Chapter 14 Rescue
Rescue
The van smelled like fear and unwashed bodies.
I kept my head down, shoulders hunched, making myself small among the other women.
Six of us packed in like cattle, though only I knew where we were heading.
The others—Romanian, Ukrainian, one who might have been Syrian—had already learned the first rule of being cargo: invisibility was survival.
Nathan's voice crackled through the subdermal comm in my ear, barely audible: "Two minutes out. Status?"
I couldn't respond, not with the guard watching us through the mesh partition. Instead, I shifted my weight, triggering the tracker's pressure sensor twice. All clear.
The girl beside me was crying silently, tears cutting tracks through cheap makeup. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. I wanted to tell her it would be okay, that in a few hours this would be over. But cargo didn't comfort cargo. We sat in our separate hells and pretended we were already gone.
"Coming up on the warehouse," Nathan murmured. "Backup's in position. Remember, wait for my signal before—"
The van lurched to a stop, cutting him off. Showtime.
The rear doors flew open to reveal two men with clipboards and calculating eyes. I'd seen their type before—middle management in the flesh trade, keeping distance between themselves and the product.
"Out," one barked in accented English. "Single file. No talking."
I was third in line, stumbling as my foot caught the van's edge. The guard laughed, muttering something in Russian about clumsy bitches. I kept my eyes down, memorizing his face for later.
The warehouse loomed around us, all concrete and shadows and the kind of acoustics that swallowed screams. They herded us through a maze of shipping containers toward a processing area. Folding tables laden with zip ties, collars, and what looked like veterinary equipment.
"Strip," the clipboard man ordered. "Everything off. Jewelry, hair ties, all of it."
The Syrian girl balked, clutching her hijab. The guard's backhand sent her sprawling, and she peeled it off with shaking fingers. I undressed mechanically, folding my clothes with the precise movements Gabriel had drilled into me. Submission as muscle memory.
"This one's trained." The second clipboard man noticed my posture, the way I'd automatically positioned myself for inspection. "Premium product."
They discussed me in Russian, debating prices and potential buyers. I caught Nathan cursing softly through the comm but kept my expression blank. Just meat being evaluated. Nothing more.
The inspection was clinical and humiliating. They checked teeth, muscle tone, looked for track marks and signs of disease. When they found the faint scars Gabriel's games had left, clipboard two whistled appreciatively.
"Broken in but not broken down," he said in English, probably for the guard's amusement. "Someone will pay well for this one."
They separated us based on perceived value. The young Romanian and I went to one holding area—a shipping container retrofitted with chain-link cells. The others, deemed less profitable, went elsewhere. I tried not to think about what that meant.
My cell was four feet by six, a dog crate for human cargo. The Romanian girl was put in the one beside mine, close enough I could hear her hyperventilating. There were others already here, shadows behind chain link who'd learned not to acknowledge new arrivals.
"Panic room confirmed," I subvocalized, lips barely moving. "Northwest corner, red container. Approximately twelve women inside."
"Copy that. Teams are moving to secondary positions." Nathan's voice was steady, but I could hear the strain underneath. "You okay?"
Two taps on the tracker. Yes.
A lie, but a necessary one.
The next two hours crawled by in a haze of calculated submission. Guards came and went, occasionally pulling women out for "private viewings" with potential buyers. I made myself small, valuable but not threatening, the perfect victim waiting to be claimed.
When they finally came for me, I was ready.
"You. Out." The guard from the van unlocked my cage, leering. "Boss wants to sample the premium goods."
I shuffled out, letting him grip my arm too tight, steer me roughly toward a partitioned area in the back. This wasn't part of the plan, but adaptability was survival.
"Bunny, what's happening?" Nathan's voice, urgent now.
I couldn't answer, could only follow where I was led. The partition concealed an office setup—desk, couch, laptop showing security feeds. And behind the desk, a man in an expensive suit counting money.
"Ah, the trained one." His English was smooth, educated. "Vlad says you know how to behave. Show me."
I dropped to my knees without hesitation, hands behind my back, eyes downcast. Perfect submission, performed with the same detachment as breathing.
"Excellent." He came around the desk, circling me like a buyer examining livestock. "Where were you trained? Not here—you're too refined for American breaking."
"May I speak, sir?" The words tasted like ash.
"You may."
"Eastern Europe, sir. Private trainer. I was sold to cover his debts."
