Taking Flight (A Devereux Novel) (31 page)

When
my eyes opened, the only thing in front of them was a
whitewashed concrete wall.

Where
am I? What happened?

Fog clung to my thoughts like a
spiderweb
, slowing everything down and making it difficult
to access memories.

I sat up, gingerly cradling my head as
a pounding headache threatened to split it in half.

The room was small and contained
nothing but the single bed I woke up on. The mattress was only a couple inches
thick, barely a pad on top of a metal spring frame. A window let in bright
sunlight and had iron bars bolted onto it; the lower pane sat cracked open,
letting in a light breeze.

A toilet sat through a simple wooden
door on one end of the room and a large metal portal sat closed on the wall
next to the bed.

It looked like a prison cell.

Oh,
my God. What the fuck is going on?

It would have been sweltering if I
hadn’t been almost naked.

I struggled to get to my feet,
stumbling the two steps to the door and latching onto the handle to keep
upright. I took a couple deep breaths to steady myself and then gave the handle
a yank.

Nothing.

I tried harder, pulling with everything
in my weakened body and failing to wrest the door open.

Come
on!

“Let me out of here!” I screamed. “Why
am I here?”

The door refused to answer. I hit it,
my knuckles cracking on the hardened steel. Pain raced through my arm, and I
cried out as I cradled my hand and collapsed back onto the bed.

I
was supposed to have dinner with Stephen last night. Then what happened?

I didn’t remember eating with him. I
must not have gone.

Why
not?

A Russian voice rose from the fog
surrounding my memories.

That’s
right. The
photoshoot
.

I went to do a shoot last minute. That
explained the
clothing,
it was the same thing I had
been wearing during the shoot.

Anton
gave me something to drink.

It must have been drugged. It was the
only explanation.

Why
would they do that? What will happen to me?

When I’d first moved to New York, I
could never have imagined a more lonely feeling than not knowing a single soul
in such a massive hive of humanity. The bustle of the city was entrancing, but
also frightening. My first night in the tiny studio apartment had been spent in
sorrow, convinced I’d made a mistake and should move back home.

The loneliness of that night was
nothing compared to the panic I felt
rising
within me.
Tears came to my eyes, and I bit back a sob.

I’d been drugged, locked into a cell,
and who knew what would happen. It was surreal, like it should be a scene out
of a movie, not happening in real life.

There was a scratching at the door,
then the grating of metal on metal.

“Hello?” I called. “Who’s there?”

The door swung open, revealing a big,
beefy man carrying a small tray. His face was expressionless, betraying no
thoughts of the man within. He could have been the brother of the thuggish man
from the night before.

I pushed back from the door, closer to
the wall. “Who are you?”

No response. The man set the tray down
on the floor and turned to leave.

“Wait!” I called. “Why am I here?
What’s going on?”

The door slammed shut, leaving me alone
in the small room once more.

Hunger burned a pit in my stomach, reminding
me I’d skipped dinner the night before. The tray held a bowl of stew, a spoon,
a glass of water, and that was it.

It took hardly any time to scarf down
the stew and drink the water,
then
there was nothing
to do but wait.

Fortified with food, some of the nausea
and dizziness went away, enough that I felt strong enough to give standing
another try. I wanted to look out the window.

“Uh, oh.”

The view wasn’t what I’d expected.
There was no hint of the train yard or the Hudson. Instead, the window opened
onto a scruffy-looking field and the city noises I expected weren’t present.

This
is bad.

The only thing that had prevented a
full-fledged panic was the assumption I was still at the warehouse. I knew
there was a better shot at rescue if I remained there—there must be a way
the police could track down where I went.

I didn’t even know if I was still in
New York, or even America.

This
is bad.

The gears in the door turned once more,
the poorly maintained metal screaming in protest. I turned toward the door and
backed into the far corner, adrenaline pumping as I waited to see what this new
development would bring.

My jaw dropped as Paul strolled into
the room, accompanied by the big man from earlier.

“Paul?”

He smiled. It was amazing how an
expression others used to portray joy and happiness could be so twisted and
perverse.

“Why Liberty, how sweet of you to drop
by and visit. Are you enjoying your stay in my fine establishment here?”

“You son of a bitch!” I rushed forward
but before I could claw the eyes out of that smug, self-satisfied face his
bodyguard pushed me back and held my arms, keeping me captive.

“Now that’s no way to treat your owner,
Liberty. Didn’t your mother ever teach you that politeness and good manners
always pay off?”

He reached out and slapped me in an
almost casual manner, but the impact rocked my face back and would have sent me
to the floor if Paul’s thug hadn’t held me up.

“Owner?” I couldn’t think straight
through the pain, and I couldn’t even touch my face to assess the damage thanks
to the man restraining me.

