Possess: An Alpha Anthology

by Anthology

  The hallway was a long corridor with many identical doors to the one I was halfway through. A table to the side held a gun—Paul must have put it there while he entered the room.

  Paul crawled toward me, almost within reach of my ankles before I noticed.

  “Shit!” Out of reflex I lashed out again with my foot and caught him in the face, knocking him sideways. I ran out of the cell and slammed the door behind me.

  It was impossible to tell which direction led outside. I knew from the window I was on the second or third floor, and I thought I knew which way was more likely to have a road. Slaps from my bare feet echoed down the hall as I ran. Doors whizzed by, the tiny dimensions of the cells allowing many to be crammed into a small stretch of hallway.

  So many cells. Are they all occupied, or am I the only one here?

  I couldn’t believe all this was set up purely for my benefit. My heart broke as I tried to decide whether to try to free anyone else.

  “Fuck,” I murmured, and stopped my sprint.

  I tugged on a door, taking a moment to figure out the door mechanism. It finally gave way, and I held my breath as the heavy door pushed open, finger creeping along the gun to the trigger just in case.

  Nothing.

  The room was empty, the bed frame not even supporting a mattress.

  I can’t open every door until I find someone.

  The best hopes of helping any other women in the building were to escape and bring the police back.

  I ran down the hall until I came across a door different from all the others I’d passed. Instead of a security door, it was a simple hinged affair. With a tentative nudge, I cracked it enough to look in and see stairs.

  Perfect.

  As quietly as I could, I opened the door and entered the stairwell, closing it behind with barely a whisper of sound. Bare feet worked to my advantage as I could place each step and avoid letting any sounds echo to other floors. I couldn’t count on the rest of the building being as uninhabited by captors as the floor I’d called home for the past two days.

  The big number two on the wall was a good sign. The next floor down was the bottom of the staircase and had a large “G” splashed onto the concrete wall.

  Careful to not even breathe audibly, I put my shoulder against the wall beside the door and held the pistol in front of me, ready to peek out into the hall.

  For a moment I pictured what I would look like to an observer. Buxom brunette in lingerie creeping around an old prison complex with a handgun. The thought almost made me giggle—it could have been the basis for a cool photoshoot.

  Okay, here we go, Liberty. You can do this. Just find an exit and get out of here!

  I reached my free hand out to pull the door handle. It had opened only an inch before the sound of steps echoed through and two men walked past.

  They were speaking to each other, but it was in Russian or another language. It didn’t look like they were in a rush and they weren’t yelling, so my escape must have gone undetected so far.

  I wonder how often they check the cameras to watch the girls and make sure they’re not up to anything they shouldn’t be. It couldn’t have been a constant surveillance or else it would have been clear I’d trapped Paul in the room. Unless he got them to switch it off because he’d planned on raping me.

  The thought made me smile. It would serve him right.

  The men had disappeared down the hall and I couldn’t hear the sound of their voices or their footsteps any longer.

  I opened the door again and poked my head out just enough to look down the hall in either direction. This floor didn’t have any cell doors on it, and the hallway was wider and less barren—more of an administrative feel. Holding my breath and squeezing through the stairwell door so I wouldn’t have to open it any wider than I had to, I popped out into the open.

  The direction the men had gone was toward where I thought the exit would be. I paused as I tried to figure out what to do.

  “Hey!” A loud shout surprised me. I whipped my head around to see Anton. He was half out of a doorway behind me. “Guards!” He continued on in the language used by the guards as he ran toward me.

  Talk about the worst damn timing possible!

  There was only one direction to go, and it was toward the men who had just walked past.

  This won’t work out well.

  The corridor didn’t last much longer in this direction before it emptied into a large room. Rays of muted sunlight lit the floor through two wide double doors finished with frosted glass. There was a desk and seating arrayed along one wall and standing beside the desk were the two men from earlier.

  I ground to a halt as I looked desperately for my best choice. The outside was so close—it was a mere thirty feet to the doors— but the guards were closer, and both raised their guns, shouting words I didn’t understand.

  Only then remembering the firearm I held in my hand, I brought it up to point at the men. The shouting intensified, and sweat broke out along my forehead. When Anton ran into the room, I swiveled to train the handgun on him.

  “Whoa!” he said. “Where did you get that from? Don’t be a fool, Liberty, put the gun down.”

  I looked at him, then the guards. They didn’t look to be in any hurry to shoot, and I barely even knew what I was doing with a gun. There was an uneasy stalemate.

  “Why did you do this?” I asked Anton. If this was the end of the line, I at least wanted answers. “How do you live with yourself?”

  He looked pained. “Liberty, I don’t like this. I don’t have a choice, any more than you do. Once you owe the wrong people a favor that can be the end of any chance for a respectable life.”

  Tears filled my eyes and dropped down my cheeks. I had been so close. To escape and freedom. To seeing Stephen again. To going back to the life I should be living.

