The room he entered was an exact replica of the greeting room, though quiet and darker. And filled with children. At least ten teenagers—mostly girls—sat on the brown sofa as if they were posing for a photo shoot. Their subdued smiles couldn’t mask the fear in their eyes. The hair on the back of his neck prickled. Three more kids leaned against the wall, also striking stilted poses. The girls wore makeup and provocative dresses; the boys were in button down shirts and skinny suits. Their vacant expressions reminded him of Sage’s.
For several chilling seconds no one moved. No one spoke. Crockett’s worst nightmare had been confirmed. The ad Decker had found offered sex with minors. His body stiffened as he fought to control his fury. The children resembled mannequins. The emptiness in their eyes broke his heart. It was as if their innocent souls had been sucked from their bodies and their shells were all that remained.
A tall, rail-thin woman sailed around the corner. Unmasked, her sunken cheeks, melancholy eyes, and sallow skin struck a chord. Pain pounded his chest. It was Sage.
“Are you here for rejuvenation?” she asked.
Though desperate to find Alexandra, he didn’t want to frighten her away. He removed his mask. “No, Sage, I’m not. I’m here to help you. Where’s Electra?”
Her blank stare led him to think she didn’t understand him.
“I’m here to help you and the children. But first, I need to find Electra. Take me to her.”
As she studied his face, a deep line creased her brows. She appeared to be having trouble comprehending his words.
“Please.” He kept his voice low and steady, though adrenaline pumped through him at a frenzying speed. “She’s in a lot of danger. We need to hurry.”
Fear flashed in her eyes. Sage flew down the hallway, her long wispy hair trailing like feathers in the wind. Though unsure if she was taking him to Alex or running him into a trap, Crockett had no choice but to follow.
He rounded the corner and almost bumped into Sage. With a haunting laugh, Jase pulled a door closed and headed toward them, a sardonic grin erupting over his face. “You’re too late, pretty boy. Our little Electra is about to get the fuck of her life.”
The rage that Crockett had fought for years to contain exploded from the depths of his soul. Jase surged toward him and Crockett’s hands tightened into coiled fists.
Sage squeaked out, “He’s got a stun gun,” at the same time Jase yanked it from his pocket and sprinted toward Crockett.
With the weapon inches from reaching him, Crockett raised his knee to his chest and launched a punishing heel-stomp kick to Jase’s sternum that send him flying backward and crying out in pain. He crashed to the floor, gasping for air. Fury clouded Crockett’s thoughts. He wanted to wrap his hands around Jase’s throat and choke the life out of him.
Instead, he grabbed the weapon, pressed it to Jase’s shirt near his ribcage, and pulled the trigger. Again Jase cried out. His body went rigid. But the pain and incapacitation wouldn’t last long, so Crockett landed a right hook squarely on Jase’s jaw, knocking him out.
Crockett sprinted to the door, but it was locked. “Open this,” he said to Sage.
Her hands trembled as she tapped the Silver Towers card to the keypad. The light blinked green and Crockett burst into the room.
Dracule stood beside the bed, unbuttoning his tuxedo shirt.
An unmasked Alexandra, wearing only her bra and panties, lay spread eagle on the bed, her wrists and ankles buckled into bands that were strapped to each bedpost. Her blonde wig was all that remained of her disguise. Her cheek was red and swollen. Dried blood clung to her arm from a gash on her shoulder. But it was the fear in her eyes that flipped his switch.
Crockett thundered toward him. “No!”
Dracule threw his arms in front of his face like an “X”. Crockett delivered an uppercut to the solar plexus that brought Dracule’s hands to his stomach. Then he wrapped his hands around Dracule’s neck and body-slammed him against the wall so hard, the table lamp crashed to the floor. “I’m gonna fucking kill you, you son of a bitch.”
Fear flashed in Dracule’s eyes, his face turning bright red from lack of oxygen.
“Don’t do it.” Alexandra’s voice snapped Crockett’s head around.
“Sage,” Crockett barked. “Free her.”
Crouching in the corner, Sage rocked back and forth, repeating, “No more Payne, no more Payne…”
“Please, Sage, help me,” Alexandra pleaded.