“Don’t worry, I’ve slapped enough women
that I know how to send a message without leaving a mark.” He sounded proud of
the fact. “And yes. I own you, Liberty. Not for long though. With a body and
face like yours, there will be many interested buyers. I’m sure you won’t hang
around for too long.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s simple.” Paul spoke like he was
explaining how the weather worked to a simple-minded child. “People are
commodities like any other, and that is my business. Some people are worth more
than others, but everyone has a price.” He pulled something out of the hallway
and tossed it on the bed—another set of lingerie. “You’ll wear this so
you can better show off your assets and fetch a higher price. Your future owner
may even be watching right now.”

Paul pointed to where the corner of the
room met the ceiling. A small black orb hung there, undoubtedly hiding a
camera.

The truth was becoming clear.
The terrible, horrific truth.

“You’re going to sell me? As what, a
sex slave?”

“Now she gets it!” Paul clapped for a
couple seconds, then stopped and brought his face close to mine. “This is what
you get when you fucking cross me and embarrass me in public, you little bitch.
I’ll make sure you end up with the foulest,
cruelest
brute of a man possible. If I’m lucky I might even get him to send me videos of
the things he does to you.”

A blinding pain hit the left side of my
face—a slap I didn’t even see coming. It swamped my senses with pain, and
this time I was allowed to slump to the floor. By the time I recovered, the
door to the room had slammed shut once more.

I curled up into a ball and rocked
where I was. Tears streamed down my face, and I did nothing to stop them. What
was the point?

I
can’t believe this is happening. This doesn’t happen to people.

How long I cried for—I didn’t
know. Minutes. Hours. Until there were no more tears to cry. The reasons for
crying cycled from fright to sadness to rage and back again, over and over.

I
wish that rotten piece of shit had never walked into
Dorgo’s
.

If he hadn’t, I would never have met
Stephen. But while that relationship was a bright spot in an otherwise hard
struggle of a life, it wasn’t worth the cost of the rest of my life spent in
slavery.

When I couldn’t cry any longer and my
butt was sore from sitting on the concrete floor for so long, I got up. The
lingerie Paul had left was higher quality than the set I already had on.

I
should throw it out the window just to spite him.

The thought sparked an idea.

Not wanting to give any potential
observers more than they deserved, I ducked into the bathroom. I stripped off
the clothes I wore and slipped into the new ones.

Leaning against the wall to hide my
actions from the camera, I used the old red bra to tie a knot around the bars
in the window and let the piece of negligee dangle out so it fluttered in the
breeze. Then I bunched up the pair of panties and threw them as far as I could.

The slip of fabric turned in the wind
and drifted out of sight.

Everything done I could think to do, I
lay back on the bed and waited.

The
grinding of the door woke me.

It had been two days of absolute
boredom,
passing the time by sleeping and planning all the
delightful ways I would torture Paul if I ever got the chance. The only breaks in
the monotony were the two times a day the door opened and the voiceless thug
delivered what felt like the bare minimum amount of food needed to keep me
alive.

“Rise and shine,” Paul’s voice cut
through the residual sleep haze.

My eyes snapped open.

“Today’s your lucky day—I’ll be
auctioning you off in a few hours.” He leaned against the wall at the foot of
the bed, his eyes daring me to break down in front of him so he could humiliate
me even more.

I didn’t give him the satisfaction even
though my throat constricted at the prospect of the bleak future ahead. “Don’t
you have a business to run or something? I can’t believe a man who gloats he’s
worth four hundred million dollars wastes his time in a dump like this running
a human trafficking ring. What’s the point?”

“You’re assuming I do this for the
money,” Paul said. “It’s more of a hobby, something I enjoy. And in your case,
I personally wanted to oversee the process to make sure you get everything you
deserve.”

“You’re one to talk, you creep. I can’t
think of a single person the world would be better off without than you.”

Paul scowled. “You will spend the rest
of your short, miserable life wishing you’d never refused me at the bar. If
you’d just been a good little slut like you should have been, none of this
would have ever happened to you.”

I’d had two days to come to terms with
the realities of my situation. Two solid days of painful reflection over my
life and all the mistakes that had led to this point. Calling out Paul at the
bar was not one of them, and that belief gave me the strength to continue to at
least make him angry for as long as I could.

“I doubt you could even show a slut a
good time, you scumbag. I bet you resort to doing this because you’re so
worthless in bed that no women would ever willingly sleep with you.”

“How dare you,” Paul said. He walked to
the bed and grabbed my legs, pulling me to the edge. “I’ll show you how wrong
you are, you worthless bitch.”

I struggled as he tried to pin me down
and open his pants at the same time. The panties I wore weren’t much protection
against a rapist, something I was all too aware of.

“Get off of me!” I shouted. I flung all
my limbs up at once, hoping that something would fend him off.

My right foot connected with something,
the contact so hard it felt like it would bruise later.

Paul toppled over, falling to his side
on the floor, hands in between his legs. My kick had gotten him right in the
testicles.

“You bitch,” he wheezed. So little air
was left in his lungs that it was barely audible.

He had left the door cracked when he’d
entered the room. I leapt up and swung it open, sticking my head out into the
hall and looking either direction.

The hallway was a long corridor with
many identical doors to the one I was halfway through. A table to the side held
a gun—Paul must have put it there while he entered the room.

Paul crawled toward me, almost within
reach of my ankles before I noticed.

