Page 70 of Nightfire

“Three more,” he said again and left the room, closing the sound-proofed door behind him.

Consuelo came to her senses slowly. She was cold. Terribly cold, down to her bones, in a way she’d never been before. Born in Tijuana, living in San Diego, she’d never experienced true cold, had never seen snow. Now, it was as if she were encased in ice.

She opened her eyes, at first not recognizing what she was seeing. A flat expanse, a reflecting surface. She stared for a long time until she finally understood. Water. Water all over.

She blinked and things started to come into focus. She was lying on the floor, naked, in a pool of water. She shivered convulsively, mind blank.

She had no idea how long she lay there, shivering and shaking on the cold tile floor, moving only her eyes. Nothing made sense. She was used to being naked—that was how she worked, after all—but not like this. She felt more than naked, she felt stripped bare of everything, even her humanity.

It was coming back in slow, painful stages. The cruelty of the Russian’s eyes, the endless questions, the near drownings.

She couldn’t remember how many times that horrible cloth had been put over her face but she did remember that desperate shock of knowing that she was drowning, being on the verge of death, then brought back to life at the last possible second, gasping and shaking, numb with fear.

And the Russian, carefully watching her, with no expression on his face. It was almost worse than some of her customers who secretly liked inflicting pain. They had a sly smile as they sneaked in a hard pinch, pulled her hair too hard. There was always a secretive smile, because they were doing what they liked best—hurting.

This was nothing like that. The Russian didn’t like what he was doing to her. He didn’t dislike it, either. He was totally indifferent. There was no doubt that, if he felt it helped him in any way, he’d have ordered his man to keep pouring water over the cloth until she drowned for real. But she still earned the Meteor Club good money, so she wasn’t killed.

None of it meant anything to him.

Of course, Consuelo had never meant anything to the men who bought her, she knew that. But this was one level down from the horror of the Meteor Club. And they were all going to stay deep down at this level, since the Russians were here to stay. Word had it that they were pumping so much money into the Club, they could kill her and her friends and use the skins for coats, for all Sands cared.

She rose shakily, hand slipping in the water, landing face down on the floor again. Getting up seemed impossible, something beyond her.

She was broken inside.

Often after sex sessions, she was left hurting in some way. Most men went to prostitutes because they could treat a woman exactly as they pleased. A wife, a girlfriend expected certain attentions which some men found difficult to give. Something built up inside them they had to release during sex for pay.

Consuelo was used to feeling used and thrown away, brought low by lust and coldness. But this was something else again. This was a level of darkness and cruelty she’d never even suspected existed, and she knew she’d touched rock bottom. Any further down and she would die.

Consuelo had felt the dark wings of death brush her. The long-forgotten teachings of the nuns in the Tijuana slums when she was a tiny child, before her mother abandoned her, suddenly rose in her mind. She had a soul, and it had just been touched by the Devil himself.

Consuelo knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she had to get out. For her life. For her soul.

She couldn’t stay one second longer.

The ground was slippery and she was shaking, weak. She had to get up, get up now. She had to get away from this place as fast as she could.

Sands treated the girls relatively well. Consuelo knew that when he’d found her, an abandoned girl living on the streets, he’d saved her life. God knows he’d told her often enough.

And he’d waited until she was fifteen to turn her over to the life. She recognized now that it wasn’t his goodness of heart, but a cold-eyed business decision. First had come intensive English lessons, deportment, long talks with the older women. He’d turned her into an upscale prostitute who earned him much more money than she would have on the street.

She’d been so grateful. It shamed her to realize that she’d been a little in love with Sands all these years. She’d wake up having dreamt that they got married and had children. The dreams left a lingering warmth that lasted until the first trick of the day.

Fool. She was a fool. And if she didn’t want to be a dead fool, she was going to have to move fast.

The core of chill was still there but her muscles felt stronger now. Able to bear her weight. Fear and dread and determination fuelled her as she placed the palms of her hands on the slick floor.

She looked around for a second to see what she could cling to if her legs wouldn’t bear her up and that’s when she saw it. A small metal object on the floor behind an armchair. If you weren’t lying with your face on the floor you wouldn’t see it unless you were behind the chair, looking down.

It belonged to him, to the ruso. She had an almost tactile memory of him carelessly flinging a dark leather jacket over the chair back, not paying attention because there was work to be done. A woman to torture.

She slithered through the water, pulling herself along by her elbows, reached out and picked it up. A small object with a removable cap. A thumb drive.

Nothing about the outside of the small metallic object gave any indication of what it was, what was contained within it. Consuelo only hoped it would be something that could harm the ruso.

She lay on the cold, wet floor for a while, panting, clutching the thumb drive in her fist until it warmed up, the only source of warmth in the entire world.

Finally, she pushed with her hands and sat up, head swimming, nauseous. After another minute she pulled herself to her feet with the help of the chair.