out and join in on the fun. Which do you prefer, huh? Me, or both of us?” he spits harshly, though keeping his tone hushed. It would seem he wants me to himself, so he’ll stay quiet for now.
Tears burn the backs of my eyes, and I nod my head quickly, hoping to
assuage him. The drugs tend to get them riled up, and their tempers are unpredictable.
“Good girl,” he croons, loosening his grip. “I want you to turn around, push
down those pants, and touch your toes. I want to fuck you from behind.”
My mind races as I pivot, keeping my movements slow as I try to figure out
what the hell I’m going to do. There’s no way I’m just going to let this asshole
rape me again.
He nudges me firmly, “Hurry up.”
“Let me set my bag down first,” I whisper, voice shaky. He harrumphs but doesn’t protest, so I bend down, deftly grab the knife and slide it out, hoping my body is concealing what I’m doing.
“Fucking slow-ass bitch,” he curses, growing impatient and tugging at my
waistband, attempting to slide them down for me.
I straighten, which allows him to get them halfway down my ass before I’m
twisting at the waist and slashing out my knife. The blade cuts through his
throat, and his eyes widen, nearly silent from the shock.
And I spring into action, pulling up my pants, quickly grabbing the sack, the
stupid fucking water bottles, and booking it out of the door, leaving Jerry to choke on his blood.
The muscle in my chest pounds so hard that it hurts as I skitter across the porch and down the rickety steps, barely pausing when I spot the two dead bodies piled next to the stairs. The guards—their throats are slit open.
Panting, I round the house towards the back. Rio is nowhere to be found, and
I pray to god he got the hell away already.
Because he may be the only one to get out of here alive.
Chapter 21
The Hunter
“Motherfucker, I will fuck you up,” Daire snaps from his computer chair, his
chin tipped over his shoulder as he glares at me.
I roll my eyes. “You say that every time and never do.”
I wouldn’t mind if he tried. These men are trained killers just as I am, and a
good old-fashioned fistfight might serve to release some of the tension crammed
in my muscles. The weight of carrying frustration, anger, and anxiety in my bones is taking a toll. I’ve gone out on a few missions to take down rings in Oregon to relieve some stress, but it’s never enough.
I push away and pace the floor behind him. His office is inside the vault, but
you wouldn’t be able to tell if it wasn’t for the door. They hollowed out the room
and transformed it into a basement. Right at the round entrance is a staircase that
leads you down to the bottom, which has been expanded to run beneath the ground floor, where Kace’s work area is. Just like the rest of the bank, it’s washed in browns, creams, and blacks; all of it screams money.
So of course, his get-up is a computer nerd’s wet dream. His desk takes up an
entire wall, filled with monitors and TV screens hanging above. LED lights flash
colorfully around the room, highlighting the sharp edges of Daire’s face as he searches through his channels again, checking to see if Addie was tagged in any locations.
“You’re looming over me. I can feel your breath on the back of my fucking
neck.”
I exhale extra heavily, prompting him to whip around and send a fist flying towards my dick. I easily avoid it, but he manages to surprise me and stomp on my foot with his, forcing me to step back.
Touché.
“You hover worse than a wife checking over her cheating husband’s
shoulder,” he snips.
“I would say the scorned wife and I both have valid reasons.”
He grumbles something under his breath, leaning his face farther into the computer as he checks over the grid. His pet kneels beside us, head cast down, but I catch the hint of a smile on her face.
“Did you find out where Jillian and Gloria came from?” I ask.
Daire shakes his head. “Not yet. I can easily trace the ones kept in a holding
facility—like the ones you take down—because those are checkpoints for girls to be transported to and from. But many of the victims are taken to groomers before they’re auctioned, and those are usually residential houses and oftentimes off-grid to protect the homeowners. Whoever Francesca is, she’s obviously a groomer and a well-hidden one.”
He has an entire map of transportation routes and checkpoints and insists that
he would know if Addie were put up for sale or transported. There are minimal
places to list girls for sale on the dark web, even for those who are selling their
own children for profit, and Daire has access to every one of those channels.
There is also an entire network for the auctions, moving girls to and from holding facilities, and other events where high-profile people can buy women and children, which Daire also has access to.
But Addie is too high-risk to be put through those standard processes. Claire
is smarter than that. So, we’ve shifted our focus to tracking down this Francesca
woman, but there are no homes in the state of Oregon owned by her.
“What was their last known location before they disappeared?” I ask. We’ve
been narrowing our search down to surrounding towns within an hour’s drive from Jacksonville—where the auction was held—but unless they have cameras within or outside of the house, we have no way to confirm if Addie is inside any
of them.
“Prior to being auctioned, Gloria was last seen getting into a vehicle in Grants
Pass, and Jillian was picked up in Portland. She has records for prostitution, so
she most likely was being trafficked beforehand that way.”
“Those cars are dead ends?”
“Yep,” he confirms. “Drove somewhere with no cameras and never seen
again from there.”
“Fuck,” I curse, beginning to pace again. It’s the same ordeal with Xavier Delano. We were able to track his flight to Portland, Oregon, and a town car that drove him to the outskirts, but he fucking disappears again after that. They’ve taken every fucking precaution to make sure there is no trail leading to this house.
Daire clicks through a map as he says, “There are hundreds of thousands of