“Shit!” Out of reflex I lashed out
again with my foot and caught him in the face, knocking him sideways. I ran out
of the cell and slammed the door behind me.

It was impossible to tell which
direction led outside. I knew from the window I was on the second or third
floor, and I thought I knew which way was more likely to have a road. Slaps
from my bare feet echoed down the hall as I ran. Doors whizzed by, the tiny
dimensions of the cells allowing many to be crammed into a small stretch of
hallway.

So many cells.
Are they all occupied, or am I the only one here?

I couldn’t believe all this was set up
purely for my benefit. My heart broke as I tried to decide whether to try to
free anyone else.

“Fuck,” I murmured, and stopped my
sprint.

I tugged on a door, taking a moment to
figure out the door mechanism. It finally gave way, and I held my breath as the
heavy door pushed open, finger creeping along the gun to the trigger just in
case.

Nothing.

The room was empty, the bed frame not
even supporting a mattress.

I
can’t open every door until I find someone.

The best hopes of helping any other
women in the building were to escape and bring the police back.

I ran down the hall until I came across
a door different from all the others I’d passed. Instead of a security door, it
was a simple hinged affair. With a tentative nudge, I cracked it enough to look
in and see stairs.

Perfect.

As quietly as I could, I opened the
door and entered the stairwell, closing it behind with barely a whisper of
sound. Bare feet worked to my advantage as I could place each step and avoid
letting any sounds echo to other floors. I couldn’t count on the rest of the
building being as uninhabited by captors as the floor I’d called home for the
past two days.

The big number two on the wall was a
good sign. The next floor down was the bottom of the staircase and had a large
“G” splashed onto the concrete wall.

Careful to not even breathe audibly, I
put my shoulder against the wall beside the door and held the pistol in front
of me, ready to peek out into the hall.

For a moment I pictured what I would
look like to an observer.
Buxom brunette in lingerie creeping
around an old prison complex with a handgun.
The thought almost made me
giggle—it could have been the basis for a cool
photoshoot
.

Okay,
here we go, Liberty. You can do this. Just find an exit and get out of here!

I reached my free hand out to pull the
door handle. It had opened only an inch before the sound of steps echoed
through and two men walked past.

They were speaking to each other, but
it was in Russian or another language. It didn’t look like they were in a rush
and they weren’t yelling, so my escape must have gone undetected so far.

I
wonder how often they check the cameras to watch the girls and make sure
they’re not up to anything they shouldn’t be.
It couldn’t
have been a constant surveillance or else it would have been clear I’d trapped
Paul in the room.
Unless he got them to
switch it off because he’d planned on raping me.

The thought made me smile. It would
serve him right.

The men had disappeared down the hall
and I couldn’t hear the sound of their voices or their footsteps any longer.

I opened the door again and poked my
head out just enough to look down the hall in either direction. This floor
didn’t have any cell doors on it, and the hallway was wider and less
barren—more of an administrative feel. Holding my breath and squeezing through
the stairwell door so I wouldn’t have to open it any wider than I had to, I
popped out into the open.

The direction the men had gone was
toward where I thought the exit would be. I paused as I tried to figure out
what to do.

“Hey!” A loud shout surprised me. I
whipped my head around to see Anton. He was half out of a doorway behind me.
“Guards!” He continued on in the language used by the guards as he ran toward
me.

Talk
about the worst damn timing possible!

There was only one direction to go, and
it was toward the men who had just walked past.

This
won’t work out well.

The corridor didn’t last much longer in
this direction before it emptied into a large room. Rays of muted sunlight lit
the floor through two wide double doors finished with frosted glass. There was
a desk and seating arrayed along one wall and standing beside the desk were the
two men from earlier.

I ground to a halt as I looked
desperately for my best choice. The outside was so close—it was a mere
thirty feet to the doors— but the guards were closer, and both raised
their guns, shouting words I didn’t understand.

Only then remembering the firearm I
held in my hand, I brought it up to point at the men. The shouting intensified,
and sweat broke out along my forehead. When Anton ran into the room, I
swiveled
to train the handgun on him.

“Whoa!” he said. “Where did you get
that from? Don’t be a fool, Liberty, put the gun down.”

I looked at him, then the guards. They
didn’t look to be in any hurry to shoot, and I barely even knew what I was
doing with a gun. There was an uneasy stalemate.

“Why did you do this?” I asked Anton.
If this was the end of the line, I at least wanted answers. “How do you live
with yourself?”

He looked pained. “Liberty, I don’t
like this. I don’t have a choice, any more than you do. Once you owe the wrong
people a
favor
that can be the end of any chance for
a respectable life.”

Tears filled my eyes and dropped down
my cheeks. I had been so close. To escape and freedom.
To
seeing Stephen again.
To going back to the life I should be living.

“Just put the gun down,” Anton said
again. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”

I stared at him. Hated him. Would it be
worth dying so that one of these criminals would be wiped off the face of the
earth and unable to inflict suffering on any other women?

My trigger finger trembled. I wanted to
do it so badly.