For Sale On Display

by Hollie Hutchins

  “What the hell are you doing?” Noah screamed.

  “We need to catch up!”

  “Okay, okay! Just let go!”

  She pulled her hand back and Noah lightened up on the gas a little, but he kept the car going fast enough to keep Sam’s truck in sights.

  “Are you insane?” He said once everything calmed down. “You could have killed us.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Anna. “But my gut feeling was taking over. I feel like something big, no huge is about to happen and I couldn’t risk us missing our chance to bust these guys!”

  “Alright, fine. Apology accepted. Just never do that again. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “Okay, I promise, I won’t do that again.”

  “And promise me that if we follow Sam right now, you will eventually go on a date with me.”

  “Yes, yes, okay, I promise.”

  “And one more thing,” he said, flashing a flirty smile her way.

  “What?”

  “Promise me when we do go on the date, you’ll wear that dress again because it looks really, really good on you.”

  Anna scoffed and made a face like she was annoyed, but then she forced herself to look out the window so that Noah wouldn’t notice her blushing.

  Sam took them on a wild goose chase. He stayed on the main highway for some time, roughly fifteen miles, but once he turned off onto some windy back streets, it was hard to keep on his tail. He was going well above the speed limit and every third turn or so was made at the very last possible second. At first, Anna was worried he knew he was being followed at that he was trying to shake them off, but it soon became apparent that he was more likely just completely wasted.

  “He’s going to kill someone,” said Anna. “If he makes one more crazy turn like that, I think I’m going to have to call the cops or something. It’s too dangerous to let him keep on like this.”

  Luckily, Sam didn’t take any more turns. In fact, a moment or two after Anna said that, he started to slow down a little, eventually coming to a stop in front of a boarded up old pub. Noah stopped a couple hundred feet back and put the SUV into park. They watched as Sam stumbled out of the driver’s seat, a bottle of dark liquor in his hand, and made his way, zig-zagging, towards the building.

  “Looks like he’s going in,” said Anna. “We should get a little closer if that’s possible, see if there’s anywhere we can park that will give us a better view of the inside of the pub. Maybe we—”

  Noah held his hand up and shushed her softly. He was staring out of the window, frowning as if with recognition. He rolled down his window and sniffed the air.

  “What is it?”

  “There are other wolves here.”

  “Besides Sam?” Anna felt her body tense with anticipation. “That means we found them! We found the gang.”

  “There are a lot more than just Sam,” said Noah.

  “Like how many?”

  “Twelve at least. Probably closer to fifteen or twenty.”

  “Oh.” Anna sat back in her seat and sighed. “Well that really throws a monkey wrench into things.”

  “We should really get out of here,” said Noah. “If even one of them sees us or smells us, we’re screwed.”

  “Hang on just a second!” said Anna. “Maybe we can call for backup.”

  “There’s no time,” said Noah. “I’m telling you they are going to smell you.”

  “Why just me?”

  “They probably already have smelled me, but they must assume I’m a wolf who’s on my way to this little meeting they have going on here. Unless they are in wolf form, which I doubt they are, they wouldn’t be able to smell that I wasn’t someone they already knew. But you on the other hand, you obviously smell like a human.”

  “Why wouldn’t they just assume I was some human driving by? Someone who lives around here?”

  “They might,” said Noah. “But if these guys are really the gang members and murders we’ve been looking for, I wouldn’t put it past them to come looking for the sweet smelling virgin who happened to be driving by.”

  “Maybe I could—” Anna started to explain a possible solution to their problem, in which she would put on Noah’s jacket and maybe mask her smell while they waited for back up, when she realized what he’d just said. “How did you know I was…? How?”

  “As creepy as this is going to sound, it’s something wolves can smell.”

  Anna swallowed the excess spit that was beginning to collect in her mouth. “So… you knew from the second you met me?”

  Noah drew his gaze away from her and down at his feet. “Yes.”

  “Oh my god,” she put her head in her hands. “I can’t believe this is happening right now.”

  She wasn’t sure what she was feeling at that moment. Part of her wanted to cry, another part wanted to smack Noah across the face, and a third part of her wanted to walk right into that gang of werewolves and start reading them their rights.

  “I’m sorry,” said Noah. “I know it’s a major invasion of your privacy, but I swear I couldn’t help it. Truly, Anna, I’m so so sorry.”

  All the sudden a hairy face appeared in the window next to Noah’s. “Not as sorry as you’re going to be,” said the werewolf. He was in the middle of his transformation, somewhere between man and beast. He ripped open Noah’s door and yanked him from the seat.

  Anna screamed. She opened her own door to try and run around to help Noah, but a second man was waiting for her on the other side of the car. He grabbed her around the shoulders, pinning her arms to her side, and whispered in her ear. “You smell delicious. I can’t wait to see what a great price we can get for a ripe and juicy piece of fruit like you.” He squeezed her rib cage, making it harder and harder for her to breath. It felt like little tiny needles were being plunged into her lungs. She opened her mouth to try and scream, but no sound came out. Her vision started to fade as she watched Noah struggle to fight off three other guys, all four of them in wolf form.

