“It’s meant a lot to me, too. I really care for you, Kat. I know it’s only been two weeks… but I feel like we have such a strong connection,” he said.
She moved closer, turning her face up for a kiss.
Chapter 16
Kat took a deep breath and looked around her. Hidden behind the trees, sheds and cars surrounding Ted’s compound, she could see Hakim and his team of Rangers set up. Jesus Christ, she hoped this whole thing went right. There were so many ways it could go wrong, but they’d gone over the plan endlessly.
Hakim and the guys were going to run cover and interference. Ted would have armed men guarding him at all times. Kat knew that Sam had tried to give the impression, over the phone, that he was a little stupid and crazy, hoping Ted would take the bait; it seemed like he had. No doubt he planned to kill Sam the second he crossed the threshold, and torture her once Sam was dead.
They had other plans, though. She’d gotten in touch with journalists who’d covered Ted’s scandals before, sent them some incriminating audio clips of Ted admitting to human trafficking and hinted that more was coming. Hakim had an ambitious friend at the FBI, who’d happily agreed to wait until signaled to send the feds out; Hakim had explained that a promotion could be on the horizon if the feds could get in before the corrupt local police. That was all his friend needed to hear.
If everything went to plan, Ted would be dead within the hour, and there would be plenty of proof to show that he’d not only attacked Sam and Kat, but had been running a sex trafficking ring. His death would be the first domino to fall, implicating dozens of other D.C. higher-ups along the way. Hakim and the guys would have melted away into the woods leaving no trace of their involvement. If the feds figured out the attack was planned, it wouldn’t matter, because they’d be too eager prosecuting and grabbing headlines to care about anyone’s personal vendetta.
Kat took another deep breath, then another. It was no good. Her heart was pounding like crazy, she could feel her palms sweating even in the frigid winter air. She looked at Sam, who had bound her hands. She was gagged, too, for good measure.
“It’s okay?” he asked her.
Kat knew what he meant. Sam had tied her hands, but he’d insisted on her carrying a knife and he’d spent hours last night showing her how to, in one swift motion, throw off those knots if she needed to. Kat nodded at him and pushed her hands into her back pocket where the knife was. She could get to it whenever she needed. She looked deep into Sam’s blue eyes. She could hear his voice from last night, as he’d repeated over and over again, “I won’t let anything happen to you.” She just had to trust him.
She took another deep breath. It was go time.
Sam signaled Hakim and the men, then he and Kat got out of the car and crunched down the icy walkway leading to Ted’s house. They knew Ted was watching. For good effect, she whimpered and Sam yelled loudly, “Shut the fuck up!” Kat could tell by the lines around his mouth and eyes that it hurt him to scream at her like that, but they had to make it seem real, so she cringed, struggling a bit at her bonds. Sam squeezed her hands briefly, then moved her forward, the long length of his body offering her a few last moments of reassurance as they walked forward.
Kat heard a muffled groan behind them, then a few quiet sounds of struggle, almost entirely muffled by the snow. That would be Hakim and the guys, silently taking out every guard Ted had stationed. Everything was going to plan. They reached the front door. It opened immediately, before they’d even knocked.
Ted stood before them, a tall man who was probably fit before, but had now gone to fat. Kat looked into the face of the man who had tormented her and felt panic fill her. This time she didn’t have to pretend to struggle; her instincts made her want to run as far as possible. Only the subtle contact of her body next to Sam’s calmed her enough to think.
Ted took in the scene before him: Kat struggling against her bonds, Sam unarmed and looking intentionally stupid. No backup, no cops, nothing indicating that the dumbass on the phone had any plan other than to trade Kat for a more willing woman and cash out. Ted grinned.
“Come on in, you two. Sweetheart,” he said to Kat in an icy tone, “it’s such a nice surprise to see you again.” Kat’s eyes narrowed. Hearing him speak made her want to vomit. Memories crashed through her mind, almost overwhelming her. You can do this, you can do this, you can do this. Sam won’t let anything happen to you.
