One
It was a hot Saturday evening in Nashville, Tennessee, when seventeen-year-old Starla Davis came running up the hall carrying an overnight bag in one hand and her car keys in the other.
She stopped by the recliner her dad, John, was sitting in to kiss his forehead.
“’Bye, Daddy, I’m off to Lara’s house. We’re going to the movies. I’ll be home sometime in the morning.”
“’Bye, sugar. Drive safely and have a good time.”
“I will. Mama! I’m leaving now!” she yelled.
Her mother, Connie, came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands.
“Supper is almost ready. Sure you don’t want to eat before you leave? It’s meat loaf and mashed potatoes. Your favorite.”
“Sounds wonderful, but we’ll eat popcorn and junk at the movie,” she said and kissed her mother goodbye. “See you in the morning.”
“Good. Leaves more for me,” her brother, Justin, said as he walked through the living room.
Starla made a face at him.
He was laughing when she opened the door.
“Have fun!” her mother said.
“I will. Love you!”
And then she was gone.
She had a slight twinge of conscience as she drove away because she’d lied to her parents about where she was going, and she’d never lied to them before. But that wasn’t the extent of the lie. She’d also lied to get a fake ID last week so she could get in at a club on the outskirts of Nashville to meet the boy she’d met online. They’d been talking for weeks, FaceTiming on a regular basis.
Then he told her he was falling in love with her, and that was his lie, but she didn’t know it. She believed him, just as her parents had believed her.
He was already twenty-one, and she didn’t want to come across as the high school kid she was when she finally met him in person, so she was going for her idea of sexy when she chose the red leather miniskirt, black knit top and black leather knee-high boots.
She passed the time before their meeting at her friend Lara’s house, but they didn’t go to a movie, even though Lara knew what was happening and was worried how this might turn out. But they had been friends their whole lives, and Lara wasn’t going to snitch.
They were in her bedroom, talking and laughing while Lara was doing Starla’s hair. When it was almost time to leave, she got dressed.
“How do I look?” Starla asked, twirling around and around in front of her friend.
Lara smiled.
“You look beautiful, no matter what you’re wearing.”
“Thanks for everything, Lara. You’re the best friend ever.”
Lara’s parents owned a supermarket and were always late coming home, so there were no other witnesses to Starla’s new look as she left the house and drove away.
The closer she got to the club, the more excited she became. The parking lot was filling up fast when she arrived, but she finally found a space toward the back of the lot. She locked the car, put the keys in a little shoulder bag and started walking across the gravel toward the club.
The night air was sultry and still. A bead of sweat rolled out of her hairline and down the back of her neck. The mosquitoes were already out. One landed on her bare arm, but she swatted it before it could bite. The buzz of the neon sign was loud in her ears as she passed beneath it on the way toward the club.
Putting her hair up in the messy-on-purpose look was a good move on Lara’s part. It was a sexy style for her long blond hair and made her feel pretty and grown up. Her eyes were alight with the night’s possibilities as she neared the club.
And then she saw him leaning against the corner of the building, watching her come toward him. He smiled and waved.
She shivered.
Oh, my God, he is so handsome.
His name was Darren, and when she waved back, he came running.
That first hug was a rush. The first kiss made her ache for so much more. He laughed when she suddenly turned shy, and then they walked into the club arm in arm.
One hour and one spiked drink later, Starla Davis was passed out in his arms. He made a joke about having too much fun, and carried her out of the club, and away from the city of her birth.
When she didn’t come home the next morning, John and Connie called Lara. Lara was already worried because Starla hadn’t come back after her date and quickly confessed to their ruse.
John and Connie went from concern to panic and called the police. The first thing the police did was confiscate Starla’s computer. They found the emails, then the location of a meeting place and found her car in the club parking lot, but no trace of Starla.
The bartender vaguely remembered the guy, and a waitress remembered Starla because of the red leather miniskirt. It wasn’t the kind of club that was high on security cameras, because most of the people who went there didn’t necessarily want to be found.
After the police found pictures of Darren on her computer, they ran them through facial recognition. Darren Edward Vail popped up in criminal records. He’d been in and out of juvenile detentions since he was twelve, but the files were sealed. He popped up again on police reports after he turned eighteen, but nothing that had put him in prison. Then a year ago last Christmas, he was implicated in the disappearance of four girls from neighboring states, two of whom turned up dead, which connected him to a human-trafficking ring. He had bonded out on the charges and disappeared. After that, he stayed two steps ahead of the law. That’s when John and Connie Davis began to realize the possibility they may never see Starla again.
