“It’s not,” I interjected.
“Good,” Raj said. “I’ve booked a cruising yacht for the next two weeks. The captain is notoriously discreet. We leave tonight. You’ll just be two American tourists and real estate developers visiting the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and I’ll be your Jamaican guide.”
“Have you done anything like this before?” I asked.
“Yes, of course. Though not with this much style. I was instrumental in bringing down a couple of smaller trafficking rings. From what you’ve described though, we’re looking for something bigger. I heard about the two girls who went missing from the Destination Desire resort when you two were here a few weeks ago. Since then, four other young women have disappeared from three other resorts. These things tend to happen in waves.”
“The other two rings you brought down,” I said. “Were they on a separate island?”
Raj shook his head. “One was here in Jamaica, and the other had its headquarters in the Dominican Republic. They’re everywhere. Even in your own country.”
I swallowed. Even though I knew what he said was true, the thought of humans being bought and sold in the US made my flesh crawl. But it had been happening under our noses.
Raj continued, “Because you’ve assured me that money is not an issue, we’ll have access to more information. I have informants who aren’t above taking bribes.”
“Let’s see what they’ll tell us before we start handing out cash,” I said.
“We will,” Raj said. “But it’s amazing how the sight of American green stuff makes people start remembering. The people we’ll be dealing with aren’t the best of society.”
Really? Of course anyone who knew about this wasn’t the best of society. This was no surprise. And damn it, it would be worth every penny we had if we could ferret out Theodore Mathias and get rid of him for good. Now that Tom Simpson and Larry Wade had both met their maker, once Mathias was behind bars, Talon could truly heal.
We all could.
Including Ruby.
Where the hell was she? I closed my eyes for a split second. Her beautiful face appeared, her eyes sparkling…but then they morphed into something else. Cold blue. Fear. Ruby was frightened. I’ll find you, baby. I’ll find you and bring you home.
As I suspected, the PD hadn’t been able to uncover anything on Ruby’s phone. I was tempted to have Raj try to find her, but she could be anywhere. Wouldn’t hurt to ask though.
I quickly filled Raj in on Ruby’s disappearance, and he began punching stuff into his phone. “I’ll do what I can, mon. Let’s get you two to the yacht and get settled in. We’ll be cruising all night.”
Chapter Four
Ruby
“Juliet?” I tried to stand but stumbled onto my hands and knees. “Fuck!” The concrete scraped against my palms, shooting pain into them.
“Easy,” she said. Her voice was gravelly, as if she’d been screaming a lot. Maybe not getting enough to drink.
My vision was still a little fuzzy, but I could see that her baggy T-shirt and sweats were grayish and soiled. I squinted again, and this time her face became clearer. Her cheeks had hollowed out in the few weeks since I’d seen her, and lacerations were scabbing on her chin and forehead. The skin around her right eye was tinged yellow, as if a black eye was healing.
“It takes a while for the drugs to completely leave your system.”
“Drugs? It was just chloro— Oh, shit.”
I crawled as quickly as I could to the toilet in the corner and heaved. Nothing but stomach acid. It coated my tongue with bitterness and made me gag again.
When had I last eaten? I’d scrambled some eggs at Ryan’s house—God, I wanted Ryan—and drunk a cup of coffee. Right? I willed my mind to churn. Yes, and then I had gone to work. I hadn’t been able to get the vacation time I requested, so I had quit. I went home to pack and— My father.
My father had brought me here.
He intended to sell me into human slavery after all.
I couldn’t say I was surprised.
An image crept into my mind—of two blurry figures standing over me.
Someone else… Someone had helped my father drug and take me.
“Juliet…” My voice was nearly as gravelly as hers.
“The drugs make you sick. Coming out of it really sucks. I’m afraid you’ll have another couple hours of it.”
“Great.” I spewed into the toilet again.
“I wish I could help you. But I can’t move to where you are.”
I didn’t really need any help vomiting, but the thought was nice. I retched once more and then leaned back, gravity taking over until I was flat on my back. Sweat poured from my forehead. I tried to lift my arm to wipe it off on my sleeve, but I couldn’t find the strength.
“How long have I—”
The door opening interrupted me. Someone entered. I was still lying supine, so I couldn’t see.
“Ready for some fun?” A man’s voice. A masked face looked down at me. “She’s a mess, but that’s a tight little body she’s got.”
“She’s off-limits, remember?” another voice said.
I forced my eyes to stay open.
“Why should she be?” the man staring at me said. “No one’s off-limits around here.”
“She is. Boss’s orders.”
“Can’t even knock her around a little?” His eyes were brown. Brown and laced with evil.
“Only if you make sure you don’t leave a mark. And Bud, you always leave a mark.”
So I was hands off. Not a bad thing. But what did that mean for— I dragged myself into a sitting position. Another man turned Juliet around and pushed her sweats down her legs.
“Hey!” I pushed myself to my feet. “Get the fuck off of her!”
“It’s all right, Ruby.” Juliet sniffled. “Just let them get it over with.”
“The hell I will.” I ran—more like stumbled like a drunk—toward the man who was now unbuckling his jeans.
The other one grabbed my arm and wrenched it until I shouted in pain.
“Let go of me, you fucking brute!”
Try as I might, though, I couldn’t get free. My mind was still muddled, and he was twice my size. My body wouldn’t form any self-defense moves. It wasn’t cooperating.
“I can’t just stand here and let him rape you!”
“It’s okay,” she said again.
No. This was so far from okay.
She wasn’t crying. Wasn’t even whimpering. In fact, she didn’t even flinch when he shoved himself into her.
A vile scent hung around the dank room—a putrid aroma of soiled bodies laced with corruption and misery. All I could do was watch the fat hairy ass pumping as the man forced himself inside Juliet.
All I could do was watch.
* * *
They’d both taken a turn.
I’d tried to close my eyes, to close my ears to the grunting, the painful silence of Juliet’s resignation to her fate.
But after fighting so hard to open them, two invisible toothpicks had propped them wide apart like two separated curtains. I couldn’t look away from the train wreck, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Instead, I’d held back the nausea that threatened to consume me and let the horrid scene imprint itself on my brain.
Juliet was slumped in the corner, and I crawled over to her, guilt overwhelming me. They hadn’t touched me. Why?
“Can I do anything for you?”
She sighed softly. “I wish you could. I wish I could go back to that day on the beach and listen to you. I should have never gotten on that Jet Ski.”
True, but now wasn’t the time to press the point. “No matter what you did, what mistakes you made, you didn’t deserve this. No one deserves this.” I helped her pull her sweats back up to cover herself.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Sometimes they keep us naked. I’m used to it.”
I cringed at her words. No one should ever be “used to” this.