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The idea had possibilities.
Abruptly I turned from Fred and said to his date, "In my house, you can talk. I request that you call me Sir."
Covington bristled. "I said she doesn't talk."
I didn't bother to look at him. Abruptly I wanted to punch him in the face. "That's up to her. Go get yourself a drink, Fred. Chloe, could you show him?" I didn't take my eyes from the girl and when they had gone, I tilted her face up, forcing her eyes to meet mine. I always had a soft spot for the abused. "There's a very beautiful supermodel from the 90s," I said. "Elle MacPherson."
Her eyes lit. She smiled.
"Ahh, you know of her. I always thought she was one of the most beautiful women in the world. If you won't tell me your name, I'm going to call you Elle."
She sighed, started to speak, looked around for Covington. I caught her chin in my hands. "He's across the room."
Her eyes flashed as if she was doing something daring. "I like the name Elle."
"Good. Elle, do you need help?" Because I'm so much better at disciplining my subs. I was coming perilously close to the My kink is fine; your kink is weird way of acting but Covington rubbed me the wrong way.
The light faded a little in her eyes. "I don't think there's anything you could do, sir."
"You might be surprised," I said, but there were other guests arriving and I excused myself, nodding at Chloe to come gather up Elle because Covington had gotten into a conversation across the room.
Chloe had been hurt plenty badly by her husband. She understood abuse. She'd take care of Elle.
I turned back to answer the door.
13
Annie
The law enforcement vehicles were moving very slowly. Out on the desert floor, it's hard to drive without kicking up dust. They had to know there were cameras on a billionaire's rural compound. But they weren't coming on foot. They'd waited until the guests had started to arrive and now they were circling the place.
I needed to get inside. While the vehicles were still far enough out that I could move through the sage without being too obvious. All I wanted was to give St. Martin time to – damn, I didn't know what. Time to put clothes on the women and throw out any obvious sexual board games? Time to make the centerpiece get off the table and put her clothes on? Time to somehow make everything look like an actual dinner party and not some kind of Roman feast or Greek Bacchanalia?
Probably I didn't even need to be here. That thought shouldn't have been a surprise. Moving fast through the scrub, keeping low so the oncoming police wouldn't see me, although security already would know I was here, it occurred to me that St. Martin and whoever was left of his group would already have cover stories in place. That, and judges in their pockets. Not that they'd get away with actually running a trafficking ring. Especially not if a judge was up for reelection. But in the ordinary course of things, I'd noticed when there was enough money involved, there were fewer problems that were insurmountable.
The answer to what I was doing here then was not one I wanted to look at too closely.
I moved up around the building. There wasn't time to go all around the compound, not if I wanted to remain unseen by the police. There'd be a couple minutes while they reconnoitered before they went to the door, when they made sure they'd surrounded the vehicles already present to stop as many as possible from leaving in them. There'd be maybe a minute or two that could be attributed to confusion and reading through whatever warrants there were. That was it.
Still, approaching the southeast side, I passed the short outside walkway between the main house and the semi-detached suite of holding cells where St. Martin kept me.
For a second the world flashed into incandescent fury. The security post was just beyond that, where it had eyes on the exit from my cell and the entrance to the compound and on the long private road that led from the south to the compound.
For that second all there was in my world was the memory of waking in St. Martin's custody and being told I would be examined by a nurse, stripped naked, watched by leering security he did nothing to discourage. I remembered my confusion and anger and fear.
Fear was nothing new. Undercover means never not being afraid unless you're stoned and part of the scene. Or dead. If you're not afraid, you make mistakes.
Mistakes get you killed.
But there in the compound, new to it, unable to stop the violations and humiliations, being touched and exhibited and whipped and punished, being given enemas and forcefed if I didn't eat, being told my rainforest cures would be changed to suppositories administered by the sadist because he wanted to? All of that eclipsed my rational thoughts and drummed out the early morning runs through the desert, the companionable silences as the sun came up, the support he showed me when I decided I wanted to go back to school.
The fact that getting a BA and applying to the feds rather than staying PD had been his idea. All of that was secondary.
There was no rush of lust. Just the question; With everything he's done to you, why are you here?
Loyalty. Or payback. Or to watch it go down? No. Because I was moving to the guard hut, pounding a fist against the door. I didn't want to see anyone hurt and some of St. Martin's men were mercs.
I didn't want to see him hurt. Or arrested.
