Chapter Fourteen
Mitch
Wednesday came around quicker than I’d expected.
Being with Amy and her sweet delicate body was all I could think of.
The only way I’d wanted to spend my time.
Damn, she was a beautiful game that it turned out I could play pretty well.
Her gasps and moans of delight were music to my ears, and when she got all desperate and begged me not to stop, begged me to make her come…
that was enough to make me spurt too soon.
“Hey, what’s up, man? You’re late,” Dalton said when I walked into the busy kitchen at Rose Cottage.
“What? Nothing.” I frowned.
“He’s got a new woman,” Phil said. He glanced away from the security screens to study me. “Probably brooding that he’s not deep in her pussy right now.”
I frowned at him. “I already told you. Don’t fucking speak about Amy that way.”
Cillian grinned and passed me a Union Jack bandana. “She’s nice, and ’bout time after Sarah. I’m pleased for you, mate.”
“Yeah, Amy is nice,” Finn added. He checked the barrel of a handgun and then shoved it into the waistband of his black jeans.
I took a gun from the table. “She is, really nice.”
“Yeah, well, forget about her now.” Andrew slurped from a mug of coffee. “We need our wits about us. These are big players, and fuck knows how many women he’s got stashed away.”
“Or how many heavies and damn Rottweilers are lurking around,” Cillian added. “He said, dogs, right?”
“Yep.” Phil nodded.
“Did we get an address yet?” I turned to Jamie. “For this White Rabbit location?”
“He just messaged me three words. Rambler. Kite. Condensation.”
“Okay, and where is that?”
“South of here, near a sewage works.” Jamie wrinkled his nose. “Pleasant.”
“We’ve been on Google Earth,” Grant said, his face lifting from his phone.
I hadn’t noticed him sitting in the corner.
“Oh, and?” I asked.
“Same shit as usual. Very isolated house, a few outbuildings, long drive. Some of the barns appear more like shipping containers.”
“Ready-made prison cells.” Finn clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “Asshole. I’ll grab some bolt cutters. I’ve got a feeling we might need them.”
“Good idea.” Cillian tied his bandana around his neck.
“You sure you’re okay with staying here, Phil?” Andrew asked.
“Yeah, someone has to, but I’ll be on standby if you need anything. Girls have full client lists tonight. We can’t leave them alone.”
“Mmm, we should have planned this better.” I rubbed on my bottom lip. “They’re vulnerable as fuck. I swear the weirdo level is going up in Oxford lately.”
“Better they’re in here than on the streets.” Dalton yanked the sleeves of his black sweater down to his wrists. “Want me to drive?”
“Sure,” Andrew said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
We headed south. The commuter traffic had eased, and we were soon out into the countryside. My belly was taut, and a knot in my shoulder was growing with the anticipation of the contact. I watched the hedgerow slide past in a blur and listened to the conversations of the five men around me.
But my concentration wasn’t there. My mind kept drifting to Amy and her trusting blue eyes and quick smile.
I couldn’t understand why no one had been close to her before when I found being close to her the most natural thing in the world.
She really must have hooked up with a bunch of emotionally stunted twats; that was the only explanation.
Her childhood still tormented me, but when Jamie and I had visited the commune there’d been nothing to suggest foul play. Just a group of hippies living sustainably. I’d be keeping an eye on them for sure, dropping in from time to time, and I had a few buddies up north who would do the same.
We passed an industrial estate then took a left onto a smaller road with just a smattering of houses behind high fences and big gates.
Millionaires most likely.
I hadn’t told Amy that her twin brother was missing, and whether or not to mention it bugged me.
Would she want to know or had she washed her hands of everyone from her childhood forever?
Including him? But she’d told me she’d confided in him that she was escaping and he’d helped her.
So she must have a soft spot for him even if he had agreed to incest. Incest at the insistence of extremely mad and bad adults who had brainwashed him.
I let out a gruff sigh.
“You okay?” Jamie asked from my left side.
“Yeah, just thinking.”
“About Amy?”
“That bloody commune, and how awful it was when she was there ten years ago.”
“Have you told her about her brother?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She had a right hissy fit when I told her I’d been up to Yorkshire. To be honest, I didn’t get further than telling her that I’d gone before I was machine gunned with pasta.”
“Should have told her beforehand.” He chuckled. “You had a search for him? The brother?”
“A quick sweep around. But not a proper dig. I’ll get to it.”
“Fuck me, it stinks ’round here.” Cillian wafted his hand in front of his nose.