Lara heard the news and collapsed in hysterics. Her worst fear had come true, and she helped make it happen.
* * *
Starla woke up in the back of a moving vehicle, hands and feet bound, blindfolded, gagged and certain she was going to die. She tried sending a mental message to her daddy, as if he could read her mind in the miles between them.
Daddy, save me. Help me. Find me.
Then she began praying to God.
God, I’m sorry. Please save me. Please don’t let me die.
But neither miracle happened, and the miles rolled on.
She listened to her captors talking, laughing, as if completely oblivious to her presence, which made her reality that much scarier. If they didn’t care what she heard, she was probably going to die. And then she heard the words “sell” and “auction,” and her heart sank. She hadn’t just been kidnapped for ransom. They weren’t going to try to get money out of her parents. She was the product they were going to sell.
Her naïveté and rash behavior had put her in the hands of human traffickers. They weren’t going to kill her after all, but she might soon wish they had.
The ride went on forever, and after a time she began moaning and screaming behind the gag, trying to tell them she needed to pee. But they didn’t pay any attention, and they didn’t stop, and she wet herself, and they kept driving.
The ride ended after dark. Only then did the men in the front seat become real. She heard a door slide back and felt a breeze on her face. One of them stepped up into the van, then began cursing her when he smelled the urine. He grabbed at her breasts and squeezed them hard until she moaned, then dragged her out of the van, still bitching about the smell of urine on her and her clothes.
“Stand up,” one of them growled, as he removed the ties around her ankles, then the blindfold and gag.
“I can’t feel my feet,” she cried, as she went to her knees.
One of them yanked her to her feet and slapped her.
She cried out.
“Did you feel that, bitch?”
She nodded. Fear had a whole new meaning.
“Then shut up and do what we say,” he growled.
There was nothing on her mind now but survival. She couldn’t think about family. There would be no rescue. No one knew where she’d gone. She didn’t even know where she was. They were in the middle of nowhere, and all she could see were the stars overhead and what looked like a long metal building in front of them.
Then a light came on inside, and she watched in growing horror at the opening door. The man who came out was tall and skinny.
“Get her inside!” he yelled.
The two men grabbed her by the arms.
“Walk, or we’ll drag you,” one said, but her legs were shaking so hard she couldn’t make them move.
One of the men punched her in the stomach. With no breath left to scream, she leaned over and threw up until there was nothing left but the faint taste of bile in the back of her throat.
This time when they grabbed her by the arms, she followed.
* * *
People in Nashville were holding vigils for Starla. Her last school picture was on flyers posted all over town.
Her brother, Justin, had nightly dreams about her screaming for help. He could hear her voice, but he never found her.
Their family was in mourning. Connie took to her bed. John went to work every day because it’s all he knew what to do, then came home and drank himself to sleep. Justin became the boy whose sister was gone. Starla wasn’t the only one who had disappeared. Their family unit was gone as well, and verging on implosion.
* * *
Starla was thrown into a room with five other girls who appeared to be around her age, and from the looks of their clothes and blank stares, they’d been there awhile. Each of them had a manacle and chain on one wrist and the other end of the chain fastened to a wall. At first they wouldn’t talk to her, and then when they began, she regretted it. They all knew Darren, and they had no idea how they’d gotten here, but they knew where they were going.
The auction block.
Dread shot through Starla like a bullet ripping through flesh. Less than twelve hours later, they moved the girls in the dark, and when they stopped they were taken out blindfolded and led into another building.
An hour later they were forced to strip and, under the watchful eye of three armed men, were sent to a communal shower not unlike the ones in the gym at Starla’s school.
The humiliation of undressing in front of strange men was only the first in a long line of horrors to come. The girls scrubbed their bodies and then their hair, then went straight from the shower to another room full of young girls and women in the same state. They didn’t look at each other. They didn’t speak. They sat on the floor, hunched up to cover their nudity from each other, waiting to be called. Starla’s hair slowly dried, as did her skin, then soon beaded with sweat again. When Starla’s name was called she stood up. The shame she felt was less about her nudity than the lies that had gotten her here. She had to face a hard truth. Her last hopes were gone.
The room they took her to was air-conditioned, an accommodation to the nearly fifty men there, but it was thick with smoke from their cigarettes and cigars.