Ted showed them to a living room, only vaguely familiar to Kat. Ted might be making plenty of money, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at his house. It was dirty, with dust, trash, dirty plates and empty beer bottles lying all around. The living room had dirty leather couches, flags and military paraphernalia mixed in with the bongs, ashtrays, and posters of muscle cars tacked up to the walls. Despite the clean mountain air outside, the inside air was stale. Sitting on the couches already were two muscled men. They watched with dead eyes as Ted walked the two into the room.
“Sit,” Ted commanded them. Sam dropped into a lounge chair. The two men pulled Kat away to sit next to them on the couch.
“This one I remember,” one sneered, while the other laughed and pinched her breast. Kat’s lip curled up in disgust, but she didn’t recoil; she knew from experience that they liked that.
“Wanna beer?” Ted asked Sam, who nodded his head yes. Ted grabbed a can from a cooler next to the couch and threw it to Sam, who popped the tab and exaggeratedly gulped at it. Ted watched him closely. “You know,” he said, “you look kinda familiar…”
Kat distracted Ted’s attention by suddenly struggling at the ties on her hands. One of the men laughed and roughly men grabbed her ass. “Haha, she’s got some fight left in her!” one exclaimed. The other stroked her cheek. “She won’t by the time I’m done with her,” he replied. Kat felt sick, but at least she’d distracted Ted, who was grinning at the scene.
Sam took charge. “Well, good fucking luck with her, because she was so sour I didn’t want my dick anywhere near her. But before you two start planning your night, I want what we agreed to.” He looked at Ted, adding, “Gimme the money for the girl, and I’ll be out of your hair forever. That was the deal.”
Ted nodded. He looked at Kat, “Sweetheart over here can go make some new friends while I grab the cash!” He grabbed her roughly and propelled her toward a room adjoining the den.
As Ted opened the door, she panicked, struggling blindly against Ted’s grip.
Ted was about to cuff her when she heard Sam’s roar and the sound of his approaching footsteps. “Hey, you break it, you buy it! I don’t want a single bruise on the bitch until I’m holding cash, you hear me?”
Ted lessened his grip immediately, and Kat’s panic subsided a bit. She darted into the room, feeling her panic return when Ted slammed the door closed. She fought back tears as memories crowded in. The room smelled like stale humans. Kat looked around, noticing for the first time that she wasn’t alone. There were two other women in the room, huddled on a twin bed together under a thin, ratty blanket.
Kat shivered. The rest of the house was warm, but this room was somehow freezing. She looked up at the ceiling. Sure enough, Ted had shut the vents off to the room. That fucking bastard! She looked over at the women again. They were staring at her, their dark brown eyes blank and hopeless. They looked half-starved. Kat wondered where they were from, and how long they’d been here.
Kat wiggled out of the ropes that bound her hands. Ted would be dead soon, if everything went according to plan, and if it didn’t... well, she didn’t want to be bound in that situation. She was not going back to the life she had before, that was for damn sure.
The women watched her now with a bit more interest. One saw the knife, poked the other in the chest and said something in a language Kat didn’t recognize. Thai, maybe? The girl had beautiful deeply tanned skin and Asian features. If she had to guess, she would say that the girls were from Thailand or somewhere similar. I wish I’d been able to go to college, she thought useles
sly. Probably then she’d know what they were speaking, at least.
Kat pulled out some candy bars she’d stashed in her bra and offered it to the women. They jumped off the bed, snatching the candy eagerly from her hands. One of them didn’t even bother to remove the wrapper before she stuffed it in her mouth. The candy was gone in seconds. Next, Kat pulled a granola bar from her pocket, split it in half, and gave it to them. They moaned happily as they tasted the savory peanut butter coating. Kat felt something in her heal a little, watching their faces. No more torture for these women.
“Thank you,” said one of the women after she’d finished her portion. She had a trace of an accent, but Kat couldn’t quite place it.
“How long have you been here?” Kat asked the one who’d spoken.
“We think... here four months now.” The women’s eyes filled with tears. The other hugged her softly and said something soothing in their language. Kat didn’t need a translator to know she’d just told her friend not to give up hope. She nodded at them.