"Hmm." His hand tangled in my hair, testing. "And yet there's something... off about you. Too calm. Too accepting." He yanked my head back, studying my face. "You're not scared enough."
The blade was ceramic, thin as paper, hidden in the hem of my underwear. Gabriel had taught me to hide weapons in places men were too arrogant to check. As the boss leaned closer, suspicious, I let my body go limp, falling forward in a perfect faint.
"Shit." He stepped back, annoyed. "Vlad! The bitch—"
I rolled, blade flashing out to catch his femoral artery just above the knee. Blood sprayed in arterial spurts, painting the wall behind him. He screamed, hands trying to stem the flow, but I was already moving.
"Now!" I shouted into the comm. "Panic room, northwest corner!"
The warehouse erupted in chaos. Flash-bangs, shouting, the crack of gunfire. I heard Vlad running toward the office and pressed myself against the wall beside the door, waiting.
He burst through, gun drawn, looking for his boss. I let him see the blood first, watched his eyes widen, then jabbed the confiscated taser into the base of his skull. He went down convulsing, the gun skittering across the floor.
"Bunny, report!" Nathan's voice cut through the noise.
"Office clear. Two down. Moving to panic room."
I grabbed the keycard and gun, not bothering to dress.
Blood slicked my feet as I ran, following the mental map I'd built during surveillance.
Around me, the warehouse had become a battlefield.
FBI agents swarmed through, but the traffickers had been ready.
Automatic weapons chattered from elevated positions.
The panic room was locked, of course. Women pounded on the walls inside, screaming. I swiped the keycard but the pad flashed red. Fuck.
"It's biometric," I told Nathan. "I need—"
Gunfire erupted behind me. I spun, firing twice, watching a guard crumple. His partner ducked behind a crate, returning fire, pushing me back from the door.
Then Nathan was there, moving like violent poetry. Two shots, center mass, and the second guard dropped. He looked at me—naked, blood-splattered, holding a smoking gun—and his expression was unreadable.
"Biometric lock," I repeated. "Need a hand. Literally."
We dragged the dead guard to the scanner. His hand was still warm enough to work. The lock disengaged with a cheerful beep that felt obscene in the carnage.
Inside, women huddled together, some in cages, others chained to the walls. The smell hit me like a physical blow—fear and waste and that particular brand of despair I remembered too well.
"FBI," Nathan announced. "We're getting you out."
They shrank back, not believing. I understood. Sometimes rescue looked too much like another trick.
"Listen to me," I said in Russian, then Ukrainian, then broken Arabic. "This is real. But we need to move fast."
One woman, braver or more desperate than the others, stood. A collar circled her neck, the kind with an electronic lock. I'd worn similar once. I remember the panic when the collar was gone, the fear.
"Please," she whispered.
I found bolt cutters in the guard's supplies, but the collar was beyond simple tools. Electronic, probably GPS-enabled. Cutting it wrong could trigger any number of fail-safes.
"Hold still," I told her, then pressed the taser to the lock mechanism.
The device fried in a shower of sparks. She screamed, the sound too close to my own memories, but the collar fell away. Angry burns marked her neck, but she was free.
"Jesus, Bunny," Nathan muttered, but he was already working on the cages, shooting locks when keys couldn't be found.
We freed seventeen women in total. Some walked out on their own. Others had to be carried. The youngest couldn't have been more than fourteen, and when she saw the blood on my hands, she started screaming—high, thin wails that scraped against my skull.
"It's okay," I tried to tell her. "You're safe now."
But she looked at me and saw a monster covered in other monsters' blood. Maybe she wasn't wrong.
The mop-up took hours. Statements, medical evaluations, processing survivors. I found clothes in an office—ill-fitting men's pants and a shirt that reeked of cologne—and tried to wash the blood off in a utility sink. It had dried under my nails, in the creases of my palms. Evidence of choices made.
"Bunny."
I looked up to find Nathan in the doorway, his own clothes bearing testament to the night's violence.
"Seventeen women," he said. "Because of you. Seventeen lives saved."
"Minus three lives taken." I scrubbed harder at a stubborn stain. "Does the math work out?"
"You know it does."
"Do I?" The water ran pink down the drain. "I killed them the same way Gabriel taught me. Used their expectations against them. Performed submission until the moment I didn't." I met his gaze in the mirror. "I did exactly what he trained me to do."