by Vivien Sparx
“You have jeopardized everything. Put everything at risk. I hope you’re happy.”
Instead of heading back towards the living room, the sheriff turned the handle of the door opposite. He pushed the door open slowly and then stood back to let Stone walk into the room first.
Stone froze. Felt sudden shock jump down his nerves and wrench them tight.
“Say hello to Katrina Walker,” the sheriff said.
Twenty-five.
Katrina Walker was laying in a big double bed. She was wearing a white gown and nothing else, propped up into a kind of sitting position by several pillows.
Both of her legs were in thick plaster casts. Her right arm was slung across her body like a broken wing. Her arms were red and inflamed with open cuts and abrasions, and her face was swollen and bruised so that she was barely recognizable. Both her eyes were blackened, her features pale and sunken.
On one side of the bed was an iron post on a wheeled stand, hung with plastic fluid bags and attached to long clear tubes that were bandaged to her wrist. On the other side of the bed was a woman in her late forties, or maybe early fifties, wearing a nurse’s uniform. The woman was writing notes onto a clipboard. The nurse looked up at Stone standing in the doorway and frowned. She set the notes down on a bedside chair and came quickly across the room.
They were standing in a spare bedroom. Stone saw a wide window in the wall to his left, with black heavy material tacked up to block daylight. There were no furnishings in the room apart from the bed and the chair, and a shaded lamp on a stand in the corner. The floor was covered in worn carpet, and Stone could see dents and ridges in the flooring where heavy furniture pieces like chests of drawers and maybe wardrobes had stood until recently. The room smelled of talcum powder and pine disinfectant.
The sheriff clutched at Stone’s arm. “Katrina was found at the bottom of a twenty foot drop along the coastal road on Monday,” he explained. “She was in a bad way, but luckily she had been thrown from the car as it was going over the edge of the cliff. When my officers arrived on the scene she was lucid. She told them she had been run off the road. We brought her here. She’s testifying against The Dom, Stone,” the sheriff said suddenly, his voice rising with his intensity. “She knows all his dealings – every sordid deal he has been involved in. She said she told the Dom she wanted to go back to Ohio, and he didn’t take the news well. It was his men who tried to kill her. For the past three days we have been slowly building a case against him, with Katrina as our star witness.”
“Why isn’t she in a hospital?”
“Because I can’t protect her in a hospital,” the sheriff said. “She wouldn’t be safe. That’s why we told you she was dead. And that’s why it is important the Dom thinks she’s dead. It’s the best way to keep her safe for the next week until she is well enough to testify to the relevant authorities. Once the State police and the FBI have spoken to her and the Dom has been arrested, we can get her into a protection program until it goes to trial. But for now, she is here recovering because it’s the best way I know to keep her alive.”
Stone glanced at the nurse. “How bad are her injuries?”
“I’m just the night nurse,” the woman said. “We have a doctor and two more nurses here working in shifts from 6am until 10pm each night. The doctor would be the best one to speak to about her condition.”
“But what’s your opinion.”
The nurse shrugged. “She’ll live,” the woman said confidently. “I don’t know about her legs, though. It’s going to take a long time for them to heal. There were multiple fractures. She may need the support of a cane for the rest of her life. But she will live.”
Stone nodded.
“Is she awake?” the sheriff asked the nurse in a whisper.
The nurse nodded. “She’s just had more pain medication.”
The sheriff frowned. “Is she up to talking – even just for a few minutes?”
The nurse looked mortified.
“It’s important.”
The nurse paused for more long seconds and then nodded reluctantly. “Just for a minute.”
The sheriff led Stone over to the bed. Katrina was laying on her back, and up close Stone could see more clearly the extent of her injuries. Her face was badly bruised and swollen, like it had been bent out of shape. There were dark purple marks along her jaw and across her mouth, and her left eye was bloodshot red. The skin across her face seemed drawn tight, sunken beneath her cheeks and below her eyes.
