by Sophia Reed
I thought he was about to apologize, which would have been one too many weird and surreal things in a day. I put my good hand out and said, "You're here now. You found me. And they're not giving us a lot of time." I nodded out the open back door of the bus where the two EMTs stood watching their phones – undoubtedly timing us – and making sure we didn't steal the ambulance.
Cole nodded. "The trackers kept fucking up but they did produce a trail."
My eyes widened.
He nodded, smiling ruefully. "We have a record of everywhere you were. You were tracked to Raven's warehouse. You were tracked to this hellhole. We only got it once we actually pinpointed you. Until then we just got a lot of nothing. Once we got a fix, we got everything. It can be used as evidence."
I smiled. Good. "And here. We have enough here?"
"We have the four of you. More than enough. Even if statements didn't matter, there's a record on your body." He looked sick and angry and I didn't hurry him off the topic. He had a right to feel that way. I wasn't going to try and talk him down from his anger.
I breathed in through my nose. Even doing that hurt. The shoulder was a bitch. "You have any magic rainforest potions that will make me stop hurting without getting me addicted again?" I bit my lip because I was trying to sound light but I was really, really fucking hopeful.
Cole gave me his mischievous upside down triangle smile, looking a lot like the movie Loki. "I have something that will make you stop hurting. I have something else that will make you simply not notice you're hurting." He glanced back over his shoulder. The EMTs were starting to move toward us. "And I can always distract you totally from that little pain by giving you something else to concentrate on."
I was sitting on the edge of the gurney. Every time anyone tried to move me back I resisted and no one had forced me. Probably it looked like nerves. I realized no one knew about the brand yet. I started to tell Cole, and stopped. He'd just suggested spanking me to distract me from the pain of a gunshot wound. The man was impossible. He didn't play the role of sexual sadist and Master. He was. If I told him now about the brand I'd be turned over and stripped down while everyone and sundry stared at my ass.
Best to save that for the hospital.
Outside the bus the driver held up two fingers. I nodded. Two more minutes and they were transporting me. I'd actually had enough of teams of men transporting me to places I didn't really want to go. But I'd just have to put up with it this one more time.
"I want to talk to the girls," I said to Cole.
"We can transport them with us. They've got the option of getting checked out." The way he said it I knew no one was going to force them, whether that was standard protocol or protocol put in by a billionaire.
It didn't matter. It was help and I'd take it.
We nodded at the attendants. The EMTs from the second bus released Lettie, Mia and Nikki and they came onboard. Someone outside the bus slammed the door and smacked the flat of his hand against it.
The driver put the ambulance in gear and we rolled off Bevington's property and into the bright morning.
40
Cole
Annie Knox lay on her stomach against a crisp white hospital bed, her black lace covered ass in the air. There was no one else in the room and her backside was uncovered, open to the air. Best thing for burns. Her eyes were closed and she was snoring lightly.
My eyes were very open and I was considering just what was going to happen to Bevington before he ever had a chance to get to trial.
Between one snorting snore and the next, Annie opened her eyes and looked directly at me.
"You're supposed to be resting," I said automatically.
"I could hear you," she said.
"I wasn't doing anything."
She cocked her head patiently, without even sitting up. She gave great attitude. "Dude. You were thinking really loud, and you were staring at my ass."
"It's a great ass," I said appreciatively. "I'm going to cut down a paddle so I can spank the left cheek by itself until you're healed." There was know way of knowing what she'd been through until she told me, or until she wrote out a report. I relied on our dynamic.
She didn't flinch or gag or cringe away from the idea of sexual games. Instead, she studied me and said, "Red."
Then she smiled.
"Really? Red?" Her safe word. "It's not like I was going to do it right this minute."
She continued to watch me. Very judgey watching.
"Just until you call me Sir. I mean, dude?"
She smirked. And went back to sleep.
And instantly my smile faded. Her right butt cheek was blistered and bubbled, sweating in the cool air of the hospital. One blessing was it hadn't been covered. When trying for a brand, people cover the burns with plastic to make them sweat, both causing infection and making the scar take hold rather than heal.
I've been called a sick fuck by a lot of people, including Annie herself.
I would never have imagined doing anything like this to anyone. Let alone Annie.
She opened her eyes again.
"Why aren't you sleeping this time?"
She pushed her lips out, pretending to think about it. "Let's see. I've slept for nearly 24 hours, on my stomach since every time I turn on my side, someone pulls me back onto my stomach. My head is permanently stuck at this angle. You keep staring at me and thinking really loud, which makes it hard to sleep. And I have to pee, and that stupid nurse isn't around to make me use the bedpan, so if you'll either help me out or get out of the way – "
"I get a thrill watching you use the bedpan."
She made a face at me. "No water sports. Hard limit."
"You're a slave. You don't get hard limits."
"I'll pee on you." She said. When I looked at her she said, "I have terrible aim."
I sighed and helped her out of the bed, walked nervously behind her to the toilet and got the door shut in my face. I laughed. She was giving me so many new ideas. I said that.
