“He is a creepy man. But until now, also a very effective manager.” Selene looked at Lisa. “You’re pretty messed up. Do you think anything’s broken?”
“Explain this ‘selling you’ thing.”
“In a moment. We’ve got time. Let’s see if you’re okay.”
Lisa pulled herself up. Checked her limbs, her torso, frowning at that stupid cuff, and then her face. “Just my pride.” Pain shot through her shoulder and she winced. “My name’s Lisa, I’m a doctor, and I teach self-defense at a crisis center.” Embarrassing how fast she’d fallen. Humiliating.
“Honey, with three men pounding on you, you need a Glock or an army to stop them.”
Lisa had little choice but to agree with Gwen on that. “You said sell. Why are we here? What’s going on?”
Dark and exotic, Selene lifted a hand. “I was shopping at a mall in Tampa, just about to get into my car. Next thing I know, these three goons grab me and shove me into this nasty truck. I would so love some fresh air.”
“Me too.” Lisa looked at Gwen. “What about you?”
“Pumping gas at a station in Tallahassee. You?”
“Visiting my mother in ICU.”
Selene’s jaw dropped open. “They snatched you out of ICU?”
“I had a choice. I could walk out with them or they’d kill my mother. I have a black belt. The goons had a gun.”
“That’s Draconian.” Selene pressed a hand to her chest. “Is your mother … ?”
“She’s critical.” Tears welled. Lisa choked them down. “I hadn’t seen her in a long, long time.” She shivered. “Stepfather situation.”
“Enough said.” Selene paused. “No sense torturing yourself. Is she really sick?”
“She doesn’t have a disease, but she does have a weak heart. Her doctor told me to prepare. She’s likely to die tonight.”
“Oh no. And you’re not there.” Selene’s voice went husky. “I’m so sorry, Lisa.”
So was she.
“If she’s not sick,” Gwen asked, “why is she critical?”
Lisa stiffened. “She was coming to my party—I got my medical license and my friends were celebrating—only someone intercepted her on the way. He beat her up and left her on the side of the road.”
“Dumped at the curb like a piece of trash.” Selene’s expression turned fierce. “These people are animals.”
“I don’t know that these people are the same ones who hurt my mom, though it’s certainly looking that way now.”
“You think your stepfather hurt her?” Gwen asked.
“Who else?” Lisa wracked her brain but couldn’t come up with another single suspect. “He keeps her under lock and key.”
“Which is why you haven’t seen each other for a long time.”
“Twelve years.” Lisa gave Selene an agreeing nod, tried to be patient, but was eager to get back to this selling business. “Why are these people abducting us? Who are they?”
“Oh dear.” Gwen shot Selene a look laced with dread.
“She doesn’t need more bad news now. Give her a minute.”
“We could wait a week, if we had a week. The news isn’t going to get any better, Selene.” Gwen shrugged.
She was right about that. “Just tell me.”
“First, does anyone know you’re missing?” Gwen passed the flashlight to Selene. “There’s no one to come looking for us.”
Mark would know. He and his team and everyone at Crossroads would know. And of course God knew, but she didn’t hold out much hope that He’d help her. Use her to help others, yes, but not help her. Things just didn’t work that way between them. “A lot of people will be looking for me.”
And oh … but was she ever grateful that Mark’s old team had been spies. None admitted it, of course, but everyone close to Mark had independently drawn the same conclusion. He knew too much about those kinds of things even for a security chief. If anyone could find her, Mark and his team could.
She rubbed the bare skin on her finger. Since the night she’d left home and moved into the Towers with Nora, she’d worn her mom’s ring. Not once had she ever taken it off—until tonight. Mark would find it, her pager, and the scrap of material from her dress in the parking lot. She hadn’t been able to get out the door before the jerks had slammed it, but when she’d rolled, she released those items. Busy with her, the men hadn’t noticed, but Mark would find them, and he’d hold the ring until he found her, and then he’d put it back on her finger. He’d watch over her mother too. He, his team, friends at the center, and their friends at church—they’d all come together to help them both.
“Yes! Did you hear that, Selene? Someone will be searching for her.” Gwen clapped her hands softly. “Finally, things are looking up.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on here?” Lisa swept her damp hair back from her face. It was hot in the truck, and the air was stale and stank of sweat.
“We’re not positive,” Selene said quickly.
“I’m positive.” Gwen shushed Selene. “I know what I heard, and you’re not doing anyone any favors by soft-pedalling things. Just tell her the truth.”
“Excuse me for trying to make it easier on her. She’s had her heart broken with her mother, suffered kidnapping and abuse, and now this.” Selene waved in a wide arc. “That’s a lot to take in, Gwen. I don’t care how strong you are; it’s hard.”
“I know it is. I’m going through it too—”
Lisa’s patience snapped. “Will you two stop it, and please just tell me what you know?”
Selene tossed her long and dark curly hair back behind her shoulder. “Both Gwen and I have heard things. When the men put her in the truck—”
“I fainted.” Gwen shrugged, but tears rolled down her face. “Brave and glamorous, huh?”
Understandable , Lisa thought but kept quiet. If she interrupted, who knew how long it would take to get back to this point? More delays she didn’t need.
Selene went on, the hand at her throat trembling. “One goon told the other one Gwen was a beauty. Gwen heard more.”
“What more?”
“That I’d bring in a fortune,” Gwen shrieked.
Lisa dragged in a sharp breath. “You’re telling me they’re actually going to—”
“Yes!” Gwen grabbed Lisa’s hand and squeezed it hard. “We’re going to be sold!”
Lisa couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. This wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be happening. It had to be a bad dream. Any second she would wake up and discover none of it was true.