  “Just put the gun down,” Anton said again. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

  I stared at him. Hated him. Would it be worth dying so that one of these criminals would be wiped off the face of the earth and unable to inflict suffering on any other women?

  My trigger finger trembled. I wanted to do it so badly.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A loud crash thirty feet to my left made me flinch. The gun went off in my hand with a loud crack and the recoil of the handgun sent me reeling backward as I tried to see what happened.

  Dozens of men in black body armor and helmets streamed in through the double doors. They overwhelmed the two Russians and disarmed them almost instantly. Anton had hit the ground and clutched his shoulder, screaming.

  “Police! Get down on the ground!”

  I dropped the gun and sank to my knees, staring in disbelief as men rushed past and entered the hallway to the rest of the building.

  I shot someone. Numbness spread inside my chest, leaving me detached from the action. I hadn’t meant to pull the trigger.

  A man with a trimmed mustache and a vest with “Detective” emblazoned across the chest approached. “Liberty Tilset?”

  I nodded, unable to speak from the overwhelming emotions that raged through my mind. Paramedics flooded onto the scene and knelt next to Anton.

  “I didn’t mean to shoot him.”

  The detective’s sharp eyes flicked between me, the photographer and the gun on the floor.

  “Don’t worry about that, Miss Tilset, he doesn’t look critical and we’ll make a case for self defense. I’m Detective Keely, please come with me,” he helped me to shaky feet and took my arm as he guided me out the front of the building.

  Too many police cars and SWAT vehicles to count stood in the street outside the building. Sirens flashed from all directions, almost blindingly bright. The detective walked me over to a tent that looked like it had just been erected.

  Inside stood Stephen.

  “Oh, thank God. Liberty! Are you all right?” He took me into his arms and held me tight. It felt like heaven after the hell I had been through over the past
two days. Tension drained from me as I fought to release the pain and fear and depression from my body.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I can’t believe you’re here. How did you find me?”

  Stephen’s hand stroked the back of my head, comforting me more than anything else could have. “It took a lot of good work by the detective there. I’ll explain everything later, but the important part is that you’re safe now.”

  A blanket came from somewhere and Stephen wrapped it around my shoulders, covering up my nearly naked body. After so long dressed like that I’d forgotten I wasn’t appropriate.

  As much as I never wanted to leave Stephen’s arms, reality set in. Despite my protestations that I was fine, paramedics ushered me into a waiting ambulance where they took my vitals and ensured there was nothing wrong with me.

  Only then was I cleared to sit with Stephen in the command tent, wrapped in my blanket and with a mug of coffee. Detective Keely had disappeared once more into the building, and there were a few people in the tent coordinating the efforts of the men inside the building.

  By the time my examination was complete the raid team secured the building. All that remained was to sort through the prisoners and lock down the men who had been working for Paul.

  “How were you able to track me down?” I asked Stephen. “I want to know everything.”

  “I got your messages after I met with my friends the other night. I waited for you to tell me when you finished the shoot, and it never happened.” He gave me a grim look. “It bothered me you didn’t get in touch when you said you would, so I called and sent you a couple messages but got nothing back. I didn’t want to play the overreacting jealous boyfriend, so I let it go until the morning.

  “When I couldn’t get a hold of you then, I got worried. You’d never gone so long without answering my messages. I checked with the staff at Dorgo’s, but no one had seen or heard from you since the day before. After that I got a hold of Lacy and we used the spare key you gave her to get into your apartment and saw you weren’t there.”

  He paused and grimaced.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Even though it turns out you were in trouble, saying it all out loud makes me feel like the worst control freak. Not hearing from you for half a day and I’m tracking down and interviewing everyone you know.”

  I took his hand in mine and kissed the back of it. “Don’t worry about that. I told you I would call you and come over that night, and then you didn’t hear from me at all. You were justified. And if you hadn’t then I would be dead by now considering how things were going when the police arrived on the scene.”

  Stephen nodded. “Okay. So when we ran out of places to look, I did the only thing I could think of short of calling the police. I didn’t want to go there until I knew more, so I called one of my friends at Uber and made him do something he could get fired for—pull your account’s records. From that I got the address you went to the night you vanished.”

  “Thank God I use Uber instead of taxis,” I said. “Otherwise there would have been no trace. And you called the police after that?”

  “Uh, not exactly.” Stephen shifted. “I went there myself.”

  “What? Stephen! These guys were not messing around, you could have ended up in the river with a cinder block tied around your feet.”

  “I know that now,” he said. “But I still didn’t know for sure there was any foul play involved. When I went to talk to them and ask where you were, they denied knowing who you were and said you’d never been there. I didn’t press them too hard since I could tell they wouldn’t hesitate to cause trouble, but it gave me enough to go to the police and get them to start an investigation.”

  “We aren’t at the warehouse where I went for the photoshoot,” I pointed out. “How did they figure out I was here?”

