Going Down

by Vonna Harper

  In contrast, their slaves were young and beautiful women, especially the one engaged in servicing the men. The lack of makeup, unkempt hair, bruises, especially the S brands, said more clearly than any words that none of them had gone into this willingly.

  Except for an occasional order or oath from one of the men, there was only silence. The poor creature moving from man to man had been crying, and on the few occasions when she looked at the camera, Saree was nearly undone by her air of defeat.

  “You’re going to take me there,” she made herself say. “That’s what this is about, getting me ready to become one of them.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Pretty much.” He should have left her hands tied because she wasn’t sure she could keep from punching him. “Can’t you do any better than that?”

  He seemed to consider that. “The woman doing all the work? It might have been the last thing she ever did.”

  What was it about momentous announcements that took them a while to sink in? It was like that now. Oh, she heard the words all right. She just couldn’t put them together until she’d silently repeated them several times. Then more time passed while she tried to work saliva back into her mouth. “She’s dead?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She was the one you were talking about, the one who’d been beaten—”

  “Yeah.”

  The video was still playing, and although she hated doing so, Saree returned her attention to it. If that tired, dirty, and scared woman had indeed been killed, the least Saree could do was acknowledge her as a living, breathing human being. Murdered. She’d been murdered. Probably by one of those men.

  Much as she needed to ask how Reeve or more precisely his coworkers had gotten hold of the video, she couldn’t bring herself to do so. Hating those damnable arrogant men as she couldn’t remember having ever hated before, she ordered herself to study them. She had to understand how any so-called human being could—

  “No!”

  “No what?” Reeve insisted.

  But she couldn’t respond because she couldn’t take her eyes off, not the men, but one of the silent and still women.

  Reeve paused the video. “What are you seeing?”

  Lifting a shaky finger, she pointed at a petite redhead with large, high, natural breasts. “Amber. Amber Green.”

  “You know her?”

  “Yes.” As horrified as she was by the sight of Amber with a brand and minus the mischievous sparkle in her eyes, she was also deeply impacted by the leather cuff circling her own wrist. “She, ah, she worked for The Dungeon. She left to—everyone thought she’d quit because she’d found a sugar daddy. Where is she? Damn it, where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Reeve’s tone pulled her attention off Amber. He looked defeated and trapped, an expression that shouldn’t have been on someone who wielded so much power over her. “Is she still alive? Please, can you tell me that?”

  “No, I can’t.” Standing, he stalked to the far end of the room only to whirl and stride back. “All right, all right, Amber lived—lives locally, does she? If the two of you worked together, she must be from the L.A. area.”

  “Born and bred. She loved to go into the mountains for the skiing, and when she had enough free time, she’d fly to Vegas, but she said she’d never leave Southern California no matter how bad the air quality got.” The way Reeve kept staring at her made her even more self-conscious.

  “When did you last see her?”

  Think. This is important. “Six weeks maybe. I don’t think it’s been two months. Why?”

  “Because since then she’s been incorporated into The Slavers.”

  “The Slavers?”

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “The hell it doesn’t! All the models, we joked about why did it have to be Amber who’d found someone to support her instead of one of us. But we were wrong, weren’t we? She’s in hell.” Saying the last exhausted her.

  Instead of agreeing or telling her she was being melodramatic, he turned his attention back to the video. He didn’t start it running again but brought his face close to the screen while he traced Amber’s cowed outline. “Did she say anything before she disappeared?”

  Think. Think. “About who the man might have been, no. But before she left she talked a lot about this club she’d found.” At that, Reeve swung his attention to her, his intense gaze demanding she mine her memory for everything she could.

  It wasn’t much, at least she didn’t think it was, but he hung onto every word as she told him about one of the last conversations she and Amber had. Although Amber hadn’t told many people at The Dungeon this, she’d confided in Saree. Despite the all-American looks that had belied her strong sex drive and thus made her a favorite with members, beneath that pert nose, wide green eyes, and flawless flesh beat the heart of a submissive.

  “She wanted an owner. Not games playing, but the real thing. She wanted to be owned by someone she didn’t quite trust, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “All right.” Placing her feet on the chair, she hugged her knees. “Danger turned her on. At the same time, she wanted to be pampered. Scared and worshipped. That’s what she said one time.”

  “What about this club she talked about? What was it?”

  “For BDSM play.” Or had it been play after all? “She wanted me to go to it with her, but I never did.”

  “Why not?”

  “It didn’t sound like my thing. Besides it doesn’t matter. Just finding Amber does.”

  “If she’s alive.”

  Even with the air-conditioning going, the desert’s impact had seeped into the rooms, but suddenly Saree felt cold. She nodded. Funny how quickly things could change. Oh, her body still responded to Reeve’s, but sexual attraction was no longer predominant. Now she wanted to work with him toward a single goal, saving Amber and those other women from the death one of them had suffered.

  No, not a death. Murder.

  Think. Think.

  “The club—I’m trying to remember if she told me what it was called. I know it was in Hollywood because I joked that I’d go there only if she threw in one of those maps of where the stars live.”

