by Livia Grant
His loud cry of, "Brianna!" was the only surprise. The quiet 'fuck' under his breath, which followed, was her only indication he'd lost control of himself. Hannah was curious about who this Brianna might be but returned her thoughts to how she would get out of there alive. She said a prayer of thanks that she was on the pill. She couldn't fathom the idea of Jake Davenport fathering an innocent child.
"Get dressed and I'll drop you off at home. I have places to go. In the future, you'll stay with me, but I don't trust you yet."
That was fine by her. He stepped away from her and turned towards the bathroom. "I'm gonna shower. Be ready to leave in ten minutes."
She remained laid out across the desk, the feel of his sticky cum dribbling down her inner thigh. That was when she felt the ledger still poking her from below.
I shouldn't. He'll miss it.
But even as Hannah thought it, she'd already made up her mind. She'd take the ledger with her and try to make sense of the information inside. It could be a powerful bargaining chip to make Jake leave her alone. It could also work as evidence if she decided to go to the police to report the rape.
She lifted herself up and rushed to throw the book into the big bag that doubled as her purse. She hurried to pull on her clothes, regretting she didn't have time for her own shower, yet knowing she couldn't get out of this house a second too soon.
Chapter Three
Dylan
Dylan Parker's right leg bounced up and down nervously. He was wired on caffeine, adrenaline, and dread. If he didn't already know for a fact that the seemingly average ranch home he was staking out was a veritable fortress, he would have stormed it already, Lukus Mitchell be damned. Dylan had only worked for Titan Securities for a few weeks, but he already hated the fucking job. As the new guy, he'd been relegated to stakeout duty, which meant long, boring hours of no activity.
Boredom wasn't why he hated the job.
What he loathed was following a lowlife like Jake Davenport and not being able to do jack-shit to intervene. In the weeks Dylan had been trailing the prick, he'd seen more horrendous grievances against women than in his entire two duties in Afghanistan as a decorated Marine sniper.
It turned his stomach to think what might be happening inside the brick home he had his binoculars trained on. He'd sat outside this house for many nights, and had seen at least three other women go inside. In every case, they'd come out looking worse for wear—sometimes limping, often disheveled—always scared.
Davenport only brought the innocent ones home with him.
What had Dylan most upset was that tonight it wasn't just some nameless victim inside that house. Tonight it was Hannah Martine. He hadn't been prepared for the protective anger he would feel on behalf of Davenport's newest victim.
The nagging guilt at not being able to do a damn thing to protect her mingled with his fury that Hannah would willingly go anywhere with Davenport. Dylan had tried to warn her about the kind of man Jake was; yet she'd ignored him. He hadn't felt this level of anxiety since his last mission overseas. That he could compare what was happening in a quiet Palo Alto house to having his platoon attacked and his Humvee blown up by an IED proved to Dylan how evil Jake Davenport really was.
The buzz of his mobile phone jarred him from his trip down memory lane. It was his brother calling.
"Derek, you'd better be calling to tell me we're moving on to plan B," Dylan said.
His older brother paused before replying. "Sort of. Lukus and I are in the car on the way to the airport. We're on a red-eye and will be there in the morning. Stay the course."
"Fuck staying the course. I thought we were going on offense when Z got out here last week, but all we do is sit around with our thumbs up our asses, watching while more women are getting hurt."
"We aren't sitting around. We're gathering evidence," Derek said.
"I haven't given you anything substantially new in a week. How many pictures do you need of this asshole? We either have the goods on him, or we need to go in and get more proof."
"Listen, you twerp. You're just one member of this team. We've dug up a lot of intel that we're about to use. Just shut up and do your job. We need to know where Davenport is at all times. Can you do that, or do we need to replace you?"
Dylan was about to say he'd gladly be replaced, but the front door opening distracted him. It was worse than he'd feared. It was hard to make out details in the dark, but he could see that Hannah was moving slowly, as if she was in pain. Davenport seemed to be dragging her along, his grip on her upper arm prodding her to go faster. She was barefoot and her long sandy brown hair looked as messy, as if she'd been riding on the back of Dylan's motorcycle for an hour.