The sheriff gently touched Katrina’s shoulder and her eyes fluttered open, uncertain and reluctant, as though the weight of her eyelids was too heavy to bear.
She turned her head a little, licked painfully at swollen lips.
“Katrina, this is Jack Stone,” the sheriff said softly. “He is a friend of your sister. He came to town to help look for you.”
At the mention of her sister, Katrina’s eyes seemed to become more focused and attentive. She looked at Stone for long seconds.
“Is Celia all right?” Katrina’s voice was a croaked whisper.
Stone nodded. “She’s fine,” he said. “We’ve been in town for the last few days looking for you.”
Katrina nodded slowly.
“The Dom did this to you?” Stone asked.
Katrina nodded, and it took another moment before she was able to find her voice. “His men,” she said. “I told the Dom that I wanted out. I wanted to stop being his submissive…” she lapsed into another long silence, like every word was an effort. “But he doesn’t let any woman go.”
Stone nodded. He could feel the black unholy rage returning. That same vengeful anger that had burned through him when he had confronted the Dom across the card table. Now it was there again, simmering red and wild behind his eyes.
“Did you know all of the Dom’s girls?” Stone asked gently.
Again Katrina simply nodded.
Stone reached into his pocket and pulled the photograph of Susan from his wallet. He held it up to Katrina, and his hand was shaking. The photo showed a pretty teenage girl with smooth clear skin. She had long blonde hair, and big eyes. She was smiling shyly at the camera, perched on a back-yard swing set, wearing a floral dress that was rucked up around her thighs.
“Do you recognize this girl?” he asked. “It’s my sister, Susan. She was a girl like you – trapped into sex-slavery.”
Katrina’s eyes turned to the photo and she frowned for long seconds. She licked her lips and a flash of pain from her bruised jaw made her grimace.
“I…. I’m not sure…” Katrina said vaguely. She looked again. Stone held the photo a little closer. “She looks like a girl who came to the club a long time ago, but she was only there for a couple of weeks.”
“Was her name Susan?”
Katrina shook her head. “She didn’t know her real name,” she said. “She was called Tink, because she looked like Tinkerbell from Peter Pan.”
“Is this her?” Stone urged. He felt a hot surge of emotion, and his voice was suddenly thick and strained.
Katrina nodded. “Yes, it is,” she said. “Her hair was shorter… but that’s the girl.”
Stone took a deep breath. Crushed down on everything that was boiling up inside him and kept his voice calm. “What happened to her?”
Katrina shook her head. “I don’t know. She was only at the club for a couple of weeks,” she said again. “Last year, maybe. She was heavily drugged. The Dom had her in a pleasure room, tied to a bed, for the guests to use. Then one day she was gone. I think she went back to the Animal Trainer.”
Stone knew that name. The Animal Trainer was the man he was hunting. He was the man at the center of the sex-slave trafficking business. The man he also knew as Harper.
Stone put the photo back into his wallet. He clutched Katrina’s hand and held it. “Thank you,” he said softly.
The sheriff patted Katrina’s shoulder and his touch was surprisingly gentle for such a big bulky man. “Go back to sleep,” he
said softly.
They went from the room quietly. Stood in the hallway with the door still open so Stone could see the nurse bent over the big bed, tending to Katrina and then adjusting the flow of the intravenous drip. Making more notes on the chart.
“Now you understand?” the sheriff was toe-to-toe with Stone.
Stone nodded. Said nothing.
“I can’t have you running around Heston’s Cove raising three kinds of trouble when I’m doing everything in my power to keep Katrina Walker safely out of the Dom’s hands until she is well enough to provide a full statement to the state authorities.”
Stone nodded again. He was torn. He wanted nothing more than to go back to The Cage and tear the Dom’s arms off, and then beat him to death with the wet ends. Katrina had seen his sister at The Cage. That meant the Dom knew what had happened to Susan – the girl Katrina had called Tink. Stone knew that he might never get another chance to find out about Harper the Animal Trainer. If the Dom was arrested, there would be no opportunity to get him alone and ask in him Stone’s unique persuasive way exactly where Susan was. Exactly where the Animal Trainer was. And yet he knew also that if he took matters into his own hands it was going to jeopardize the police case against The Dom – and that might put the safety of more girls like Katrina and his sister at risk.
