Sexual Games [The Heroes of Silver Springs 8] (Siren Publishing Classic) (25 page)

“We are, sir. Just tell us where you want us.”

“I’ve already got men manning the trucks. What I need is another on the nozzle. You got turnouts?”

“Yes, sir, back in the trunk of the car.”

“Suit up.” The lieutenant shifted his attention to Terri. “EMT, right? Medical equipment is in the rescue. I’ve got both my men from there fighting this fire. See if you can get Agent Stone to let you have a look at his burns.”

Thaddeus started to turn when he heard the lieutenant’s words. His gaze flicked to Cameron, raked over him, and halted on his right arm. A four-inch patch of flesh on his forearm was red and shiny, with white areas already starting to blister. “Oh my God, baby, you’re hurt.”

“I’m fine. Thaddeus, Mallory is inside there.”

A chill unlike anything Thaddeus had ever felt washed through him. He shot a glance at the building and raced to his car, digging his keys out of his pocket as he ran. He wrenched the trunk open, yanked the zipper of his gear bag, and pulled out his turnouts.

Methodical movements carried him through the process of suiting up. Each routine step of pulling on the turnout pants, coat, and waterproof boots, sliding the Nomax hood over his head and covering that with his helmet and connected face shield was habit more than thought. Good thing, too, because his thoughts were on Cameron’s last words.

Cameron’s sister was inside that building.
Dear God, there’s no way she’s still alive.

Thaddeus double-timed it back to the lieutenant, delving his hands in his thick, fire-retardant gloves as he ran. He shut off the thoughts of Cameron’s sister, buried the fear for her rising inside him, and focused his mind on the job. Despite the habitualness of it, the act of battling this fire would demand his full attention.

He halted in front of the lieutenant. “Where do you want me, sir?”

“Grab the extra crosslay and find a point of attack. We need to surround this thing if we’re going to get it under control. There’s a spare SCBA on the engine. Grab it, too.”

“Yes, sir.” Thaddeus followed the command, finding the self-contained breathing apparatus and sliding the face mask over his mouth and nose before snagging the already-charging crosslay hose. Clean, cool oxygen filled his nostrils as he headed for the flames.

* * * *

Jackson stood on the sidelines with Cooper and Waterston PD task force leader, Jerry Blanchard, watching as more than twenty firefighters fought to put out the fire in front of them. There was nothing he could do, and the knowledge of that cut into his soul. Nothing he could do and no way Mallory could have made it out of there alive.

Toshie had called them back seconds after they reached the scene with the news that the signal from Mallory’s GPS had gone off radar. It hadn’t moved. It had simply gone out.

It had been burnt out, Jackson knew. Toshie had designed the GPS to be waterproof but not fireproof. The loss of that signal had brought with it a loss of hope Jackson fought desperately not to feel, hope he knew deep down to be futile as he looked at what remained of the building that was once the Stardust Club.

He and Cooper had been at the scene now for nearly a half hour. The firefighters had skillfully gotten the fire under control. The front half of the building looked to be out, leaving nothing but a charred frame.

“I’ve got my men combing the area,” Jerry Blanchard said. “Damn near every cop on duty in this town is out here somewhere right now.”

“I’ve got an agent inside that building.” Cooper sounded livid. “And one of the bastards we’re looking for is one of your guys.”

“I’m aware of that,” Blanchard said hotly. “My guys won’t hesitate to bring Kenneth Reese in when he’s found. We don’t tolerate traitors in this department.”

Jackson stopped listening to Cooper and Blanchard’s conversation and focused on the reports coming through the firefighter radios he could hear.

“Still some hot spots in here.”

“Nothing left but debris.”

“Structure is compromised…be lucky if what’s left of this place doesn’t collapse on our heads.”

“Cut the chatter!” One forceful voice came through above the others, silencing the radio waves. “Lieutenant, I’ve got a body in here. It’s, oh, God, it’s—” The firefighter stopped talking, and all Jackson heard was the sound of retching.

Jackson stumbled backward, slamming into the fender of a nearby car as his world spun.