Sage stood, her body quaking.
“Unbuckle me so I can help you.”
“What about the Littles?” Sage asked.
“The what?” Alexandra asked.
“Help Electra, then hide the Littles,” Crockett ordered. “Hurry.”
With tender steps, Sage approached the bed and unbuckled the wrist cuffs. Alexandra freed her ankle restraints as Sage ran from the room.
After throwing on her dress, Alexandra approached Dracule, hatred radiating from her eyes. But Crockett caught a glimpse of her true feelings. Perhaps she could conceal her terror from this monster, but not from him. If he’d arrived a few minutes later… I could snap his neck like a twig.
“Let me go and I won’t press assault charges,” Dracule rasped. “You have my word.”
Crockett turned slowly toward Dracule. Pure evil stared back. Refusing to dignify that lie with a response, Crockett gritted his teeth and tightened his hold on Dracule’s throat.
Alexandra brushed against Crockett’s shoulder. “Tie him to the bed and I’ll call the police.”
Her soft touch, her soothing words, slowed his hammering heart. He’d arrived in time. She was safe.
After yanking off Dracule’s mask, she fished her phone from Crockett’s pants pocket and snapped a picture. “You sicken me.” She slapped his face so hard his eyes watered.
Crockett threw him onto the bed and secured his wrists in the restraints.
“Let me go,” Dracule begged. “I’ll pay you, handsomely.”
“Jase!” Alexandra screamed.
Crockett whipped around as Jase attacked with a six-inch knife, the blade inches from his neck. He blocked the strike but the knife slashed through his forearm, piercing his flesh and striking bone.
“Arrrghh!” Crockett cried.
Jase lunged at him again, the knife thrust at his abdomen. This time, Crockett’s muscle memory kicked in. He deflected the weapon with a lower block, grasped Jase’s wrist with one hand and jabbed his other, palm up, against the underside of Jase’s chin.
Jase’s head jerked back violently. The force of Crockett’s blow sent him reeling back. Going on the offense, Crockett swept his foot under both of Jase’s, knocking him to the floor with a thud, the back of his head hitting the bedpost.
“Ayyyyy!” Jase cried.
Crockett stomped his heel in Jase’s armpit, keeping his weight on Jase. He cried out. Then Crockett grabbed Jase’s arm and twisted, hard. As soon as Jase dropped the weapon, Crockett grabbed it and held the razor-sharp edge to his throat.
“I want to do this so badly,” Crockett bit out, still breathing hard. Instead, he dragged Jase to the foot of the bed and pressed his full weight on Jase’s legs to immobilize him. Alexandra rushed over and pulled one of the ankle restraints around. Crockett set the knife out of Jase’s reach, yanked up his arm, slapped the restraint around his wrist and buckled it on the tightest notch. They did the same for his other wrist.
And again, Crockett pressed the blade against Jase’s throat.
“Do it,” Jase said. “Kill a defenseless man.”
Struggling to contain his fury, Crockett glared at him. Hatred boiled just below the surface.
“You’ve been stabbed,” Alexandra said.
Crockett’s hand was drenched in blood. He hadn’t noticed, didn’t care. Alexandra clasped his hand and rose. Jase yanked on the restraints, his legs flailing wildly in all directions. Crockett stood and moved her a safe distance away.
“Are you okay?” He sear
ched her face, eyed the dried blood on her upper arm. “Where are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. Let’s get your jacket off.”
“I’ll deal with this. Call the police.”
Though her hands shook, Alexandra dialed. “I have an emergency. I’m at Incognito nightclub in Crystal City, Arlington. The GM attacked a guest. A member tried to sexually assault me. I need police and an ambulance.” After a brief pause, she said, “My name is Alexandra Mitus.”
Dracule’s wail made Alexandra jump. “Oh, my God,” Dracule cried. “No, no, it can’t be. Oh, sweet Jesus, what have I done?”
In order to hear the emergency operator, Alexandra plugged her other ear with her finger.
“Shut up,” Crockett yelled, but Dracule wouldn’t stop blathering and crying.
