Seduced in the Dark (11 page)

Chapter Six

Matthew tried very hard to
concentrate on the computer screen in front of him, but as he
typed, his mind couldn’t help but wander off. Olivia Ruiz was most
certainly suffering from Stockholm’s Syndrome, pining over her lost
lover, her kidnapper and abuser.
Matthew
didn’t care for abusers – not one little bit
. They were all the same. His mother used to try and
apologize for beating him by taking him to the park. The best
abusers could make you believe they felt guilty for what they’d
done, right up until you got in their way.

Still, he would be lying if he didn’t admit,
at least to himself, Olivia’s storytelling abilities were
quite…compelling. For four hours he’d listened to her talk about
her relationship with Caleb and he’d watched as her cheeks had
colored and her skin flushed with what he knew was arousal. How
could he not be affected?

Yes, he’d grown hard,
painfully so, but he didn’t like it.
What
kind of person got a hard-on while listening to a victim talk about
her abuse? It made him feel sick. He was sick.

And it wasn’t necessarily
a new problem.
He had a long history of
strange sexual proclivities.
It was the
reason he was thirty-one and still single with no viable prospects
on the horizon. He was afraid of someone seeing him for what he
was. Being alone didn’t mean he was lonely, not really. He kept
very busy with work at the Bureau.
However, he often thought it would be nice to have someone to
come home to, someone he could talk to that wouldn’t make him feel
like a freak
– even though he knew he was.
And like, attracted like.

He was attracted to
damaged and fractured women as much as they seemed to be attracted
to him.
Olivia Ruiz seemed to be no
different. She was drawn to him for some reason, he could intuit
that much, but he knew it was an attraction that could only run the
one way. He would never compromise an investigation, never take
advantage of a witness, and
never try to
save someone who was so obviously broken. He’d learned his lesson
all too well.

He would do his
job.
That’s why the Bureau kept him on
board; because at the end of the day he could be counted on to do
what needed to be done. He was a closer. Nothing got in the way of
that. No one got in his way.

Bringing his attention back toward his
screen, he continued to type up Olivia’s statement about her time
in captivity. He tried to remain impassive as he typed, but certain
sentences continued to jump out at him:

“
He made me beg for food…”

“
Spanked me repeatedly…”

“…
forced me to come.”

His report was reading
more like an erotic novel than a case file.
His mind was beginning to wander again, this time toward his
last girlfriend, the one who couldn’t come unless he called her a
whore. He was starting to get hard again—
Stop!

He saved the file and decided to take a much
needed break from Olivia and her relatively useless memoir and
opened his browser to search for more information on Muhammad
Rafiq. He was the lynchpin of the entire investigation.

According to the witness, Caleb had reported
his involvement with Rafiq began because they needed to kill Vladek
Rostrovich, A.K.A. Demitri Balk.

“Why?” Matthew whispered to himself and then
remembered the comment about Rafiq’s mother and sister. Were they
dead?

Doesn’t matter, he thought. The important
thing was the auction, everything else was inconsequential. So why
couldn’t he get it out of his head? Why did the story seem
relevant? It was motive, sure, but how did it lead to the location
of the auction in Pakistan?

Matthew let out a deep sigh and got up to
pour himself another cup of coffee. He’d heard the local cops gripe
about the coffee on an almost daily basis, but unlike them, he
actually enjoyed the coffee in the office. It was likely true the
coffee machine had never been cleaned, but maybe the grit added
something. He smirked. Back at his desk he grabbed his notepad and
started digging through his notes to find a starting point for his
research.

Olivia’s jerk-off story
didn’t provide much of a jumping off point, but he did manage to
learn
min-fadlik
meant ‘please’ in Arabic. Caleb apparently spoke Arabic with
so much ease he used it in private. He would guess people typically
spoke their native tongue while alone and certainly while engaged
in that particular activity. Lord knew he’d never yelled out in
Mandarin while in the throes of ecstasy. Of course, he didn’t speak
Mandarin.

He flipped through more of
his notes and found Caleb also spoke Spanish and his English was
spoken with a strange accent, one characterized as “…a mix of
British, Arabic, and Persian…
maybe
on the Persian.” Matthew pulled out a map of
Pakistan and tried to narrow down an area with such a mix. It
seemed highly unlikely he would find it. Still, an accent meant
Caleb was either born or immersed long-term in an area where he’d
have heard those languages on a daily basis. Afghanistan, India,
and Iran all surrounded Pakistan and each of those would certainly
have similarities in demographics and social conventions. The Brits
obviously had influence in each mentioned country, but he knew
their influence would be more pervasive in India. Caleb was
obviously not Indian, and if he had grown up there, he would have
picked up the dialect.

He needed to narrow the list of possible
locations for the auction and he had little more than experience,
old case files, and the internet to work with. Pakistan was making
strides toward reducing or eliminating the number of human
trafficking crimes committed within their borders, but they were
very much a long way from succeeding in any way as to impact their
society or their politics. Slavery was very popular there, though
most of it came from an indentured work force made up of women and
children.

People were bought, sold, and rented in an
almost casual way in Pakistan and it was about time the U.S.
Government started to take notice and work with the U.N. to do
something about it. Matthew was not naïve; he knew the reason the
U.S. had decided to take point on the change throughout many Middle
Eastern regions had more to do with the resources abroad. Still, if
it meant less women and children were sold into sexual slavery or
bonded labor, then he was all for it. Oil and freedom for
everyone.

The Sindh and Punjab provinces were large
hotbeds for human trafficking activity, but he temporarily opted to
exclude them, as the area was mostly agricultural and the slavery
predominately bonded labor. Certainly not the location for the
world’s elitist playboys and terrorists to arrange for a lavish
pleasure slave auction.

