The Taken

Testing, Grif found it swung open silently, though he was still careful to lift it degree by degree. His power from Anne lingered, because even though no light filtered in or out, a steel catwalk popped below him like tiles in a Scrabble game. He entered, paused to be sure he hadn’t been seen, then helped Bridget inside, only taking a breath again when she’d closed the hatch behind her. Crouching and silent, they looked around.

There was only one other figure up on the catwalk, and he was hunched opposite them, turned away, thick cables crowding the space in between. Fiddling with equipment, and intermittently putting his hand to his ear, he was clearly engrossed in whatever was being said over a wireless headset.

“Cameraman.” Bridget pointed, and Grif saw she was right. The man had a shoulder cam, another propped on a tripod, while a third could be seen on the adjacent pathways. Yet it was the headset that bothered him most. One low word into that baby and everyone would know they were there.

Grif turned his attention to the room below, spotlit in pastel hues to appear oddly serene, like twilight emerging on a cool summer’s eve.

But this was no day at the beach. Dozens of men flared around the makeshift room in spokes and cushioned chairs, each with a side table holding refreshments and a simple electronic paddle. The floor was carpeted in black, the walls draped in white sheers.

But the room’s center was the real focal point. There, a platform stage sat draped in red silk, a four-poster bed centered atop, dripping with crystals and gold tassels. So there were lights, there were cameras… and there was the promise of action.

Plasma undulated over the sheer, silken walls.

“There he is.”

Following Bridget’s hard stare, Grif found Chambers at the back of the room. His chair was identical to the others, but he’d elevated himself, like he was a statue or god. His shirt appeared blindingly white in the pastel spotlights, though that was because everyone else was in black. It made him look like nothing could touch him, and that alone made Grif want to punch him square.

Chambers leaned back in the plush chair, a gleam sparking in a gaze worn by spoiled four-year-olds and homicidal killers alike. He lifted a microphone, and smiled. “Before we commence the final bidding, I’d like to take a moment to welcome our first-timers. That’s each of you seated in the front row. I think you’ll agree, it’s an exclusive club that you now find yourselves in, so don’t be surprised to find your social network outside of this room greatly expanded. We, men of taste, men of the same taste,” he clarified, “help each other. One final word of advice… make sure your electronic paddles are at the ready. Bidding tends to get… frenzied.”

He laughed, and Bridget growled beside Grif, but the sound was drowned out by a loud buzzing. The cameraman whirled in their direction and for a moment Grif thought they were spotted. Bridget did, too; her tense limbs began to shake, but Grif put a hand on her arm, and could tell the moment she saw it. The camera wasn’t pointed at them but between them, at a space in the rafters occupied only by a giant ventilation grille.

“Not a grille,” he whispered harshly, his mouth gone dry.

“A cage,” Bridget finished, and the cameraman punched a control panel at his side. Every gaze below lifted, fastening upon the black metal frame, though the interior was velvet-lined from top to bottom, its contents entirely obscured. It lowered slowly, no doubt to build anticipation, until it was suspended above the bed’s center, and hovered there like a question. The plasma began to crawl across the floor… though that’s not why Grif jumped. Something moved inside the cage. “Is that…?”

“A woman,” Bridget said tightly as the cameraman moved again, and the black velvet curtain fell away.

But Charlotte couldn’t truly be called a woman, Grif thought, swallowing hard. Not by a long shot. Just as what she wore certainly couldn’t be called clothing. But the silken restraints were meant to approximate both, snaking along her limbs to wrap up and around her torso, ending in a knot at her neck. One tiny nipple peeked from between the bindings, a pink petal flare against all the black and white, while one thigh lay exposed, revealing the full of her smooth bottom. Grif wanted desperately to take off his jacket and cover the child up.

But worse than the bindings, worse than the overt objectification, was the look in her eyes. As the cage slowly rotated, giving every man in the room a full and measured look, her stare was as blank as a doll’s… and, of course, that’s exactly what she was to them. A plaything to be toyed with, used, and discarded when they were done.

