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  “I’m so glad they have him,” Heather said, “but listen, I wasn’t exaggerating about the evil. We’ve got some really ugly news.”

  Dawn nodded. “Honey, get a hold of yourself but keep working.”

  That didn’t sound good. Skye steeled herself, swallowed a knot in her throat, and said, “Okay.”

  “Uh, they didn’t kidnap you just to work on this farm,” Dawn said. “It’s no accident that you’re pretty.”

  “Yeah, oh, God, how to say this? Rufus is a true demon,” Heather said. “He wants you for…”

  She tried to speak several times, but couldn’t seem to get the words out. Skye’s whole body shivered. “Rape? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  Both women nodded with tears in their eyes. “We’re really, really sorry,” Heather said. “As soon as he gets out of jail, he will come after you, again and again. He’ll hurt and humiliate you as much as he can. He’s done it to us. An incredibly sick monster.”

  Skye had somehow already known. That didn’t make it any easier to accept. She tried to speak several times but couldn’t. Her nightmare kept getting worse.

  She froze in place until Dawn said, “Keep working, sweetheart. Can’t stop.”

  Despite her panic, Skye forced herself to keep moving her hands.

  “He’s so evil,” Heather said, “that the girl they kidnapped a month ago hung herself in the cellar. She couldn’t endure him focusing on her.”

  That was too much. Skye burst into tears. Her throat burned, and she could hardly stay upright.

  “We’re so, so sorry,” Dawn said, “but you have to keep filling the cells. Maude loves every chance she gets to hurt us.”

  Skye could hardly see through her tear-soaked eyes, but she kept pouring potting soil over trays filled with small plastic seedling cells. She snuck a glance at Maude. The woman stared at her with a smirk on her face. Probably knew what her slaves were talking about.

  When Skye had caught her breath again, she asked, “How long will he be gone?”

  “Not sure,” Heather said. “He keeps getting arrested, thank God. The asshole drinks too much and is always picking fights. But unfortunately, the county jail is way overcrowded. They keep putting him in but cutting him loose early to make room for other assholes. The last time he was convicted of drunk and disorderly, which was a few weeks back, he claimed the judge gave him ninety days. But he was out on probation in less than two weeks.”

  Chapter 5

  Athena’s ranch

  Athena searched all over the Dark Web but found no trace of Dawn Miller or Isabella Costa. Her head was beginning to throb. Damn! What happened to them?

  She wasn’t used to striking out so completely, especially given her investigations for her dear friend, Cici Brodie. Cici had been a sex slave for five years, and now, she and Athena were freeing others.

  Athena’s part of the partnership was to search the Dark Web and find women and girls who were new to that ugly life and drug-free. They were the best candidates for halfway houses that led back to normal lives.

  For months, Athena had immersed herself in the filthiest, raunchiest part of the underground online slave auctions. When Athena found a good prospect for recovery, she either worked with law enforcement or bought the slave outright. Athena’s cover story was that she needed women and girls for whorehouses all over the good ol’ USA. That explained her looking in cities across the nation.

  Unfortunately, whoever had grabbed Dawn and Isabella wasn’t interested in selling them online. That probably meant the women had been forced into prostitution in some nearby whorehouse. But Athena couldn’t check in person because she wasn’t a guy.

  So, she called Tony Brickman, a former Denver vice cop who’d become a private investigator. He’d already worked with Athena a dozen times to extract somebody from slavery. He even discounted his normal fee for Athena because she was doing the work of the angels.

  “Hey, Tony, got a second?” she asked when he answered the phone.

  “Sure, Carol. How are you and the kid getting along?”

  That was always the way it was with him. He’d never start out a business conversation by talking business.

  When the small talk wound down, she asked, “Do you remember hearing about Isabella Costa, a coed someone kidnapped in Boulder about a month ago?”

  “Sure, my buddies inside tell me everybody’s running around but not making progress.”

  “I’m running around, too. And today, a teenage girl named Skye Dunbar was grabbed in Denver using the same MO.”

