AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It did. It was exactly what you saw back there. Women being caught and sold...tortured. Only Gregor got out of hand over here. I can’t imagine his boss expected torture like he was doing it.”
“The other women were fine according to what I saw. Just traumatized. I’m sure they were raped but not tortured.”
Maybe it was just her and the cop that Gregor got carried away with? Screaming wasn’t exclusive to people being tortured. The women would perhaps have been worth tens or even hundreds of thousands to the right buyer. They had this huge set-up. Implanted them with contraceptives. So for them to make an exception for Jazmine, the Client must have been paying a lot of money. Why?
I jerked forward and sat up. “If you have a job or two, I’d consider it.”
“More than that. You know if you want to commit, I can let you in for regular work that pays very well. I need reliable men for shotgun duty. You can share a house in the compound with Jurgen and his lady? Or even bed down here?”
“Okay.” I nodded. It was either this or I could try construction work. I had some possibilities there too. It paid less, but it was legal. “Tomorrow, as soon as you find out, tell me who she is.”
“I will. Though the way you said that, you don’t think you know who she is.” Flat statement, but he’d hit the nail on the head.
“No. I don’t.”
“That’s...not comforting.”
“Yeah. So true.”
I drank the last of the beer, rested it back in the circle of condensation on the polished timber table. That gap in my facts was scary and frustrating but finding out the truth, now that was exciting.
Confronting her might make my day.
Chapter 26
The strip of plastic I’d found was from a clothing label, from the looks of it. When wriggled into the door latch, it’d let me, eventually, after hours of fucking around with it, open the damn thing.
My one advantage – this house wasn’t made to be a prison, just secure against criminal gangs like the raskols. From memory, most of the foreigners in Papua New Guinea lived in these secured compounds.
The house was dark. Early still. Too early and the darkness would terrify me. I just knew it would. The crime rate here was high and a foreigner on the streets in the early hours after midnight, especially a woman, would be robbed, assaulted, and raped. As a journalist I’d heard all the stories coming out of Port Moresby.
I needed money, maybe a phone.
In the early dawn, I sneaked downstairs with a small purse, empty, but it made a good prop, and to my desperate relief, found a wallet in a bowl in the side room near the front door. Being in a secure compound had obviously left Glass certain no one could rob him.
But no phone. Shit. I was going to have to take a chance.
What was I going to do? If this place was alarmed, I was up the creek with no paddle. I opened the front door and tensed, waiting for the blare...nothing. I shut it behind me quietly, and set off down the short road toward the obvious entry, my little tan sandals clip-clopping.
A guard stood there in a khaki uniform. Sparrows pecked at and swooped across a stretch of mowed lawn to the side. The sky...was so blue. I smiled and felt buoyed up by this unexpected dose of beauty.
“Excuse me ma’am. Where would you be going?”
Be bold. “I’m a...lady friend of Glass and I need to get to the nearest corner shop. Is there anywhere open yet?” I smiled and flipped my hair off my shoulder, trying to act like a pretty girlfriend and not an escaped prisoner.
“I think so, yes. Can I call you a taxi? I have a friend. He’s honest and a good driver.”
Oh god, oh god. Yes!
I broadened my smile. ‘Yes. Please do that.”
“Did you know you didn’t turn off the alarm before you opened the door?”
Fuck. Think!
Did he suspect me? If he did I was screwed. I made myself not look past him. That might be a red flag that I was thinking about escaping into the street. If I ran, if the guard didn’t catch me, Glass and Pieter would. Or if not, I’d still be lost in the streets.
“Damn. No I didn’t. Can you fix that? I wanted to surprise him with a proper cooked breakfast and all the man has is canned stuff.”