Fuck! It was going to be a very long
night.

Matthew checked his watch
and decided to order his dinner before his favorite Chinese
restaurant closed for the night. He was practically salivating over
the thought of garlic noodles and crunchy eggrolls. There had been
a time when he’d have ordered for two,
but
it had been nearly a year since he’d had a partner to share the
long investigative hours with; these days, he worked alone. It was
just as well since he wasn’t really good with people. He was much
too honest and people just didn’t appreciate him for it.

He was good at his job and people respected
him, but it didn’t mean they jumped at the chance to work with him
or wanted to go out for beers after work. Still, they did what he
asked them to do and he couldn’t fault them. If he’d asked one of
the analysts to stay behind and help him do some research, they’d
have begrudgingly done it and kept their disparaging remarks to
themselves until the next time they found themselves in better
company.

Matthew had asked for a special task force
to assist on the case. There was a potentially short turn-around
and the possibility of an international incident if they had a raid
in Pakistan. Still, his boss refused to get a decent task force
together unless Matthew had concrete proof suspected terrorists and
political targets would be at the auction.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d accuse
the Bureau of purposely letting this case fall between the cracks.
Olivia Ruiz’s face was splashed all over the news, complete with
grainy surveillance and camera-phone videos of her standoff with
the border patrol. Something like that didn’t go away easily.

He scrolled through the
information he had available on Muhammad Rafiq and his accomplices.
He was a Pakistani military officer and a high ranking one. He had
fought beside U.S. forces as part of the coalition during
Desert Storm
. He was
highly decorated and was rumored to be very close to the former
Major General who assisted in the 1999 coup that overthrew
Pakistan’s president. In short, the man had some very powerful
people in his circle.

If he wanted someone dead, he couldn’t
imagine it would be difficult for him to carry it out. Of course,
he would have to do it without embarrassing himself or his
superiors in front of the international community. Could his
involvement be the reason the Bureau was hesitating on attacking
this case full force?

Matthew picked up his pen and wrote down a
list of things he needed to gather information on: military bases
in Pakistan, air strips near or on such bases, customs locations
and refueling stations. One thing was for certain, Rafiq wouldn’t
be flying in or out through commercial means, he’d need a private
plane, one that wouldn’t have to contend with customs officials. It
wasn’t much, but it was a start.

The intercom buzzer startled him. His food
had finally arrived. He took the elevator to the first floor and
met the delivery guy, gave him a healthy tip and trudged back
upstairs to enjoy his greasy, delicious treats.

Several hours later, Matthew decided to call
it a night and drive back to his hotel. He planned on getting up
early in the morning and going to visit Olivia in the hospital
again. She’d be expecting news on her request to join the witness
protection program and he had no additional news to offer, but he
still needed to get the rest of her statement.

If her information delivered the results he
had proposed to his superiors, her request would likely be granted,
but not for the right reasons. What the girl needed was justice.
She needed the men responsible for her kidnapping, rape, and
torture to pay for their crimes in the public arena. She needed for
those men to be judged and found wanting of basic human decency,
only then could she pick up the pieces of her life and move
forward.

However, if he was correct in his
assumptions, the Bureau would be more interested in the national
security elements, rather than justice for one eighteen-year-old
girl. There would be no official arrests, no public trials, because
the information she could provide and the covert op that would
garner evidence of involvement in human trafficking by wealthy and
powerful military leaders, heads of state, and billionaire moguls
would be an invaluable asset in the hands of the U.S.
government.

It was somewhat of a moral
conundrum as far as Matthew was concerned. Olivia was running away.
She didn’t want to face her former life or its inhabitants and it
was a sentiment Matthew understood well, but couldn’t agree with.
At the same time, he was the last person to give advice on how a
person should move beyond their personal traumas.
He was still damaged, still sick in the head, no
matter how many therapists he had talked to as a teenager. His
records had been sealed and for all intents and purposes he was fit
for duty, but he knew his own mind. He knew his own limitations and
biases. He supposed it counted for something, his knowledge of his
own shortcomings afforded him the semblance of perspective when
dealing with his job.

He entered his hotel room
and set his briefcase down on the table provided. He emptied his
pockets, careful to stack any loose change by denomination and
place them in a row by size. His keys, wallet and watch were also
placed with care. He unbuttoned his suit jacket and hung it up in
the closet. Next, he sat and removed his shoes and socks, followed
by his shirt and tie. Finally, he removed his belt, wound it, and
placed it on the table with his other things before he removed his
underwear. He lined up his shoes under the bed and placed the other
items in the hotels dry-cleaning bag.
It
was his nightly routine and he took comfort in the repeated
actions. Order was important.

He stood naked in the warm, slightly humid,
Texas air and ignored the tingling sensation of his penis becoming
more erect. He knew why he was getting hard and he wished he
weren’t. He’d been unable to resist the temptation of perusing his
interview notes, despite the promising information he’d garnered
through researching Rafiq in greater depth. That much of the girl’s
story was filled with violence was regrettable, that the violence
was a direct result of sexually charged circumstances was
contemptible, but the way she recounted the story with such devious
and manipulating zest and obvious arousal was enough to put him
over the edge. It pushed all of his buttons and on the heels of his
distaste was the undeniable quickening of his pulse.

He wouldn’t do it though. He wouldn’t
fantasize. He wouldn’t masturbate. He wouldn’t seek out sexual
gratification. Doing so, would be a step in the wrong direction for
him because he knew it would lead to the debilitating guilt that
inexorably followed.