Flesh Market

by Kate Lowell

  DeGraff called out from behind them, his tone amused, “Don’t tell me you can’t take a twink like him down?”

  Leo growled and wrestled Julian back to his feet. “Fucker bit me.” He dragged the still-kicking Julian down to the bed frame and held him facedown on it. “Squirmy little shit.” His opinion of the size of Julian’s balls went up a notch. No one came out of the academy without knowing all about torture.

  Leo still remembered that class, back when he was a new agent trainee. He’d asked a question about it—damned if he could remember what—and the instructor offered to do a demonstration with him. Six strokes in, he tapped out, and he’d walked like an old man for a good hour after. If Julian could agree to this without qualms, he was tougher than Leo. Just thinking about it made Leo sick. “Is this going to damage him?”

  “Naw, I know what I’m doing.” DeGraff gripped each of Julian’s arms in turn and stretched them out until the young agent’s wrists lay across the steel crossbar at the end of the cot. He tied Julian to the cot with enough speed and skill that it couldn’t have been the first time he’d done this. Then he had Leo sit on Julian and hold his feet so they too could be tied to the bed, soles facing upward.

  When they were done, DeGraff and Leo stepped back to watch Julian pull uselessly against the rope. Julian was tall enough that he had some play in his arms, elbows bent and sticking out from his body, but moving back and forth along the length of the cot was all he could do. There was no getting out of those knots.

  After a few minutes of fruitless struggle, he lay still, his eyes closed.

  DeGraff grunted, a satisfied sound that made Leo’s hands curl into fists. “They call this bastinado,” DeGraff explained as he picked up the rod again and showed it to Leo. “First time, we use a thin rod. Hurts like hell but no permanent damage, and they can still walk after. Kind of.” He grabbed Julian’s hair and pulled his head back. “It won’t be comfortable, I guarantee you. Think about that the next time you want to rearrange someone’s face.” He let go with a rough shove and looked at Leo. “I don’t do this often, but you get a sense after a while which ones will do better with a sharp lesson on respect early in the process. If they keep it up, there’s other options, but a lot of times it ends up diminishing their value.” He slid his hand down the rod as if he were caressing it. “There’s all sorts of ways to make money off them, but some ways get you a higher return for your investment. So we start small.” He turned and brought the rod down over the soles of Julian’s feet without warning.

  Julian yelled and jerked against the restraints so hard the bed moved. DeGraff made a tch at him. “You move the bed while I’m hitting you, I might hit something that will break. You don’t want to be working for me with broken toes, do you?” He looked over at Leo and shook his head. “It’s usually bolted down. Damn, I hate moving day; it’s such a fuck-up. Go sit next to him. See if you can keep it from jumping around like that. This boy’s going to be an earner, once he learns his place. I don’t want anything holding it up.”

  Leo did as he was told, going so far as to put a hand on Julian’s back between his shoulder blades. He hoped DeGraff would take it as Leo holding Julian down. In fact, he was offering whatever support Julian could take from it, though it was little enough.

  On the next strike, Julian gave a half-strangled cry, and he pushed back against Leo’s hand. Leo pressed down on him and thought about leaning over to whisper, “Breathe through it.” But he hesitated just a moment too long, and DeGraff struck again.

  Five strokes in, Julian began crying and begging for DeGraff to stop. By ten, he’d stopped speaking and simply howled when the rod came down.

  DeGraff halted at fourteen, at the point when Julian no longer flailed against each strike and merely cried out, his voice hoarse from screaming.

  Leo unclenched his teeth when DeGraff stepped back. “We done?” he asked. His jaw hurt, and he had a headache starting.

  “Yeah, we’re done. Get him up; make him walk. It’ll be slow, but there’s a lesson to learn in that too.” He crouched beside the head of the bed and spoke to Julian. “You be good, and this’ll never happen again. You understand?”

  Julian nodded, his face blotchy red and covered in tears and snot.

  DeGraff patted him on the head, not cruelly but in the same manner you would pat your dog when he’d done something right. “That’s a good boy.”