Ah Hannah, what the fuck did he do to you, honey?
"Dylan! Are you still there?" Derek's voice boomed in his ear.
"Yeah, I'm here. I have eyes on the jerk and his newest victim."
"Good. Stay back. He's already had his goons put you in the hospital once. We don't need a repeat performance."
"I couldn't give a fuck about that. It's these women I care about. Every day that goes by, more innocents are getting hurt."
His brother sighed. "I wish this wasn't your first assignment with us. I admire how much you care, I do. But you have to stay detached. You can't make this personal or you'll make mistakes. It already got your ass kicked once. It's a job."
"You wouldn't say that if Davenport had Rachel... or Mom. I'm not like you, Derek. I can't make this impersonal. You aren't here to see how afraid some of these women are. You aren't here to watch them limp out after surviving God-only-knows-what fucked-up shit goes on inside his house or his warehouse."
"You're right. I'm not there... yet. But I will be by the morning. You've done good, but you're getting too close."
Davenport was pulling out and Dylan waited a respectable amount of time before following. He'd been trading in his rental car every day to keep mixing it up, but he suspected Davenport knew he was still under surveillance.
He returned his attention to the phone conversation. "Listen, he's moving in on women I know for a fact are innocent. He's been working on a bartender at the Four Seasons for a few weeks, and tonight she was his latest victim. I just had the pleasure of watching a beautiful young woman go into his house of horrors and come back out four hours later limping, her clothes awry, and looking like she's gone through hell. So am I getting too close? Fuck yeah. The question is, what the hell is wrong with you and Mitchell that you aren't?"
"You don't know shit about it," Derek said.
"So enlighten me. Why is this asshole even on your radar? He's in California. You all are in Chicago."
"Let's just say he has ties to Chicago and leave it at that. Follow. Take photos. Document. That's it. If you can't do that, just go back to the damn rental house."
Dylan merged into traffic, relieved Davenport appeared to be taking Hannah home and not to his warehouse. They may not know exactly what went on in his warehouse in the seedy part of town, but Dylan knew enough that a good girl like Hannah didn't belong there.
"Fine. I'll just follow, but things need to change tomorrow. We need a lot less watching and a lot more action around here."
"And you need to be patient."
"Fuck patience. I want vengeance."
"All in good time. Tomorrow." The call dropped.
Twenty minutes later, Dylan watched as Jake dropped Hannah off at her small duplex apartment. He pretended to be a gentleman by opening her car door and escorting her to the door. Dylan wanted to scream when Davenport pushed his way inside her apartment. He had his hand on the car door latch to jump out and follow the two inside when Davenport left a minute later to stalk back to his sports car and drive away.
Dylan debated going up and knocking on her door to see if she was okay, but in the end, he knew he'd only scare her more. He'd only talked to her a few times at the Four Seasons bar when he'd trailed Davenport inside. Something about the petite woman called out to his protect
ive side. She tried to project this tough exterior, but he'd seen a vulnerability in her that made him want to wrap her up in bubble wrap and protect her at all costs. Now that he'd been trailing Jake Davenport for a few weeks, he understood it was that exact vulnerability that Davenport noticed in her, too. The difference between the men was that Dylan wanted to protect her—Jake wanted to exploit her.
When Davenport took off in the direction of the warehouse, Dylan put his car in gear to follow. He'd be patient for one more night.
Lukus
Lukus crossed to the coffee maker and poured the last cup of burnt coffee into his Stanford University mug. He was running on only a few hours of sleep, but he was too wired to slow down.
They'd been lucky to find a furnished townhouse available for rent by the month, and turned it into their west coast war room. It was easier to maintain the privacy they needed here than in the hotel suite Z and Dylan had been holed-up in a few days ago. The rental also gave them a small kitchen and two bedrooms to crash in when they needed to catch a few hours of rest.
