LITMIR.BIZ

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since the last time you came,” she finally replied, speaking so quietly that, had he not been looking at her lips, he wouldn’t have even known that she’d answered.

      So, the torn bill had worked, he thought. He didn’t kid himself that the guard he’d given it to had any sense of honor, only greed, but that was all right. He wasn’t above using whatever worked.

      “But before then?” he pressed.

      The small, perfect shoulders rose slightly and then lowered in an almost imperceptible shrug. The clinging green gown rustled a little.

      “Before then,” she murmured.

      “Who?” he asked, moving closer to her.

      Tate saw the young woman automatically shrink into herself again, but this time, she didn’t step back the way she had before. This time, she remained where she was.

      “The one with the scraggly hairs on his chin,” she told him.

      The man with the goatee, Tate thought. Of the two henchmen, he looked like the more dangerous one, the more unpredictable one.

      “Did he hurt you … badly?” Tate pressed, unable to make himself ask Hannah if the scum had actually raped her.

      Somehow, phrasing it that directly seemed to just intensify the horror of the attack. He didn’t want to resurrect painful memories for her, he just needed information.

      To his relief, Hannah shook her head. “No, not badly.” She knew what he was asking her. Uncomfortable, she pressed her lips together, testing each word cautiously as she uttered it. Her eyes were once again riveted on his face as she watched his reaction. “He tried, but the other man—” What was it that she’d heard the dark-skinned man called? “Nathan,” she suddenly remembered. “Nathan pulled him off me and hit him. Nathan said that no one would pay for me if I was ruined.” She raised her head, a glimmer of defiance in her eyes, as if these were odds she’d managed somehow to beat. “You paid for me.”

      Tate paused. He had no doubt that there was probably a camera in the suite somewhere—possibly several—watching his every move, recording his every word. Anything he wanted to convey to her would have to be almost inaudible if he wanted to have a prayer of getting out of here alive—and ever coming back to rescue the girls.

      “Yes,” he answered. “I paid for you. Or at least made a partial payment,” he qualified. The rest he was to bring to the “party” that was being given. A party where he and other so-called pillars of society were to be coupled with their bought-and-paid-for virgins.

      A party that, rumor had it, the mastermind behind this ring was also to attend.

      She didn’t quite follow him. A partial payment? “So do you own me?” she asked, still unable to grasp the concept, even as she heard herself ask the question.

      “I will as soon as I make the second payment,” he corrected her, playing to whatever audience would eventually be sitting on the other side of the camera and observing this.

      Hannah paused, her head spinning. The conversation didn’t seem real to her, like something in one of the books that were forbidden for her and young people like her in the village to read.

      “And when you make that second payment,” she finally said, “then what?”

      “Then you’re mine,” he said as matter-of-factly as he could. He saw another glimmer of defiance in her eyes before it faded away again.

      Good for you, Tate thought, pleased. They hadn’t broken her spirit. This meant he had something to work with. And that, hopefully, would help her get back to normal once he brought her back to her village.

      Watching him intently, Hannah was frantically searching for something to cling to, something to give her hope that there would be an end to this nightmare and that the end she was seeking wasn’t tied to her demise.

      There had to be more to this than what there was on the surface.

      There had to be, she silently insisted.

      “Why did you call me what you did earlier?” she wanted to know, focusing on the name the stranger had used. How could he have possibly known she’d been called that as a child?

      Unless …

      Unless he had actually spoken to Caleb. Had Caleb sent him, as the man had claimed? It didn’t seem possible. Caleb wouldn’t have left Paradise and walked among the outsiders—

      He would. For me, she realized and knew it was true. Hannah looked at the stranger expectantly, waiting for an answer. Then, in case he’d forgotten what she’d asked, she said, “You called me Blue Bird.”

      “Blue Birds look pretty against the sky when they soar,” he said evasively, doing his best to recall exactly how Caleb had explained the reason for the nickname to him. “It just seemed to fit you,” he concluded, looking at her pointedly.

      Willing her to make the connection between the nickname and what he’d whispered to her the last time he’d seen her.

      Had she heard him then?

      Or had she been too drugged or too despondent at the time to understand what he was saying to her?

      Tate watched the young woman’s face for some sort of clue. Unlike his own stoic expression—his “game” face—Tate saw a myriad of emotions wash over Hannah’s heart-shaped face.

      And then, he could have sworn that what looked like enlightenment entered her eyes—just before she shut down again. Shut down as if she was afraid to believe him. Afraid to get her hopes up, for fear that she was only going to have them dashed again.

      “You don’t have to be afraid,” he said to her as gently as he dared. “I’m not going to do anything to you. I just want to talk.”

      “Talk?” she echoed, as if she didn’t understand the word. As if it was just too much for her to hope for.

      “Talk,” he repeated. “I want to get to know you.”

      She still looked as if she didn’t comprehend the word, or at least was confused by it. “They said …” The words felt as if they had gotten stuck in her throat and she tried again. “They said I should be ‘nice’ to you.”

      There was no mistaking what the euphemism actually meant, though she refused to think about it.

      “Who’s they?” Tate asked, doing his best not to put any undue emphasis on the question. He wanted it to sound like nothing more than an idle query, one of many that could crop up in the course of a conversation. “Do you mean the two men outside the door?” he asked, trying to get her to talk to him.

      She shook her head. “No, another man. I’d never seen him before. He and the man with him said if I wasn’t nice to you, I’d be sorry.” Either way, she lost, Hannah thought.

      Picking up the slender thread, Tate continued, doing his best to sound almost uninterested, just mildly curious. “This man you didn’t know, did you hear anyone address him by name?”

      But Hannah shook her head again. “They just called him ‘Boss,’” she told him.

       Jackpot!

      Kind of.

      Subduing his excitement, Tate lowered his voice and asked, “What did he look like?”

      Instead of answering him, Tate saw apprehension return to her eyes as she looked at him nervously. “You are trying to trick me.” It was half a question, half a statement.

      “Trick you?” he echoed in surprise. Why would she think that?

      “Yes,” Hannah insisted. “You are here. He is the man who arranges these things. You must know what he looks like.” Suspicion rose in her voice. Was he trying to trap her somehow? She didn’t understand any of this, not the abduction, not why she had to be here, nothing.

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