  Lean

  Julian had never experienced agony like that before. Not even when he was a kid and he’d been racing his brother on their bikes down a steep hill and lost control. That accident had won him a scar under his chin and the most awesome multicolored cast ever for his broken arm.

  This wasn’t awesome. When he’d agreed to the beating, scared to raise suspicions by refusing, determined not to be the one who torpedoed the investigation, he’d expected it would hurt. He’d been ready for that, figuring he’d survived Dave using a flogger on him, so he could survive this if he concentrated and breathed through it.

  There might have been a little bit of trying to impress his FBI partner in there too.

  But boy, did he ever appreciate Dave’s refusal to up the ante when the flogger had done nothing for him. He hadn’t anticipated the level of pain or how it would creep up his legs and seize his entire body, wrenching all conscious thought from him. There’d been no acting involved—he couldn’t have stopped the humiliating pleading if he’d been offered a million dollars. God, how he wished the begging had worked—his entire body ached, like he’d been showing off at the gym or doing endless pushups for his dad because he’d brought home a silver medal instead of a gold. And now, here was DeGraff telling him he had to get up and walk, on feet that felt like they should be raw and oozing.

  You wait, you pig.

  Julian would have been quite happy to lie on that uncomfortable steel mesh for a week, but some instinct of self-preservation told him that if DeGraff came back and found him still there, he’d probably get another beating, just to remind him who was boss. So when Leo untied him, he made the effort to push himself up until he could sit on the edge of the cot. The ache made it hard to focus on anything but his body.

  Someone grabbed his arm, and he flinched before he realized it was Leo. When he looked around, DeGraff was gone, and that made him happier than it had any right to.

  How did the kids here do it? He was scared shitless and ready to say yes to just about anything to avoid a repeat of the last…he didn’t even know how long it had been. It felt like hours. But at least he knew he could call it quits and the bureau would come get him. Ethan—God, Ethan—couldn’t.

  “You okay to stand up? I can carry you.” Leo kept his voice low, for Julian’s ears only.

  “Better not. What if he comes back?” Julian wasn’t looking forward to this walk. If his feet hurt this much now, how much would it hurt when they actually touched the floor? He let Leo help him up, and as soon as his soles hit the concrete, he started to cry and sat down again. “Holy shit,” he repeated over and over again, completely ignoring his rule about swearing out loud as tears streamed down his face. “Oh, that wasn’t a good idea.”

  Leo sat next to him. “Let me carry you. He can yell if he wants—I can always pretend to be a softie.”

  That startled a choked laugh out of Julian. “Yeah, you look like one.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes to collect himself, then gave Leo his best determined look. “Okay, I’m good. Help me up.” Liar, liar.

  Leo frowned, and Julian thought he was going to challenge him on it, but he let it pass. With Leo’s help, Julian got to his feet, more successfully this time. Once there, he shook off Leo’s supporting arm, determined not to look like a wimp in front of this man.

  Inch by painful inch, he forced himself to cross the room under his own power. Each step sent a flood of red pain up his nerves and made him wish he could just curl into a ball and hide until it went away. He reminded himself of the guaranteed seat at Quantico and shuffled his weight
forward.

  I will not puke.

  When they got to the hallway, Leo put an arm around Julian’s waist.

  “What are you doing?” Julian said.

  “My room is farther away than yours.” Leo pulled one of Julian’s arms over his shoulder, tightening his grip when Julian tried to jerk it back. “And we need to talk. Stop fighting me, and do what you’re told.”

  Julian groaned and let Leo take some of his weight. Yes, indeed, they did need to talk.

  Leo hauled him down the hallway and sidled through the fourth door down.

  The contrast between Leo’s room and the cells the victims were kept in was like the difference between an alley and a suite at a four-star hotel. Passing by an open door, Julian had seen the same gray plywood walls and ratty mattresses that had been his dormitory in the old place. That was probably where Leo was supposed to leave him.