“We don’t know who they are, but that’s what they said they would do.”
Selene frowned. “I’m so naive; I thought maybe I was being abducted for ransom. But no.” Her voice went shrill. “Can you believe that? Sold?”
As absurd as it sounded, being held for ransom appealed more than the thought of being sold. As the shock settled in, Lisa found her voice. “So they just snatch women they think they can sell somewhere?”
Selene looked at Gwen, clearly seeking reinforcement. That she didn’t want to be the bearer of more bad news didn’t alarm Lisa. Already she had revealed herself as a gentle, protective type. But Gwen, straight talking and blunt, returning the look, alarmed Lisa immensely. “What are you not telling me?”
“We aren’t holding out. Honest. We just haven’t gotten to it yet.”
“Well, get to it, Gwen.”
“All right, already.” Gwen worried her lip with her teeth. “Selene told you she refused to sign her new recording contract. Her manager didn’t take the news well. He warned her that her label would ruin her.”
Selene hiked a shoulder. “Pure rubbish. They wouldn’t. They’re good people. He, on the other hand, was very upset. He said he’d earned the money by negotiating a fair deal and if I refused to sign, he would sue me for his share of it. He can, but he’d lose. I checked with my lawyer, and I told my manager so.”
Now, evident from her mercurial expressions, Selene was rethinking the wisdom of that. “He is more apt to do this to me than my label. They totally understood I needed time to myself for a while to recharge. It’s essential to creativity that an artist take time to feed her muse.”
Selene paused, giving Lisa time to digest that, but before she could string together her thoughts, Gwen hooked a thumb toward Selene. “What she means is after a year on tour, she was exhausted and couldn’t take it anymore. She was fried head to toe and needed a break to get human again.”
“Precisely,” Selene said. “Crass but unfortunately accurate.”
“Honey, truth is truth. No sense dressing it up. It works fine just as it is.” Gwen sniffed. “Making the jerk her beneficiary gave him a direct route to her money and her copyrights. That’s the straight skinny on Selene.”
Gwen touched a fingertip to her chest. Her metal cuff banged against her arm. “Me, I’m in the middle of a very messy and expensive divorce. Derek, my moronic and soon-to-be ex, and I have been haggling over the settlement for seven months with no end in sight. If he could make me disappear, it would save him a fortune. No division of marital assets, no divorce. He takes it all.”
What they were saying penetrated the fog in Lisa’s mind. “You’re saying these abductions aren’t random?” How could they not be random? Human trafficking was well documented, but were there really that many sick people out there? “Are you telling me that your husband and your business manager have paid to get you out of their lives for giving them problems?” Good grief, there had to be a mistake.
Fifty percent divorce rate. More single than married households for the first time in the history of the nation. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake, but no one with any business sense would build a trade around an anomaly. Could there really be enough men like Dutch to support a trade?
For money? There’s always someone willing to do anything for money, Lisa. You’ve seen too much to deny that .
“Deliberately. Intentionally. On purpose.” Gwen nodded.
Horror slithered through her, set her pulse to pounding in her temples. “Someone paid money to have this done to me?”
“My guess is yes. No one is going to snatch any of us off the street or out of a public building unless someone is paying him to do it.”
“They might, Selene.” Gwen fanned the beam of light across the bed of the truck. “Remember, they’re selling us on the other end. So they might.”
“Don’t be absurd. No one involved in this kind of sick, nefarious activity would miss the opportunity not to double their money. If they can be paid twice, they’re going to get paid twice.”
“She has a point,” Lisa said, really thinking it through. “I see this same kind of mentality at the center. To the professionals, it’s not personal. It’s business. They couldn’t care less about our lives. To them, it’s all about money, control, and power. Get paid to get rid of the problem, get paid again when selling the problem. One job, two payments.”
“See?” Selene lifted a hand. “Exactly my point. It’s always about greed.”
“Makes sense,” Gwen admitted. “Even if it does scare me to death and tick me off.”
“Be scared and ticked off later.” Lisa forced her own anger and fear to take a backseat. “If we want to live through this, we need clear heads.”
“Exactly. We’re all scared, but we need to keep our wits to help ourselves.”
“Selene’s right.” So Gwen’s husband and Selene’s manager paid for their disappearances. And Lisa’s? Dutch. Of course, Dutch . Which meant her initial reaction had been right. He’d had her mother brutalized to guarantee Lisa be in a specific location at a set time. Staged . Her stomach sank. Despicable. Twisted. Evil .
“You okay, Lisa?” Gwen asked.
“No.” Her stomach hurt, her head throbbed, and if she didn’t get some fresh air soon, she was going to be sick. “Wait. Yes, I’m okay.” She steeled herself. “I’m just fine.” She had to think. Think. “Who are our buyers?” Even trying hard, she could barely wrap her mind around this kind of evil. “Do we have any idea?”
“Not yet.” Gwen sounded as vexed as she looked. “All I’ve heard Frank say was I would bring a fortune at auction.”
Frank . “Which one is he?”
“Dirty. Long hair, grimy T-shirt. He was driving. I don’t know if he still is or not.”
“So is this Frank auctioning us off?” The sickness inside Lisa swelled. Auctioned and sold? Dutch must have thought for years about the worst thing he could do to her to pull her into something this seedy and disgusting. How did he sleep at night? How did any of them sleep at night? Did they have no consciences? No spark in their souls they hadn’t corrupted?
Evil exists. You know it does. This is one of its many faces .
It was an ugly one. The truck hit a bump, jarring them. Pain shot through Lisa’s hip and back. “What else do we know?”
Selene lifted a hand for Gwen to speak.
“They stop every two hours and let us go to the rest room.”