  “Jesus,” he said. “Plus, my sources tell me that the Costa snatch was probably connected with another one even older named Dawn Miller.”

  “All three victims are real attractive,” Athena said. “I’m thinking they might’ve been taken for the sex trade.”

  “Yeah, I remember the blonde. She’s a knockout.”

  For some reason, men always remembered the blondes better.

  “As for another kidnapping today,” Tony said, “I hadn’t heard. I’m down in the Springs with my son and grandkids. Garden of the Gods, rodeo museum, all that jazz. We’re at the Cave of the Winds now. They’re rampaging through the gift shop, and I’m sneaking a smoke.”

  Athena felt guilty about interrupting him when he was with his family, but Skye and the others were in big trouble. “None of them are showing up on the online auction sites. Could you check the brothels along the Front Range? These gals have to be somewhere, hopefully close.”

  “And I’m sure these gals would love to get back to their friends and families. Listen, I haven’t heard any rumors about Dawn or Isabella, much less Skye. Let me get back to you. But it’ll cost you some serious bucks and take a few days.”

  Athena understood he’d have to show up at each whorehouse, bullshit with the pimp running it, then take a woman to her room. Being a player was essential to his cover.

  “Works for me,” Athena said. “Check every place you know that doesn’t use the online slave auctions. I’ll send you the best photos I have of the three victims.”

  While Tony did what he could, Athena worked other angles. Maybe the three had been kidnapped for use in snuff films. Those were available online, too. The human mind was capable of incredible depravity.

  She checked that possibility, looking for Dawn and Isabella. They’d been gone long enough that any film they’d been killed in would’ve been released by now.

  No luck finding them, which was lucky for them.

  Athena was fast running out of ideas. She sent Beau an encrypted message asking for an update on what he’d learned. The best chance to recover kidnapping victims was always immediately after they’d been grabbed. Skye’s chances of survival were rapidly diminishing.

  -o-o-o-

  Maude’s farm, Weld County

  Skye worked steadily for two hours, even as her hands continued to shake. She’d hardly seen Rufus through the dirty canopy’s windows. All she knew for sure was that he was a nasty, huge guy. And everybody considered him big trouble. She didn’t doubt they were right.

  Skye had to figure some way to escape from this farm-prison. It was so far from Denver that she couldn’t imagine the police from there ever finding her. She’d have to save herself. But how?

  Maybe Maude was the weak point? Still sat in her recliner twenty yards away, paying more attention to her screen than to Skye and the others.

  But she had that revolver at her hip…

  ZAP!

  Skye hadn’t realized she’d stopped for a moment until the zap. Skye froze in place, her mind consumed by pain. It seemed like the shock lasted for a full minute, but who could tell?

  When Maude released the button, Skye bent over and gasped for a moment to catch her breath. How could I have been so stupid?

  While she began filling the six-pack cells again, her mind raced. Their only chance to confront Maude would be to catch the monstrous bitch unawares. Three
against one.

  They’d have to wait for the right opportunity, and Skye couldn’t even be sure they’d work together. She needed to discuss that possibility with them, but not until they were alone.

  After a few hours of steady work, Skye’s back began to ache from bending over all the time. The others seemed to be accustomed to this much manual labor. Dawn was closest, so Skye said, “Could I ask her for something to soothe my back? It’s killing me.”

  “No, the pills are in the house. She won’t return there until the end of our shift. We all have to stay together, or she has to chain the people she leaves behind in place. That’s too much work for her, so you’ll have to wait. Around five, we’ll break for dinner.”

  Skye hoped to god she could hold out that long. One more electrical shock and she might not get back up.

  -o-o-o-

  Athena’s ranch

  Late in the afternoon, Beau called Athena. “Forget dinner. I probably won’t finish work until midnight.”

  She wasn’t surprised. “Come whenever you’ve done what you can for the women today. I wouldn’t have said anything, but we won’t be able to get together again for a while. The trial could stretch out for a week or more.”

