chapter 7
Liv found Van downstairs in the sitting room, reclined in the armchair, a lit cigarette drooping from his lips. She stiffened as he patted his knee in invitation, his eyes twin sparks of silver in the glow of his phablet, the room’s only light.
The way he looked at her chilled her skin, even as his smoke-curled smile made her heart ache for things he could never give.
Spine steeled against the brutal beauty of his face, she put one sneaker before the other, plucked the cig from his mouth, and perched on his knee. “Ready?”
Moving his arms around her waist, he rested his chin on her shoulder and reached for the device.
“Been ready since the day I met you.”
Her skin itched where his breath touched her cheek, where his leg pressed against her ass, where his arms brushed her hips. He was both an infectious rash and a soothing touch.
She finished the final drag on the cigarette and squashed it in the ashtray, eyes on the blank screen.
He launched their e-mail account, the inbox empty. Empty for nine weeks. She stared at it, willing it to beep, her exhale trapped in her chest.
A tap on the screen made the phone call. Another tap, and he switched it to speaker mode, his free arm draped over her thigh. The call connected on the first ring.
“Any problems?” Crisp and deep, the voice dragged a shudder from her lungs.
“No, sir,” she and Van said in chorus.
The inbox dinged, announcing a new message with an attached file.
“The recording is five minutes old,” Mr. E said, “and two minutes long. I’ll wait.” Van clicked on the video file and leaned back. She bent toward it, where it perched in his outstretched hand.
On the screen, a woman in her late-forties sat at a table in a kitchen that had become familiar from this camera angle. Wisps of gray curled through her short brown hair, her hands folded around the mug she stared into. If she glanced up, her eyes would be a deep warm brown, set in the determined expression of a woman who had birthed a child on the heels of an abusive relationship. A woman whose passion for skydiving came second to her love for her only child. The woman who said that anyone could fall; the skill was in landing.
When she’d learned her missing daughter’s remains had been found in an abandoned house, she’d cried for weeks as Liv watched through video footage from her attic prison. But Mom knew how to land. A few weeks before Liv’s one-year incarceration as a slave ended, Mom moved on to a new job and a new home.
The ache to find that kitchen in the video festered inside her. While she had the freedom to run errands, scout for new victims, and—not often enough—skydive, her movements were monitored.
With anxious discretion, she slipped in and out of public libraries, hunting the web for Jill Reed the skydiving instructor, the pilot, the grieving mother. There were too many skydiving schools, too many Jill Reeds.
She scrutinized Mom’s sleeveless shirt. Tepid climate in October? Could’ve been anywhere along the Gulf. Were the creases in her hair from long hours beneath a skydiving helmet? Or a ponytail holder, pulled back for any job? The print on the newspaper at her elbow was too small to read, and the blinds were closed on the window. No new clues, every recorded clip too meticulously selected before delivery.
The sudden impulse to demand the location from Mr. E cramped her gut and heated her face. Last time she did that, he slapped her with his two-week version of house arrest. So she crushed her reckless notion behind pinned lips and traced a finger over the beloved image on the screen.
She earned three video sessions per slave. One the evening of the capture. One after a successful first meeting between buyer and slave. And one when she made the final delivery and the funds were transferred to Mr. E’s account.
Only once had she received a video outside of this schedule. It had arrived after she’d forgotten to take her phone on a grocery errand. Her failure to respond immediately to one of Mr. E’s texts while she was out had earned her a video of Mom’s demolished car, lying on its side in a ravine.
Mom survived with three broken ribs and a shattered femur.
Her chest tightened at the memory and squeezed harder as she watched Mom stand from the table and move out of view of the camera. The video ended, frozen on the empty room.
Each time she watched the videos, she was reminded that she’d sold her soul and the lives of her captives to a man she couldn’t trust. Didn’t stop her pulse from strumming excitedly as her attention flew to the phablet’s notification bar. One more email would come, the video meant for her and Van.
“I expect,” Mr. E said, “you’ll meet your next deadline. Or your future viewings will only include one of the two videos.”
A knot lodged in her throat. It was a threat he could only use once. If he killed the only two people she loved, she would no longer have the incentive to work for him…or to go on.
“A camera was installed in the bedroom, and the recording is three hours old.” The line disconnected.
The lump in her throat loosened. “Did you hear that? Her bedroom, Van.” For six years, she’d imagined what it might look like.
“I heard.” There was a smile in his voice.
A new message alert popped up. She reached for the screen, colliding with his hand. Chuckling, he offered her the device. Then he wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned them forward on the edge of the seat, hunching over the five-inch screen. She tapped the file and the video player opened.