The open bar was manned by two young naked men, who moved among the crowd with shots of whiskey and tequila, and longneck bottles of beer.
Starla walked in with her head held high, past the humiliation of being nude, locked into the fear of what would happen next.
Her hair was dry now and hanging halfway to her waist, and beneath the bright overhead lights, her pale blond hair almost looked white.
A guard marched her up the steps to a small round stage in the middle of the room before he untied her. Then he grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked.
“Look up,” he growled.
So she did, and when it was announced that she was a virgin, the crowd, as a whole, moved closer. She began to pray again, but this time not to be rescued. She was asking for something easier—asking God to strike her dead.
The first bid started at a thousand and flew up to ten, and then fifteen thousand, and the bidders were thinning out. She wouldn’t look at them and was trying not to cry. Her survival instinct was already guiding her, telling her not to let them see her fear, and so she stared at a spot above their heads.
But then the bidding suddenly came to a stop and the room went quiet. When she realized the crowd was beginning to part, her heart started to pound. Something was happening, and she had to look, because it was going to happen to her.
A fortysomething man was coming toward the stage as if he owned it. Their gazes locked. His eyes narrowed as hers widened.
He was someone important. That much she guessed. He was dressed fit to kill, but she didn’t know that he was also willing to do it to get what he wanted.
“The bidding stops now. She is no longer for sale. She is mine,” the man said.
The silence in the room was sudden—almost as if men were afraid to breathe, and then the auctioneer slammed the gavel down on the dais.
“The girl known as Star is no longer for sale.”
Starla blinked at the name change. She was lost—so lost—and now she no longer existed.
“Take the girl down now,” the man said.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Baba. Right away.”
Baba snapped his fingers. A man came running behind him carrying a long white robe. When Star was led down the steps, Mr. Baba held it out for her to put on and then turned her around to face him and tied the ties himself. The gesture was not lost on her. For all intents and purposes, she was now tied to him.
* * *
The first plane ride of her life was in a private jet in the middle of the night. It landed in a city emblazoned with lights. It would be a week before she would know it was Las Vegas.
Her first night in his bed was a learning experience in how much pain she could bear before he would climax. Every time she cried out, he rammed her harder. It was as effective a reminder to shut up as the gag in her mouth had been to keep her silent.
In the daylight he was a consummate gentleman, calling her his shining princess and shining star, saying she was going to bring him good luck. So she set about learning everything she could about how to please him, how to make his climax happen sooner and with more intensity. She made herself indispensable to him in the sex department, but always with an eye on one day making her escape, until the night Anton sat her down and showed her a video. He called it insurance against her urge to run. She called it carnage. Just thinking about her family innocently opening a door to that fate gave her nightmares. In that moment, she gave up plotting for a better future in the hopes that she would be keeping the people she loved safe and alive.
And so one year followed another and then another, when one day, to her horror, after one of their vacation trips to his Mexican villa, she found herself pregnant.
* * *
Star missed her period. The shock and the implications were staggering. Women in Anton’s houses were not allowed to keep babies. Abortions were SOP—standard operating procedure. While the thought of being tied to him for life by the birth of his child was abhorrent, the idea of aborting her own baby was worse, and she kept silent, still waiting for a way to make a break. And then a week later, the nausea began. She hid it for a while by waiting to get up until after he had left their bed. Then one morning he came back to get his watch and heard her throwing up.
When he rushed into the bathroom, she was on her knees in front of the commode, trembling in every muscle, praying that was the last wave of nausea when he walked in.
“Star! What’s happening?”
Startled by the sound of his voice, she rocked back on her heels and started to cry.
He pulled her to her feet, then got a wet cloth and began wiping her face.
“You are sick. I will call a doctor.”
If he did, he would know the truth, and someone else would be telling him. If she stood a chance at all, it had to come from her.
“I’m not sick. I’m pregnant. I don’t know how it happened. I take my birth control pills as you request. I never miss. I never forget. But...remember the night I got food poisoning when we were in Mexico? I threw up all night and most of the next day. I took my pill as always, but it must have come up before it had time to get into my system.”
She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around his legs.
“Please forgive me, Anton. I would never mean to displease you. I live to make you happy.”
Anton was in shock. The idea of becoming a father had never entered his mind. But this girl he’d taken from an auction block had turned into a woman over the past five years, and in doing so had become entrenched in his life.
