez said. “I have a bad feeling that was no accident.”
“Son of a bitch.” Rich sat back. “Since I’m here at Claymore and sitting in the man’s chair, I’m surprised that you’re trusting me on this.”
“I wasn’t going to at first. But we tied the date of your being hired into the picture and realized you wouldn’t have known Marcia. That, and the return of the deep security check Christopher conducted on you and your brother, gave me the sense I could probably trust you.”
Estevez made no apologies for his doubt, and Rich didn’t expect him to. “What do you need from me, Special Agent?”
“You mentioned Dr. Broderick thought highly of Marcia. What made you come to that conclusion? Do you think there was an improper relationship between the two?”
“Yeah, I wondered about that at first, myself. But as I read more of his class notes, I realized he must have had a fatherly interest in her. But I didn’t get the feeling he was worried about something bad, particularly.”
“If he had been worried about her, I wonder if he would have confronted someone about it? When she awakens, I’ll ask her if Dr. Broderick was aware of the terms of that so-called scholarship she’d been given.” Estevez sat back and seemed to be thinking. “I wonder what brought her, specifically, to the attention of whoever it is behind this?”
Love Under Two Loners [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 16