“I’ll meet the police in the lobby of the twelfth floor and bring them upstairs.” After listening, she said, “We’re on the thirteenth floor, but they won’t be able to find us without my help.”
She tapped a button and set the phone on the sofa arm. “You’re on speaker and the attackers are in the room. My boyfriend was stabbed. I need to help him.”
Alexandra yanked out a pillow from beneath Dracule, whipped off the case, and folded it. She hurried back to Crockett. “I’m going to remove your jacket.”
When she slid it off him, his white sleeve was blood soaked. Alexandra folded the pillowcase in half, lengthwise, and wrapped the cotton around his arm. “Apply pressure where it’s bleeding.” She guided Crockett onto the sofa.
“The police have arrived at your location,” said the dispatch operator.
“I kicked in the unmarked door,” said Crockett. “Be careful. Francois should be trapped in that bathroom.”
With her phone in hand, she gave Crockett a quick peck. “I’m on my way downstairs,” she said to the operator before rushing out.
Applying pressure to the wound hurt, but Crockett didn’t give a fuck about his pain. The reality of the situation sank in as he eyed Jase and Dracule.
He couldn’t stand being in the same room with those two monsters, so he relocated to the quiet hallway. Sage must have hidden the children.
A few moments later, Alexandra hurried toward him with three police officers and four paramedics in tow, one pulling a gurney. While the female officer approached him, the two male officers entered the room.
“This is the man I was telling you about,” said Alexandra.
With a hand on her hip, she eyed Crockett. “Mr. Wilde, I’m Officer Randolph. Can you tell me what happened?”
“We need to tend to his wound,” said the paramedic. “Let’s move him onto the sofa.”
“I’m fine,” Crockett said.
“Please, Crockett,” Alexandra said. “You have a bad gash.”
To appease her, he returned to the couch. While the paramedic tended to his knife wound and secured his arm in a sling, he spoke with the officers. “I feared for Alexandra’s safety and forced my way upstairs. There’s a man named Francois locked in a bathroom suite downstairs.”
“We found him,” said the officer.
“When I came upstairs, I saw several children waiting in reception,” Crockett continued. “They were posed like mannequins and dressed like adults.” A shiver ran through him. “Sickest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Ohmygod,” Alexandra said. “It’s much worse than I’d thought.”
Before continuing, he nodded. “There’s a young woman who works here. Her name is Sage and Alexandra has been concerned about her.”
“Ms. Mitus told us,” said the policewoman. “Where is she?”
“After she used her keycard to let me into this room, she ran to hide the children,” Crockett said. “I found Alexandra strapped to the bed, in her underwear. I assumed by the man on the floor.” A surge of fury rippled through him. “The other man—the one I’ve strapped in the bed—was removing his clothing.”
“Aw, Christ,” Jase moaned. “My head hurts like a motherfucking cocksucker.”
The larger of the two male officers approached Jase. “I’m Officer Jones. What’s your name, sir?”
“Jase Payne, GM. That member attacked me in my own club. I want to press charges.”
“You keeping minors here against their will?” asked Officer Jones.
Jase’s face reddened. “Jesus H. Christ. I run a club for consenting adults.”
“Let’s take a little ride.” Officer Jones unbuckled Jase from the bed shackles while the second male officer stood nearby. “Face down. Hands behind your back.”
Jase lay there while the officer threw a cuff around his wrist. But before he could attach the second cuff, Jase bolted up and swung his arm around, smacking the officer in the face with the metal bracket. Blood splattered from Jones’s forehead as he tried to subdue Jase, but Jase unsnapped the officer’s holstered weapon. As he yanked it out—
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Dracule screamed. Alexandra startled.
Jase hit the floor, blood gushing from his wounds, the unfired gun still in his hand. Officer Randolph stood, her weapon poised in her outstretched hands.
This is a fucking nightmare.
As the third officer pulled the weapon from Jase’s hand, Officer Randolph radioed for backup while paramedics jumped into action. One tended to Jones’s forehead gash while the other three tried to resuscitate Jase. Several tense minutes passed before one of the paramedics called it.