He put a hand on the top of her head and then lifted her to her feet.
Star was in desperation mode, and the only thing she could think to do was feed his ego. Make him believe she adored him as much as she pretended to do.
“Please don’t make me kill our baby. Please, Anton, don’t make me kill a part of you.”
Anton believed what she’d said. She worshipped him. She was a beautiful woman who was carrying his child. What if it was a boy? In two years he would be fifty. What would happen to his fortune of flesh when he died? Maybe it was time to think about an heir.
“Don’t cry, my shining Star. We will keep this baby. You will give me a son. I will have an heir.”
She shuddered.
“What if it’s a girl?”
He frowned.
“I do not sire girls. It will be a boy.”
He helped her up, had his secretary make an appointment for her at an obstetrician’s office and then had the chef bring her something to calm her stomach.
Every day afterward, he did not leave their bedroom until she’d had weak tea and toast in bed, until she was able to get up without nausea.
Eight months later, Samuel Anton Baba was laid in his mother’s arms, with Anton standing beside her. But it wasn’t love he felt for the child, only pride.
* * *
Star went home to a nursery someone else decorated and a nanny who took the baby out of her arms. Anton gave Star a week, and then she was back on the job, satisfying his sexual appetite with her wits and her hands until her body had time to heal.
The months passed, and while Anton found that he enjoyed watching Sammy grow and witnessing the milestones that came to each baby’s life...first words, first steps, he also realized he had become jaded with Star. She had gone from sexy siren to a mother figure, and he no longer desired her in that way. Just after Sammy’s second birthday, Anton fired their personal chef and hired a new one—a woman named Lacey, who’d come highly recommended by a friend. Lacey was in her early thirties, short and stocky with black hair she wore combed into a Mohawk, and was as good in the kitchen as Star was in the bedroom. The only thing Anton didn’t know about her was that she was an undercover Fed.
Anton Baba had long been suspected of being behind a large ring of human trafficking, but the Feds had never been able to prove it. Sending their agent in undercover was risky, but her skills in cooking gave her the edge she needed to get into his personal space.
It didn’t take long for Lacey to learn Anton did not conduct business from his home. The only armed men on the premises were the guards who worked for him. During the two months she’d been there, she had learned nothing that would aid in building a case. Her superiors were considering pulling her out when Lacey picked up on some gossip among the staff. If what they were saying was true, she might have found a weak link in Baba’s business—Star Davis, who was the mother of his child.
* * *
Star was in the nursery rocking Sammy to sleep for his afternoon nap. She loved this time with him, watching his long dark lashes as they fluttered against his cheeks while he fought to stay awake, and then the peaceful perfection of his little face after he finally fell asleep. She was about to put him to bed when she heard Anton’s voice. She thought he was upstairs looking for her but didn’t want to call out and wake up Sammy. But when she realized he was on the phone, she relaxed.
It wasn’t until she heard her name and how he was describing her that she realized he only considered her a product to sell.
Her life as she’d known it was about to explode. Learning that he wanted his son but he no longer wanted her was a death sentence. She would rather die than live a life somewhere else knowing her baby was growing up without her.
Anton’s voice faded as he walked away, but what she’d overheard had been the warning she needed. As soon as she put Sammy to bed she grabbed his diaper bag and began packing it for a getaway, then left it inside his closet.
The hardest thing she’d ever done was pretend nothing was wrong as she went downstairs to the kitchen. Lacey, the chef, had been preparing vegetables for Sammy and then pureeing them for her, but she wouldn’t be able to take food like this, and began gathering up jars of baby food from the pantry.
Lacey saw the tears on Star’s face as she entered the kitchen, and when Star went to the pantry without speaking, she followed.
“Good afternoon, Miss Star. Can I help you in any way?”
Star shook her head and kept sorting through the jars.
“I’ll be happy to make something fresh for Sammy,” Lacey offered.
Star couldn’t talk for fear she’d burst into tears, and just shook her head as she set aside little jars of fruit and vegetables, and a box of teething crackers.
“Looks like we’re packing for another trip. Want me to get a small box?” she asked.
Star panicked.
“No, please. I just need...” Star took a deep breath, trying to control the spreading panic, and started over. “I just need to—”
A jar of applesauce slipped from her fingers and shattered on the pantry floor.
Horrified, Star burst into tears.
“I’m so sorry.”
