“You are really much too old for me, Angel,” he said, gripping my breast and giving it a painful shake. “But you intrigue me. Your friend Zandora, she was intriguing too. For a time.”
He reached behind my head and unknotted the gag, pulling the wet fabric from my mouth. He abruptly yanked me upright so that I was balanced on my knees, facing him. Pulling a straight razor from his pocket, he swiftly cut away my t-shirt, nicking the skin beneath more than once in the process. It was enough to pull me out of the stupor I’d been in. I had pretty much resigned myself to being shot; I’d even managed to convince myself that it would be a noble, tough guy kind of a death. But slow death by straight razor is a whole different ballgame.
Once my shirt was out of the way, Vukasin wrapped one skinny arm around me and kissed me, mashing my sore lips into my teeth like an eager teenager. I let him, focusing everything I had into working my wrists loose. They wouldn’t give and wouldn’t give and then suddenly the rope went miraculously slack, just enough to slip one hand free.
I had one shot. I remembered that tacky shirt he’d worn in Vegas, the one with the cards and dice on it, and I remembered the pistol I’d found under it, tucked down the back of his pants. He was wearing a different tacky polyester shirt today, but it was untucked the same way. I could only hope that he was a creature of habit.
When he reached down to unbutton my jeans, I made my move. The pistol was right where I’d hoped it would be. In less than a heartbeat, I had it out of his waistband and up under his chin.
“Get the fuck off me,” I told him.
He dropped the razor and backed away slowly, eyes narrow and furious. I could see that he no longer harbored any doubt that I would shoot him.
“Back up,” I told him, keeping the gun pointed at his face.
No snappy banter now. No back talk. He just stepped backwards toward the chintzy little bondage bench.
“Lie on your stomach and cuff your wrists to the bench,” I said. He fastened one cuff around a wrist and then ineffectually fumbled, one handed, with the remaining cuff.
I freed my ankles and cuffed his remaining wrist and ankles to the bench myself. I put my spit-damp gag into his mouth, knotting it securely behind his head and then took his keys from his pocket. I took his trench coat too, since the sliced up Lakers t-shirt was a total loss. I put his gun in the deep pocket and grabbed an extra set of handcuffs and a roll of thick, heavy-duty electrical tape. Just in case.
I could have killed him without thinking twice. It wouldn’t have troubled me at all. But it also wouldn’t have satisfied me. No point wasting my time on wiping out all the rest of Ridgeway’s little errand boys. Ridgeway was the one who planned this whole mess. Ridgeway was the one who needed to pay.
Outside in the thick unnatural stillness of the deserted complex, I stood with Vukasin’s keys in my hand. I could get out of town in just the trench coat and my jeans, but if I was going to get Ridgeway, I needed clothes. If the girls were shooting videos and turning tricks here, they probably had a wardrobe room somewhere in this complex. In her scene for Naughty Teens 17, Lia had worn a sleazy hot pink hooker dress, but some of the other Naughty Teens had been in nondescript GND outfits so I was hoping I’d be able to find something besides stripper-wear and cheerleader costumes.
The first few doors I opened led to more sets. A schoolroom, an office, a prison with little wooden cells. By far the creepiest was a little girl’s bedroom, complete with cute plush animals and a pink canopy bed. There were also a few minimally furnished studio apartments that looked like trick pads. All of them were empty.
I went downstairs to try some of the doors on the first floor. The locks on these doors were expensive and new, and there was more than one on each door. The first door I unlocked led to what I initially mistook for an empty apartment. There was no furniture in the room I could see from the front door, yet the lights were on. I was about to shut the door and try another when a blonde head peered around the doorless entry to a second room on the left.
“Hello?” I said.
A girl came out into the main room. She was naked. She had a pretty face but was clearly exhausted and her skinny, underdeveloped body was mottled with bruises and scratches. She made no attempt to cover herself. Her eyes were skittish, like Lia’s had been. She didn’t say anything.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
Her lack of response answered for her, but at the sound of my voice, two other girls appeared behind her. They were also naked, and also didn’t seem to care. Any dignity or shyness had long since worn away. They were silent, resigned.
I quickly searched the tiny unit and found absolutely nothing inside. No clothes, no furniture, no toiletries, nothing at all. Just these three naked girls.
It was a pretty smart set-up Ridgeway had going here. This was the perfect place to keep illegal girls locked down tight, providing privacy for the johns and the shoots. In a neighborhood like this, nobody thought twice about heavy security bars and multiple locks. The neighbors would never imagine all that security wasn’t to keep people out but to keep them in.
I went down the row of doors, opening them one after the other. The girls were housed three per unit, fifteen total. They were all pale and scared and painfully young. I would have been very surprised if even half of them were over eighteen. The girls were all naked and there were no clothes or shoes in any of their units. Not so much as a blanket or a towel. There was something hideously brilliant about keeping them demoralized that way, leaving them naked, making them sleep on the floor.
It took a lot of non-verbal coaxing to get them all out of their little carpeted prisons.
“Does anybody speak English?” I asked, once I had herded all the shivering girls into the central garden.
“Yes,” a tall, awkward brunette replied.
“A little bit,” said a bottom-heavy blonde, indicating a little bit between her thumb and forefinger.
“Okay,” I said speaking slow and clear. “Where are clothes?”
The brunette pointed to a left corner unit on the ground floor. When I unlocked the door, I found a dressing room filled with racks of slutty dresses and costumes. It was not unlike the Sissy Boudoir at Ulka’s except the clothes were in smaller sizes.
“Everyone get dressed,” I said.
The girls obediently did as I asked and the ones who didn’t understand followed the examples of the ones who did. They were so used to doing what they were told that it made me angry.
I had hoped there would be some plain good-girl outfits but if there were any, they kept them somewhere else.
“Okay, I said. “Everyone dressed?”
I surveyed my little hooker army. Each girl was clad in a trashy spandex dress and plastic platform shoes or vinyl hot pants and a halter top. It was so preposterous that you had to laugh, but I suddenly thought of one particular motherfucker who would not be laughing when he saw them.
I led the girls up to the dungeon where Vukasin was manacled. In my absence, he had struggled so fiercely that he’d knocked the bench over on its side. His wrists were bleeding, but he had been unable to free himself.
I bent down to retrieve the open straight razor from the carpet and handed it to the blonde who understood English a little bit. She didn’t need her English to understand what I had in mind. I was pleased to see, finally, flashes of defiance and life in fifteen pairs of eyes as understanding swept over the girls on a tide of foreign whispers.
As I turned away, I could hear Vukasin’s muffled, impotent squeaks through the gag and frantic thumping as he struggled to get away from what he had coming. I left the girls to their revenge. I had my own to think about.