“Sewage works. Keep going straight for another mile.” Finn was studying his phone. “Not far now.” He pulled up his bandana.
I did the same.
“What’s the plan, Prof?” Dalton asked.
“Jamie will have to make first contact,” Andrew said. “His voice is recognizable, and they’ve spoken on the phone. We don’t want to arouse suspicion until we’ve got the measure of the place.”
“Yeah, we need to know what we’re up against,” Grant agreed. “But Jamie can’t be completely exposed.”
“Yeah, you go with him, Mitch.” Andrew turned to me. “Put your phone on so we can hear any conversations. Then when we know how many girls are there and what backup this asshole has, we’ll move in. They won’t know we’re in the van with these blacked-out windows.”
“Are we shooting to kill, Prof?” Jamie asked.
It was the question on all of our minds. We only killed killers.
So if this Beelzebub guy, or whatever his name was, wasn’t a murderer we couldn’t take him out, that was our code. No matter how much of a deviant, a despicable human being he was, we had to let him live and hope the scales of justice balanced and a judge sent him down for a long time.
My right index finger twitched. My darkness prodding to be let out. Selling women into lives as sex slaves was as bad as murdering them…wasn’t it?
“We know nothing about him,” Andrew said. “But we can change that. Do some digging when you start talking, guys, let’s see if he tries to big himself up and trips up on bravado and tells you something about his past.”
“Yeah, good plan.” I nodded slowly. “We can do that.”
I studied Jamie. People just liked talking to him. He had a knack of feigning interest even when someone didn’t interest him. Probably got taught that at one of his posh schools. And I had enough policing years under my belt to know how to catch people out.
Basically, everyone liked talking about themselves. Favorite topic of conversation.
We turned onto a long driveway lined with silver birches. It would have been upmarket if it wasn’t for the potholes and the crap lining the way—an old fridge, two stained mattresses, a shopping trolley to name a few items.
“What is this place?” Andrew muttered.
“A place to shop for women, women who didn’t choose to be for sale,” Dalton said between gritted teeth. “It’s a shithole.”
I leaned to see between the driver and passenger seats. The building was in a state of terrible disrepair with a hole in the red-tiled roof, a fallen length of grimy guttering slicing the view from a window. Curtains hung tattered and filthy, and paint peeled on the once-yellow front door.
“Dogs, two o’clock,” Andrew said. “A lot of them, and big bastards, too.”
He was right, but they appeared to be caged—ten feet of strong diamond-shaped wire separating us from them. They were barking furiously at our approach; big teeth and menace, we needed to stay trapped.
“Where were the shipping containers?” I asked, unable to locate them. “When you went online.”
“Round the back,” Finn said.
The vehicle drew to a halt.
“Go guys, be safe,” Andrew said, pulling down his cap and drawing up his bandana.
Jamie and I did the same. We shared a look, a wordless confirmation that we had each other’s backs.
We got out of the vehicle, our feet crunching on the gravel. The dogs’ barking upped a notch, and then to our right we saw three guys rounding the corner of the house.
I shut the door. Hiding our backup inside. These heavies didn’t need to know there were more than two of us…yet.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” The smaller of the three guys marched forward, gun on show in his waistband, two full sleeves of tats, and greasy hair that hung limply to his shoulders. His face was long, the creases around his mouth deep brackets, and his chin pointed.
“We’ve got an appointment.” Jamie walked toward him, the holdall of cash in his hand.
I stuck to his side, a discreet phone connection letting the rest of Galahad know what was being said as we went out of earshot.
“What you got them up for?” Long Faced Guy, who I guessed was the boss, nodded at our bandanas.
“Don’t want a record of us being here,” Jamie said. “Not exactly legit, is it? Buying three women.” He glanced at the farmhouse. “You could have cameras for all I know. Could be a setup. I told you, I’ve done some bad shit, don’t want to go down. Would kill me not being able to get any pussy.”
Beelzebub huffed. “Or live it large in your fancy mansion by the sound of it.”
“Exactly.” Jamie shrugged. “I have standards.”
“Sure you have, Silver Spoon. And yeah, we could have cameras and you wouldn’t know.”
“Have you?”
“Nah, I’m as camera shy as you, mate.” He laughed gruffly. It held no humor.
Jamie’s attention went to the dogs.
“Big ain’t they,” Beelzebub said, his mouth curling in a nasty canine snarl that matched the dogs’. “Dobermans.”
“Yep, glad they’re in their cage.” Jamie blew out a breath.