Extreme Danger by Shannon McKenna Read Free Book Online

face reality. Like a raised fist at an activists’ rally, it stayed up and stayed high. He wondered if he was going to have to jerk off to get some relief. It had been months since the urge to masturbate had even crossed his mind. Let alone sex.
    He’d been too busy, too focused. Too depressed. The last time he’d had sex offered to him was at an icebound way station for human traffickers in the armpit of Russia, three months ago. Posing as a buyer while he looked for Sveti. Stone cold afraid to find her there.
    One of the traffickers had offered him the use of a piece of his merchandise. Ivana. From Belarus. Couldn’t have been fourteen. Even terrified and traumatized, she was a pretty girl. Destined to be chained to a bed in a brothel, in some sex tourism hot spot in Thailand or the Philippines, until she got used up and sent off to the boneyard.
    He’d given Ivana his bed to spare her having to turn any other tricks that night and slept with the rats on the filthy floor, wrapped in his coat. The cargo had moved on the next morning.
    It had put him off sex ever since. He’d barely managed to eat afterwards, it had made him so fucking miserable. He could have saved Ivana, if he’d been willing to break cover, give up his search.
    But he’d made a promise to Sveti’s mother. To Sergei’s ghost.
    It made him crazy. Thousands of women and children, bought and sold, used and tossed like garbage so that Zhoglo and men like him could get richer. So that sleazy sex tourist assholes from all over the world had a constant supply of fresh meat. Thousands of Svetis, of Ivanas. And he couldn’t do a fucking thing about it.
    Except for this. He would keep it simple, focus on one individual. Just Sveti. If he thought about them all, he’d go nuts.
    He knew in his gut that trying to stop Zhoglo and his kind was a useless effort. Even if he took out one kingpin, a thousand wannabes would hustle to fill his shoes. But he could try to find one single stolen girl and take her back to her mother. Just one. That wasn’t too goddamn much to ask.
    He patted the various pockets of his cut-off cargo pants until he found a lighter and the battered pack of Turkish cigarettes that his alter ego Arkady favored.
    He took a deep, grateful drag of the harsh smoke. He’d acquired the habit when he was a freaked-out, fucked-up teenager and tried to quit several times. Now that he’d wrapped his mind around the fact that he wasn’t likely to be needing his lungs in the long term anyhow, it seemed pointless to deny himself.
    He struggled to remember what Sveti looked like, but after six months, the finer details were gone. He remembered obvious things: long dark hair, hazel eyes, a big smile like Sergei’s. A port wine birthmark on her neck. But when he tried to see her face, a vision of Becca got in the way. All grown up but somehow just as innocent.
    He looked at his crotch, let out a mirthless laugh. Thinking about Sveti and Ivana was a great way to wilt an inconvenient boner.
     
    Useful discovery: if she kept the walkway boards perpendicular to her naked toes, she could stay on her feet without toppling onto sharp rocks and thorny, bug-and-snake-infested foliage. This was good.
    Sobering reflection: she could miss the turn-off to the A-frame, and keep going in an endless loop around the island until she croaked of exposure, or got eaten for a midnight snack. That was bad.
    Becca’s imperfect solution was to hug the edge of the path and follow the edge of the boards with her toes, which compelled her to go at a slow, limping pace. She clung to her outrage, and somehow that kept her from sliding into screaming panic.
    A bump on the ends of her abused toes made her howl, even while tears of gratitude popped into her eyes. The turn-off.
    She groped for the handrail, and went up the stairs. Thin branches tickled and slapped, cobwebs broke across her face, winged things fluttered against her hair. She swatted them away as she felt her way