  Everything went black.

  The Virgin Behind the Glass

  Before opening her eyes, Anna began to gather information using her other senses and her intuition. As far as she could tell, she was in the trunk of a car, which was currently barreling down a very bumpy road, but the strangest part was that she wasn’t alone. She could tell there was another person crammed into the trunk with her, but since it was likely that person was bound and gagged too, there didn’t seem much hope for striking up a conversation.

  The drove on for another forty five minutes until finally Anna heard one of them complain about having to go to the bathroom and the car came to a stop. She listened, trying to gauge how many different people were piled into the car, and using that number to calculate her odds of fighting them off if the opportunity presented itself. It was too dark to see the other person in the trunk, but he or she hadn’t moved or made any sort of noise since Anna woke up, so she thought it best not to count on the other captive for help.

  The car door slammed shut and she heard a muffled conversation between two or possibly three different men.

  “How far are we?”

  “About twenty miles out from the border.”

  Border? What border?

  “Is it close once we get into the country?”

  Into the country? Are they taking me to Canada?

  “Pretty close, yeah.”

  “Where are we go—we get to the mark—there a motel?” The guy’s question was partially drowned out by the sound of the engine coming back to life and gravel on tires as they pulled back onto the road.

  “The boss has a friend out there says we can stay with him.”

  “What about the virgins?”

  “We’re dropping them off tonight. They will sell 'em, then we’ll pick up the money.”

  Anna’s muscles tensed at the mention of “selling”. Of course she knew there existed illegal, underground marketplaces in which humans, mostly women, were sold like cattle, but for all
the horror stories she’d heard over the years, it never occurred to her that she could find herself being up for sale at one. The women who get abducted and sold where not women like her. They were women who already worked selling their bodies, or who got mixed in with the wrong crowd. Anna always just assumed she was too capable, too intuitive, to end up in a situation like this.

  Capable? Intuitive? she berated herself. Where was all your capability and intuition when we’re sitting like an idiot, unarmed, right out front of a building full of angry werewolves?

  She went through the night’s events, trying to figure out where exactly her intuition had failed her. She was right, when she knew that following Sam Cottons would lead to something “big”, but why hadn’t the little red light gone off in her head, which usually flashes when she’s about to walk into a dangerous situation? Why had she been so off her game?

  Then it hit her like a handsome bag of bricks.

  Noah.

  She had been so anxious about the date, her intuition could have been full on screaming at her to “TURN BACK” and she would have assumed it was all having to do with dinner. Not to mention, when Noah dropped the bomb shell on her that he has in fact known she was a virgin since the day they met, she was so taken aback she couldn’t form a sentence, nonetheless anticipate an ambush.

  This is all his fault. He better be on his way to save me right now, because I would hate to be sold and shipped off before I have a chance to kick his sorry ass.

  Noah woke up with a raging headache and a throbbing in his left shoulder. He was in an apartment he didn’t recognize, which had low lighting and was sparse in the way of furniture. He let out a heavy grown as he sat up on the couch where someone had tried to make a sort of bed for him.

  “Good,” said a female voice behind. “You’re awake.”

  Noah winced as he turned his head in the direction of the voice. Sue was across the room, in a kitchenette, putting a kettle on the stove to boil. She was wearing sweatpants and a tank top, which showed off her muscular arms.

  “I was starting to think I’d have to call in a real doctor,” she said. “Which seemed like a real hassle.”

  Noah rubbed his temples and coughed a few times. “What is going on?”

  “You tell me!” she said.

  “The last thing I remember was fighting off some guys who ambushed Anna and I somewhere outside of town. We were all in wolf form and I was holding my own for a while…” He stared at the scratched up hardwood floor at his feet. “One of them got me good.” He glanced down at the bandage over his shoulder. “That must be what that’s from. I managed to shake them all finally but when I ran back to check on Anna, they were gone. Her too.”

  Sue nodded. “Okay, well does clear a few things up for me.”

  “After that it’s all blank.”

  He heard some clanking in the kitchen as Sue prepared two cups of what smelled like green tea. “You somehow got to a phone and called the office. I was the only one still there that late. You gave me a rough idea of where you were and asked me to come find you and bring you some clothes.” She came over to the other side of the couch and handed Noah a steaming mug. “I came and found you, although it took me a while. I loaded you up into the car and you passed out on the drive home.”

  “You patched me up yourself?” Noah asked, pulling up a corner of the bandage and looking at his fresh stitches.

  Sue shrugged. “I have a little first aid training.” She sat down on the floor, seeing as there was no other furniture in the room besides the couch.

  “Did you see anything else when you picked me up? Any sign of where the guys might have run off to? Tire tracks?”

  “Nothing really. I know they went South. That’s about all I could tell you.”

  “I need to find her,” he said.

  “I know,” said Sue. “I’ve been working on it while you were getting your beauty sleep.” She smiled at him and pointed to a file that was sitting on the floor to the side of the couch. “Did you know another young woman from town went missing last night.”