She responded, "Don't talk to me while I'm peeing!"
When she came back out, she lay in the bed with her head propped on her hands, her upper body up on her elbows.
"Tell me what's happened," she said. "Please." She didn't add Sir. This was still her thing.
"Decker's gone to Arizona. She's posing as Raven with her accounts."
Annie's eyes got wider. "Are they -- ?"
"They've tracked down about a third of the girls so far and that's just because there's so many. They should get about 80 to 90 percent before the game's up, or all of them if we're lucky. There were some who were dead, Annie."
She swallowed but nodded. "That's to be expected." But her eyes were downcast.
"There are so many more who aren't. And who won't be, thanks to you."
She nodded and I guessed it meant she didn't need that reassurance. She needed to know what had happened.
So I told her.
Raven and Evie were in custody. That was real. They were being questioned and they were mostly cooperating and mostly the questioning was proper and by the books. Chad, the only male who had driven her to Arizona, had tried to run. He'd seen police coming for him and barricaded himself in his house. When ordered to come out, he didn't.
I'd thought he was in custody, but he wasn't. He had died in the resultant firefight.
She didn't ask anything. I told her some more anyway, not any of which took her by surprise. Chad had been connected with multiple violent rapes. With girls who didn't quite arrive the way they were supposed to. Who showed up injured. Two of them were too injured to use and died.
She nodded. She listened. When I told her Chad was dead she narrowed her lips and closed her eyes, but I saw the relief wash over her and I knew it was both because Chad would never be tried, never slip through the justice system with a good lawyer or a bad judge. He was out of the game.
And the other driver, the one she clearly had dreamed, he had never existed and there'd be no Chad to tal
k about him. It was unlikely either Evie or Raven would bring him up. Why would they?
Whoever he was, he'd helped Annie. He had my gratitude. If somehow someone caught him, I'd do whatever was in my considerable, financially-granted means to fix.
"Bevington?" she asked. She didn't quite meet my eyes and I didn't like the way she asked it. Like he was a Candyman type boogeyman who might appear if she said his name.
"Bevington and his men," I said. I tilted my head a little, making sure she met my eyes. "He didn't lie about how many men he had, just how many were on shift. There were eight total, not eight day and night."
Annie shrugged, as if that didn't matter, and maybe it didn't. But if she'd known there were four and not eight, she might have moved before he did what he did to her. Just looking at it made me sick. I've savaged how many women in my time? But this wasn't sexual sadism. It wasn't even sexual. It was psychopathy. Which was why I approached the next part carefully, waiting while the nurse came in, examined Annie's wound, asked if she needed a bedpan. She was no the far side of Annie's permanently turned head and didn't see Annie wink at me.
"No, thanks."
"How about painkiller? Oh, wait, I'm sorry, no, I see the note. You doing okay? You're cleared for Advil."
"I'm okay," Annie said.
She wasn't. I loved that she was being strong.
The nurse went away and Annie's attention came right back to me. "And?"
"Eight guards. One was killed in the firefight. One disappeared."
She came up off the bed. "Not Joseph."
I said instantly, "Not Joseph. Littler guy." I described him and she nodded.
"He was hallway decent. If someone had to escape, I'm glad it was him." Not that she wouldn't see him tried and hung out to dry for what he'd done.
"Annie. Here's the thing. Decker's got them."
She frowned, met my eyes, opened hers wide. "She's – what, still on their trail? All of them?" Clearly she was wondering how stupid the feds were.
I shrugged. "So she says." Then I leaned in close and said in a very low voice, "You decide. They can all face trial. Or they can all disappear. Or the worst can disappear and the others have the facts of life explained to them."
"The others couldn't go to trial," she said thoughtfully. "They'd spill about Bevington. On purpose or by mistake." She took a long breath. "Can we get away with it?"
I laughed softly. "We absolutely can. Decker has made a few … shall we say questionable connections over the years. I'm not guaranteeing exactly what would happen to Bevington or Joseph or the others." I leaned carefully over her and cupped the undamaged side of her ass. "But I am saying they'd never get away with it. They'd never get a slap on the wrist and be back in business." A pause and I squeezed her ass hard enough to see her eyes change focus, from thoughtful to angry to dreamy. I let go. I needed her actual answer. "They'll never be seen again."
She considered for so long I thought she'd gone back to sleep but her eyes were open. She finally said, "Yes."
That wasn't enough of an answer. "Yes to which."
"Yes," she said again. "They're evil. They're vile. They break fragile things and they like doing it." She met my eyes squarely. "Make them disappear, Sir," she said.
When she fell asleep that time, I could see she was deeply, healingly asleep.
I stepped out of the hospital and went to make some carefully coded calls.
It seemed like a long time later when Annie woke up again. "Still looking at my ass."
"I was not." I had been. But I'd been brooding about the damage. Wishing I could demand Decker turn Bevington over to me.
Knowing I wouldn't. For Annie's sake.
She started to fall back to sleep and I slid down so we were face to face. "There's something I wanted to tell you."
She blinked at me.
