effort.
Sick at heart, she lay still. He had her.
Could and would do whatever he wanted to her.
Reality was different, far different from her naive fantasies.
Chapter four
Pulling off the capture called for skills Reno had honed over years of doing a job only a few were capable of. He knew what had to be done and when without needing to think about the steps so why was he taking so damn long tonight?
The answer came as he headed for the trailer where the subject had left her tools. He wasn’t at the top of his game because no matter how much he wished it wasn’t so, he hadn’t fully recovered from the motorcycle accident that had nearly killed him. When he’d been actively engaged in securing her, he’d managed to ignore his left leg. Now the deep ache reminded him that he’d nearly lost it. It would never be the same. Managing pain and compromised mobility took a lot out of a man.
A sex slave trainer.
At least the accident hadn’t compromised his vision. He could still see better than most people, particularly at night. Teeth clenched against the throbbing crawling through his thigh muscle, he hurried to the trailer with the probably still sleeping couple and picked up the tool bag. It was heavy enough that he admired the subject’s ability to carry it the way she had.
The veins in his temple started pulsing, forcing him to stop and wait for his blood pressure to back off. His hearing was as acute as his eyesight, enabling him to catch the reassuring snores from inside the metal can. Having this particular RV with those particular owners in this remote space had made the capture possible. That and the lack of security lighting. If not for those fortuitous elements, he’d probably be half way home while trying to shake off the memory of the one who’d gotten away.
She hadn’t.
She was his.
To do what with?
The unexpected question stopped him half way to the office where he intended to leave the tool bag. Damn it, he was like a dog that had been chasing sticks all his life. He shouldn’t be asking himself why he was chasing them.
Teeth clenched, he silenced the mental questions. He was damn good at what he did, and tonight was a prime example of his skills. He was back in the saddle so to speak.
Because he’d been watching her, he knew where she’d gotten the bag from. It hadn’t occurred her to lock the office door which made putting it back in place easy. He pulled a cloth from a back pocket and wiped off both the bag and door knob. He debated locking the door but decided it didn’t make any difference.
At the beginning of his career, he’d been eager to spend as much time with a subject as possible, but the years of work and too-long hospitalization had taught him patience. He’d take a few minutes to look through the shoebox sized trailer where she lived. She’d keep.
Once he was in it, he took advantage of the light from the TV to check out his surroundings. He grabbed her cell phone and the small back pack she used as a purse. Leaving her car behind might arouse someone’s suspicions but maybe not if he took most of her clothes. That way people might conclude she’d taken off with some man with a vehicle that was in better shape than her beater.
She had taken off, just not willingly.
It surprised him to discover she didn’t have a laptop. He could check her cell phone for information about family and friends. Until or unless he learned different, he’d assume she wasn’t hooked into social networks.
Was indeed the loner instinct had told him she was.
Sometimes the stars aligned perfectly.
Like now when he needed to feel alive.
#
No surprise, the subject was where he’d left her. If he was doing this by the book, he would have truly hog tied her so there was no way she could make enough noise to alert someone to what had happened to her, but tonight was about living dangerously. Remembering what had given his life purpose before a sharp turn and water on the
Robert J. Sawyer, Stefan Bolz, Ann Christy, Samuel Peralta, Rysa Walker, Lucas Bale, Anthony Vicino, Ernie Lindsey, Carol Davis, Tracy Banghart, Michael Holden, Daniel Arthur Smith, Ernie Luis, Erik Wecks