* * * *

Mallory’s head ached, but not from banging against the van floor this time. It couldn’t be. This pain was internal, a sharp dagger stabbing incessantly across her forehead from temple to temple, and rather than the cold, metal floor, she felt something soft beneath her. She forced herself to open eyes that felt glued together, and the pain worsened as light penetrated the foggy darkness.

“You’re awake.” The female voice, sweet, young, and gushing with relief came from somewhere beside her.

Mallory turned her head slowly to her right, groaning as the pain skated down her neck, and struggled to focus on the voice and her surroundings. The light came from a fluorescent bulb overhead. The softness beneath her was a bed in an otherwise seemingly empty room, empty but for the voice.

“Here. Drink some of this.” The bed dipped and she turned her head left. A girl, eighteen at most, sat beside her, holding a plastic cup. “It’s safe. No drugs. I promise. I drank half of it myself to make sure first.”

Drugs? Mallory grappled to make sense of the girl’s words. It hurt to concentrate, but somehow she knew she must.

“What happened?” It hurt to talk, too. Her throat felt scratchy, dry, and bruised. She lifted a shaking hand and took the cup of water.

“I don’t know exactly what he did to you,” the girl answered. “Careful. Don’t drink it too fast or you’ll throw up.”

Mallory drank the water slowly, her eyes closing as the room-temperature liquid soothed her aching throat. “Who?” She strained to remember. Her last clear thought was being in Jackson’s office, going off on him for leaving her last night.

No, she remembered more after that. She remembered promising him, in not so many words, she wouldn’t remove the anklet and that she would use the alert device in her earrings at the first sign of trouble.

“Jim,” the girl told her. “I don’t know if that’s really his name, but that’s what he calls himself.”

Jim. The name jarred Mallory’s memory further with a painful clarity that nearly made her eyes explode. She remembered arriving at Stardust, talking with Sasha, and Betty leading her to the office where “Jim” and the other men had been waiting.

“His real name is Wade Forbes,” she said softly, handing the cup back to the girl. She paused when the girl reached to take the cup and didn’t let go of it. “You drank half of that first. Why?”

“To make sure it wasn’t drugged.” The girl pulled the cup from Mallory’s fingers and set it on the floor by the bed. “He does that, puts drugs in the food and drink he gives us.”

“You were trying to keep me from being drugged?” It was getting easier to focus, though only marginally. She studied the girl with long dark hair, blue eyes, a slender face, and an equally slender build. A dark bruise on her left cheek and another on the right side of her jaw marred her otherwise-pretty face. Mallory saw other bruises, too, on the girl’s wrists and the top of her thighs the plain T-shirt she wore failed to hide. Despite her red-rimmed eyes and the puffy bags beneath them, she didn’t look like someone who would have wanted the drugs for herself.

“I’m weak, tired, and still woozy from all the drugs he’s been pumping into me. I knew the food and drink was drugged and held out for as long as I could, but I had to eat, had to drink. You just got here. I was hoping you would be stronger.” Her eyes filled with tears she didn’t attempt to hold back. “I was hoping you could help me.”

Mallory pushed herself up and pulled the girl into her arms. What had Forbes done to this girl? He had obviously beaten her, and the marks around her wrists were telltale signs of being tied down. Though she didn’t want to think about the implications of that, she had to know.

“Has he hurt you?”

The question made the girl cry harder. Sobs racked her body, and she squeezed Mallory so hard it reminded her again of the pain in her solar plexus and belly, the ache that had only dulled a smidgen since the powerful kicks Forbes had given her.

“What’s your name?” Mallory tried a different question, softly smoothing her hand down the back of the girl’s hair. If felt matted, dirty, as if it hadn’t been washed in months.

“Sophie,” the girl managed on a ragged breath. “Sophie Reese”

Mallory gasped and drew back to look at the girl. “Sophie
Reese
? Do you know Kenneth Reese?”

