“Wainwright going to take possession then or are we shipping to his choice of location?” Nelson asked gruffly. “Will I need to bring along extra firepower?”
“No, he’s coming alone, except for his usual three who accompany him everywhere. He won’t do a thing because he wants those girls very badly. We’ll off-load the plane and he’s going to have a truck parked at the airport that the girls will be herded onto. It all should take five minutes tops, and then we’ll fly out on the plane the girls came in on. Easy transaction and I make another ten million.”
“We could take this girl with us,” Nelson hedged. “She’s not so messed up I can’t have her cleaned up in half an hour. I’ll keep her drugged enough she won’t be a problem.”
“Get us the hell there, goddamn it,” Cole barked to Baker. “This is bullshit!”
Brumley chuckled. “Have your fun with her then silence her for good. She saw your face and mine, not to mention Colin’s and Isaac’s. I don’t take chances. Especially not over some two-bit whore.”
Steele held up four fingers to signal the number of people in the room.
The sound of footsteps echoing through the comm and then the shutting of a door signaled Brumley’s departure.
Son of a bitch!
“What’s the ETA, Baker?” Cole demanded.
“Fucking traffic!” Baker snarled. “It’s not far but this is balls, man. It’s balls!”
They all went quiet again when more came through P.J.’s wire.
“Why the tears?” Nelson asked mockingly. “Surely he wasn’t that bad. Most women fight over the honor to be his lover. But maybe you’ll like me better.”
Cole covered his ears, no longer able to bear to hear anything more. When he looked up, he could read the expressions of the others.
They’d gotten the information they’d needed after all. Brumley had spilled the details of the shipment of girls.
But at what cost? At what f**king cost? Something so precious that it gutted Cole to even dwell on what the success of this mission had cost P.J.
As much as it shamed Cole, he’d give it all back and never know how to save those girls if he could take back what had just happened to P.J.
CHAPTER 11
P.J. lay sprawled on the couch, pain knifing through her body as surely as the blade had cut into her skin. Nelson loomed over her but he was frowning. He didn’t like passive women. He’d said as much.
Well that was fine because the drug was starting to wear off and if the ass**le gave her just a little more time, he was going to have one hell of a fight on his hands, because she wasn’t going to lie here and take it like she’d been forced to do for Brumley.
Rage ate at her. It was acid in her blood, eating a hole in her very soul.
There was nothing more horrific than being so helpless that she hadn’t been able to move. She could barely speak. And it hadn’t been enough for the bastard to rape her. He’d gotten off on making her bleed.
The smell of her own blood gagged her. It was an assault to her senses. Smeared all over the front of her body where he made the jagged cuts. He hadn’t minded the mess. He’d wallowed in it like a gluttonous pig.
Nelson left the room and P.J. immediately tested her ability to move. Some of the lead had left her limbs and she could move both arms and legs. She looked around for something, anything, she could use as a weapon. She wasn’t strong enough to get off the couch yet, but she could make the bastard sorry he’d ever touched her.
To her utter shock, the knife that Brumley had used on her was on the coffee table just a few inches from her grasp. She leaned as far as she could, straining and reaching for the blade.
She bumped it, sending it into a slight spin. Swearing mentally, she tried again, wincing when the edge sliced into her fingers. It was a small price to pay for pulling it closer.
She turned it so she could grasp the hilt and then she took it, transferring it to the hand closest to the inside of the couch, and then tucked her hand between the back of the couch and her side.
Nelson returned a moment later with a damp cloth and set about cleaning the smeared blood. He frowned when he realized she was still bleeding from the cuts.
He looked . . . pissed.
“There was no point in this,” he muttered. “No need to cut you at all, much less so deep. You need stitches.”
An odd thing to say when he planned to kill her. What the f**k did it matter if she was sliced open?
“Please,” she rasped out, trying to buy more time. “I’m just an American college student. I was out for a good time. I don’t even know who you are. I just want to go home. No one will ever know.”
Nelson’s lips thinned into a firm line. “I have orders.”
He wiped at most of the blood and then finally gave up. He rose, and she was appalled to see the bulge at his groin. Despite his seeming disgust, he was certainly turned on, blood or not.
“I wanted you to be able to fight,” he said in irritation. “It’s not fun when you just lie there.”
Come get some, bastard. You’ll get your fight.
He unzipped his pants, not even bothering to remove them. He shoved them down his hips and then he yanked her legs apart and was on her and inside her in a brutally painful thrust that momentarily paralyzed her in her shock.
“Come on, bitch, fight me,” he snarled.
“Be careful what you ask for, ass**le,” she hissed.
His eyes widened in surprise just as she nailed him right in the jaw with enough force to break it. Pain lanced through her fingers, but she ignored it. Then she raised the hand holding the knife and plunged it into his back.