“No pulse,” he said. They lifted Jase onto the stretcher and covered him with a sheet.
“Officer Randolph,” said Crockett. “Jase has a master keycard. You’re going to need that to check the rooms and locate Sage and the children.”
Randolph spoke with the paramedic. After a quick search, they located the card. When Officer Jones unbuckled Dracule, Officer Randolph and the third policeman drew their weapons.
No longer full of bravado and big smiles, Dracule only whimpered. Officer Randolph ordered him to kneel on the floor while they cuffed him.
After Officer Jones read Dracule his rights, he paused in front of Alexandra. “Can you forgive me?” he asked.
Her upper lip curled into a snarl. “You’re a monster.”
With a firm grip on Dracule’s shoulder, the officer nudged him forward.
Squaring her shoulders, Alexandra addressed the officer in charge. “I need to find Sage. She must be terrified.”
Several clubbers had found their way upstairs and were lurking in the hallway. Officer Randolph ordered the two patrolmen to escort them downstairs and to remain outside the broken door on the twelfth floor. Then, she radioed for backup.
One by one, the policewoman tapped Jase’s Silver Towers card against the keypads on the suite doors. The first two were empty. But in the third, a masked man and teenage girl crouched in the bathroom. Crockett’s hands fisted when police led the pedophile and the child into the hallway.
“Call social services,” Officer Randolph told her partner.
Alexandra sidled close. “This is way worse than even I suspected,” she whispered. Eager to touch her, he stroked her back. Though anger blackened her eyes, he kept reminding himself that she was safe.
In the next room, there was a desk and a sixty-inch monitor hanging on the wall. The screen was split into eight squares that displayed public areas in the club along with what appeared to be private suites on that floor.
“That’s how Sage must have found me in the club,” Alexandra whispered to Crockett.
Three more men had been hiding in their respective suites with either a male or a female minor. When Randolph opened the door to a suite marked “Playpen”, Crockett’s chest tightened.
For several seconds, no one moved.
Several children huddled on two dilapidated sofas. Sage stood in the middle of the room, her eyes wild with fear; a small shepherd guarding her flock.
Unlike the posh suites, this decrepit room told the true story of their existence. Empty pizza boxes lay scattered ac
ross the floor. Dirty plates stacked in piles. Their only light—a floor lamp with a tattered shade—stood in the corner. Two racks of formal clothing were pushed against a wall. The surreal scene looked more like a horror movie than anything based in reality. These children lived worse than any pet he’d ever owned.
Some of the children gaped, their sad, hollow expressions void of emotion. The others peeked like caged animals too scared to make eye contact.
Crockett’s heart broke. He couldn’t begin to know the torture and abuse they’d suffered at the hands of Jase Payne.
Alexandra entered the room with Officer Randolph. “Thank you for helping me, Sage. I’d like to help you, now.”
From the hallway, Officer Jones radioed that they’d need upwards of ten social workers to meet them at the hospital. “Looks like sex trafficking of minors. Approximately a dozen juveniles. Mostly female.”
Sage gaped at the small crowd. “We heard gunshots,” she said. “I have to protect the Littles.”
“Hello, Sage. My name is Officer Randolph and I’m a police officer. I’d like to help you.”
Sage stared from Alexandra to the officer before hugging herself.
“Can I get a blanket, please?” Alexandra called over her shoulder. “Officer Randolph would like to help you and the Littles find your families.”
Officer Jones handed Alexandra the blanket. After she draped it over Sage’s shoulders, Sage murmured, “I’m scared. We’re all so scared.”
“I understand,” said the policewoman. “Why don’t we start with something simple? Can you tell me your name?”
Lowering her head, she whispered, “Sage.”
“What’s your last name?”
“He never gave me one.”
“Who?” asked Officer Randolph.
“Papa bear.”
“Who’s papa bear?”
“Jase Payne.” She clutched the blanket and started rocking. “No more Payne. No more Payne.”
“What was your name?” Alexandra asked.
Terror radiated from her eyes. “I can’t say or he’ll beat the Littles. I’m Sage. Just Sage.”
THE WILDE TOUCH: Book Two of The Touch Series Page 31