He looked around the room at the motley crew he had on the ground, and wondered again if he needed to bring in more help. He had purposefully kept the team small on this one, mainly because he wasn't entirely sure if they were going to be able to do this job by the book. The fewer men he needed involved, the better.
He was relieved to have Zachary 'Z' Zimmerman, his most senior detective, on the case. To an outsider, Z could, at times, appear to be as much of a predator as their mark, Jake Davenport. Lukus knew that as ruthless as Z was in the pursuit of a target, he was at least usually on the right side of the moral compass. Still, he regularly found himself having to overlook his employee's rather unconventional, and sometimes shady, methods used to get his man. Under normal circumstances, those methods made Lukus nervous, but with Jake Davenport on the loose, he couldn't be happier to have Z on the case.
His friend and second in command, Derek, was in the corner talking softly to his brother, Dylan, Lukus's newest and most junior employee. Dylan was the antithesis of Z. Too emotional. Too volatile. Too inexperienced. Lukus would send him back to Chicago if he thought for a minute the kid would go, but cutting him loose now would only drive Dylan to go rogue. Better to keep him close.
On the phone with Z was Cameron Solinski, their tech guru. Only twenty-three, the kid was a computer genius. Lukus didn't want to know the details of how Cam acquired the confidential information they needed for their investigations.
Plausible deniability.
"Okay, I've got the monitors set up. Let's get started," Z called out to get everyone's attention.
Dylan couldn't wait to lay down his own agenda. "We've been watching long enough. Tell me we're going into the fucking warehouse tonight."
Lukus didn't need to intervene. Z had just about had enough of young Parker. "And do what? For the hundredth time, we don't have enough evidence yet. Davenport is smart. He's got a lot of security around him. We haven't found anything illegal, and even if we had, we know for a fact he has some of the local law enforcement's ear. You know we got a lot of push back after you got the shit beat out of you. We're gonna need something rock solid before we can involve the police again," Z snapped.
"Fuck the police," Dylan retorted.
"Sure. Fuck the police. I'm not exactly their biggest supporter, but will you get your head out of your ass for five minutes and listen to me rationally? What's your plan here? To rush in there guns blazing and shoot the bastard dead? If so, that's great. I'll be sure to visit you once a year in Statesville."
"All right, everybody calm down. We're on the same team." Lukus had stepped between them to try to keep the two men from throwing punches.
Cameron's voice came over the speaker. "If you guys are done, I have new information."
Derek urged him on. "Great. Tell us what you've got."
"Look at the screen Z just got hooked up."
The four men gathered around the thirty-two inch monitor as the picture of a naked, red-headed woman hanging from an elaborate display of ropes came into focus. She was writhing in pain and the cameraman made sure to capture the running mascara on her face.
Cam continued his report. "This is just one of six different interactive Internet sites run out of the 'Strictly Disciplined' warehouse you've been staking out. This channel specializes in bondage and what they call diabolical restraints. There's another focused on anal domination, another for group orgies, and my personal favorite, staged abductions with non-con elements. The most controversial with the lowest subscription numbers is all watersports, and I'm trying not to be totally grossed out by the fact that the most popular site is for staged incest fantasies. Mommy/son, Daddy/daughter, brother/sister."
Dylan was animated. "Thank fuck. We've got him."
Cameron corrected him. "We don't have shit. The sessions are often live. The recording studios are set up in the warehouse, and every session begins with the actors in the scene recording their consent to participate live. They end every session the same way, with a narrator interviewing the players involved to find out their favorite part of the scene or what they didn't enjoy. I've been able to match at least a dozen on-screen talents with surveillance photos you took Dylan; proving these women and even some submissive men are willingly driving themselves to and from the warehouse to work just like they would if they worked at Wal-Mart."
"That's such bullshit! He has to be blackmailing them." Dylan's emotions were running hot.
