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"His name is Llewellyn Price Bevington," she said a moment later.
"I think I understand why he always uses his last name," Mia said.
We found deeds for land. We found financial transactions none of us understood. We found records from his checkups. We found –
We found his checkbook, with large amounts paid to Raven Holdings, LLC in Arizona and more money to a similar sounding venture.
I found his business information. Bevington worked in real estate, handling very expensive houses. That explained the enormous but virtually empty home we were in.
But it was Lettie who found the cache of photos of girls no longer in the harem. We all went still, gathering around the desk where she laid them out. The girls in the photos weren't dead. But the images showed exactly how badly Bev had fucked them up before he let them go on to whatever horrible fate awaited them. Nothing that would reduce their value. The beatings would heal. So would black eyes and broken fingers. It made sense that someone malignant who would buy or steal human beings would also treat them like this. But seeing the evidence of it in photographs hurt.
And there was one photograph, blurry and out of focus, as if the subject had moved as it was taken. I thought I was looking at a round, nearly perfect female butt cheek. Nearly perfect, but forever altered. Because I'd thought that everything healed. Everything done inside this house would fade and the women, sold again into maybe something not quite so terrible, maybe into something impossibly worse, and maybe killed, they'd go on, beautiful and broken.
But the brand, if that's what I was looking at, that wouldn't even be meant to heal.
I shuddered and spread the photos out using an edge of my t-shirt, not leaving prints. I kept them in order and I kept the order in my mind. I didn't want him to know I'd seen them. All around me, all four of us were being careful without my having had to say it.
The photos were close but not quite what I needed. There was no way to even prove what the photographs were for. The irredeemably human part of me wanted to believe there was some shame or remorse there. That he took the photographs because he wanted to remember what he'd done and stop himself from doing it again, the same way someone might leave themselves a record of overindulgences when trying to diet, or to stop drinking.
It wasn't even the cynical part of me that couldn't believe that. Just the part that had been around people too much. Not even the cop. Just the human who had sisters who didn't like her and a father who put his own beliefs over everyone else's, a human who had been around a quarter century and seen more of the human but beastly side than she wanted.
I ground my teeth. Too soon. Even with the photographs I couldn't get out just yet. I needed proof I could take with me because nothing here was more than hearsay. I needed to link the girls to Bevington, irreversibly. What he was doing was his own dirty little secret. I was willing to bet my own middle of the night arrival at this private enclave wasn't the first after hours delivery. He fully believed in his right to do what he was doing, but he wasn't stupid: Filthy rich clients who could buy properties like he sold, properties that had made him his fortune, weren't going to buy from a human trafficker who dealt in such filth and horror.
Just for a second, while the other girls poked around and Nikki positioned herself without anyone asking as a look out (and a good idea, too), I stood swaying, wondering why I'd never heard of anyone with a fortune buying other people and setting them free. Sure, there'd be a media frenzy at the idea of buying and selling humans, but buying and setting free? Or hey, how about this – billionaire donates millions to the health and welfare of –
And I thought about Cole. I thought about Cole and what he'd tried to do for Kie, the little psychopath who had almost killed me but who in the end, had almost had happiness. She was out there somewhere and I didn't know if her life was better or worse, but she was at least free to make her own decisions.
There was Marilyn, Cole's pain slut chew toy. He'd let her go when she up and decided on another life, one that didn't include his extreme sadism and her own extreme masochism.
There was Ariel, so worn out and hurt by life she'd curled up in Cole's underground labyrinth and gone to ground like a hurt creature. The sex she and Cole had was brutal combative. Ariel didn't want to die but she hadn't wanted anything to do with life, either. But he'd let her stay there, safe from everyone but him. He'd brought in therapists. He'd brought in companions. He'd kept her fed and exercised and let her paint and write and heal. And one day she'd walked out of there.
There was me. Hooked on fentanyl and on a life that kept me in the driver's seat at all times. There was nothing so very wrong with that. The control freak nature, not the fet. I'd had my own life when I met Cole and the idea had been to heal the addiction and get back to it.
Only I'd found something better. Something more authentic.
There was good in the world. Because of that, I still had to do what I could to fight the dark in the world. I thought when I got out of this, I'd still go back to school. Back to Cole. Back to the new life I'd been building. But there'd be something from this experience, something from the horror of Bevington and the photographs of abused women that I would carry with me.
A darkness to remind me always to seek the light.
Paralysis broke. I went back to his desk, staring at the pictures. Those were the key if I could document them being here, in this place, among his things. I looked fast around the desk. Leather day planners. An expensive desktop. Two laptops stacked on top of each other.
The laptops had cameras. I could get stills and undoubtedly Bevington's office would allow for email. I wanted photos of the four of us, of my injuries and anyone else's, of the girls now missing, of the deeds and information in the checkbook that connected Bevington to Raven. Once I had the shot I'd send them to Cole. Send them to myself. Send them to the police or the feds or the LA Times. As long as word got out.
Then wipe the photos off the computer and go back to bed.
"Hey!" Mia hissed from across the room. "I hear security. They're downstairs starting to meet about the day."
The idea that they had briefings was – sickening? Or just sick. So today Bevington is going to want the new girl, naked and waiting…
We all froze, listening. "Time to go," Lettie said. To my expression she said, "We have enough time to put everything back and then let's go."
Which was exactly what we did. We set Bevington's office to rights, the way we'd found it. I didn't have time to use the laptops to get photos, but I would the coming night. Now I knew what I needed I could come do directly this. My heart pounded a little at the idea of at least another 24 hours in this place, but even if I'd sent the photos to Cole tonight and gotten confirmation he had them, there'd be the question of how to get out.
By the time security came to the door, knocked peremptorily and stuck their heads in to count bodies, we were under the covers, eyes closed, tremors running through our bodies.
Tonight, I told myself as sleep claimed me. Tonight we would get everything we needed to take him down.
We were awake again earlier than any of us wanted, and the previous day repeated itself: the food, the workouts, the showers, the classes. But in between we exchanged information.
