“Because Francois doesn’t know it yet, but he is going to die and you are going to help me kill him.” Luis gave her a calculating and cold once over. “You are exactly the type of woman he wants. I’ve been searching for a way to get inside his operation and tonight, you presented the perfectopportunity.”
Luis headed for the door, glancing over his shoulder at her before he left. “Think about it Tomi, your cooperation for your precious best friend’s life. I’ll give you a few days to think itover.”
He walked out without another look, leaving her chained to the bed in a room doused with blood. Oh mygod.
3
One weeklater…
Cole Fury leanedhis shoulder against the massive metal column’s running down the center of the cavernous warehouse, separating the bar area from the holding area. The whole place had been cleared for tonight’s event. Cole studied the occupants quietly, appearing bored in his black pants and long-sleeved fitted black shirt, even though his senses were on highalert.
This was his first glimpse inside El Oscuro’s world—and his first chance of getting a glimpse at the inner workings of the man’s operations. No one knew anything about his true identity, not even the FBI. The bastard was as slippery as a ghost and as deadly as the Grim Reaper. His specialty: sex-slave trafficking. He was good at flying under the radar 99% of the time—so good, Cole’s brothers had nearly tripped over their own feet when they’d finally gotten a substantial lead onhim.
Fury Security, the private security company he ran with his brothers and former Navy SEAL teammates, was relatively new to the investigation. The FBI had been tracking El Oscuro, the dark one, for months in connection with four missing women, all stolen from BDSM clubs, but their lack of leads and his cash drain had prompted the case to bedropped.
It wasn’t until Adam Wise, Cole’s friend and retired FBI agent, had come to Cole for help that the case had been reopened. Adam’s submissive, Tara, had gone missing. Adam suspected El Oscuro, but couldn’t get his old employer to re-open theinvestigation.
Cole’s and Adam’s lifestyle had provided the perfect toehold into the underground world. Adam, owner of Shade BDSM Club in the Dallas area, had somehow managed to secure their invitation to tonight’sauction.
“Jesus Christ, Cole, you look like you want to vomit. At least try to pretend like you’re enjoying yourself.” Adam sidled up to him in a custom-cut black suit, his closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair the only sign that the man was pushing into his lateforties.
“Just playing the part. Can’t look too eager.” Cole shifted and crossed his arms over his chest, his tight muscles bunching and stretching the fabric of hisshirt.
He had to play the part of a restless Dom, one who’d grown bored with the local scene and longed for something darker. The boredom part wasn’t much of a pretense. Something inside of Cole had shifted. He was a favorite of the subs on the circuit, but he’d grown bored of their willingattention.
There was only one woman in his life that he’d ever dreamed of holding in his arms forever—and she’d taught him how ignorant those types of dreams were. Cole wasn’t the type of man who needed to be taught the same lesson twice. He’d given Tomi his heart a decade ago, and she’d crushed it. He’d never bothered trying to put it backtogether.
“Okay, forget what I said. Go back to looking disgusted—you’re scaring the crowd.” Adam’s quietly amused voice drew Cole from histhoughts.
Indeed, the tuxedo-outfitted men closest to them were edging away, casting nervous glances in his direction. “I like my space.” Cole said it loud enough for their neighbors to hear, causing the already scurrying rats to move even farther away. When he had enough clearance, he whispered, “You see our targetyet?”
They’d managed to find tonight’s event and location by tracking the whereabouts of a Russian arms dealer with a penchant for buying slaves. This was the third auction Adam and Cole had attended, each time looking for any intel on Tara, but the auctions they’d attended had been completely on the up-and-up. Tonight wasdifferent.
The majority of the cultured occupants pretending to be Dom’s appeared completely out of place in the grungy warehouse, but a few men – those Cole recognized as suspected criminals and terrorists – seemed completely athome.
“Not yet,” he said in a tone only Cole could hear. “You’re drawing attention from the guards.” Adam gave a slight nod in the direction of the open archway, where two brutes who wore their tuxedos as naturally as an overweight biker would wear a leotard had zoned in on him. Instead of changing his behavior, Cole gave them a silent nod, as if a salute to theirprofession.
The men looked just as bored as he did. Cole’s move must have worked because their gazes flickered from him to the rest of the room. “It’s goodnow.”
“Were your brothers able to dig up anythingnew?”
Cole shook his head. “Only what we had as of this morning. This appears to be a legitimate slave auction tonight—the women who signed up for ‘sale’ did it consensually. The instructions sent out to most of the attendees were the same we’d managed to get – history, consent forms and minimum purchaseprice.”
Adam stroked his clean-shaven jaw. “Which is why everyone who’s here is in the millionaire club. You did nail down our cover for tonight,right?”
They’d set Adam Wise up as Adam Devine, wealthy oil baron with suspected ties to illegal arms sales. Cole’s cover had been easy. Dishonorable discharge from the SEALs. Numerous arrests for assault.Sadist.
“Yep. Everything appears to be on the up and up. But Clint was able to get a picture of the invitation sent to Chaplinsky, and his looked different. Different color, different text.” It had taken Cole’s younger brother two days of surveillance to get a snap of the Russian opening the invitation inside his study. Thank god for high-powered lenses. “The image was grainy, but we were able to clean it up enough on the computer to read part of the last paragraph. Sounds like there’s another auction going on here tonight that the rest of the crowd wasn’t invitedto.”
And it was that auction that Cole and Adam had to find. El Oscuro wasn’t only hosting a consensual slave and master exchange tonight—he was using this party as a cover for human sex slavetrafficking.
A killing glint shone in Adam’s smoky gray eyes. Two of the missing women had disappeared from his club over the past couple of months, including Adam’s girlfriend, Tara. Beyond the BDSM connection, the victims had been impossible to predict. There had been absolutely no distinguishing features or preferences when it came to looks or hair coloring or size and shape. The only consistent marker was that most of the victims were young and relatively new to the scene. The fact that the kidnap victims were so unpredictable was precisely why the FBI had beenunsuccessful.
“Tara’s been gone for nearly a month,” Adam said. “I still can’t believe those assholes wouldn’t help me findher.”
Cole restrained the urge to pat his friend on the shoulder; instead, he just continued to look bored and nonchalant. “They couldn’t nail him down before. We will find her. You have myword.”
“Her family is desperate. Her father called me again today at lunch, and dammit, I didn’t have anything to tell him,” Adam said in a voice rough with rawemotion.