Red and brown whimsical birds winged a painted pattern over the bedroom wall. White lacy curtains draped the window, the shroud of night swallowing any clues that could point to location or climate. A red-checkered quilt blanketed the twin bed and the six-year-old girl within.
Liv’s breath stuttered, and she felt Van smile against her neck.
The girl grinned, front tooth missing, eyes heavy-lidded with trust and love. Her smile was for the blond woman who sat beside her.
Liv wanted to rejoice at seeing her happy and safe, but bitter jealousy was a noose, strangling her air and failing her heart.
He gripped the back of her free hand, lifting it with his and cupping their twined fingers around the screen. Their fingers an inch from the girl’s pixelated face was the closest they’d ever been to touching her. In her mind, she’d named her Mattie.
Warm breath flitted over the curve of her neck, his other arm a brace around her waist. At that moment, his affection was a quietude in shared happiness, their connection suspended in a twinkling of peace.
“She’s beautiful,” he murmured against her skin.
Dark brown hair curled from Mattie’s sweet face and fanned over the pillow. She laughed at something her adoptive mother said and rolled to her side, shut her eyes.
Liv imagined herself a mother, saying silly things to incite that beautiful, toothy smile. She wanted to call her name just to look into her eyes. She wanted to know her real name and hug her when she cried. What would it feel like to pick her up when she fell, to help her with homework, to watch her blow out birthday candles? It would have been a complete life.
A burn erupted behind her eyes, her fingers dragging Van’s up and down the edge of the screen.
She breathed deeply, tried to swallow the choking hopelessness.
The blond woman reached for the bedside lamp.
“No.” A whimper escaped Liv’s lips. “Not yet.”
Van moved their twined hands, hugging her arm to her waist. Her other hand held the device in a death grip. Mattie’s shoulders rose and fell with restful breaths, her little hand fisted in the blanket.
The lamp clicked off, drenching the screen in black. The video stopped.
Her heart plummeted. She wanted to restart it, tried to untangle her arm from his, but he held it pinned against her body. She balanced the phablet on her leg to punch the play button, and he snatched it away.
“No replays, Liv.” He forged his voice in an iron tone. “You know the rules.” Watch it once and delete it. Their phones were monitored and swapped out each time Mr. E
visited. No cameras and recordings allowed on the property. No evidence. No replays. No saved or copied files. No distractions from the job.
The job, the job, the job. Focus on the job. Be the job. Or else. It was all she was, a mechanical, hollow nothing that did anything needed to prevent the else.
A violent shudder snapped through her bones. As long as she lived, Mom and Mattie would be in danger. Her death would set them free. So many times, she came close but couldn’t do it. She was a weak, selfish cunt.
She pushed against his chest. “Let me go.”
His arm tightened against her waist. “The child will be fine.” The child.
“She’s your child.” Spit flew from her lips, her voice rising. “Our child.” He dropped the device and spun her off his lap. Her back hit the couch, the weight of him holding her down. Her pathetic struggle ended with her arms above her head, shackled by one of his hands, his other pointing at the phablet on the floor. “She’s not our child!” His volume hiked, matching hers.
“She belongs to that woman.”
“A woman who probably works for Mr. E!” In six years and twenty-one videos, the blonde’s face had never been revealed. Mattie’s life depended on Liv. A failure during the job or a fracture in the rules promised another accident. Mom had been meant to die in that car. Mattie wouldn’t be so lucky. Only Liv could protect her, and the safest way would be to hide her from Mr. E. She could be anywhere in the world. Liv desperately needed her name.
“Wipe that look off your face.” He pressed his hips against hers, the steel of his irises resistant and unfeeling. “Even if you could find her, you can’t take her from the only mother she’s ever known.”
“The way you snatched me from my mother?”
His lips thinned into hard lines with clenched teeth in the middle. “Back to this again?”
“You started this when you accepted his proposal. You chose to ruin people’s lives.” He released her arms, standing tall and imposing, and glared down at her. “Mr. E started it when he freed me from that goddamned slum.” He stabbed a finger at the front door as if indicating the direction of his crackhaggot mother. She slung drugs in Ell Paso, assuming she still lived. Liv knew he didn’t care either way.
Mr. E had freed him from his victimized life, trained him to be a deliverer, and paid him to kidnap a girl of his choice. Lucky for him, his choice ignorantly roller-bladed up to his car.
Her chest ached, her body felt cold. “You broke his rules.”
He’d taken her virginity not long after capture. Eight weeks later, he delivered her to the client, claiming she met the requirements of obedience and chastity. The former was accurate. Van had well and truly whipped the insolence out of her and replaced it with the trap of fear. The chastity, however, was disproved when the buyer brought in a doctor while Van waited for the exam results and the money transfer. The positive pregnancy test was a shock to everyone. Except Van.
