by Sophia Reed
Besides, the mesh would be in the way of me being able to do anything but sit in the back seat and start to dehydrate and overheat as the sun came up. Even if I could kick out the mesh, long before I did so they'd shatter the windows and reach in.
They only had to do that if they didn't have a second set of keys.
"Get out of the car," Theo said.
I'd been fighting second nature too long.
The look on his face was still one I couldn't make sense of. It wasn't cruel enough. It wasn't – Chad-like enough. It was –
"Get out of the car, you stupid bitch!" His voice splintered in sudden rage and he grabbed my arm and yanked me so hard I fell to my knees. He wasn't fast enough to stop me. Gravel cut into my knees, marring what was probably meant to look all virginal. I wondered why the client wouldn't care that the schoolgirl had signs of a caning all over her but whatever.
Chad was right beside Theo. That gave me pause. He'd finished his business and come over.
He showed up at the vehicle at about the same time Theo shouted at me and dragged me?
Or had Theo shouted at me and dragged me out of the SUV when Chad showed up?
I shook my head, dizzy and confused.
"Shit," Chad said, sounding disturbed. "What the fuck happened?"
"She wouldn't get out," Theo said shortly and forced me to my feet more with menace than actual assistance.
A gun magically materialized in Chad's hand. It shouldn't have been that much of a threat. What would happen to him if the package got destroyed right on the recipient's doorstep?
But a gun is a gun and Chad was a thug. I retained my feet, motioned to the SUV when they tried to walk me forward. "Evie gave me a kit of makeup the – he – " God, I was choking. I nodded toward where the house seemed to be. "He likes." Then I nodded at the vehicle.
Chad leaned in and got out the small case of equally idiotic costumes and make up and started toward the house. Theo stopped him and took out his phone, using the flashlight to go through everything. Probably should have done that before we rolled. Probably kicking himself for not having done so.
What he expected to find in a case packed by Raven's underling after that same underling had beaten me to tears I didn't know. It seemed to take him a long damn time.
Not that I was in any hurry to get to the house. Or to meet my new master.
17
Cole
The trackers had stopped sending.
There'd been intermittent sputtering signals for part of the night. Enough that it seemed like she'd been in Arizona and then, stupidly, as if she'd been in Vegas. That made no sense.
April worked tirelessly. Everyone did. Scott's team of security worked with us. We had the best of everything, surveillance and tech.
Nothing. She was gone, heading toward Vegas or through Vegas if that was correct, and after that there'd been nothing.
I scrubbed my hands over my face until it felt raw. There was no release. No relief. No girls to beat. There was no one living in the cells under the compound, the level that Annie called the labyrinth. There'd been several damaged women with various degrees of kinky personalities hiding out while they recovered from life's afflictions and abundances and then, suddenly, there was no one. Everyone had suddenly healed or changed or gone away for some reason and it didn't matter. I wouldn't have trusted myself with an implement or with my bare hands around anyone in a power game situation.
It wouldn't have made any difference anyway. I wanted relief in the form of Annie, somehow contacting me to tell me she was all right, just wait. She was still working.
It hadn't even been twenty-four hours. But what was she enduring?
Time passed nightmare slow, and I waited.
18
Annie
The house appeared out of the dark green plants that surrounded it like we were in a jungle. Imposing and as huge as it had to be to fit its setting, it still seemed to just suddenly appear in front of us.
White, with a grand wrapping porch and wide front stairs. Columns. Enormous windows. A double front door. Everything about it screamed overkill and excess. This was a place for the rich who needed everyone to know they were rich. At the same time it was so hidden, so insulated with the plants and the rolling hills of the canyon, I had no doubt it was as intimate as the owner needed it to be for his purposes.
Once again I didn't have to act. Theo carried the bag because I couldn't have done it. I was shaking and nauseated and my eyes darted around sucking in details and cataloging them to myself. A cynical sneer for everything I looked at because I was so desperate to distract myself.
It wasn't clear if I was really getting enough details to identify where I was again or just stopping myself from trying something drastic. Running here would be stupid. There'd be predators in these hills, probably bobcats and mountain lions and coyotes. With the exception of the lions, I thought they'd be a better risk than the men flanking me and the man waiting for me.
"Are you going fight when we get in?" Chad asked as we climbed the stairs. He sounded more like he hoped I would than like he wanted to know if I was going to make the operation look bad.
I didn't answer. My breathing had a hitch, like I'd been sobbing.
Theo didn't say anything either, but he took hold of my arm on that side and I felt the tension running through him. His grip forced me up the stairs, not letting me slow or stumble or balk. At the same time, it kept me from falling.
The door opened before we got there. Lights came on like we'd just gone on stage. Brilliant, blinding floodlights. I squinted and tried to keep my eyes open so I could see what was waiting. In a place like this, surely armed guards or a proper British butler. Sometimes out of the movies and out of insanity.
I did not think the man rich enough to actually buy a person – rich as Cole, for example – would be opening his own door.
But he did.
"You're here!" he said, sounding like a man greeting his favorite grandchildren. "And you made good time, too. I'm so glad! So glad! Come in, come in."