“No problem, Miss Star. It’ll clean right up!” Lacey said. She grabbed a handful of paper towels and quickly mopped it up.
But Star was beyond help. Once she’d started crying, she couldn’t stop, and that’s when Lacey knew something more was going on.
“Come sit with me,” she urged.
“I can’t,” Star whispered. “I don’t want them to see me cry.”
“Who? You don’t want who to see you cry?” Lacey asked.
“The guards. They’ll tell Anton.”
“But Mr. Baba adores you,” Lacey said. “I see the way he treats you.”
Star shook her head.
“Not anymore. He’s going to sell me, just like he sells the others,” she whispered and then gasped at what she’d done. “No, I didn’t mean that. I just—”
Lacey’s heart leaped, but she kept playing along.
“Sell you? But what about Sammy?”
And that’s when Star’s last defenses fell, and she took a chance.
“He’ll keep Sammy. Sammy is his son, but he’ll sell me to someone else, and I’ll never see Sammy again. Please don’t tell. Pretend you never saw me getting food. Just let me walk out of here. I have to get away before this happens. He’ll be at his club tonight. It’s the only chance I’ll have to make a run for it. I can’t lose my baby. I’d rather be dead.”
“I’ll help you,” Lacey said.
Star’s heart skipped a beat.
“How?”
“I have a friend here in the city. He’ll help.”
Star frowned.
“I don’t believe you. You’ll just tell Anton and then I’m done. If you do I’ll swear you lied, and believe me, I’m good at lying. I’ve been doing it for seven years without getting caught.”
Star made a grab for the food and was about to bolt when Lacey grabbed her hand.
“Stop,” she whispered and pulled her back into the pantry, then leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “I’m with the FBI. Will you testify against him if I help you and Sammy escape?”
Star gasped, then stared at the woman, looking for the lie on her face, but she didn’t flinch.
“You’re serious?”
Lacey nodded.
“What do I do?” Star asked.
“Be ready to run. It’ll be after dark.”
“After Anton leaves,” Star said.
Lacey nodded. “Go pack what you need for the baby and just be ready.”
“Thank you,” Star murmured. “Thank you.”
“Go,” Lacey said, and the moment the woman was out of the kitchen, she sent Ryker, her outside contact, a text.
We have ourselves a witness who’ll testify. She’s running tonight with a toddler. Pick us up at the back gate of the property.
She hit Send and then waited.
Drug the kid to keep it quiet. I’ll have to disarm the alarm at the gate. I’ll text you when it’s done.
She sent back a thumbs-up emoji and stowed the cell back in her pocket beneath the chef’s jacket and went back to prepping vegetables, but her thoughts were already locked into what she needed to do to get them off premises. She’d need to put the silencer on her weapon. There were at least three guards at all times between the house and the back of the property. She would have to take them out just to reach the gate.
* * *
Anton left to go to his casino just before 7:00 p.m., which was his habit. Since it was the Fourth of July, Las Vegas was packed with people on holidays. He got all the way to his office before it dawned on him that he hadn’t told Star or Sammy goodbye, and then dismissed it as of no concern. It wouldn’t be long before she would be gone, Sammy would be with a live-in nanny, and he would be giving full attention to the business of making money, again.
An hour passed and then another before the fireworks began. He got up and walked to the windows overlooking Vegas just as a shower of fireworks spread across the sky.
Entertainment.
That’s what Vegas was all about.
He was still watching when his cell phone rang. He went back to the desk to get it.
“Hello.”
“Boss, this is Ian. The security alarm just went off at the house. We found three guards dead in the back garden, and Star and the baby are gone.”
Anton staggered.
“Gone? How? Who was supposed to be watching them?”
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t me.”
“You and Dev know how to track runaways. Star has a chip as well and doesn’t know it. Send out as many men as you need. I’m on my way home.”
“Yes, sir,” Ian said and disconnected.
Anton rang for his driver and then took the back way out of Lucky Joe’s. He rode home in silence, mentally going over everything Star had said and done over the past week. He couldn’t find one instance where he’d doubted he had lost control. He had enemies. It occurred to him that this might be the case, but whatever the reason, he wasn’t too worried about getting her back. All of the procurers who worked for him, including Darren Vail, had one last duty before they turned the girls over to the men who took them out of state. They shot a tiny tracking chip just under the skin on the back of every girl’s neck. It was done while they were unconscious, and they didn’t even know it was there. It’s also why no one ever got away.