Chapter Fourteen
I wait for hours at Stuckey’s. I hate waiting, but I know Elliot is coming because Atticus tells me he’s on his way. Just as we suspected, he frantically tried to get in touch with the man he thought he sold me to. When he couldn’t, he booked a flight. Atticus and his team are on top of this. They even have a copy of his car rental information. He’ll be driving a gray Kia Sedona.
I’m dressed the part of a victim. Short, ripped skirt, stained shirt, worn shoes. My hair is a mess, I’m devoid of makeup, save for some eyeshadow I’ve used to enhance the natural circles under my eyes. I look so convincing that the waitress who comes to pour me coffee keeps asking if I’m okay, if she should call someone. I tell her someone’s on the way, and that I’m fine, just tired. And I am. I’ve told Atticus that when all this is over, I plan to spend a day in bed. Sleeping.
It’s late afternoon when I see the Sedona with rental tags pull into the parking lot. Elliot climbs out and squints against the bright sunlight. He’s a creature of darkness. He must really be frightened to be out of his element.
I know that Atticus has been tracking his cellular communication. On the way he called an encrypted number four times. One of the conversations lasted twenty minutes. I don’t tell Atticus, but this scares me. I’m certain that I can handle Elliot, but whoever he’s in contact with is an unknown.
He looks like any other nerdy guy, standing there scanning the dining room in his button- down shirt and khakis. He looks harmless. But looks can be deceiving. I know it would be more convincing to jump from the table, run over, and throw my arms around him in relief. But seeing him there, seeing his worried look and knowing that worry is over the problems I’ve caused by still being alive… I clench my fist under the table, imagining how good it would feel to drive it into his face.
Yeah, I’m over Elliot.
“Maeve?” He manages to sound almost sad when he spots me. He walks over and sits across from me. “You look like shit.”
Typical Elliot. This is why he doesn’t have friends.
“Yeah,” I say. “And I feel like it.” I sniffle, wipe a dirty hand across my face, and begin to cry. “Elliot, if I’d only known what a fucking awful idea this was.”
He reaches out and puts his hand on mine. He never touches me. His is cold. “It’s going to be okay.” He pauses. “So what kind of information did you get from this guy? Do you have it with you?”
If this were a real situation, how would former Maeve react? She’d be shocked and confused. I act shocked and confused.
“Elliot?” I shake my head. “Did you hear what I said to you on the phone? He raped me. He hurt me!”
He picks up on my cue and pretends to care. “That’s awful,” he says. “I’m so sorry. I was sure he was a decent guy. You know I’d never deliberately put you in harm’s way.” He licks his lips. His eyes shift left to right. He reminds me of a lizard that wants a fly it can’t quite reach. “But this information. You said it could be the key to putting him away. What is it?”
“Elliot,” I say. “I want to go home. Just take me home. I can tell you there.”
He manages what is supposed to be a reassuring smile as he stands, but it looks more like a pained grimace. He’s about to reach for me when his phone goes off. He’s reading a text message.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Nobody. A client. About some… computer stuff.” He helps me up.
“Can I use your phone?” I ask when we get in the car.
He looks at me nervously. “Why?”
“I want to check my bank balance,” I say. “I assume you put the money in my account, right? Like we talked about?”
I’m fucking with him now, going off script.
“No… I…” He drums his finger on the steering wheel as he pulls out of the lot. “I thought it might raise suspicions, that much money in your account.” He casts me a sidelong look. “I mean, if the truth came out, Maeve, you’d be the one in trouble. Prostitution is against the law. And if you try to say he kidnapped you, there’s plenty of evidence that you were complicit. He’s rich, Maeve. He’ll destroy you.”
“I don’t care,” I say. “I don’t care if I get in trouble.”
“Well, I do,” he says. “I care.”
Fuck you. I want to scream the words at him. Lying little son of a bitch.
“We’ll find a way to work all this out,” he says. His phone goes off again. This time he answers it. His responses to whoever is on the line are short. “Yeah. No. Yeah, that’ll work. When? Where? Yeah. Right.”
“Who was that?” I ask. “The client?”
If he catches the sarcasm in my voice, he pretends not to.
“Yeah,” he says, and focuses on the road.
I try not to be too obvious as I glance in the rearview mirror. Atticus told me that he’d be behind me, but that couldn’t follow directly on the rural road without raising suspicion. I try to remember the range of the wire. Five? Ten miles?