Hatred more acute than any Mallory had ever witnessed dried Sophie’s tears. “He’s the reason Jim, or whatever you called him, took me. Jim said he was using me to keep Kenneth in line. That’s why he didn’t sell me like the others yet. But he”—she gulped and the tears started to flow again— “he plans to. He said there are a lot of men dying to get hold of a child like me.”

Dear God.
Mallory didn’t ask Sophie her age. She had first thought she was eighteen, but it didn’t really matter. Sixteen or twenty, the girl was too young to be mixed up in something like this. Any woman of any age was.

“He’s wrong.” Sophie viciously swiped at her tears. “Jim, he’s wrong. Kenneth doesn’t give a shit about me. Money makes his world go around. That’s all he’s ever cared about, and he’s never given a damn about who gets hurt in the process of him getting it, even people who love him.”

“I think you’re wrong.” Mallory remembered the constant ticking she had seen in Kenneth’s jaw, the tip he had given the bureau that led them to Erin Griffin’s body, the haunted look in his eyes. She understood it now. It all made sense. “Kenneth has done some terrible things, probably a lot that I don’t even know about, but I believe he’s done them to protect you.”

“How do you know my brother?” Sophie’s tone rang with fear and suspicion now. She backed away, quickly moving off the bed to stand next to it. “How do you know Jim’s real name?”

“I’m Mallory. Mallory Stone. I’m a special agent with the Waterston branch of the FBI.”

Sophie’s eyes widened to the size of saucers. “You’re an FBI agent?”

“Yes, my team has been investigating a string of missing women, young women between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-eight. All of them worked as strippers at a club called Stardust. Kenneth is part of a task force the Waterston PD set up to aid us in investigations of human trafficking. Sexual slavery,” she clarified. “We didn’t find out until this morning that Kenneth was working for Forbes, Jim, too.”

“Did Natalie work at Stardust, too? And Lexie?”

“You’ve seen them?”

Sophie nodded. “They took Natalie out of here early this morning. She wasn’t here long, a few hours at most. Lexie was here when they brought me in, but then they took her out to let her go to the bathroom and I never saw her again.”

“Yes, they are two of the women we’ve been looking for.”

“How many more are there?”

“At least four that we know of, maybe more.” Mallory prayed there weren’t more. “Do you know what happened to them? Do you know where he took them?”

Sophie’s gaze dropped to the floor. “He sold them. After he took Lexie, I kept demanding to know what happened to her, and he said she was with her new master now.”

“He didn’t use any names or tell you anything more?”

Sophie shook her head and looked up at Mallory apologetically. “I lost it when he told me that. If he did, I don’t remember. I was so drugged up at the time I could hardly think straight. Then, when he started telling me the things a master does to his slave, things that would happen to me when he finally decided to sell me I…I lost it.” Her face crumpled again, and she sank back down on the side of the bed.

“It’s okay. I probably would have lost it, too.” Mallory stroked Sophie’s back and waited a beat, until Sophie’s breathing steadied once more. “Sophie, you have to tell me what he’s done to you. You said he’s been drugging you. What else has he done? Has he hurt you?”

“He took pictures of me.” Sophie’s voice shook. She took a deep breath, but it didn’t help to steady her words. “Naked pictures he said he would use when he got ready to find me a new m-master. And he r–raped me.”

Mallory felt the blood drain from her face as Sophie put voice to her worst fears.

“I don’t know how many times,” Sophie whispered. “I lost count. I think he let others do it, too. One night I was so drugged I can barely remember anything, but I have these nightmares of at least two other men touching me, doing t–things to me that seem too vivid to be dreams.” Her entire body stiffened and she whirled on Mallory. “I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to think about it.”

“Okay,” Mallory said quickly, gently. “We don’t have talk about that anymore. You aren’t drugged now, at least you don’t seem to be.”

“Because I haven’t eaten anything he’s brought me in days, haven’t drank anything either until I had some of the water he left for you. I told you he puts stuff in it. That’s how he got me. I was at a party. My friends talked me into going to a rave. I didn’t want to go. I heard about all the drugs, ecstasy and roofies and special K and stuff that goes around at those kinds of parties. My friends swore it wasn’t that kind of rave.”