by M. S. Parker
“I wasn’t in the FBI,” I said. The drugs blunted my tongue, and the words came out slurred. “I got kicked out for lying.”
“Why did you lie?” Clay asked as he appeared next to Jalen. “You had to know the FBI would figure it out.”
“Because it’s easier to get kicked out than it is to fail,” Jalen answered the question when I could only stare. “Why do you think she dated you? Friends with benefits but with plenty of reasons to cut and run if things got too tough, too emotional. You were practically her supervisor.”
“No, he wasn’t,” I cut in, glaring at Jalen. “It wasn’t like that. Clay and I had fun, but that’s all it was.”
“That’s all it is with you too,” Clay said with a smarmy sort of grin. The kind I’d never seen on his face before. “I’ll bet she’s already given you a reason why she needs some ‘space’ or ‘time.’”
Jalen’s expression shifted, as if something about Clay’s words made him think. “She did say she needed some time to think about things.”
“To think about your wife being pregnant with your child!” I barely managed to keep from shouting. “Anyone would need some time to process that.”
Clay shook his head. “She’s just looking for excuses to get out.”
“I’m not,” I hissed at him. “I don’t want to ‘get out’ of this thing with Jalen.”
“’This thing’?” he echoed. “Is that all we are to each other?”
“Go away!” I clapped my hands over my mouth as soon as I shouted the words.
I stared at the door as sickly yellows and greens swirled around my head. It’d only been two words, and I hadn’t screamed them. Maybe no one heard. Maybe they’d forgive me because I’d been so good. I hadn’t tried to run away or fight since years ago. Or hours. I still didn’t know.
My churning stomach calmed as the door stayed shut. That was good. I didn’t want to throw up. I’d already drunk all my water, and I didn’t have a place to rinse my mouth out. No bathroom at all. Not even a bucket.
I wrinkled my nose. I didn’t want to think about that.
“Of course you don’t,” Clay said. “You never want to think about the unpleasant things. It’s easier to just pretend everything’s fine and then run away when it gets hard.”
“I didn’t run away.”
“You sabotaged your FBI career before it even really began,” he pointed out. “You kept your shirt on when we had sex because you didn’t want me to see your scar, and I knew the second I pushed you on the subject, you’d be out the door.”
I wanted to tell him that wasn’t true, but I knew it was. I pressed my face against my knees and covered my ears. I didn’t want to talk to Clay anymore. I just wanted to drift on the colors and not have to think.
“I love this time of day,” Jalen said as he slipped his arm around my shoulders and pulled me tight against his side. “Not quite afternoon, not quite evening. It’s the sort of time that makes me feel like anything’s possible.”
“Anything is possible,” I reminded him. I ran my hand over my stomach, smoothing down the soft cotton of my maternity shirt.
It seemed like I’d gone from a slight little bump to showing almost overnight. In no time at all, our little one would be here, and we hadn’t even begun discussing names.
“What do you think of the name Dana?” I asked. “If it’s a girl, I think we should name her Dana, after my mother.”
“You want to name our child after a woman who was murdered?” Jalen asked.
I pretended his comment didn’t hurt. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
“She should have left your father the first time she saw that the accident changed him.”
I wanted to argue with him, but I’d said those words too. The first year after…it happened, I’d blamed her. I’d screamed those words at Anton dozens of times those first couple years. The bitterness would have eaten away at me if Anton hadn’t told me that it was okay to be angry. That adults made mistakes, that they didn’t know everything. He told me that if my mother had known what my father would do, she would’ve made different choices.
I still struggled with anger for years after that, but the bitterness was gone. I could love my mom again even as I acknowledged how different things would have been if she’d made different choices.
I mustered a smile for Jalen and tried again. “What do you think?”
He shrugged. “Let’s just call her Denise.”
I frowned. “That’s the name of your other daughter.”
“I know,” he said. “It’ll just make things easier for me, not having to remember two names.”
