5. Mia
Chapter five
Mia
M ia stared at the ten dollar bills in her hand, her brow furrowing. The man who had carefully slipped them into her underwear had whispered something about a secret message to her.
Who was that guy anyway? He didn’t look like the normal clientele here. He was in his thirties, muscular and handsome, with a five o’clock shadow and a stern look in his eyes. The kind of guy who could have any girl he wanted. He didn’t need to come here to pay for the likes of her.
He told her he was Fred from the chat room. The guy she had been suspicious of. But if he was giving her some sort of secret message, that meant he wanted to help her, right?
Well, not necessarily. There were all kinds of reasons that random guys wanted to get in touch with strippers privately. Illegal requests. Frightening reasons she didn’t want to think about.
As she looked more closely, she saw tiny codes scrawled in the top left of some of them. One of them read “1-p26-4-2.” They looked like gibberish. The dim light of the dressing room cast a sickly glow over the worn paper, and the scent of sweat and cheap perfume hung heavy in the air.
"Whatcha got there, Mia?" a fellow dancer asked.
"Nothing," Mia replied, her tone clipped and defensive. She turned her back to the wall, shielding her discovery from curious eyes. “Just counting my earnings.”
The codes were a jumble of letters and numbers that made no sense. Frustration bubbled within her, but she couldn't bring herself to discard the mysterious notes. Instead, she counted out the money she owed Chad, separating it from the six cryptic bills.
"Hey, Daddy wants his cut," a gruff voice called from outside the dressing room. Mia knew it was Chad, and her heart raced with equal parts fear and resentment.
"Coming, Daddy," she shouted back, stuffing the remaining cash into her bra for safekeeping. Her pulse thrummed in her ears, drowning out the pounding bass of the club beyond the door.
Chad's hulking figure loomed in the doorway, his eyes narrowed as he scrutinized Mia. "What took you so long?" he demanded, his voice thick with impatience.
"Sorry," she muttered, biting back a retort about how he wasn't her real daddy. “You know me, I’m a little slow sometimes.” She handed him the money without meeting his gaze, secretly hoping he wouldn't notice the absence of the six strange notes.
"Good girl," he sneered, his breath hot and foul against her face. Mia fought the urge to recoil as he counted the cash and slipped it into his pocket. "Now go to your room and eat your food. Fifteen minutes until the camera’s on. Don’t be slow this time."
"Right away, Daddy," she mumbled, trying to keep her voice steady. As he turned and stalked away, she let out a shaky breath, her green eyes flicking to the hidden bundle in her bra. Something about those notes felt important, and she was determined to crack their code.
Back in her tiny room, Mia's dinner sat cold and untouched on the small table, a sad-looking plate of pasta swimming in cheap sauce. Her stomach rumbled, but she paid no mind to the so-called food, her eyes fixated instead on the six crumpled notes spread out before her.
"Damn it," she muttered under her breath, frustration seeping into every crevice of her voice. "What the hell is this?"
Her gaze flicked over each note, trying to discern if there was any pattern or hidden meaning behind the scrawled numbers and letters. As her eyes narrowed in concentration, a spark of realization ignited within her.
"Wait a second." Mia leaned closer, scrutinizing the notes with renewed interest. Each one began with a number, followed by a series of seemingly random letters.
"Three, five, one . . .” she whispered, arranging the money by the numbers at the top of each note. The tension in her chest tightened as if she were holding her breath, waiting for a revelation. And then, she saw it.
The first number in the code was the order she had to read each one. They were the numbers one to six. The next part of the code was “p” followed by a number.
"Could it be?" Her heart hammered against her ribcage, a mix of excitement and fear coursing through her veins.
A tiger's snarl stared back at her from the mirror, its fangs bared in defiance. Mia ran her fingers over the tattoo on the back of her neck as she contemplated her next move. What if those numbers weren't just a random jumble? She remembered Jax (aka “Fred”) asking about her book—her treasured copy of The Jungle Book —during their last chat.
"Page numbers," she breathed, her green eyes widening at the thought. "They’re page numbers!"
Hurriedly, Mia grabbed her worn copy of The Jungle Book from the nightstand and flipped to page twenty-six. Her heart pounded, echoing in her ears like tribal drums as anticipation coursed through her veins. Please let it mean something, she prayed.
"Here goes nothing," she muttered, scanning the text for any possible clue. The words blurred together until one seemed to jump off the page, demanding her attention. Paragraph three, word five: "friend."
"Friend?" A shiver raced down her spine as the implications of that single word sank in. Was Jax trying to tell her that he was on her side? That he wanted to help her?
"Damn it, Jax. Who are you?" she whispered, torn between disbelief and hope. But there was no time to dwell on it; Mia needed answers, and she was determined to decode the rest of the messages.
"Let's see what else you're trying to tell me," she said with renewed purpose, flipping to the pages indicated by the other numbers scrawled on the money. As she worked, she couldn't help the small, secretive smile that tugged at her lips. After years of feeling trapped, Mia was beginning to taste the sweet possibility of freedom.
"Friend," she repeated, a fierce determination burning within her. The next word that Mia decoded was “of” and she felt a pang of excitement when she saw that. What was it going to say? Friend of yours?
As Mia continued with her hunt, she realized that part of her was finding this fun. It was about as close to Little space as she’d managed to get in a long time. Back when she was in foster care, she and Savannah had enjoyed being childlike together. Even as teenagers, they’d played the kinds of games much younger kids might have played. Probably something to do with having that shitty foster father who did things to them that he shouldn’t have, trying to force them to grow up so fast. So they’d retreated into their younger selves, their safe spaces.