  In Leo’s room, the walls were a deep blue, with a brocaded border around the ceiling. A tall dresser stood against the wall just past them. The corner held a small table with a pair of sturdy chairs, and a flat-screen TV bigger than his at home hung on the wall at the foot of the bed.

  And that bed. It looked like it came out of some store so expensive Julian didn’t even know the name of it. The cover was navy suede, heavy and luxurious. It was stacked with pillows and folded back to display clean sheets. The TV remote sat on the cabinet beside the bed.

  The only similarity between the cells and Leo’s room was the lack of windows—fluorescent lights shone harshly over everything, stealing some of the comfortable allure.

  As soon as the door closed behind them, Leo swept Julian off his feet and carried him over to the bed. A wave of relief rushed through his body as the pressure came off his bruised soles, and he moaned in appreciation when Leo let him sink into the delicious comfort of the bed.

  Julian started to relax, and his eyes began to slip closed. He was exhausted—from the drugs, from the beating, from the stress of the unfamiliar situation.

  From Ethan’s red-raw body bleeding out into a plastic bag in front of him.

  On second thought, that didn’t make him tired. It made him scared and angry and sick.

  The mattress sank beneath him, and a line of warmth covered his left side. Julian pried his eyes open. Leo was watching him intently.

  Julian moved his mouth into a semblance of a smile. “Hey, I’m fine. But don’t ever let me do something stupid like that again.” He whispered, cautious of microphones until he knew it was all right. Something occurred to him. “No, never mind. If you do let stuff like that happen, he’ll never suspect that we’re working together. I need you more as an escape hatch than to protect my delicate butt.”

  Leo snorted, though his eyes still looked concerned. “I’ll talk to DeGraff, see if I can convince him to give me more warning before he pulls another stunt like that, in case we need to bug out.” His voice was low but not the whisper Julian had used. “You were fantastic. You looked just like a scared-as-hell fifteen-year-old who’s only figuring out now that the world isn’t fair. How are you feeling? The drugs bothering you?”

  “Not really. Just sleepy. What’s in that shit they’re pumping us full of?”

  “Not sure. Ketamine, I think, but there’s some other stuff mixed in with it.”

  “Disgusting.” Julian started to doze again, though he couldn’t quite manage it with the sharp pain in his feet and the smell of blood in his nose. Just being in relative safety felt good, though.

  Leo’s voice rumbled in his ear. “You want to sleep, I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

  “Hmph.” But Julian couldn’t sleep. Not yet. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Ethan on the table, smelled the iron sweetness of his blood. Sleep wasn’t coming anytime soon.

  He had to ask. “Did you know?”

  “Know what?”

  Julian stared at a rough patch on the ceiling. “What they were going to do to Ethan?”

  Leo shook his head. “No.” He paused, then pressed a hand against Julian’s shoulder. It felt good—warm and strong. The kind of hands that were good to be held by, and Julian couldn’t believe how badly he wanted to be held right now. “I knew they had a disposal system, but I only found out they weren’t selling them onto the streets the day you arrived.” He let go of Julian and lay back to stare at the ceiling as well. “I should have guessed. They keep everything so locked down. There’s no way they’d put anyone out on the street, knowing what those kids could tell the authorities.” Leo scrubbed his hands over his face. “Look, I have a favor to ask you.”

  A favor? “What?”

  “They take pictures of all the kids that come through. Somewhere, there’s a database with a picture of every single victim of this ring. I want it. And wherever that is, I’ll bet there’s a pile of other stuff we can use to put these guys in prison.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  Leo took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I need time to find it. If I’m lucky, everything we need will be on the computer in the office or traceable from there. I should be able to get to it whenever he decides I’m okay to be on duty overnight by myself. Soon, I hope. If not…” He rolled onto his side again, his eyes serious and anxious as he peered at Julian. “Can you hang on here, put up with this for a while longer than planned? I’ll do my best to keep you out of the deep shit, but I don’t know how this side of it runs. DeGraff is already talking about taking pictures and video of you.”