Kat squeezed their hands as she thought of Sam, only a few feet away through the door. She would get out of here. They all would. And Ted was going to die.
“Today,” she said to them, in a slow, clear voice, “is your last day in this room. I promise you that. We are all going to be free.” She said it again, relishing the way it sounded on her tongue. “Free.”
A flicker of hope appeared in the women’s eyes. It seemed like “free” was a word in English they both understood.
Chapter 17
Sam left Kat in the dungeon room, walking slowly as though his feet were made of heavy iron. He followed Ted down the short hallway, careful to keep his face blank.
Inside though, Sam was murderous. Ted had gestured to a large hot tub outside, and in doing so showed off a peculiar tattoo on his arm. A tattoo of a snake eating its own tail, and one that Sam recognized from his nightmares.
Ted was at the rail station the night that Sam’s fiancée was killed, or at least he was a part of the same organization. If Sam had seen a similar tattoo on one of the other men’s arms, he would have killed Ted right then and there, regardless of the consequences.
Now he trailed Ted, trying with all his willpower to keep his fury contained. Ted had either killed his fiancée, or knew who killed her. All the answers to the puzzle lay within the man in front of him. If he could just wait until Kat and the other women were safe, he could pound the answers out of Ted, he was sure of it.
“You ever done any woodsman courses, or spent time fishing at Lake George?”
“Not that I recall,” Sam said.
“Man, your face is just really familiar. I’ll figure it out, you wait and see.”
They stepped into the living room again, nodding to the other guys who were standing around, still drinking beer.
“I just have to run downstairs. I have your money in a safe down there,” Ted said, smiling.
Ted’s smile gave Sam the chills. He shrugged. “Okay.”
“You all just relax and have a beer, I’ll be right back,” Ted said, heading outside to the stairs.
As the door closed, one of the guys handed Sam another beer. He nodded and twisted off the cap, refusing to let himself look back toward the room where Kat was held captive. He knew he would give himself away if he seemed to care about her, so he kept his eyes trained on his beer.
The other guys in the room talked whose slaves were the hottest, throwing out names and discussing whether or not they would ‘bang’ them. It was agreed that Ted had the hottest slave, though none of them had touched her before now.
With a start, Sam realized that they were talking about Kat.
“Tell me you got with that,” Billy said to Sam. “I would’ve been all over that like white on rice.”
The other guys agreed, looking at Sam. He shrugged.
“She’s not very obedient,” he explained. “Makes me want to pull my hair out. I told Ted to find me someone more pliable.”
“Pliable,” chuckled Jimmy. “Yeah, I like my girls eager to please, too… but Ted’s girl is going to get what’s coming to her.”
“For sure,” Billy agreed. “Can’t fucking wait. If we take turns, I’d better go last, because I am going to destroy that pussy.”
Sam sipped his beer and made an absentminded sound, repressing his rage. It occurred to him that Ted was taking his sweet time in the basement. It made him want to fidget or ask questions, but instead he just gripped his beer bottle as they slowly moved to the kitchen as the conversation continued.
“Is this your first time getting a girl to take home?” Jimmy asked.
“Yeah, it’ll be the first,” nodded Sam. He screwed up his face. “How do you guys keep them contained? What if they get out of your house?”
Billy belly laughed. “I have a vacation home not too far from here. Same kind of deal, barely worth the land it sits on. That’s where I keep my girls, when I have them.”
“I can’t seem to keep them for long,” Jimmy said. “They don’t live very long.”
The others guffawed, and Sam forced himself to smile. Billy turned to him.
“Seriously, though. Ketamine works great. It’s an animal tranquilizer, keeps the girls in line and quiet. It’s great.”
Sam was saved from having to respond by Ted’s return. Ted looked positively thrilled with himself, swinging a big black tote bag.
“You guys look mighty cozy,” Ted said, eyeing how everyone was crowded in the tiny kitchen.
“We were all starting to wonder where you went,” Sam said, trying to keep his tone light. “Thought you might have run off or something.”