A cramp in my leg yanked me out of the nightmare, but it was too late. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I scrubbed at them, knowing I was just making things worse. I was filthy, disgusting, and it was no wonder that no one had come for me. No one wanted me badly enough to come.
Dimly, I wondered if the drugs they were giving me were affecting my mood as much as my thoughts, but I couldn’t hold on to the idea long enough to really think about it. Instead, my mind latched onto something else, and I gratefully followed.
Seven
Someone had cleaned out my cell. Not like scrubbed down clean, but enough so that the stench wasn’t overwhelming. I doubted it was because of me. I’d heard scrawny guy gag the last time he’d come in to give me my food and my shot. He was the only one I recognized besides Serge, but I wasn’t sure anyone else had come in at all. I was aware enough of my situation to know that I couldn’t completely trust anything I saw or heard.
At times like these, it wasn’t hard to remember. Red and I were having a great conversation about pizza toppings, but even as I laughed, a part of me knew that I was alone, talking to colors and people who weren’t even there.
But it didn’t stop me. My only other option was to try to fight the drugs, but it was a fight I couldn’t win. Not without losing my mind. Serge had turned the lights off the last two times between meals, and I’d felt panic at the edges of my mind. Then Jalen had appeared, and we’d talked until I’d fallen asleep.
I couldn’t do this much longer. I wasn’t strong enough. I’d never been strong enough. It was a good thing I hadn’t made it into the FBI because I would’ve been a shit agent.
“No, you would’ve been great.”
I rolled my eyes and flicked Clay off.
“C’mon, Rona. Don’t you remember when I came to recruit you?”
I did.
“You look like shit, kid. When’s the last time you slept?”
I looked up from my abnormal psychology textbook to see a familiar face standing over me. “Clay? What are you doing here?”
He swung one long leg over the chair across from me and sat down without asking for permission. He crossed his arms and leaned on the table. “I told you that I’d be checking in on you from time to time.”
I shrugged. He’d made the promise at Uncle Anton’s funeral a couple months ago, but I hadn’t expected it to last long. I wasn’t anything to Clay. His friend’s niece. Some kid who was always underfoot and mouthing off to him.
“You didn’t think I’d do it.” He sounded more amused than annoyed. “No matter. I’ve been keeping an eye on you even when I’m not here.”
“That’s not at all creepy.”
He laughed, showing those straight, white teeth of his. “When you started at Columbia, Anton suggested to me the possibility that you might be a good candidate for the FBI.”
It was my turn to laugh, and I stretched my arms over my head as I did so. It’d been a while since I’d moved, and my muscles were stiff. “Are you trying to recruit me?”
“Anton said you intended to maybe go into criminal psychology and become a detective, but I think you’d make an excellent intelligence analyst with the FBI.”
An intelligence analyst with the FBI. That hadn’t been on my radar before, but now that he’d mentioned it, I could see it. Still, a part of me was wary.
“Why?�
�� I leaned back in my chair. “What makes you think I’d be any good in the FBI?”
Clay’s eyes narrowed, and he gave me a searching look, waiting nearly a full minute before answering my question. “I don’t know a lot about what brought you and Anton together, but I know how passionate you are about justice. After what happened to your uncle, I think you’re even more driven to find ways to right wrongs.”
“Okay, but why the FBI? Why not at the local level?”
He smiled again. “Because you’re meant for greater things than New York City Homicide.”
“Greater things,” I muttered as I rolled over to face the wall. “Right. I’m meant for big things. Like being a PI in Colorado.”
“You saved Meka and other girls from being sold as sex slaves.” Jalen’s voice came from behind me. “And you helped stop a human trafficking ring that provided sweatshop labor. I’d say that isn’t bad for a PI.”
I shrugged. “Jenna did most of the work.”
“We both know that’s bullshit,” he countered. “Jenna would say the same. Didn’t she hire you to find her siblings rather than doing it herself?”