She sat up, unable to glance away from the scar that perforated his prominent cheekbone, his face otherwise model-perfect from his clear, round eyes and full lips to the high, smooth bridge of his strong nose. His complexion glowed so vibrantly with health, one could almost overlook the four-inch red cut. The laceration Mr. E had given him when the buyer returned her without payment. The mate to the one she’d received minutes after his.
He watched her with a toothpick in his mouth and the harsh lines of intention etched around his eyes. “I saved you.”
Did he save her by impregnating her before she was sold? Or when he pleaded for her life as Mr.
E held the gun to her head upon her return? What did a human trafficker want with a pregnant slave?
In the end, Mr. E gave Van what he’d wanted: Her.
“Yeah, you saved me.” She clenched and unclenched her hands. “Instead of a life as a sex slave or a bullet in the brain, I got a disfigured face, my tubes tied, an illegal job, and a promise that I will never hug the only two people who matter to me.”
His darkening expression blasted her anger to her stomach. That look had trained her to avert her eyes and drop to her knees. But sometimes, in the dark, the intensity of his stare and the openness of his lust almost felt like love.
A muscle jumped in his cheek. “Someday, I hope to matter to you, because you are the only one who matters to me. You will always be mine, Liv.”
The promise propelled her to the night he’d preyed on her fear of him, comforting her while piercing past her virginal barrier. In that moment of frailty, wrapped in his strong arms, that scared, lonely girl had wanted nothing more than his devotion. She should’ve fought, should’ve retained some inkling of dignity.
That girl had realized, too late, something wasn’t quite right with his adoring smile. After that night, the matching scars, and the loss of Mattie, that girl fell so far the hand of God couldn’t pull her back. If manufacturing sex slaves in the house of evil was the only way to protect Mom and Mattie, to hell with God and everyone else.
Van rolled the toothpick between his lips and knelt in the V of her legs. “Shall we head to bed?” The desire in his eyes knocked her backward. She pulled her knees up and pivoted, scrambling off the couch. “I have a job to do.”
He caught her before she reached the stairs, slamming her back against the wall, his lips a toothpick away from hers. His hand moved over her waist, fingers slipping beneath her waistband.
The way his breath hitched and the heat melting his steely eyes swept an uninvited warmth through her womb. When he spit the pick on the floor and slanted his mouth toward hers, she jerked her face away. Damn, his f*cking lips. His kisses were potent, and she was too emotionally exhausted to pretend like they weren’t.
A strong finger on her chin turned her face back to his. “Don’t you dare look away from me.” He captured her bottom lip between his, nuzzling, and pulled back. Her heart raced and her weak f*cking knees wobbled. His gaze roamed over her eyes, hair, and mouth, gorging on every detail. “Christ, Liv, you’re so f*cking beautiful.”
She shivered at the compliment. Or was it the nausea tumbling her stomach? Why wasn’t she fighting him? Spitting and punching and running away? Was it his strength holding her against the door? The conditioning instilled in her as a slave? The connection they shared through Mattie? Or was it as shallow as lust in the proximity of those stark gray eyes and talented lips?
He shoved a hand through her hair and licked the corner of her mouth. “I won’t touch your defenses. Just give me everything else.”
Yet he’d already taken everything, and her walls against him were splintering. Even if she could bring herself to kill him, she was restrained by the contract on Mom and Mattie’s lives. A contract that would mobilize a hit man if he or Mr. E died suspiciously.
Her chest hurt, and her heartbeat thrashed in her ears. Sure, she could run. She could disappear somewhere they couldn’t find her. But Mr. E had promised that if she vanished, he’d make Mom and Mattie’s death so vile, it would reach national attention. Just to ensure it reached her attention.
Trapped in paranoia, she was terrified to make a mistake, her every action watched, judged, and used to threaten her family. Her nerves were so raw, she trusted nothing, connected to no one, and her loneliness was exasperated by her complicated f*cking relationship with the man peppering kisses over her lips. She wanted to love him even as her fingers twitched to run a blade across his throat.
She spoke against his persistent mouth. “If the boy is suffocating on his own vomit, I won’t be around long enough to give you anything.”
His face tightened. “Very well. Go check on him.” He stepped back to give her just enough room to slip around him. As she did, a recognizable pang assaulted her scalp. She didn’t have to look back to know he held a chunk of her hair in his fist.
His creepy hair-thing fueled her race up the stairs, to the safety of her bedroom and to the boy she would destroy to keep her family alive.