  “Hollywood.” Going by his tone, she’d have thought she’d given him what he’d asked for for Christmas.

  “Yes.” Needing to distance herself from Reeve’s impact, she closed her eyes. In her mind she saw herself and Amber in the oversized shower that was part of The Dungeon complex. They’d worked together on some shoot and were getting rid of sweat and other body fluids, joking, discussing high heels and terrible traffic. At some point Amber had caressed Saree’s breast. Then just as Saree was wondering if Amber was coming on to her, the younger woman had said that masters preferred their slaves to have real breasts.

  “Maybe that’s why I’m a hit at Segun, because of my natural boobs,” Amber had said.

  Opening her eyes, Saree grabbed Reeve’s forearm. “Segun. That’s what it’s called.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Positive. I asked about the name and she said it meant conqueror. It was her favorite place to go. In fact—why the hell didn’t I think of this before—she said that if she had her way, she’d move there.”

  “Shit.”

  “I thought she was joking. Oh God, I thought she was joking.”

  “Yeah,” Reeve admitted to the voice on the other end of his cell phone. “I showed her the video. That’s how she was able to identify one of the slaves.”

  Saree hadn’t moved since she’d given him the name that just might be the biggest break they’d had so far. Despite her relaxed look, he sensed her tension. So much had changed today, so damn much.

  At the moment he was speaking to Agent B, so called because B was second in command at The Clan. B not only knew where most of the important bodies in the United States were buried, he could also make decisions without bothering with a damn committee. True
to form, he didn’t ask a lot of questions. Neither did he give any indication whether he approved or disapproved of what Reeve had done. What mattered to him was whether Saree had given them anything they could run with.

  “I’ll get someone on it,” B said no more than five minutes after the two of them had started talking. “As soon as I know about Segun I’ll call you back. In the meantime, keep her on ice.”

  Ice. Fire was more like it.

  13

  Reeve’s phone rang an hour later, saving him from the impact of Saree’s presence. Like him, she’d said little during that hour. Right or wrong, he’d let her view the rest of the video, and when she was done, she’d curled up on a couch in the living room and stared out the window. Her eyes had taken on a haunted look that dug into him. No wonder; after all, she had to be asking herself what in the hell she’d been sucked into and what she would have to do to be free again.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t have the answer.

  “Segun gives underground new meaning,” B said by way of greeting. “Not going to find it in the yellow pages, and they’re really saving on advertising.”

  “What is it?” As if he didn’t know.

  “Before I tell you, do you want her to hear this?”

  That surprised him. After everything The Clan had gone through setting up Saree’s abduction, training, and use, had they changed their minds?

  “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

  “Because?”

  “We owe her. You’re going to tell me that taking advantage of her memory might have resulted in a breakthrough. Learning about Segun is a hell of a lot more productive than throwing dirty movies onto the net and hoping they landed in the right place.” Although Saree hadn’t moved, he noted new tension in her body. No doubt about it, she was listening to his every word.

  “It’s looking like it.”

  That’s all it took for him to punch the speakerphone. “What did you learn?”

  “Segun’s a sex club, but it’s a hell of a lot more than that. Anyone who gets in the front door is going to find vanilla BDSM, the whole role-playing thing with slaves and masters getting into their acts for their and the audience’s kicks.”

  Still slumped forward, Saree began rubbing her arms. Damn but she looked seductive as hell nearly lost in the large couch. He was going to have to either order her to put on some clothes or fuck her until neither of them could think.

  “I’ve never considered BDSM vanilla sex,” he told B.

  “It is compared to what rumors say goes on in the back rooms.”

  Saree’s head came up; she stared at him. “Go on,” he managed.

  “First, clarification. I’m not going to reveal our source on this beyond saying he isn’t someone more than a half percent of the population would want to have anything to do with, but when he tells me something, I believe him. When you’re amoral and don’t give a damn who knows it, you speak the truth. He could and probably should be locked up, but so far law enforcement has found him to have enough value as an underground snitch to allow him to remain on the outside. His involvement with Segun isn’t as intimate as he would like it to be, he’s a fringe player.”

  “But he is involved. He’s not just saying what pops into his head?”

  “Right. He’s been in the back rooms.”

  At that Saree’s eyes widened, and she shook her head as if trying to free herself from what she’d just heard. For someone who believed he’d made his peace with the world’s underbelly, Reeve suddenly felt the same way.

  “To save you from asking, according to our source, there’s no play to the back rooms,” B continued. “No consent, boundaries, safe words, bouncers.”

  “What is it?” Reeve asked. “White slavery?”

  “Our informant wouldn’t go that far. He probably will in time; he’s that much of a bastard. He took great pride in describing the private area where the rough, good stuff takes place. Membership’s pricey, a hundred thousand.”

  Reeve whistled. “Eliminates a hell of a lot of people.”

  “And opens doors for those who believe money and power are the same.”

  He’d been caught up in what he was learning. Now, however, he forced himself to look ahead in time. “Keep going,” he ordered the man he really wasn’t in a position to order. “You’ve already talked to A about this, right?”