Elliot is driving faster than I like. He slows down when he sees blue lights in the distance. His nervousness is palpable, but the cause is an overturned produce truck. The police are setting up roadblocks and several drivers take advantage of the officers’ distraction to use the shoulder and drive past the wreck. Elliot does it, too, and I find myself looking back in fear. I can’t see the van, but the cops have put the last sawhorse in the road and are waving back any other car that tries to pass. There’s a line forming. Somewhere back there are the men I’m counting on to save me.
“What are you looking at?” Elliot’s tone is suspicious.
“I was just hoping nobody got hurt,” I lie.
“I don’t hear an ambulance,” Elliot looks in the rearview mirror. “Probably just scared the hell out of him. And some store won’t get its cantaloupes tonight.”
“Yeah.” I sit back in the seat. “Are we going to the airport?”
“In a bit,” he says. “I need to rest first. I wasn’t exactly planning on a rescue mission.”
“Are you mad at me?”
He glances over. “No. I just wish it had worked out is all. This complicates things, Maeve.”
“How? Because of the money?”
He doesn’t answer. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. I don’t push him. I don’t know if any of this is being recorded, anyway.
He drives for another thirty minutes until we come to the Elkwood Motor Lodge, and I know this meeting place has been set up by someone else, because Elliot is a germaphobe and won’t stay in any hotel where the sanitation grade isn’t one hundred percent. This place is a dive.
“Here?” I ask.
“You were expecting the fucking Ritz Carlton?” he asks. “A little appreciation would be nice, Maeve. I had to fly out here, rent a car, and pick you up. That cost money—money I don’t have.”
I long to tell the lying asshole that he does have money, that I know exactly how much was transferred into his virtual wallet. I’ve since learned that Bitcoin can be sold for real cash, and suspect that Elliot is quite comfortable both on and offline.
He’s on his phone again, texting. A moment later, he gets a return text.
“Let’s go,” he says.
“Where?”
“I told you. I want to rest.”
I follow him to the lobby. I have a bad feeling. He goes to the desk.
“Is there a room here for Simms?” he asks. “One is supposed to be booked?”
The hair stands up on the back of my neck. I didn’t hear him book a room.
“Nope.” The old man behind the desk is looking in a handwritten ledger. We don’t get many reservations. Don’t need ‘em. The only one we had came in earlier for a…” He squints. “A Deckert?”
“You mean DarkArt?” Elliot says the name quietly, and I feel my heart start to pound.
“Yeah.” The man looks up. “That you?”
Elliot glances at me and nods. The man hands him a key for Room 13.
“Come on,” he says.
“Room 13, huh?” I say, hoping against hope that Atticus is back in range, that he’ll hear this and know where I am.
The room is what I expect. Small and dingy, with a décor of rust and beige. The room smells like stale cigarette smoke. There’s a picture of a ship at sea on the wall. A stained push-button phone sits on a pressboard table beside menus for several greasy takeout joints.
“How long do you need to rest?” I ask Elliot. “I really want to get home.”
“Not long,” he says, and then pauses. “But first you have to tell me what you know.”
This is where I have to wing it.
“You want to know what I know?” I ask, sinking into a chair with scratchy upholstery. “I know that my life has been hell since I left. I know that selling myself like an object was the worst idea I ever had. The man who bought me? He took me to the woods. He dumped me there. He hunted me down, like an animal. He could have killed me. It’s a miracle that he didn’t. I know I was lucky. I know other women bought and sold aren’t. I know about the Dark Web and the kind of scum that trades there. It’s inhabited by losers and assholes and freaks. But you already know that, don’t you, Elliot?”
This isn’t going as planned. I was supposed to play dumb, but sitting here across from my former friend, realizing that his sole concern is what I know, rather than how I am… I don’t know how long it will be before his cohorts arrive. I don’t know if Atticus knows where I am. I could die here, but before I do, I will have the answer to the one burning question.
“Why, Elliot?” I ask.
I’m not really surprised when he pulls a gun from out of his waistband and calmly points it at me.
“Because life isn’t fair,” he says. “Because the world belongs to the cleverest. See, Maeve, society doesn’t appreciate men like me. They don’t appreciate genius. I never understood why any man would pay for a woman. But if men guided by their cocks are willing to shell out millions for women, why not exploit both? There’s too many people on the planet, anyway. People are bought and sold all the time. What makes you so fucking special?”
“I was your friend, Elliot.”
“Wrong,” he says. “You were just someone to split the rent.” He laughs. “I wasn’t born to be ordinary, Maeve. But this world, the world above… it doesn’t appreciate me. Now the Dark Web… There, I can be a king. But even there, you need a foot in the door.” He nods. “You were my foot in the door. I only pretended to be an average guy to earn your trust, but the whole time, I was grooming you. When you got the idea for the auction, I almost laughed. Here I was, thinking of a way to capitalize on my beautiful roommate, and she hands the idea to me. Yeah, I fooled you. But the money I made from you has helped me make real friends, powerful friends. And they’re going to fix this.”
