Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84913 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
There was no sleeping when you had maybe started to get a little turned on by the kissing memory then immediately made queasy by the memory of looking down and finding brain matter on the top of your shoe.
In retrospect, I should have put the mission off one more day. The intel I'd gotten had suggested it was a relatively new location, so they were likely to be there a while still. I had the time to wait until I had gotten a decent night of rest.
I was headstrong, though, sure of myself, hungry to prove I could do it on my own, that the past four years of training were more than enough.
I didn't want to wait.
Impatience was one of my flaws.
So I shook off the tired with a large black coffee, had a small meal, then hit the road.
The Alpha brothers had been a name in the trafficking world for years, had managed to stay just below the radar, never getting caught because they never stuck around for very long. Their greatest asset was the fact that the younger brother, Patrick, was a ridiculously good looking guy. Mix that with a little charm, and that made him the guy who could lure countless unhappy runaways and foster kids into his car, could earn their trust. Then drug them and send them off to be trafficked overseas.
The older brother, Thomas, was the mastermind of it all, the muscle, the shot caller.
Both of them took advantage of the women they were to traffick. Sometimes at the same time. That disgusting little tidbit was information I had gotten from a girl who had managed to jump off the ship she was bound to be transported in, swim to shore, and scream for help, creating a big enough scene that the brothers had simply taken off without her, knowing that trying to retrieve her would only end them both up for a decent stint in prison.
She claimed the only ones who got away without being raped by one or both of the brothers were the ones they determined to be virgins, knowing they could get a much higher price for them if they served them up intact.
I was itching to finally get to take them down.
I was sure it would be one of the easier gigs.
It was only ever the two brothers and this one hired hand.
Three guys wasn't too big of a deal.
Oh, how very, very cocky I had been when I got ready for the day, when I took off, when I walked up to the door of a small three-bedroom that, from the record I found online, was in the middle of a foreclosure and supposedly abandoned. From those records, I also knew there was an unfinished basements.
Traffickers liked basements for obvious reasons. One way in and out. Really fucking thick walls to keep sounds from being overheard by neighbors.
This place didn't have neighbors, though. On a deep cul-de-sac, the closest house was half a mile down, and from the looks of it as I passed—crumbling front steps, holes in the roof, and shutters hanging on for dear life—abandoned.
See, I got in the door.
In the past, getting in the door was all that I had needed.
It was a pattern that had given me a false sense of security. Like nothing could go wrong during the introduction process.
I miscalculated.
Got sloppy.
Missed the way his eyes had roamed over me.
I'd noticed him glancing at me, of course, but had written it off as a typical man-inspecting-man look. Not a predatory look. Not a look that found hints of breasts, a subtle flare of hips, a certain softness of ass, the thickness of thigh.
Men who made money off of women's bodies became a sick sort of expert on appraising them.
In the past, Holden's presence had secured me my place in the door, had validated my claim. Or maybe they were simply too busy eyeing his herculean size to pay me much mind.
The door was closed behind me.
I was led through the abandoned living room, dining room, and into the kitchen. A formica nightmare straight out of the seventies with hideous dark wood cabinets and holes where all the appliances were supposed to be, the only redeeming quality I found was an ornate scalloped wooden detail around the window over the sink.
"Right through here, Frank," he said. And I missed the sneer. I missed it. But when I replayed it in my head later, I wasn't sure how it hadn't sounded like a blaring siren in my ears.
He moved in behind my left shoulder, reaching in front of me to open a door.
Which should have been another warning sign.
No one had a bedroom off of the kitchen.
What was often off the kitchen, though, was a basement.
This was something I figured out when the door swung open.