And then, in the early hours of the morning as the two men stood in the darkened hallway, Jack Stone’s phone rang, and all of the sheriff’s careful planning suddenly went to hell.
Twenty-Six.
For the first hour Celia struggled against the knots that held her wrists tied to the headboard.
For the second hour, she lay perfectly still. She was exhausted from trying to wrench her arms free, and she was also becoming worried. Stone had been gone a long time. What had happened to him? Had he confronted the Dom? Had he somehow found some vital clue, or forced a confession? Were police cars encircling The Cage as she lay there – maybe an exchange of gunfire as the Dom barricaded himself in the building and fought it out against the police?
Or had Stone been hurt – or killed even? Had he walked into a trap? Had the Dom’s men overpowered him?
Her mind went round in ever tightening circles, spiraling down into a quagmire of fear and then panic. Of anger and then alarm.
She began to cry out for help.
For several minutes nothing happened. The hotel stayed silent. And then finally she heard a loud thump through the wall of the adjacent room. Celia heard a middle-aged man’s voice, muffled and uncertain, from room sixteen.
“Hello? Are you okay in there?”
The guy was a travelling salesman for a greeting card wholesaler, working his regular route up and down the west coast. Once a month he called into Heston’s Cove for an overnight stay on his way north. He had arrived to the hotel late, eaten alone in his room and was planning on a solid night’s sleep..
Until he heard the screams for help.
“No. I’m not okay!” Celia shouted back. “I… I need help.”
There was a brief silence, and then the voice came back through the wall, this time a little louder and clearer, like the guy had his face against the wall as he spoke.
“Are you injured?”
Celia considered her situation. She was naked, tied to the headboard, lingerie and clothing strewn across the room and over the bed around her.
“Not…. not exactly,” she said.
This time the delay was longer. So long that Celia wondered if the man had gone. “I’m kind of trapped.”
She heard faint sounds of movement. Then the guy called out again. “Do you want me to get someone from the hotel?”
“Yes!” Celia cried out. “And please hurry!”
For long impatient minutes Celia lay on the bed and waited. She thought about what might happen next. She played each scene out in her imagination, and every time she did she reached the point where a stranger came through the door and saw her tied naked to the bed – and her mind just shut down, refusing to dwell on what might happen next.
How would she explain herself?
What would the night attendant think?
Was it something that they might laugh about?
Celia doubted it.
She was furious with Stone, and she was about to be humiliated and embarrassed beyond a level she could imagine.
Finally she heard the sounds of shuffling feet outside the room door, and her mind snapped back to the moment. She could hear the rattle of keys, and then a polite knock.
“Hello? Mr. Stone?” It was a man’s voice, but kind of young. Maybe a guy in his twenties. Maybe he was pulling the late shift behind the reception desk as a part time job while he worked his way through college. He sounded uncertain.
“Mr. Stone is not here!” Celia called back. “Please help me. I am trapped.”
“Are you alone?”
“Of course I’m alone!” Celia snapped. Otherwise I wouldn’t be trapped!”
“Um… okay, ma’am. I’ll go back to the reception counter and call the paramedics and the fire brigade.”
“No!” Celia shouted, her voice wild with sudden alarm. “I’m not trapped like that.”
There was a confused silence. Celia could feel herself becoming anxious. “Just open the damned door and help me!”
Another brief pause. Then she heard keys in the lock. Heard the door open on its hinges. Heard the ambient sounds of the night come through the doorway, and then the sounds of shuffling nervous feet. Opened her eyes and saw a young guy standing in the middle of the room, with another older man in a rumpled suit close behind him, peering at Celia with a dazed, shocked expression on his face. The two men gaped at her.
