Rescuing Their Virgin Mate[Pack Wars-Book 3] (2 page)

Elena mentally crossed
herself and schooled her features. “I was a secretary for Harvey Couch.” Given
he was such a jerk, perhaps he’d visited her strip club.

Before they got a chance to
figure out what to do about their confinement, the side door opened and the
hulking figure she’d come to accept as part of her world trudged in. He had
three food trays with him and mumbled something that sounded Russian.

He shoved the meal through
the small door at the bottom of each cage, and she wrinkled her nose at the
stench. When she lifted the lid, she nearly gagged. It was some kind of
porridge that smelled like burnt shoes rather than a cousin of the wheat
family.

Elena didn’t complain though.
Barbie, however, shoved it back out. “What is this shit?”

The guard picked it up,
walked across the room, and dumped it in the trash. Like her, Barbie would
learn that complaining would gain her nothing but pain.

“Hey,” Barbie yelled at the
retreating figure. “I need to take a piss.”

The man pivoted and returned.
He unhooked the latch on the door and it swung open. Barbie crawled out and
winced when she stood.

“Follow.”

So, the giant could speak
English. He led her outside instead of to the bathroom at the back of the
warehouse. Elena was about to protest and ask why she had to use the filthy restroom
in here and Barbie didn’t, but thought better of it.

Cheryl sat up and looked
around. “What’s going to happen to us?” Not only was her hair a mess, her
clothes were dirty and torn.

“I don’t know.”

Cheryl leaned against the
bars and closed her eyes. Poor thing. From the way she wound her fingers, she
was working hard to keep it together.

She dropped her head against
the cage. “I never should have come down here. I knew the offer was too good to
be true.
Fifty-five thousand dollars to be a paralegal.
Right.”

Greed. It seemed to be all about
greed.

After an hour, Barbie still
hadn’t returned, and Elena’s heart grew heavy.
Dear Mary, mother of God
.
The
girl was never coming back.

The killing had begun.

#

General Armand handed Clay
Demmers a suitcase full of cash. “There’s fifteen thousand in there. The going
rate for one of Couch’s girls is eight thousand. When we spoke with Elena
Sanchez’s mother in Costa Rica, she said her daughter had never been with a
man.”

Clay whistled. “That sucks.”

His partner, Dirk Tilton,
shot him a dirty glance.

Clay shrugged. “What? Just
saying, if we don’t buy her first, there’s no telling what will happen to her. A
girl like Elena may be emotionally damaged for life if the wrong man gets a
hold of her.” He turned back to the general. “Is Elena from Costa Rica?”
Neither he nor Dirk spoke Spanish. Perhaps the general should put someone in
charge
who
did.

“No. She grew up in Florida.
Her parents moved down there, recently.” The general gave them the details of
the exchange. “I also included some names you can drop to prove you run a high
end strip club in Miami. Our contacts will vouch for you.”

In other words, they’d lie.
He hoped he didn’t have to name drop too much. Neither had been in Miami in
over a year. They’d done undercover work many times before and understood it
was a slippery slope. Having their backgrounds hack proof would make for a
smoother transition. One slip up and Elena Sanchez might be subjected to
unthinkable acts.

“Any other
intel
we should be aware of?”

“If we go by past events, he
usually sells ten girls at a time. But that was Couch. Now that he’s dead, it’s
John Hood’s show.”

“What do we know about him?”

“He’s new. Likes to dress the
part of the man in charge. From what I’ve heard, he can be ruthless. He’s slick.
So, watch out for him.”

Clay nodded. “We’ll be in
touch.”

The sale was being held in
the backroom of a strip club in the less than desirable part of Gulfside,
Florida. To look the part, they dressed in
fifteen-hundred
dollar suits and three-hundred dollar shoes. Clay didn’t mind looking upscale
once in a while, but Dirk kept tugging on his suit as if he’d rather roll in
shit than put on the expensive clothes.

Dirk chose a black tie that
Clay gave a thumbs-down. “Dude,” Clay said searching for another tie. “We’re
supposed to be flamboyant rich boys, not freaking lawyers.
Here.
”
The red and yellow striped tie at least looked like it might have come from a
Miami store.

“I can’t do this right
anyway.” Dirk ripped off his conservative tie. “I never learned to tie one.”

That was because Dirk’s dad
split when he was a kid, and he’d had to learn everything by himself. Dirk
grabbed the tie and made a shitty looking Windsor knot.

“You suck.” Clay stepped in
front of his friend and straightened the mess. At least the guy had shaved.
“Let’s get this over with and hope we’re not too late.”

#

The morning after Barbie
disappeared, Elena awoke to the sound of the warehouse’s side door opening. She
expected the guard, but when the sweet scent of lavender perfume reached her,
her pulse raced at the change in routine.

Dressed in a formfitting
black dress with white trim, high heels, and a pearl necklace, a thin woman
huddled next to a taller gentleman. He had neatly trimmed gray hair, and from
the cut of his suit, was rich. Together, they reminded her of a couple from the
nineteen fifties—her grandpa’s era. Sleep deprived, she couldn’t figure
out what a classy looking couple would be doing in a dump like this.

As she stared at them, blood
whooshed through her veins. Had they come to rescue her? Or should she be afraid
they’d kill her?

The two newcomers stood ten
feet away from the three cages as if getting any closer would sully them. They
leaned near to each other and whispered. They glanced at her and tossed out words
like
heavy, greasy, needs work
, but she
couldn’t piece together what was going on. Then they looked over at Cheryl and bandied
about the words
high price
and
perfect.

The powerful-looking man
nodded, stepped over to Elena’s cage, and opened her door. He yanked her out by
the arm, and the torsion wrenched her shoulder. She yelped.

