Page 122
Ginger walks in. “Ah, there you are,” he says with a satisfied grin. I yawn and check my fingernails.
In the elevator, Shannon eyes me curiously. “There are nine men on that floor tonight. Two of them are federal agents who’ve worked this circuit for years. We all have our skeletons in our closets, don’t we?” She smiles. “Now, you’re a clever girl. I’ll give you that. Work it out for yourself. He comes in. He sees you on that auction block. He’s the kind of man who breaks bones for reaching toward a woman he doesn’t even like yet, isn’t he?”
My stomach drops. “Stop.”
“No. And then there’s federal video of Torin McCarthy, fresh out of Mountjoy, buying a trafficked woman with money that came from family accounts, which, by the way, is how he bought the rest of the women too.”
She’s lying.
The elevator hums. We’re almost there.
“And if he doesn’t bid?”
“Then a man from somewhere else bids a small fortune for you, puts you on a boat, and no one, not Torin McCarthy, your brothers, or anyone, ever finds out what happened to you.”
She looks at me with a sort of twisted pleasure so naked, I’m nauseated.
“Same play, Valentina. Bigger stakes.”
The doors open to the noise of sophisticated revelry. The clink of glasses and the low cadence of male voices, a woman laughing, as if we’re at a wedding reception and not bartering with human life.
“Chin up,” she says. “You’re the whole evening.”
Don’t come. Run, Torin. Don’t come. It’s a trap. Don’t come.
“We open at two hundred,” a voice says. “Lot two.” I’m standing in a blinding spotlight, unable to make out a single face in the sea of people before me.
And out of the dark, close, so close I could almost touch him, in a voice I’ve woken up beside for weeks, “Five hundred thousand.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
TORIN
The last time I walked into a room like this, I wore a disguise. Tonight, I want them to know exactly who I am.
Nothing has gone the way we planned, but the ending of this travesty will.
The room is dark past the stage. Nine men in the seats and two more standing at the back, their arms folded. I find the cameras in seconds. Ceiling corner. Above the lectern. One low on a tripod at the end of the aisle, aimed at the buyers’ chairs like a loaded weapon.
When the light hits the stage, everything else in my head goes out like a fuse. She’s not looking at me. She can’t look at anyone, half blinded on that stage. But I know that set of her jaw and the conviction in her eyes. She’s biding her time.
Good girl.
“Five hundred thousand to…”
My voice rings out in the darkened room. “Torin McCarthy.” Somebody’s glass goes down on a table. Two men in the third row turn around. Whispers go up around me, but I don’t care.
“Don’t,” she mouths at me for reasons I don’t understand.
Too late, love.
“Don’t do it! It’s a trap, Torin! They’re trying to—”
The auctioneer’s hands are on her mouth before she can complete the sentence. My gun is in my hand before he takes another breath.
“She’s mine. I bought her.”
She’s struggling, squirming, trying to fight. The guards watch us as I stalk toward the stage.