  “Hard work, luck. Some guesswork. Your phone was a dead end—they must have smashed it and left it somewhere else. The detective went to the warehouse and asked questions, but they weren’t giving anything away. There was no sign of you or any of your stuff, but it was obvious they were hiding something. Detective Keely didn’t want to make arrests and ruin the possibility of them leading us to you, so the police waited and tailed every person with any connection to the warehouse.

  “One man drove into this neighborhood but then the tail lost him. The police drove up and down the streets for a while until they saw a bright red bra hanging out a window on this building. It was suspicious enough to hang around. They camped outside and sure enough soon they saw the photographer from the warehouse waltz in. At that point it was just a matter of time to pull together the raid team and then wait for the perfect moment to carry it out.

  “When Paul Goldsmith showed up and entered the building that was it—catching such a high-profile man inside is a dream come true for the detectives working this case—you aren’t the first model to disappear but the only one who left behind enough clues to follow.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Such a big mess. And if I hadn’t tied that bra to the bars over my window, you might not have found me in time.”

  It didn’t bear thinking about. The important thing was that I was safe, and I was back with Stephen.

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s go home and we can take your mind off it for a while.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Stephen?”

  I walked into the penthouse kitchen and found him chopping vegetables on the island.

  “There’s my gorgeous lady,” he said, smiling at me. “Good news?”

  I’d just gotten back from a meeting at the agency. I kept my face devoid of all expression.

  Stephen’s smile faded. “Liberty? Is everything all right?” He put the knife down.

  I couldn’t hold it back any longer. “You’re looking at an agency model!” The grin I’d suppressed fought its way onto my face and I bounced around the counter to jump into Stephen’s arms. “I did it!”

  He kissed me hard, his smooth lips covering mine just the way I liked it.

  “Congratulations baby,” he held my face in his hands, the smell of peppers on his fingers an odd counterpoint to the intimate moment. “I knew you would get it.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Did you bribe someone? Is that how you knew?”

  His eyes widened in astonishment. “Of course not! I knew you’d get it because you are devastatingly pretty and you have an amazing body. They would be morons not to give you a contract.”

  He sent a flutter of delight up my spine. I would never tire of hearing the man of my dreams say those types of words. “You know exactly what to say to put me in the mood.”

  “Is that right?” He hugged me closer against his chest. “Are you up for celebrating? It’s been a great week for you. Between this and the case against Paul, everything’s coming up Liberty.”

  I’d given my testimony two days before against Paul, damning him as the kingpin of a massive human trafficking network. The evidence stacked against him—the police raid had been so swift that none of the criminals had enough warning to delete a single piece of information off any of the computers in the building. The footage from the cameras in the cell had all been present, including the feed from my cell which corroborated my version of events.

  He was due to receive his sentencing within a few weeks, and the expectation is that he would be locked away for dozens of years if not life.

  “It’s been a good week,” I acknowledged. “Wrapping things up and putting them behind me, starting on new paths.” I traced my finger down his chest. “I couldn’t be happier.”

  “I’ve been so proud of you, Liberty,” Stephen said. “I love you so much.”

  The words raced through my body like a gunshot—I’d never tire of hearing them. I pulled his head down to mine and showed him exactly what I thought of that.

  “I love you too,” I said when we broke apart. “It’s still hard to believe you want me.”

  “Of course I do,” he
said. “How could I not when you’re… you? One more thing—will you move in with me? I’d love to have you here all the time.”

  It was another no brainer. Stephen and I had spent months together growing close and enjoying each other’s company—physically and mentally. I loved my independence, but I spent almost all my non-working hours here already. I could almost reach all four walls of my tiny studio apartment from the middle of the room and spending any time at all there made me feel claustrophobic.

  “Yes, of course I’ll move in with you!” I said. “Half my clothes are here anyway.”

  He picked me up and set me on the edge of the counter so that my head was level with his. I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him close as we kissed deeply.

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” he growled into my ear. “My model deserves to live in luxury.”

  He moved his mouth to cover my neck, and I gasped as he gently bit the soft skin hard enough to feel it but not enough to leave a mark. He was a master at walking the fine line between pain and pleasure.

  Stephen ran his hands up my thighs, dipping underneath the hem of the short dress I’d worn out. He gripped my ass and lifted me off the counter, carrying me across the apartment to the master bedroom, vegetables forgotten.

  I clung to his neck and worked to get his shirt off on the move, freeing it and throwing it to the floor in the hallway. By the time I’d undone the top button on his pants he’d reached the bed and tossed me on top, following like a lion stalking his prey.

  Palms on the insides of my thighs spread my legs, and the dress rode up to my waist to reveal the delicate panties underneath.

  I gripped his hair as he teased me, nibbling the skin on either side of the lacy fabric and grasping my ass to pull the cheeks apart ever so slightly.

  I flung my head back against the bed as he pulled the panties off, exposing me to his passion. His hot breath washed over me moments before his tongue made contact.

  “Stephen,” I breathed. Electric shocks ran along my skin from where his mouth played over me, his tongue barely making contact but still feeling impossibly good.