It was all the night needed to tip over into surreal. Maybe none of this was what I thought. Maybe he'd send Chad and Theo away and give me a meal and some clothes that didn't look like the whore collection from some line of lingerie. Maybe he'd find someone to treat my injuries and then send me back where I needed to be in his private jet.
Right. Apparently where I needed to be was Wonderland. Because this was clearly a fantasy I was having.
My eyes adjusted as we went inside. We'd passed our enthusiastic host before I was anything but dazzled so my first sight of anything was of a very professionally decorated and absolutely personality-free living room. Leather couches, potted palms, a white marble fireplace, tile floors. The house spread back and back from the front door, leading on the ground floor into a dining room and from the light coming that way I guessed the kitchen. Elegant iron scrollwork on the bannister that swept up and around the curling terra cotta stairs. A hallway to the right that led to more of the downstairs. The place was massive and had no imprint of anyone. It looked like it had come out of a vacation rental brochure or maybe was some grand hotel meant for corporate retreats.
Client 3837 didn't live here. He also wasn't in sight. Even Chad paused for a moment, confronted by a large empty house. "Hello?"
Our host bustled back out of the kitchen, carrying a tray with a delicate porcelain teapot covered in pale pink roses, four china cups and saucers. There were lacy tea cookies. There were crudités and a dipping sauce. There was a stack of dessert plate sized plates and linen napkins. On the table that separated the enormous living room into manageable sections there was a tall crystal pitcher of ice water and immaculate crystal glasses. Soft music played on a stereo system that surrounded us. If I didn't miss my guess, it was Vivaldi's Seasons, something I only knew about because my mother adored the piece. There was an elegant wolfhound of some sort sleeping decorously on an area rug.
There was a sense of
disconnect that slammed into me so hard for a second I not only wouldn't have been able to say what my cover name was, I wasn't sure I'd remember my real name.
"Sit, sit! You must all be exhausted from the drive." He gestured at the seating arrangements which were leather and obviously expensive, and just as obviously situated so I'd have my back to a wall with tall windows protected by ivy-patterned wrought iron bars. The effect was beautiful, but they were still bars. The couches were short as love seats. I had mine, and Chad was on one side and Theo on the other. Client 3837 sat across from me. Very casual, have some space to yourself and be comfortable seating arrangements for people new to each other.
Also I was backed against a wall and surrounded.
Still, there were polite manners, low volume classical music, offers of tea and cookies. All completely normal if we were all insane. I was starting to think I might be.
"So I want to hear all about you," the man said, leaning forward. He looked like someone I'd seen in an old Marilyn Monroe movie once, all kind of mammal like features, like he was harmless and cute. He had wrinkles on his wrinkles and walnut brown skin from the California sun. His hair was clipped very short and the same color as his skin, but he seemed to have a full head of it. Very intense and alarmingly round black eyes were open wide behind round black framed Harry Potter glasses.
The effect of the whole didn't do anything to convince me I was dealing with reality.
Snap decision. Because what Chad and Theo would expect was probably more of what had gone on so far – sobbing, pleading, occasionally hitting people. The whole fear thing.
But on second thought, what Chad thought was that I was a job and if the job had dissolved into his massive fist curled around a fragile tea cup, well, what the fuck? Clearly he was deserving of the finer things in life. Whatever those were. Chad had done his job. Undoubtedly the two captors would spend the rest of the night in LA and drive back and get paid. Or shot. Whichever. But since they'd done other jobs, I thought paid was more likely. Paid, and given more work to do.
Theo, on the other hand. There was something weird about him. I thought if I didn't panic, didn't snivel, didn't do more than ask and then talk? He'd take it in stride.
There hadn't been time to build up months of reactions that Erin might have. So I started fresh.
"My name's Erin Trace. Who're you?"
He seemed delighted at the question, though Theo frowned at his tea and Chad looked like he wanted to hit me.
"My name is Mr. Bevington," he said, leaning forward like a kindly old uncle or something equally impossibly unlikely. There wasn't even in imagination a world in which he bought girls only to free them and try to figure out how to bring down the enterprise that supplied them. Despite wrongfooting me, the kindly old whomever persona wasn't quite doing it for me.
And it wasn't quite not. A hard lump in my stomach relaxed. Just a little.
"Mr. Bevington, why am I here? You're – you'll – please, let me go. Please don't hurt me and just let me go! I won't tell anyone." Tiny shake in my voice.
"There, there, my dear."
Good grief.
"We'll talk about that later, won't we?"
How the hell would I know?
"For now, do tell me about yourself."
And so I did. The story wasn't too cliché and had just enough clichés on the other hand to be real. I'd gone undercover with an awful lot of Erins and I understood why they did the sometimes stupid, sometimes self destructive things they did.
I told him my parents were still together in the Midwest, that they had an okay marriage but my father's heart trouble made it impossible for my mom to even consider leaving him. That I had three sisters, all of whom I wanted to see again.
It's good to embroider cover stories with truth but not an overabundance of it.
He listened. He nodded. He made sympathetic sounds about my father who really did have heart problems and complications but who had a much better relationship with my real mother than my cover parents.
I told him how I got to Vegas, what I was studying, that I'd stolen a car but I didn't mean to steal a car.