“Oh no… but all that time down in the basement gave me a lot of time to think. Reminisce, more like,” Ted grinned, dropping the bag at Sam’s feet. “There’s your money, friend.”
Sam didn’t like the man’s tone. He ignored the bag of money, which didn’t seem to ruffle Ted’s feathers any. Ted sidled over to the fridge, helping himself to a bottle of beer. He popped the cap off, letting it fall to the floor.
Ted took a long pull, and sighed with obvious satisfaction. Then he came back over to Sam, clapping him on the back.
“While I was reminiscing downstairs, I couldn’t stop thinking about why you look so damn familiar,” Ted said.
He turned from casually slapping Sam on the back to leaning on him, arm thrown around Sam’s shoulders. Sam felt a deep sense of unease.
“I told you, we don’t know each other,” Sam said, shoving Ted off.
“Really? You saying you weren’t on the subway with that lawyer chick that we killed? You weren’t a giant pussy, crying when we fucking shot her to death?” Ted challenged, pulling something from his pocket.
“You’ve got it wrong,” Sam tried to protest, but to no avail.
Chaos erupted in the kitchen, everyone reaching for their guns. Sam saw the syringe seconds before Ted tackled him. He pulled his weapon as Ted sunk the syringe deep in his thigh. The sweet burn of the tranquilizer set off alarms in Sam’s mind.
This has happened before, he thought. Then, not again. I can’t let things happen while I do nothing.
He shot at Ted repeatedly, grazing his arm and then shooting him in the abdomen.
Ted folded over, howling with pain, but Sam was certain he wasn’t down for the count. The other guys were scrambling to aim at Sam even as he felt the tranquilizer that was in the syringe kick in. Everything swam in his vision, and it was suddenly very hard to move.
He pointed at Ted, trying to squeeze the trigger, but the gun was empty. Sam cursed as Ted struggled to stand up straight, sneering. Sam lurched forward, intending to engage Ted physically, but then stumbled and tripped.
Falling to his knees was Sam’s greatest shame. He was failing, unable to do anything to defend Kat or himself. The tranquilizer was too strong. This was the stuff of his worst nightmares come to life.
“You know, you really taught us a lesson,” Ted sneered. “Never leave a witness
alive.”
“I don’t care,” Sam gritted out. “Just as long as you die, I don’t mind going with you.”
Ted laughed cruelly, although traces of blood were now visible on his teeth. Sam had trouble holding his head up, feeling the darkness of unconsciousness clawing him down.
“Jimmy, go get the girl,” Ted said. He spat on the floor, and Sam saw more blood. “Let our friend Sam here live through watching a girl he cares about die right in front of him one more time, before we kill him.”
Sam ground his teeth. He wasn’t sure what they would do to her, but his resistance was surely the point. Jimmy disappeared, and came back a minute later leading Kat by the arm. Her hands were still bound, but she fought against Jimmy with all her will.
When she made eye contact with Sam, her look of distress turned to a scary kind of determination. Jimmy yelped with pain when Kat pitched herself toward him, sinking her teeth into his bicep.
“Good, she’s spirited!” Ted said, leaning over and coughing up more blood. “Take what you deserve, men!”
His friends laughed and moved toward her, tearing at her clothes. At first, they merely had fun with her, laughing as they ripped her jeans, her shirt. But when Jimmy grabbed her by the throat and Billy tore her shirt free, the men grew eager.
Sam fell onto his hands and knees, crawling toward Kat, but Matt kicked him away.
“Sit the hell down and watch us take turns,” Matt hissed.
“I’m the first,” Billy said, his eyes flickering with something like glee. He reached out and ran his dirty fingers down the side of Kat’s face. “I have to say, I like blondes.”
“Do you see her?” Ted said. He crouched over Sam when he collapsed onto his side. “I hope you enjoy this, because it’s the last thing you’ll ever witness.”
Sam tried to answer, tried to spit in the face of his nemesis, but he was utterly paralyzed. The darkness called, whispering to him. Sam resisted, but his eyelids drooped. The second his eyes closed, Sam knew he was done.
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