Charlotte’s non-gaze remained locked above the heads of the gathered men, her body motionless even as her cage rocked. Crossing his feet at the ankles, Chambers lifted the microphone again. “Let the bidding begin.”

Electronic paddles lit up all around the room.

“Jesus, Bridget…”

But she was gone. Grif had been so focused on Charlotte, he hadn’t seen Bridget closing in on the cameraman and the control panel at his side.

Grif spotted the clouds forming even before she lunged. With a maddened cry, she didn’t just bring the cage to a halt, she reversed its course. Jerking it back up and flashing a blade Grif didn’t even know she carried, she gutted the man who had lowered it.

A gust of air rushed Grif, and from the corner of his eye, he spotted wings in the rafters. “Shit.”

A Centurion. Glancing back at Chambers’s confounded face, hearing the disgruntled murmurs from the men as Charlotte’s cage continued to rise, he knew that more were coming.

Chambers was now yelling from behind his palm, causing the headset in the dead man’s ear to go crazy with commands. Get it fixed. Do it now. But the cameraman was prone and twitching, and Bridget had eased back into the shadows. Grif didn’t dare move, but pretty soon there’d be nowhere to hide.

Then Chambers surprised him. Instead of continuing to rant, he dropped from his small dais and crossed the expansive room until he was centered next to the bed. Though he cast a quick, irritated glance directly up, he replaced the frown with a wide smile, and leaned against one spearing bedpost. “We seem to be having slight technical difficulties, but at least your appetites are whetted. That’s good. I was going to save this next surprise for after the bidding, a little something to make this night extra-memorable, but I see no reason to wait now. We have a very… special show tonight.”

The microphone tilted in Chambers’s hand, like an old crooner entertaining a rapt, admiring audience. And those gathered were rapt. “Now, you’ll have to excuse our next prize for any unseemly behavior. She’s never been this route before, but I have full confidence that she’ll take to it quite easily.”

Grif found himself leaning over the rail without even knowing how he got there.

“You should brace yourself for some rough play. She will resist, and she will also be restrained, and hopefully she will cry out. Let me assure you that no matter what it looks like, she is a volunteer. She wants this. She needs it. And do you know why?”

Chambers ceased pacing, and scanned the faces there like they were gathered in a boardroom. “Because that, my brothers, is her raison d’etre. Her role is to act as victim to your conqueror. She is like a lion in the Coliseum, and being put down is her purpose.”

Then he nodded to the corner where the white panels parted to reveal five men, shirtless and hooded, very much resembling the gladiators that Chambers had likened them to. Entering the room, they stood equidistance apart, hands folded in front of them.

“Each of you has been preselected for this sport. You’ve all shown yourselves as trustworthy in the past, so this is my gift to you. Feel free to jockey for position. A little friendly competition always puts grit in your blood, and grants you the respect of your brothers who’ve chosen to watch. Perform well for them, but remember, the five of you are ultimately a team.” He gestured again toward the door. “Now, shall we bring out the prize?”

And the door, Grif thought, was proof that more rooms lurked behind this one. Bridget was already working on freeing Charlotte, and she knew the way out. Meanwhile, the men below would be occupied while he searched for Kit. Yet the plasma plummeted to the floor as the door swung wide, and though he already had one hand on the rungs leading out, Grif had to glance down.

Schmidt. First seen by Grif on a gas station’s security monitor, last seen fleeing Tony’s, there was now a bandage on his face where Anne’s bullet had grazed his cheek.

Detective Hitchens entered next, and Grif huffed, surprised but not. He’d sensed darkness in the man at the stables, and would lay odds that he was the one who’d killed Paul.

Yet pulled along after them, wearing little more than mascara smeared beneath tear-filled eyes, was the woman that Grif had placed in danger again and again.

And now again.