Celia lifted her legs, rolled her hips and did the best she could to protect her modesty. But it wasn’t a lot. She stared back at the men, feeling her face flush bright red with embarrassment, and a simmering, burning hatred for Jack Stone.
“Stop ogling me!” Celia snapped angrily, “And cut me free.”
The young guy with the bunch of keys in his hand didn’t move. It was like he was glued to the floor. Behind him, the older guy was leaning closer, his eyes wide, like he was trying to burn everything into his memory.
Finally Celia kicked and thrashed her legs. “Cut me free!” she screamed.
The young guy suddenly moved, like he had been woken from a deep trance. He came to the side of the bed and leaned over Celia to pick at the knots. They were tight, and he used the point of a key to unravel the rope around her wrist.
Celia sighed, the exquisite pain of blood racing back into to her fingertips was like a thousand tiny stabs. She threw her hand across her breasts to cover herself, and then realized she was naked below the waist as well. One hand wasn’t going to cover everything.
“Hurry!” Celia barked at the young attendant. She was seething with humiliation. The guy was staring down at her again, his eyes wide as saucers. Finally the second knot was loose enough for her to slip her hand free. She grabbed a fist full of bed sheet and threw it over herself until just her face showed.
“Thank you,” she said. “Now please leave.”
The young guy nodded jerkily. Said nothing. The old guy from room sixteen stood for a moment longer, just shaking his head in wonder, like no one was ever going to believe him when he told this story to his buddies. Then the two men were gone, the door pulled quietly shut behind them.
Celia ripped the sheet from the bed and wrapped herself tightly. She pressed her ear against the door and heard nothing. She went to the wall that adjoined room sixteen and waited until she heard the sound of shuffling feet, and then the murmur of a television. Only then did she slip out of Stone’s room and scurry back to room eighteen.
She slammed the door shut, locked it, and then slipped the security chain in place. Went to the nearest suitcase and pulled on jeans and a green top. Thrust her feet into shoes and then dug back into the bottom of the suitcase until she felt the cold steel of a gun. Pulled the pistol out and th
en felt around again until her fingers locked around a clip of ammunition.
Celia stuffed the weapon down inside the waistband of her jeans and then snatched her cell phone from her handbag.
She punched in numbers with short angry stabs. Stood breathing hard, trembling and shaking with humiliation and anger and frustration and temper.
The phone rang.
Finally she heard the click of the call being picked up.
“Stone?”
“Yes,” Stone answered from the sheriff’s house.
“You’re a bastard. You’re a low down rotten evil bastard,” the voice in his ear sounded distorted and far away.
“Celia? How did you get free?” Stone kept his questions hushed.
“Never mind. I’ll tell you later,” she snapped abruptly. “Where are you?”
Stone hesitated. “Out of town,” he said vaguely.
Celia’s expression turned darker. “I thought you were going to The Cage.”
“I did,” Stone said, and then his voice became urgent. “Celia, there’s something you need to know.”
Celia cut him off. “No!” she shouted, and finally her rage flared. “I’m going to The Cage, Stone. I’m going now. I’ve got a gun and I’m going to confront the Dom.”
She hung up. Snapped the cell phone shut and threw it against the wall. Walked out of room eighteen taking determined angry strides, with only two things in her mind.
She was going to confront the Dom and get answers about Katrina.
Then she was going to find Jack Stone and turn him into a permanent soprano.
Twenty-Seven.
Stone stuffed the phone back into his pocket. Stared at the sheriff.
“We’ve got a problem.”
Stone explained Celia’s call quickly. Then he was running through the house, down the porch steps and sprinting for the Lexus. He threw himself into the driver’s seat and crunched the selector into gear. Stamped on the pedal.
The sheriff followed him as far as the front door. Stone heard him barking orders to the two officers standing by the trunk of the Crown Vic. They dived into their patrol car and the engine roared. Tore away back down the rutted dirt track following the dusty cloud of debris thrown up by Stone in the Lexus.