  “I’ll try to come by, chère. In the meantime, I have some news. Laura managed to turn up a short video clip that probably contains the perp’s vehicle.”

  “Fantastic,” Athena said. “I’ve always loved working with her, and now, we have actual evidence. Give her a raise.”

  “Would if I could. Luckily, we know almost to the minute when Skye’s assault and kidnapping occurred. At the end of the same block, a teenage girl at a coffee shop was shooting a video of her boyfriend hamming it up. They took off, but the barista remembered them being outside at the key time. Laura used the email address connected to the girl’s loyalty card to contact her. Sure enough, she’d photographed a white, full-sized pickup with a mottled red canopy as it moved behind her boyfriend who was acting like a fool.”

  A huge break. “Wonderful police work. What did you get on the vehicle?”

  “No plate number. The camera caught the truck from the side. But our expert on passenger vehicles back in DC recognized the truck as a second-generation Chevy Silverado. That series was manufactured from 2007 until 2014. He’s not sure, but he thinks the truck is a 2008. But Chevy sold a gazillion, the company’s most popular vehicle back in the day. And according to the Colorado DMV, four thousand white 2008 Silverados are still registered in the state. Way too many trucks to individually inspect them looking for a red canopy.”

  “Send the video. With the vehicle information and knowing the time of the attack, I should be able to find another camera that caught the suspect in the area.”

  “You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. At least, we haven’t found any more pictures or video from the area. We’ve gone door-to-door in a ten-block radius around the crime scene. I was hoping you might have a bright idea about where we can look next.”

  “How about gas stations or convenience stores outside the ten-block radius? They always have cameras. It’s a long shot but worth a try.”

  “A good angle. Thanks. And I’ll come eventually, but like I said, probably be really late.”

  “Any time, day or night. Love you.”

  “Je t'aime, ma belle.”

  Athena sat at a picture window and watched her beagle running away from a coyote that’d jumped the six-foot-high chain-link fence surrounding the property. The coyote was intent on making a meal out of Barney, but before the coyote got anywhere close, Hagrid bounded to the rescue at a full gallop. Soon, both of her mutts were chasing the coyote back over the fence. Fun and games in the Rockies.

  All that running around reminded her of cars zooming up and down roads. The Colorado Department of Transportation constantly used video to monitor highway congestion and collect tolls. It was possible the kidnapper lived near downtown Denver, but most people in large cities probably didn’t drive big, honking-ass trucks. Plus, the kidnapper’s original hunting ground had been Boulder. Which told her he might have taken a freeway or other state Highway to reach LoDo. It was worth checking to see whether a highway camera had caught the pickup Beau had found as it was either going to hunt or coming back.

  He sent her the coffee shop video, but most of the background was hidden by a van parked on the street behind the boyfriend. The video did reveal a fleeting glimpse of the pickup as it moved in front of the van. By using dozens of frames from the video, Athena pieced together a complete photograph of the truck and sharpened the image details.

  With the composite in hand, she proceeded to CDOT’s huge video database. The agency operated hundreds of cameras spread across the state.

  Her only chance would be to focus on specific times when the pickup might’ve appeared at a particular spot.

  She assumed the kidnapper drove directly from a particular camera’s location to the gift shop downtown. And after the kidnapping, she had to assume the truck left downtown immediately to get away. Athena estimated the time it would take to get back and forth, given the traffic at that time of the day.

  Boulder seemed the most likely location to start her search since the first two crimes had been committed there. Athena examined the highways that led from downtown Boulder to Denver. The first freeway was US 36, which led to I 25. To be thorough, she found two cameras in each direction, one close to downtown, and the second fifteen miles northwest on US 36.

  Then she focused on a one-half hour window of time for each camera that bracketed the most likely period when the truck would’ve passed that location.