The room falls silent. The clock on the wall is ticking away.
“Are you going to kill me, Elliot?”
“Not unless you make me,” he says. “To be honest, killing’s not my thing. It’s too messy. Like all great men, I plan to outsource the dirty work. But rest assured that by nightfall, you’ll be out of the way. As for the man who bought you? I’m sure he’s pissed that you escaped, but I have his contact information, and I’ll make good on his loss. All it takes is another stupid little bitch who’ll believe anything.”
“Elliot,” I say. “It doesn’t have to be like this. This is your chance to do the right thing.”
“I’m afraid it’s gone too far for that,” he says. “The right thing may be noble, but it won’t make me great.”
There’s a soft knock at the door. Elliot winks and rises, and as soon as he’s past I’m on my feet and reaching for the lamp on the table. It’s one of the old ones with a heavy base, and it’s a good thing I’ve been working out because swinging it takes some effort. Still the crack of it hitting the base of Elliot’s head is satisfying. He slams into the door he’s gone to answer with a thud and slumps to the floor.
My eyes are on his gun hand, and as soon as the weapon falls from his grip, I’ve got it. He moans and rolls over, clearly dazed. I kick his exposed ribcage as hard as I can, then reach down and hit him in the temple with the butt of the gun.
The knocking is louder. I step back. There’s no exit. His friends are here, and I know that while Elliot fancied himself as a dangerous man, away from a keyboard he’s weaker than I am. But I don’t know who’s on the other side of the door.
I consider firing through, but decide against it. If there’s more than one, they could still kill me.
I run to the bathroom. There’s only one window, long and narrow, by the toilet. I crank it open, cursing the rusty lock. In the other room, I can hear wood splintering. I jump up on the toilet and wedge my upper body through the window. It’s a tight fit, but I can do this. I can. I can get out, get to safety, and contact Atticus.
But hands are on me now, strong hands. The gun I’m holding falls from my grip and lands in the bushes below. I grasp for it, cursing, as I try to keep my grip on the sill. But I’m being pulled back in.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I’m being held. The man who has me is wearing a mask. I pull my arm back and jab my fist into his throat. He stumbles back and I hit him with a groin shot. He doubles over. I go to push past him and he grabs my ankle. I fall. A second masked man is watching. Jesus Christ. These guys are huge. I know they’re going to kill me, but I’m determined to go down fighting in honor of every woman who’s ever been bought or sold.
I pull my foot back, preparing to slam it into the face of the man who’d holding my ankle, but he catches it, comes to his knees, and pulls me under him. He’s on top of me, holding my wrist with one hand.
“Let me go, you son of a bitch!”
He reaches up with his free hand and pulls his mask off.
“Watch the language, princess,” he says.
I am literally stunned into silence.
“Atticus?”
He grins.
“How… What?”
“We intercepted Elliot’s friends before they could get here,” he says. “By the looks of things, you took care of him, not that I’m surprised.” He winces. “I’m thinking I shouldn’t have taught you those groin shots.”
Behind me, Troy is laughing.
“Jesus,” I say, and I’m laughing too as I sit up. But the merriment only lasts for a few moments. Other men have arrived. There are flashing lights outside. Elliot, moaning audibly, is being hauled to his feet.
“Is it over?” I ask.
“It will be,” he says. “They’ll be separated. And they’ll turn on each other. But it won’t be enough. Even with the information they give up to save their own skins, these assholes will all go to prison.”
“Good work.” A plainclothes officer walks over to shake Atticus’ hand.
“You guys will take it from here, I suppose?” Atticus asks.
“Yeah, but we’ll keep you posted. And we’ll want to talk to her.”
“Whenever you’re ready,” I say.
Atticus picks up a blanket from the bed and wraps it around me. Outside, Elliot is standing hunched over as a policeman slaps cuffs on his hands. He looks over at me.
“Maeve!” he calls. “Maeve, I didn’t mean it! Maeve! I’m sorry!”
I don’t answer. I just stare at the man who wanted to be powerful, but couldn’t think of how to do it without hurting others. And I feel nothing.
“Let’s go,” I say to Atticus.
“Where do you want to go?” he asks. “This mission is over.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Always,” he says.
“I want to go home,” I say. “With you. For other missions. For other things.”
He smiles. “This way, princess.”