“Not the same.”
The door opened, but I didn’t roll over again, not even when the light came on. I squeezed my eyes shut, anticipating the pain from my light-deprived eyes. I could find the food after he left, and he could stick me from behind as well as he could stick me facing him. He’d done it before.
“You really like to talk.” It was Serge’s voice, not the scrawny man. “Most people on this, they just laugh and babble. You did some of that too, but you carry on entire conversations. Who are you seeing?”
“Nobody. No one. Nobody. No one.” I shook my head. He couldn’t know about Jalen or Clay. If he knew, he’d stop them from coming for me.
“It doesn’t matter,” Serge said. “In the morning, we’re going to get you cleaned up. A shower. Soap. Shampoo. Does that sound good?”
“Yes.” I waited to hear what I would have to do for it. The colors whispered all sorts of nasty things, but I glared at them. I needed to hear it from him first. Besides, if he’d wanted to fuck me, he would’ve done it already. I wasn’t so out of it that I wouldn’t have noticed that.
“I’m going to lower your dosage in the morning,” he continued. “Big dose tonight, little one tomorrow. But you have to be good, or my employers will be even angrier at you than they already are.”
His employers. He’d talked about them before. He said that I’d pissed them off. But I didn’t know who he was talking about. Every time I asked, I didn’t get answers. I didn’t bother asking this time. It wouldn’t do any good.
“You will clean up nicely,” he said. “There will be makeup for you to cover bruises. No one will bid on you if they believe you are not controllable. Some men like to break their women themselves, but all want them malleable at purchase.”
Some part at the back of my brain sent off warning bells as Serge spoke, but as soon as I heard one word, I forgot it for the next. I could barely put together the fact that I was going to get to take a shower tomorrow, let alone what it was for. It was important, but I’d have to wait until the morning to start figuring it out. Why I’d be able to figure it out in the morning, I didn’t know, but something told me that I just needed to wait.
“Hold on,” Jalen whispered in my ear. “Just hold on a little longer.”
I wanted to tell him that I would, but the colors were too loud, their shouts drowning him out.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Eight
I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed being clean until I stepped under the warm spray and felt the dirt slough off. I didn’t even want to consider what that ‘dirt’ was made up of. Fortunately, Serge had made good on his promise and gave me another shot, so anything I didn’t want to think about too hard, I just let slip away.
The shampoo smelled good. Clean, but without any of the extra stuff like fake-cherries. The soap was the same, and I vaguely wondered if it had been bought in bulk. I’d thought before about whether I was the only woman who’d been kept here, and the generic nature of the soap made me think that others could have gone through the same thing.
The world was still fuzzy, but when I stepped out of the shower, I felt more human than I had in days. I took my time drying off, in part because it just felt good to be clean again, but also because I needed the time alone to think. Really think. Thanks to the drugs still making their way through my system, my mind was far from as fast as I was accustomed to, but it was much better than it had been since I arrived. Even better than when I’d made my ill-fated escape attempt.
The next one wouldn’t be an attempt.
Suddenly, I remembered what Serge said last night. If, indeed, it had been last night. I still didn’t know what day it was. I could only hope that my friends hadn’t given up on me. Because I had friends, and the realization startled me. It wasn’t only Clay and Jalen who would’ve missed me by now. I had Jenna and Rylan too. Because Jenna wasn’t only a client, she was a friend as well. And if I really thought about it, Jenna was as likely to find me as anyone. Maybe more because she didn’t always feel the need to follow the law.
It wasn’t until the guard knocked on the door that I remembered there was a reason for me cleaning up, and I’d gotten distracted. Serge had told me that his employers had a plan for me. If only I could remember what that was. The memory hovered at the back of my mind, just out of reach.
“Let’s go.”