  Noah gawked, then leaned down to grab the file.

  “Sweet, innocent thing apparently. Sal’s, the guy who owns the diner, it’s his daughter. I talked to him early this morning. At first, he was worried she was going to turn up dead like the others, but I told him we usually would have already found the body, given how the other murders went down. Sal’s daughter would have been ripped to pieces and left in some public space, like a big “fuck you” to the people investigating.”

  “I’m hoping you said it with a little more decorum, however,” said Noah.

  “Of course I did!” said Sue. “I’m not an animal. Anyway I connected this abduction to something Mrs. Oliver was talking about last week. Apparently, some of her rich friends from a small town just across the border, in Canada, are thinking of moving to their summer homes near Idle Water’s permanently.”

  “What does that have to do with—”

  “They are moving because where they live there has been a recent slew of young women being abducted. They think an illegal human marketplace must’ve been established somewhere close by, and they are scared for their daughters. And for themselves.”

  Noah sat back against the couch, gently, so as to not accidentally graze his wound. “They are taking virgins. That’s why they didn’t kill Anna or Sal’s daughter. Virgins are worth a lot of money at those markets.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” said Sue. “I mean, I didn’t know for sure Anna was a virgin, it’s not really something you ask a deputy while you are on a stake out…”

  “If there was an illegal marketplace just across the border, that would mean there was an influx of gangs in the area. That could be why this one showed up in Idle Waters and started causing all this trouble.”

  “Could be,” said Sue.

  “How sure are you that this marketplace in Canada is real?”

  Sue shook her head. “Not sure at all, but it’s the only lead we have right now.”

  Noah sighed. “If we’re wrong, we’re going to waste that much more time, and are chances of rescuing Anna will dwindle dramatically.”

  “It’s your call, sir,” she said. “I can have a team here to back us up in under an hour. We can be on the road before nine.”

  Noah took a sip of tea, hoping it would help to calm his nerves and therefore clear his mind. It didn’t. His mind kept racing with the different possibilities of where Anna could be, where they could be taking her or what they could be doing to her, each idea worse than the last.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “I don’t know what will happen if we’re wrong about this, but I know for a fact that I will go crazy if I sit here doing nothing but ruminating for even one second longer.”

  There came a knock at the door.

  “Hello? Sue? Noah?” It was Stella.

  “Open up!” And the Sheriff.

  “Oh yeah, one other thing,” said Sue. “I may have called them. They have a few questions about what happened last night as well.”

  “Great,” said Noah, standing up, but holding the blanket around his waist seeing as he was only wearing boxer shorts. He would have to ask Sue about that later. “They can grill me on the drive to Canada.”

  The car slowed and one of the men, likely the drive, barked for the other people in the car to cough up their passports.

  “My picture doesn’t even look like me,” said one of the men. “Seriously, Billy, how much did you pay for these shit fakes?”

  Billy.

  Anna had been taking note of anytime she heard one of the guys use a name. So far, her list went Sam, Pauly, Vincent, and now Billy. Vincent was one of the guys in the car, as was Billy, apparently. When they spoke of Sam and Pauly, however, it was clear they weren’t currently present. Anna was pretty sure, from what she’d been able to hear of their discussion regarding what happened the night before, that Sam and Pauly were amongst the guys who went after Noah.

  �
�Oh they don’t care!” said another guy, probably Billy. “It’s just protocol that they check you have them, but nobody ever gets busted.

  So they were going through a border checkpoint. That would mean someone would be outside of the car, checking their passports and asking them questions. If Anna could just manage to make enough noise, to move around enough in the trunk, the checkpoint officer might hear something and open the hatch.

  She waited until she heard a new voice, someone from outside the car, and then she started kicking the sides of the trunk as hard as she could. She made groaning noises and wriggled from side to side. It seemed the person next to her came too, and started to move around as well. She heard some shouting and a click, then she was blinded by the sudden brightness of the morning light shining into her eyes. She squinted and waited a moment for her eyes to adjust.

  Standing over her was a big man wearing a trooper’s uniform. He stared down at Anna and the other captive with a frown.

  “What do you have to say about this then?” he asked, looking towards the front of the car.

  “Officer, we can explain.” A man came around and looked in the trunk. “It’s a game, you see. We uh, these are our friends, and—”

  “I know what’s going on here,” said the officer. He smiled at Anna and then slammed the trunk closed. She started freaking out, trying to scream and began kicking again. “You boys are taking these ladies to markets, aren’t you?”

  “What markets?”

  “I’m going to take down your license number and a description of your appearances. I expect a cut of this here action. After you sell them and come back through here with the money, I will be wanting ten percent.”

  “What? No way!”

  There was the sound of a button being pressed on a walkie talkie. “Yeah,” said the trooper. “Patch me through to the Sheriff. I have a crime to report.”

  “Hang on a minute,” said the other guy. “Just wait. Let me check with the other guys. My boss won’t give up part of his own cut, so the ten percent would have to come out of ours.”