"I was afraid I wouldn't get the chance. But."
She was starting to look wary.
"Annie, I love dark chocolate. I can't go a week without it."
Annie frowned, seemed to think through possible responses, and finally said, "You're weird, Sir."
She fell asleep again before I stopped laughing.
41
Annie
After three days in the hospital, I was discharged in Cole's care.
That seemed strange to me. Despite going undercover without being attached to an actual law enforcement entity, I wasn't charged with anything. There had been actual police on the scene, and they'd been witness to what I'd done to Bevington, but either Cole's money or whatever information was working its way down to local level kept me from going anywhere other than to make a statement. I wasn't printed. I wasn't arrested.
I was still, in their opinion, Erin Trace. That was fine with me. When I wasn't arrested, when I didn't have to prove who I was, I stopped having to think about whether to get myself out through professional courtesy: Their understanding that what I'd done was illegal, but necessary.
The first week, as November moved toward Thanksgiving, was quiet. I went for a run with Cole and discovered my healing ass wasn't up to that kind of friction from clothing and sweat from exertion. Cole stripped off his t-shirt and put it on me, covering me down to midthigh, then stripped off my shorts so the cloth would stop rubbing. He carried me back to the compound and ran a very tepid shower, helping me gentle away the salt from the sweat.
After that we took walks in the morning until the brand was healed enough I could run again. That was determined by the lifestyle savvy medics he called who came by daily to check the healing. I kept waiting for Cole to make it into a scene, to order me up on my hands and knees, naked from the waist down, for him to ask them to check my temperature and the thermometer to slide in all cold and foreign where I didn't want it and couldn't fight him.
He didn't. I knew always when the medic was expected. I was allowed to see him alone. I wore tights Cole had cut the ass cheek out of, and was covered by a sheet before and after the medic took a look. He was young and he blushed more than I did, but he answered my questions, listened to Cole talk about what he was using for the bruising, the blistering, the pain, the scarring. He suggested treatments I could try after it healed to reduce scarring even more. He asked every time about other problems but never insisted on checking out anything else except my shoulder.
It was healing even better than the brand. Physically, I was doing great.
"Another clean bill of health," Cole said, entering as the doctor left.
I nodded and pulled the sheet up to my waist. We hadn't played in the month since I'd been back under Cole's roof and with every day that went by the things we had done together seemed more impossible to believe.
"Should I run you a shower?"
I sat up, favoring one side, the sheet wrapped around me despite the fact that, sitting up, I was completely clothed. I reached out to Cole and held his hand, bridging the gap between us but not closing it.
"You've done so much for me. I'm fine, Sir. Honest." It was the first time I'd called him Sir since returning, because I'd wanted to stay in the world of undercover. I'd been kind of pretending I was still a cop. It felt better.
Less vulnerable.
Today I could see something in Cole's eyes that said just maybe my time was coming to an end. I was going to have to make a decision about what I wanted and if I didn't, he'd do it for me.
I'd go back to my apartment, I thought. I'd visit Cole regularly and he could visit me. We'd date, figure out what our relationship was. Everything could be –
That was stupid. We weren't the dating kind. I knew what our relationship was and he was being very patient waiting for it to come back.
It was just taking so long. I hadn't been raped. All the undercover with all the weird and dangerous people I was around and still I hadn't been raped.
I'd been assaulted in the shower room. I'd been stripped and punished and branded. I'd nearly been raped by a man old enough to be my great grandfather. I'd been seen by guards, sex
ually assaulted. I'd been hurt worse than I had ever imagined.
It had taken its toll.
I looked up to meet Cole's eyes, to beg him for a few more days, or a week, a month at most I just had to pull myself together and understand this was over and then maybe –
But he had already turned away.
42
Cole
She cried in her sleep. Thrashed. Even when I held her until she fell asleep she cried and struck out. Keeping her on her stomach without tying her meant keeping watch over her most of the night. I slept in the early mornings, what Annie called the green hour, when she calmed. When she slept.
I was hard in the night, wanting her, and hard in the morning. I prowled the playroom and picked up implements I knew I could use safely on her. The brand was almost gone, the pain clearly ebbing because sometimes she sat normally. When I looked at her, though, she begged me silently.
We went through a week where she woke up screaming every night. I calmed her and held her and in the morning she turned away. She wasn't using her trauma to avoid going back to our dynamic. I watched her during the days. She jolted at unfamiliar or unexpected sounds. She stayed away from anything and anyone new. She covered up around me and panicked if I looked at her too long. The quiet teasing from the hospital – You woke me up because you were staring so hard at my ass – was gone.
When she said no to therapy, I wanted to force her. But that was her right. There were places I wouldn't extend the lifestyle and forms of control I wouldn't push on her.
So instead, I went.
"Yes, it sounds like PTSD. The question is, what are you going to do about it?"
The therapist was young, only a few years in practice, and she had a healthy interest in BDSM. My circle of friends with similar proclivities suggested her, the same as through my circles I'd found the medics I could call when something went too far out of hand.