Chad let out a snore that stopped all conversation. Mr. Bevington looked disapproving at him. Theo looked pissed.
"I'm afraid it's been a long day for you all. Perhaps your friends should take their leave." He stood to do whatever needed doing with the delivery service duo and left me sitting there wondering at the layout of the house, where the backdoor was, how many locks, what alarms, how far outside he'd go with them, whether there were other people in the house. If I could hide.
If I could run.
If I could find a weapon.
Random useless speculation.
Mr. B came back inside. I heard the SUV crunching over gravel. My host locked the front door with a key that he slid into his pants pocket. That question was effectively answered. He crossed the room and sat down across from me, picking up his tea cup.
I didn't know what to do so I sat and watched him.
He took a long sip, draining the cup, then set it down on the tray, dabbed at his mouth, which was a little prissy and a little suffused with a hopeful and not all together bright smile. "So, I'd like to tell you a little about myself if you don't mind." His eyes suddenly sharpened behind the glasses. "Not that you've asked, even though I was polite and listened to you."
Mistake number one. But there was no way to see it coming. There'd probably be no way to see most of them coming.
"Yes, sir. I'd like that."
"Don't call me sir." That came out sharp and hard and much too fast for the kindly old gentleman persona. Despite that, I still wasn't sure what I was dealing with. Psychopathy, probably, in the sense of being crazy, not in the sense of being a psychopath.
Not that I ruled that one out.
"I'm a collector, my dear. I find the beautiful things in the world, and I bring them here to keep them safe." He waved a hand at the teapot, which I realized was probably an antique, and then, oh, so flatteringly, at me. I was one of the beautiful things he had brought here at his expense to keep safe.
Why ever wasn't I relieved?
"What do you collect?" I'd dropped the sir and had no idea what to call him. With every moment Erin had a little more of me. Until I figured out how to get out of here, or Cole jumped the gun again and came to get me, I'd have to let Erin have more of the waking self than me.
There was a flash of anger in his eyes, though I'd thought it a good question. "I told you. Beautiful things. Fragile things. Priceless things."
Oh, yippee. Sounding saner by the minute. "And you keep them safe?" I was trying to sound encouraging and to keep him talking. And to keep me talking before fear shut me up.
"Of course I do. I'm a collector." He poured one more cup of tea. Swallowed it down like a sailor on shore leave having his first whisky of the night. Without missing a beat and without any snapping of ancient knees or anything I'd have expected, he stood and hurled the teacup at the fireplace where it shattered into a million fragments.
I was halfway off the couch before realizing I'd moved. My mouth open, I gaped at him.
He grinned and his teeth looked horror movie sharp. "I like breakable things," he said in the same tone of voice he'd been talking: Sweet. Innocent. Safe. "I like precious, fragile, irreplaceable, breakable things." His voice went completely cold and he looked directly at me. He patted his lap. "Come here."
My heartbeat ratcheted into overdrive. I thought of the windows, all barred, and the door, locked on a keyed deadbolt. There was an upstairs, but while earlier I'd have thought even my slow running style could beat him up the staircase, his rising from the couch without an ounce of knee-cracking effort threw that idea into question. I didn't know if there were other people in the house. Like security.
Strike that. I didn't know if security was inside or outside but I was pretty damn sure they were somewhere.
The kitchen would have sharp knives somewhere but I wasn't even p
ositive I was looking at light from the kitchen. There was a wall between me and where I thought the kitchen was. Light came from it but that didn't mean anything. I could see the dining room from where I sat. That didn't mean the next room over past the loadbearing wall was the kitchen. It could be a sub-dining room. It could be a den. It could be the fucking pantry, big enough to qualify as an apartment unto itself in some cities. I just didn't know enough about my surroundings to make decisions that relied on being able to navigate my surroundings.
So I did what he said.
He watched me as I stood up and smoothed my clammy hands over the school girl skirt. I crossed slowly to him, hyper aware of the changes in his demeanor. The slightly pleasant, somewhat befuddled smile was gone. He was still lined as ever but the black eyes behind the silly round glasses had hardened. I stopped within arm's reach because there was no point not doing so. There was nowhere to go.
Somewhere onsite, theoretically, there was a harem. Girls all the age I was said to be, the oldest probably still younger than I was and I was willing to bet not one of them was here even as voluntarily as I was. Trafficked, sold, hurt, eventually killed. There was a reason I was here.
I could do this.
The instant I dropped my hands from their useless hesitation around my waist, the second I tried to let my shoulders drop from defensive to neutral, he moved snake fast. Long, bony fingers circled my wrist and dragged me to him. My body tightened automatically, trying not to fall into him, trying to keep distance. In real life, in my life, I'd always been that way. Social huggers made me nervous because I didn't approach other people automatically. I watched everything around me as I walked up to people, even those I knew well when we were in private situations. I kept well back. So when they dragged me into enthusiastic hugs, I stayed kind of where I was, and leaned stiff as a board into the embrace, like a board leaned against a wall. Sometimes it seemed like if they didn't catch and support me, I'd just crash down to the ground. Huggers never learn, but I always felt awkward for them.