  Damn, there’s a lot of traffic in the state. There were plenty of white trucks, too. In fact, it seemed like most of the trucks were white. Even worse, it wasn’t easy for her to tell the difference between a full-sized Chevy, Ford, Dodge, GMC, or Toyota. They all looked the same until Athena began focusing on tiny details, like front grill decals.

  The most unique characteristic in the composite photo was the mottled red canopy. Lots of pickups had covers over their beds. But the perp’s canopy must’ve been left out in the weather a long time. That had resulted in a distinctive pattern and varying shades of red.

  Reviewing the footage from four cameras took quite a while, even though she sped up the video dramatically. None of the vehicles on I 25 or US 36 were a good match, but a half-dozen came close enough for her to write down their license plate numbers, just in case.

  Chapter 6

  Maude’s farm

  Because of all her bending over, Skye’s back burned like fire by the time Maude climbed out of the recliner and said, “I’m hungry. Are you hungry? Why do I ask? You’re always hungry. I’m having steak and a baked sweet potato. You’re having spaghetti without meatballs and steel bread with butter. Let’s get after it.”

  Skye and the other slaves headed to the kitchen. Heather’s and Dawn’s fingers on their right hands were stained brown from pushing seeds into the potting soil moistened with manure tea. They scrubbed their hands thoroughly.

  The three of them cooked and cleaned up afterward. Although Skye hadn’t thought she was hungry earlier, she ate every bit of food she was given. Washed it down with more nasty tap water. The gods only knew how many pesticides had seeped into the water table before this farm became organic, and maybe even afterward. She had no idea how carefully the American authorities monitored such things.

  Neither Heather nor Dawn complained about anything, so Skye didn’t either. But she did meekly ask for some ibuprofen.

  “You’re ridiculously weak, girl,” Maude said. “I knew from the minute I set eyes on you that you’d be a huge headache. Don’t expect me to coddle you.”

  But Maude opened a cabinet and found a bottle of generic ibuprofen. With a scowl, she handed Skye two pills.

  Maude led them back to the greenhouse where the slaves worked until it was too dark to see. When they returned to the house, the old hag let t
hem wash their bodies at the kitchen sink. Their sweaty and smelly clothes went into a basket. Skye had nothing else to wear.

  “When we get downstairs,” Heather said, “we’ll find you a few things. You’re pretty close to Isabella’s size.”

  Skye gave her a hug. “Thanks.”

  In the meantime, the three naked slaves stood in their shoes and shivered.

  “That reminds me,” Maude said. “Time for your pills. When Rufus gets back, I won’t be able to keep him away from you sleazy bitches.”

  The old bitch gave them each a birth control pill. The very thought of Rufus returning made Skye tremble again. Her throat tightened, she fought to hold back more tears.

  If Maude had noticed, she didn’t react. Instead, she said, “Get into your hole.”

  Dawn grabbed the clothes basket and followed the others to the basement’s door. The slaves took off their shock collars and plugged them into chargers on a shelf near the door. Maude unlocked the shackles on their ankles and set the cold iron aside.

  Then, Maude held her gun on them. The slaves stepped down the basement stairs. Maude locked the door behind them.

  The cold cellar smelled of mold. A single small bulb in the ceiling near the stairs lit most of the basement, which was about six meters wide and twice as long. The walls were mortared rock, like her granda’s old farmhouse near Edinburgh. The floor was packed dirt.

  A single window, about one-meter square, rested at the outside ground level. Five vertical iron bars, each spaced about a hand’s width apart, prevented them from escaping that way.

  The room was mostly empty, but it contained a furnace, a hot water tank, a washer, a dryer, and three double beds on cheap metal frames. A couple of cardboard boxes rested at the foot of each bed.

  Dawn loaded the dirty clothes into the washer and turned it on. “At some point, Maude may drop by a used clothing store and pick you up a few things. In the meantime, you’ll have to do with Isabella’s clothes.”

  She pointed at two boxes. Skye checked them and found them full. She put on underwear, a sweatshirt, and sweatpants to help keep her warm in the frigid room.