  “You’d think he was running a dating site.”

  Leo’s mouth twisted. “To his way of thinking, he is. It’s a business; that’s it.”

  Julian thought about it. He was scared. He was only supposed to be here a couple of days, just long enough to get Leo into the office to copy off the computer. The idea of staying longer, risking ending up on that table, risking being shuffled into the other part of the business…

  It was Ethan’s voice, whispering in his ear, an echo from that cold room, that made his decision for him. “I just want to go home.”

  Ethan couldn’t ever go home now. Julian owed him, if not Ethan’s own life, then as many other lives as he could manage. Some people might argue about that, but Julian wasn’t just another victim. He was an FBI agent, at least temporarily.

  Julian rolled up on his side so he could see Leo. Pushing his feet against the bed hurt, and he sucked in a harsh breath. “Fuck.” So much for not swearing in front of the FBI. At least Leo didn’t seem to care.

  “Feet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hang on.” Leo got off the bed and opened the top drawer of the dresser. He rummaged around inside, then turned back with a baggie full of little white pills. “Oxy.”

  “You’re kidding me. What are you doing with those?”

  “Leon’s a pill-popper and a drunk and a broken cop. It’s an interesting role to play.” He dug a couple out of the bag and held them out. “It’s these, or I have a quart of rum under the sink in the bathroom. Your choice. It’ll let you sleep. We can’t afford either of us any more worn-down than we are. Even if my partner has balls the size of Montana.”

  “Ha. Not exactly. I would have blown you both to get out of that.”

  Leo chuckled. “I’d never have guessed. I might have called it quits when he pulled out that stick.”

  I didn’t have a chance. Julian thought about Leo’s offer for a moment. He didn’t want to be helpless—more helpless—here than he needed to be. But the aches and pains of the beating made him sick to his stomach, and he was so tired… “Give me the pills.” He popped them into his mouth, then accepted the water Leo offered to wash it down. Their fingers brushed, and Julian was shocked by how aware he suddenly became of his nakedness.

  It was nothing. Just, he hadn’t had sex with anything but his hand in three months, he was tired, scared, and Leo was the only one here whom he could trust. Didn’t help that the man was hot as Irish love and dog days. Since when had Julian become a slave to his hormon
es?

  Probably about the same time he’d walked through this nightmare version of the looking glass.

  The smart plan would be to let the pills take effect and get some sleep. Then he’d have his head screwed on straight. This was just shock; he’d get over it. Julian pushed the attraction firmly away.

  So when Leo lay back down on the bed beside him and pulled Julian in close, Julian was able to let it happen and take the comfort that was offered. He buried his face against Leo’s neck and just breathed in the man’s scent. It felt safe and secure, and Leo’s solid presence somehow took the edge off some of the fear. Leo couldn’t save him from everything, but even after such a short acquaintance, Julian knew Leo would do his best to give Julian the chance to choose what happened to him. Which reminded him…

  “Yes.”

  “Yes what?”

  “If you need the time, I’ll give it to you.” Julian wrapped his arm around Leo’s waist, balling his hand up in the loose T-shirt.

  “Thank you. I won’t abuse the privilege.” Leo rubbed Julian’s back. “Relax. Go to sleep. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

  Marinade

  He would have slept too, if it hadn’t been for the damn pills. They stretched their fingers through his body, tickling at his brain, rubbing away the tension in his muscles, soothing the pain in his feet. And Julian was pressed up against a muscular chest of a style he particularly liked, with strong hands working their way up and down his back. The oxy whispered to him—how good it would feel to just blow off some steam, that Leo showed every sign of being attracted to him. He didn’t know if he would make it out of this anyway, and the drugs stealing through his system made it easy not to care about consequences.

  The world went all soft-edged and warm, and the idea of grabbing a last bit of pleasure started to feel like a better and better idea. Especially since the erection he’d felt yesterday, that he’d been too startled to comment on, that had been the cause of his impulsive kiss, was once more in evidence.