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"You're looking for what?"
"Read the warrant, sir." I'd pissed him off.
"Show me your badge, again, officer."
He sighed visibly and produced it, his name on it printed out as Paul Stevens. I nodded and read the warrant. They were looking for a missing girl, seventeen apparently, which would invoke all kinds of penalties and was one of the reasons I never messed with underage. (The others were that it was wrong, and that girls were nowhere near as much fun as women. Women already knew themselves and what they wanted and where their boundaries were and making them break those boundaries and accept what they didn't want? That was a sadist's pleasure.)
"She's not here," I said, trying to hand the warrant back. He nodded at me to keep it. I sighed. "Please don't mess anything up." They couldn't search this time for anything but the girl unless they saw something illegal in plain sight.
They wouldn't find anything illegal. Or anything else. No drugs, only registered weapons in a gun safe. Which, since a missing seventeen year old girl couldn't fit in it, they couldn't require to have opened.
My second in command, Barry, stood behind them on the step as they came in. I started to tell him it was fine, he could stand down, go back to the shack. And changed my mind. It wouldn't hurt to have my own muscle here. They wouldn't find anything. They wouldn't even find Annie. The doors to the underground were only covered over with furniture that slid and locked into place at times like these, but when it happened, it looked like the heavy wood antiques had been there forever.
This was nothing more than a distraction and an annoying one. There was always the chance they'd find something. Always the chance I'd get dragged downtown anyway, and lose a chance to explore the business of the day spa, say, because Fleet maybe had more to lose than I did. Other than Annie, the idea of using rainforest cures in a day spa setting was the first thing to really snag my interest in a while. Fleet, though, like his name, seemed like he might easily bolt. If I wanted the opportunity to expand the range of the good I thought the opiate cures were capable of, this wasn't the time to be facing some kind of morals charge, or even be brought up looking dirty.
Judge Conway was becoming a problem. While they searched improbably small areas for a full sized woman, I explored options for neutralizing the threat.
25
Annie
Cole – St. Martin – Sir came back three-quarters of an hour later. He was livid. I'd pulled the robe back on, honestly cold by then, mostly from his absence and whatever was going on in the main house.
It wasn't easy to pinpoint what I was afraid of. They probably weren't going to find the entrance to my cell and if they did, so what? I was over the age of consent, a former cop, a soon to be fed. If I couldn't consent, who could? As for the locked doors, again, none of their business. Nothing that was going on was illegal.
And then if I was honest with myself, would the DEA want to hire someone who was staying with the CEO of a pharmaceutical company who was experimenting creating his own drugs? Even if those drugs were legitimately helpful? Would the idea of my being here lead back to the fact of my own addiction? Almost undoubtedly. And the chances of that screwing up my ability to get in? Very likely. My undercover career with Seattle could either make or break my chances. Time would tell. What I was doing with St. Martin regarding the fet and the end of the fet addiction? That would be a really bad thing to have come to light.
I thought in some ways the fact that St. Martin had a St. Andrew's Cross would look bad for me if I turned up here.
Since James had told me about the raid, I'd done some research and since I had a real world phone and forty-five minutes to myself, I’d done some more. It was strange that, since being out in the world and studying criminal justice, I hadn't looked up the laws pertaining to Master/slave or BDSM or anything else.
But I'd so wanted to keep my lives separate. My life in Seattle, on PD, with Mark. My life in southern Nevada as St. Martin's slave. My life now as a college student.
The lives all fit into one body though, and they had their own thoughts. Those lives had collided a lot faster than I'd expected.
The biggest damage to me could actually be considerable. Planning to head into narcotics with the feds, probably they wouldn't want anyone with questionable morals, and mine would be, even if every step of the way with St. Martin had been voluntary and something I wanted.
For Cole, I'd thought it would be reputation. The way people kept buying from Amazon even after the CEO had that little indiscretion with his camera phone. Cole St. Martin liked to chain women to BDSM furniture and whip them until they were both wet with tears and wet with want. But St. Martin Pharma could cure opiate addiction. What was a little icky whipping between friends?
Until I knew it could be illegal. There were no distinct laws on the books for Nevada saying Thou shalt not beat your consenting other. But it was illegal. Quasi-illegal. Didn't matter if there was consent. People weren't allowed to consent to being hit.
Which sounded pretty totalitarian until I read further and understood some of it. Allow that kind of harm because the other person consented (even if she was screaming “No no no please don't!” at the time) consent could be proved and there was a chance that people who wanted to duel in the street would have to be allowed to duel in the street.
Even I didn't think that was a good idea.
I hadn't had time to check further but I thought the State would be the plaintiff if such cases went to trial and it wouldn't matter if the victim didn't want to file charges – like those domestic violence cases where she realizes she loves him and besides that, she doesn't make enough to take care of the kids and… and… they're dangerous cases and a lot of jurisdictions give the arresting officers the ability to file charges and press them. The State (or county or whatever the municipality is) does it.
I couldn't do anything for Cole about that. Just my being here was dangerous for him and leaving wouldn't be an option for a little while, at least not in the middle of the night while the compound was undoubtedly under surveillance.
So I did what I could. When he came back, angry and pacing, I was out of the robe and kneeling on the floor. Refusing to believe I was sending a message.
I was only trying to help.
Yep, that was it.
If Cole noticed, I didn't see any sign. He was pacing and furious. Judge Conway was definitely announcing an agenda. By himself he couldn't do anything about prostitution – he wasn't even an appellate court judge or on the Nevada Supreme Court.
But he could send out warrant after warrant, harrying people he knew in his heart or in his gut were doing naughty things.
