Page 9 of Defending Van

“Nathan and Emma?”

“You know exactly that’s who I'm asking about,” Van snapped, grinding his molars together. He was trying to behave like a normal person. Did Falcon have to make such a big deal about it?

“They’re both good, too. But Nathan and Mateo both feel bad about leaving you in the lurch.”

“They should,” he grumbled. But it wasn't so much that he was angry about them leaving, it was more that he didn't understand it. Why would they put ridiculous feelings above a job that was actually accomplishing something important?

His irritation today wasn't because Nathan and Mateo’s leaving had left him with extra work, it was that one of those extra tasks had gotten to him. Damn the spunky brunette and her inability to back down. He hadn't liked holding her in place while he delivered the ten lashings.

It was the fact that she hadn't made a sound throughout her punishment. He’d expected her to last maybe three or four if she was lucky before she turned on the tears and began begging him to stop.

Van was comfortable not delivering mercy when asked for it, because no one had ever shown him mercy, but he wasn't comfortable with someone just accepting what they were given without a single protest. More than that, she’d told him flat out she hadn't learned anything from the punishment and would continue to be a problem.

The last problem they’d had was Emma Beaumont, who was now dating Nathan. That had turned into a disaster, and he didn't need another disaster on his hands.

“They’ve left me with a whole lot of extra work,” he continued. Entertaining the notion that he’d be stupid enough to care about the brunette whose name he had learned was Makayla Adair, was too ridiculous to waste time on. “I texted you the new location. It’s not properly set up yet, but the guys are very enthusiastic about moving all of their torture implements in. I suspect the training rooms will be set up and ready to use by tomorrow. I’m doing my best to get my camera system back up and running. One thing working in my favor this time is being there as the place is fitted out, which means I can slip in my hidden cameras while everyone else thinks I'm just putting up the old system. I have names for the six women that are currently being held by Azure. I’ll give them to you so the cyber team can run their background checks, see if anything pops. Right now, we only have one room set up, but they're planning another five holding rooms, each one housing six women. So they're upping their game. The warehouse had room for two dozen women, but the factory will be able to handle thirty.”

“They’re growing more confident,” Falcon mused. “Expanding at the new location will soon lead to setting up new locations.”

“We need to get them shut down,” he said. Already this had been going on too long. Too many innocent women had been dragged through Azure’s doors, destroyed and broken down into nothing, then rebuilt into the perfect sex slaves and sold off to monsters around the world. One hundred and forty-one women had been sold by Azure so far, for a total of just over thirty-five million dollars. Of those one hundred and forty-one women, twenty-eight of them had already been dead before Prey could mobilize to mount a rescue, or they’d been hidden away by their new owners too deep to be found.

Now another six women’s lives lie in the balance.

One in particular shoved her way into his mind. A pair of steady blue eyes refusing to look away from him, refusing to back down, taking her punishment like she’d been punished her entire life and was just used to it.

Why?

What made Makayla Adair tough enough to hold in her screams while being caned ten times?

Why was he pretending that he cared?

And why was he lying to himself?

Chapter

Four

August 26th

11:23 A.M.

Since it hurt to sit, Makayla didn't.

Sitting wasn't required to find a way out of this newest hellhole she’d found herself trapped in. Walking wasn't all that pleasant either, and neither was standing or lying down if she was honest. The man with the black eyes had known what he was doing, and he’d done a thorough job of striking all the way across her backside, including the top of her thighs, and curling slightly around her hips. The pain had been agonizing those first few hours, and it had knocked her about a bit, but now she had reached a point where she could push it aside and focus on other things.

Like finding a way to escape.

“You're going to get us all killed,” the crier, who they had eventually learned was called Debra, sniffed from where she was curled up on one of the beds.

Part of figuring out a way to escape was sizing up what she had to work with. That didn't just include walking the small room they were locked in several times over, searching for weaknesses or for anything that could be utilized as a weapon, it also meant weighing up who she had to work with.

One foster family she lived with when she was thirteen had twenty foster kids. Twenty. Ranging in age from two all the way up to seventeen. They lived in a huge old farmhouse, and she’d actually only had to share a room with two other girls about her age. Those conditions were nicer than a lot of the other places she’d lived and would have been great if she hadn't spent all weekend locked in the basement being pimped out. All the kids were, but there had been two, a boy of ten, and a girl of fourteen, who were every bit as determined to escape as she was. Together, they’d found a piece of broken tile from the bathroom down there and used it to stab one of the men who assaulted them in the eye.

In the absolute chaos that erupted in the wake of their attack, she and the boy had managed to escape. They’d gotten in the old man’s car and driven straight to a police station. Well, they’d tried, but wound up pulled over. Not that it mattered, they’d wanted the cops and they had them. After telling their story, officers went out to the farm and rescued the other kids there.

All except the girl who had helped them escape. She’d stayed behind to make sure no one followed them and wound up dead for her efforts. Makayla had never forgotten Lilly Montague or the sacrifice she’d made.

If it came down to it now, would she make the same sacrifice Lilly made that night a decade and a half ago? She wanted to think she would, that she would always do whatever was necessary to save lives, but she wasn't sure she was selfless enough.