Lukus tried to settle him down. "Will you sit down and let Cam finish? I'd like to hear more."
"As best I can tell, he has another half-dozen or so 1-800 phone-sex numbers being run from inside, too. He has enough bandwidth and phone lines going into the building to run a small city. They're using top-of-the-line encryption and security firewalls, which I, of course, was able to circumvent, thank-you-very-much. He's making a shit-load of money and even if he's paying the sex-workers top dollar, he's had these sites up for years. Subscriptions are through the roof. I haven't found his offshore accounts yet, but I know he has them. The cash-flow through the Strictly Disciplined accounts is incredible," Cam told them.
Derek jumped in next. "I think that sounds like our best angle, don't you? The websites themselves feel like a dead-end."
"Are you nuts? They're hurting those women!" Dylan protested.
"Those women are willing sex workers."
The men spent the next thirty minutes reviewing much of the same surveillance footage, doing their best to convince Dylan to proceed the right way. As much as Lukus hated to admit it, part of him wanted to just march in there like young Parker, but there was too much riding on this.
Dylan's off-hand question caught Lukus's attention. "Why the hell are you guys so hot to take down Davenport anyway? Don't get me wrong, he needs to be neutralized, but I still don't get it."
Derek and Z turned to Lukus, letting him decide how much to share. Lukus decided it made no sense to keep anything from Dylan any longer.
"Davenport used to date my best friend Markus's wife, Brianna. More like preyed on her. He hurt Bri, just like you fear he's hurting some of the women you've seen him with. When she broke it off with Jake, he threatened her and her best friend. He recently turned up in Chicago trying to nudge his way back into their lives, and his threats are escalating. Both women have gotten text messages, with pictures from years ago of Brianna in all kinds of painful and compromising positions. We've learned that Davenport records everything for use in blackmail later. The prick has even been bold enough to send us video footage of Brianna and her best friend going about their daily lives as if to tell their men that it's impossible to protect them. If Davenport wants to get to them, he thinks he can."
"Well, shit. So your best friend hired you?" Dylan asked.
"No, kid. I hired me. Brianna's best friend is my fiancée, Tiffany." Lukus let that sink in for a minute before continuing. "I know you think you have some skin in this game now, but trust me wh
en I say no one has more to lose than Markus and I do. The woman I love more than anything else in this world... her life is in danger!"
For once, Dylan seemed to back down.
"So, yes, we all know he loves hurting women, but we also know he has power and money. We need him behind bars and that means we play it by the book, got it?"
Dylan answered with a reluctant, "Got it."
"Okay, that's it for now. I need to make a couple calls. You guys know what to do next."
They hung up with Cameron. Z and Dylan took off to interview a few witnesses Cameron had tracked down who used to work for Davenport. They were hoping to find someone who might have proof they could use against the bastard.
Left alone, Lukus and Derek sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the feed of the poor young woman hanging from a hook by her arms, while her legs were pulled up wide and secured with layers of ropes wrapped around her bent thighs and shins. They had thankfully turned the volume down so they couldn't hear her screams as the on-screen Dom used a flogger to punish her exposed pussy.
Lukus asked the question hanging in the air. "How is what we do every night at The Pit any different from what's being shown on these websites?"
Derek let out the breath he'd been holding. "It's not. That's why the websites are a dead end. We aren't here because Davenport runs a sex business, Lukus. We're here because on the side, he likes to terrorize innocent and unwilling victims." When Lukus tried to get a word in, Derek held his hand up and shut him down. "Stop. Don't make the same mistake my brother is making. You have to separate what is happening in the warehouse from the mix. We both know the bastard is hiding behind his legitimate businesses. We just haven't dug deep enough yet to find out how to hurt him where it counts."
Lukus decided it was pointless to argue with his friend. A few months ago, everything would have been so black and white. Now, loving a BDSM novice who had grown up in a conservative vanilla family, Lukus found himself questioning things he hadn't given a second thought about before meeting Tiffany.