Shit. It was Yerik. I hadn’t seen him since I’d almost escaped. I hadn’t thought about him since then either but considering all the shit I’d had pumped into me, that wasn’t a surprise. Now, however, I realized how shocking it was that he was still alive. I wondered if perhaps he had a connection to Serge or one of the employers, but a part of me hoped it was because Serge figured it was better to punish for a failure and give someone the chance to improve rather than kill them. I didn’t want Yerik’s blood on my hands, especially not when there was always a chance he could be rehabilitated.
“You’ve got, ten seconds before I come in there, naked or not.”
Right. Focus.
I reached for the clothes on the counter without really seeing them. They were clean, and that was all I cared about…until I pulled up the panties and realized that they were basically a sheer lace thong. And I hadn’t been given a bra.
What the fuck?
I picked up the dress, and that was when all the pieces came together, though I wished to hell that they hadn’t.
Auction.
That was what Serge had said.
I was being taken to an auction.
Based on the low cut, high hem, and clingy material, it was easy to figure out exactly why people would be bidding on me. I hated the idea of going along with it even for one second, but I pulled the dress over my head. It was a deep, rich blue. The sort of dress that didn’t require a bra, not that I’d been given one. My nipples pebbled as the soft material slid over my body, and if I’d been wearing it for Jalen, I would’ve enjoyed every sensual moment.
The door didn’t have a lock and opened easily. Yerik looked pissed, but he didn’t glare at me. He didn’t even look at me. From the bruises on his face, it wasn’t hard to understand why.
“Let’s go.” He held out a hand, but I knew it wasn’t for me to take. No matter how I looked in this dress, he didn’t want to touch me.
Maybe it made me a bad person, but I didn’t feel guilty about it at all. He was alive and not in the hospital. Even if he’d never been involved in one of these situations before, he wasn’t stupid. He knew what was going to be done to me tonight if I didn’t get away.
I could’ve used his unwillingness to touch me, but it was too risky. I’d humiliated him. Right now, he was either going the shame route, or he was keeping a leash on his anger because he knew he’d get in even more trouble if he marked me before the auction. If I pushed him too far, he might forget about s
elf-preservation and lash out.
That would be bad for both of us.
I stepped out of the bathroom and saw a pair of flats off to the side. I was a bit surprised. A dress like this really went with heels. Then I realized that they probably thought that heels could be a weapon.
They were right.
I put on the shoes and followed Yerik meekly as he led me down a corridor. The motion after so much lack of motion spun my mind too fast for me to keep up, but I didn’t bother trying to memorize it all. I didn’t plan on coming back here.
The cold burst of air registered before I even understood that I was outside. I caught the sharp smell of snow, then felt it on my face, but only for a few seconds before I was nudged into the back of a car and a door shut behind me.
The windows were heavily tinted, to the point where I couldn’t really see out, but I supposed that was the point. Still, I strained to find something familiar, some landmark that would tell me where I was.
“Don’t bother,” Serge said easily. “You can’t get out of the car unless I unlock the doors, and I won’t be doing that until we reach our destination.”
“The auction,” I said.
He nodded. “My employers are convinced that you’ll fetch a high price. Perhaps our highest. I don’t agree.”
I didn’t bother to attempt a response, and I doubted he expected one. He assumed I was going to try to escape again, and I would do my best to not disappoint him, but not now. He’d helped me with that comment. If I hadn’t known that only he could unlock the doors, I might’ve wasted time planning to get out and run before we got to wherever we were going. Now, I focused my energy on something else.
I resisted the urge to scrub my palms on my thighs like I would have if I’d been wearing jeans. I couldn’t give anything away. Serge and the scrawny guy flanked me as we walked, making no illusions about which of the…properties was the most valuable. There were others behind me, other girls I could hear whispering in frightened breaths of sound. I hadn’t seen how many when Yerik had unloaded them from the van that had pulled into the parking garage behind us, but the sheer fact that it was more than just me told me that whatever was going on here was a hell of a lot bigger than I’d originally anticipated.