“Shut up.”

Elena swallowed a whimper.
She really needed to use the bathroom but didn’t dare ask. They seemed to have
other plans.

“Christ, you stink,” Mr.
Suit
said.

Like that was her fault? He
turned her around, and when he slapped cuffs on her wrists, her heart hammered
at the restriction. His rough handling bruised her skin, but she swallowed her
complaint.

She pulled her hands apart to
test them, and the cold metal dug into her skin. Her adrenaline spiked as she pictured
being shoved and prodded toward some kind of electric chair or worse a
guillotine.

The man stepped behind her
and dragged a blindfold over her eyes.
Oh,
no
. Not being able to see was her biggest nightmare, and with her hands
tied, she couldn’t rip off the cloth. To make it worse, he shoved a rag in her
mouth. Panic ripped through her. Her
stomach rolled and vomit
shot up into her mouth.

“Don’t move,” he commanded.

If she ran, he’d probably
shoot her.

From the direction of his
footsteps, he’d stepped over to Cheryl’s cage. Metal creaked and Cheryl
whimpered. The slap that followed hurt Elena worse than if he’d struck her.

“Let’s go, girls. Time to get
you prettied up.”

Prettied
up?
The idea of getting
clean appealed to her, but why would they care? Something wasn’t right. People
didn’t drug someone, keep her in a cage for weeks, and then suddenly want to
take care of her. This was wrong. These people were definitely not her saviors.

One of them pushed her
forward and, with her hands tied behind her back, she stumbled and landed on
her knee. “
Ooogmsn
.”
Damned gag
. Her breath caught in her throat as the pain raced up
her leg.

“Easy with the merchandise,”
the woman said.

The man’s meaty hand lifted
her up again and, with a firm grip, he led her outside where the fresh air was
a welcome contrast to the damp, stale air in the warehouse. She inhaled to fill
her lungs with the goodness and caught a whiff of his cologne. It smelled like
some version of Old Spice, a scent her uncle always wore. The good memory surfaced
and helped lessen the tension.

The sound of tires whizzing
on the pavement seemed far away, but at least they weren’t in the middle of
nowhere. If her hands weren’t tied, she’d have waved hoping someone would notice
them and come to their rescue.

A well-oiled door opened.

“Get in.” He turned her
around and pressed on her shoulder, forcing her to sit on what she believed was
the lip of a van.

The man lifted her feet and
slid her back a few feet on the metal floor. Her sore ass ached even though she
had a lot of padding. Poor Cheryl was skinny and would be miserable during the
ride. The tears leaked out of her blindfold but never reached her cheeks. The
salty liquid dripped into her throat and nearly made her choke.

She
dropped her head and said the Act of Contrition.
Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you
...
If she was about to die, she wanted to
go with a clear conscience.

The edge of the van dipped,
and Cheryl’s shoes scraped across the metal. Once the back doors slammed shut,
the engine sounded. Even though her new cage-mate was as helpless as she was,
not being alone gave her some comfort.

The vehicle pulled out. Elena
tried to memorize how many times they stopped and turned, but after a while,
she gave up. The cold metal pinched her wrists and pain sped up her spine with
every turn. She worked hard to breathe through a stuffed up nose.

In truth, every second seemed
like a minute. Elena clung to the idea they were going to clean up. She tried
to keep focused on the positive, all the while wondering if today would be the
day she died.

No more than fifteen minutes later,
the vehicle stopped and the back door squeaked opened. Cool air rushed in and
smelled sweeter than where they’d been.

Feet shuffled on the metal,
and a strong hand lifted her. He pulled her forward until she reached the edge
of the van floor. He lifted her in his arms as if she weighed nothing and
tossed her out of the back. Someone caught her, but for that one second in the
air, her heart had jammed.

Man number two set her down,
clamped a hand on her arm, and half dragged her forward. She tried to keep up,
but when she tripped on something and nearly fell, the guy had to haul her to
her feet.

“Clumsy bitch.”

Anger ripped up her spine.
They’d kept her locked in a cage for two weeks, and her legs had lost a lot of
muscle tone. What had they expected would happen?

The moment she stepped inside
this new building, the temperate air cleansed her. The man took off her gag but
not her blindfold, and she gulped in the needed oxygen.

“You scream and you won’t talk
again.”

If he was trying to scare
her, he succeeded. A door opened and he shoved her inside.

“Stay there.”

With her hands secured behind
her back, and wearing a blindfold, it was hard to do anything other than obey.
Her heart pounded. She listened for Cheryl’s breaths, but heard nothing above
her own raspy pants.

After several long minutes,
the door opened and someone removed her blindfold. Elena looked around. She was
in a bathroom that was a lot nicer than the one she had in her apartment. In
fact, this one had a stone countertop, a picture-framed mirror, and a tiled
walk-in shower.

The idea of a shower seemed
about as close to heaven as she could get—the woman in front of her did
not.

Elena judged this matronly
guard with the stern expression to be in her fifties. She was maybe five-feet-three-inches
tall and almost as wide. From the way she held her shoulders, she might have
played professional football. A zillion questions raced through Elena’s mind,
but since this woman was part of the group who’d taken her, Elena doubted she’d
be forthcoming with information.

“Turn around.” The woman
waved a key.

Elena obliged and soon the
cuffs were gone.
Thank you, God
. She
rubbed her sore wrists and rejoiced in the small amount of freedom.

“Get out of those clothes.”

Elena turned around. The
woman planted her hands on her hips. Chills raced up her body at the hatred
lacing the woman’s eyes. This person was female, but Elena was a private
person. She wasn’t going to get naked in front of her even if she’d been told her
clothes were full of bugs.