  “Right. Your instinct was correct, Reeve. This is the in to The Slavers we’ve been looking for. I’d bet my life on it.”

  “So turn what you know over to the cops and let them close down the goddamn place.”

  B grunted. “Great idea. That way the real players will go underground. We’ll never flush them out; you know it. Damn it, Reeve, don’t force me to say it. Nothing has changed except for our focus. It’s no longer going to be aimed at casting a net via the Internet. Now we concentrate on Segun.”

  We? Not likely. “The hell we will. Damn it, she’s safe as long as all those bastards have is the video of me playing with her. Someone takes her into Segun and she could get killed.”

  “Not if whoever gets her in there does his job. Something else you need to know—know, not curse about. As we’re speaking, one of our men is updating Saree’s Web site.”

  “What?”

  “By morning it’s going to say that she’s decided to come out about her commitment to BDSM as a lifestyle. Not only that, she’s found someone to help her experience it and can hardly wait to hook up with others who feel the same way. This way when she shows up at Segun, the logic’s there.”

  “Hell.”

  “Look, this isn’t what any of us want to do. If women’s lives weren’t at stake, we wouldn’t, but we honestly don’t believe we have a choice.”

  “People always have a choice.”

  “Don’t give me that again, Reeve. Unless you’ve been watching the news over the past twenty-four hours you don’t know this, but a woman was just kidnapped at Manhattan Beach. Grabbed off a path while she was jogging and thrown into a van that was later found abandoned. Her clothes were in it, no prints. She’s a college sophomore, just twenty years old, a gymnast and model, a beautiful girl.”

  Saree, the color bleached from her cheeks, was rocking back and forth.

  “Reeve, damn it, if we felt we had a choice, we wouldn’t have done what we just did.”

  “Which is?”

  “The video you took of her? A copy of it is being linked to her Web site. It’s a two-way link.”

  He’d done a number of things in his life he was still trying to justify like kidnapping a drug lord’s son to flush the father into the open. The drug lord was in prison for the rest of his life, but the son had been so traumatized that he’d needed lengthy therapy. What he’d just heard was in the same category. “In other words, that so-called private site I sent the video to can trace it to Saree McKeon, porn model?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Why the hell?

  “She’s our ticket. Whoever shows up at the front door of Segun with her in tow isn’t going to stay there long. He’s going to be let in all the way.”

  “Whoever? It’s my mug on that video.”

  B didn’t say anything.

  “What if I refuse?”

  A short silence. “Then let her go. Take her back to her place, walk away.”

  “I fucking can’t!”

  “That’s what we hoped you’d say.”

  Saree had never seen so much trapped fury in another human being. As Reeve paced and talked, paced and talked, she found herself thinking not about how trapped she was but the reasons for what he was going through. Why had he kidnapped her in the first place if he hadn’t wanted to follow through on this complex, dangerous, and still incomprehensible plan? The answer might be as simple as his not liking anyone telling him what to do and their not involving him in every step of the scheme, but that didn’t strike her as the whole story.

  He couldn’t just release her and expect her to pick up the threads of her life, a
nd she supposed she should be grateful to him for that. True, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that she’d become what, a sitting duck, a beyond-public figure. Whoever these Slavers were, they all but had the key to her front door now. They’d seen her in true bondage. If they wanted her—

  The Slavers had just kidnapped an innocent college student, had already imprisoned Amber Green, killed at least one woman. Although she was far from flattered, she’d be a fool not to put it together that getting their hands on her would be a major power trip for them. Not only that, once she was under their command, they’d do whatever they needed to do to her in order to learn who was trying to stop their despicable operation.

  Life as she’d always known it was over! As long as The Slavers existed, she was in danger. Thanks to Reeve and whomever the hell he was involved with.

  A college co-ed, Amber Green, other terrified and helpless women.

  Her head pounding, she stood and stared out the window. This time she saw not the seemingly lifeless and yet vibrant desert but the room where those men had exerted power and control over their sex slaves. She wasn’t one of them, yet.

  But she might be the slaves’ only chance of regaining their freedom.

  But only if she played the role she’d been chosen for.

  A sound turned her around. Reeve had folded the flip phone, ending the conversation. “How can you face yourself?” she demanded. “Playing with my life, it doesn’t bother you?”

  “It isn’t what I want.”

  “Don’t try to tell me you didn’t get off on treating me like your personal bondage toy. Is that why you agreed to this damnable assignment? It gave you an excuse to indulge in your sick—”

  “Sick? It’s how you earn your living.”

  Don’t go there. “That’s play, fantasy. This other thing is life and death. You’re going to do it, aren’t you? Take me to Segun.”

  His silence said it all, and she wasn’t going to let his trapped expressions get to her—she wasn’t. Neither was she going to reveal the decision she’d just made. Let him believe she was fighting him the whole way, because that would make her performance more believable. Whomever he worked with were successful, resourceful, and committed. Once she and Reeve were in the inner sanctum, his colleagues or whatever they were called would storm in like a SWAT team, free the women, and arrest those responsible for their being forced into slavery.