Since then, Mia had done a bit of research into it. She’d had a few clients ask her to pretend to be Little now and then, which she kind of enjoyed, but she never liked how they acted. And she definitely, definitely didn’t like how Chad made her call him Daddy. He was no Daddy. The thought of it was ridiculous.
Anyway, she couldn’t afford to worry about all that stuff now. She only had a few minutes left before her cam shift, and she had a code to crack.
But the next code looked a bit different. “3-p48-11-6 ed .”
She didn’t know what to make of it, but she looked in her book and found the word “saved.” Okay. So that word ended in “ed.” If she was to take off the “ed . . .” It left “sav.”
She wrinkled her noes. “Friend of sav?” Had she gotten this all wrong? Maybe she wasn’t reading the code right at all.
Unless . . .
Oh heck.
Oh holy hell.
Jax was a friend of Savannah’s?
It couldn’t be. It felt too good to be true. For years now, Mia had wondered what had happened to her old best friend. She assumed that Savannah might have been captured by traffickers like her. She may even have succumbed to a worse fate.
But if Jax was her friend, then didn’t that mean she was out there? She was free.
She kept decoding, in a frenzy now, desperate for answers. Three more words. When she was done, what Mia saw before her felt like a miracle. The decoded messages spelled out, "Friend of Sav. Help you escape." Her heart raced, and her hands trembled ever so slightly.
A lifeline had been thrown her way. But could she trust it?
"Focus, Mia," she whispered, taking a deep breath. It was time for her webcam session. There was no room for hesitation or doubt.
"Showtime," she said, her voice firm and steady as she logged on. As she adjusted the camera and made sure the lighting was just right, her thoughts were consumed by the message and what she was going to do about it.
As if by magic, a private chat request popped up for her immediately. It was him. Fred.
"Hey, Fred," she wrote. "I was just reading."
“The Jungle Book?” came his immediate response.
“Yes,” she wrote back, choosing her words carefully since these private chats were sometimes monitored. “There were some words in particular that I was very interested in reading.”
A pause. “Oh yeah? You understood them okay?”
She smiled. “Understood loud and clear.”
“And?” he asked. “Do you agree with my interpretation of the text?”
Mia's heart pounded against her ribcage, the rush of adrenaline surging through her veins as she opened the private chat window. This was it: the moment to signal her agreement to Jax's plan. She could only write one word due to the ever-present monitoring, but she knew it would be enough.
"Yes," she typed, her fingers trembling slightly on the keys. It was a simple word, but it held the weight of her future within it.
"Understood," came Jax's response, and Mia felt both relief and a stirring of anticipation. The game was in motion, and there was no turning back now.
“What’s your favorite night of the week?” Jax asked suddenly. “To go out?”
She frowned. Obviously, she wasn’t allowed out anywhere. Unless he was asking her . . . when she wanted to escape. “I like to go out all the time,” she told him. “Don’t have a favorite. Just the sooner the better haha." She paused. “What about you?”
“I like Wednesday,” he replied. “I’m going out for a drive tomorrow. I like to go out around ten p.m. As soon as that alarm sounds, I’m off.”
“Alarm?” she asked, frowning.
“Yes,” he said. “I set an alarm when it’s time to go out for a run.”
“You like running at night?”
“It’s quieter,” he replied. “I can run more easily.”
She nodded. “I see.”
She wasn’t totally sure, but if she got this correctly, she was meant to wait for an alarm to sound tomorrow night at ten, and then . . . run.
“Where do you like to run?” she asked him.
He paused. “I always run to my car.”
“What kind of have you got?”
“An Audi. Red. It’s an S5.”
She bit her lip. “I see.”
There was a long silence where Jax didn’t write anything. The anticipation made her skin prickle.
“The main thing is that I don’t hesitate when that alarm goes off. Otherwise, the whole run is ruined.”
“Makes sense,” she replied.
“Gotta dash,” wrote Jax. Then she heard the beep that indicated he’d just paid her another hundred dollars.
Why did he do that? Was it just for cover, in case their chats were being monitored? Probably.
“Thank you,” she said, giving him a nervous smile.
“Your smile is beautiful,” he wrote back. “I hope to see you smiling much more very soon.”
She swallowed. His compliment felt weirdly good. But he was probably just writing that for show too, right?
Unless he meant that helping her escape was going to make her smile? She hoped so. Because right now, she didn’t know if she was making a huge mistake. And yet, staying here with Chad was the only alternative. And almost anything had to be better than that.
"See you on the other side," Jax typed, and Mia smiled again, despite herself. His confidence was contagious, and she couldn't help but feel a spark of hope ignite within her.
"Counting on it," she replied, her fingers flying across the keyboard. The stakes were high, but for the first time in what felt like forever, Mia had something to fight for.
"Good luck," Jax sent one final message before logging off, leaving Mia alone with her thoughts and her rapidly beating heart.
Her green eyes flicked to the worn copy of The Jungle Book lying on her nightstand. It had become more than just a book to her; it was a lifeline, a connection to Jax and the hope he offered. She knew she had to be brave like Mowgli, fierce like Shere Khan, and resourceful like Bagheera.
“Alright,” she whispered under her breath. “One more night of getting naked for money. Then I’m done.”