Page 185 of Deep Cover

Pacing made me more anxious. Nervous tension ratcheted through my muscles. I wanted to run again or –

anything –

to burn off the anger and fear and fury at being bested.

I left the communications room, headed in the opposite direction from which I'd come. Moving fast. Moving with purpose.

The compound, as Annie called it, is rural and set in the southern Nevada desert, surrounded by so much land and surveillance that there was no way Vincent should have gotten in. But sometimes balls and guns overcome technology and precautions.

Didn't matter. He'd gotten in.

Now I had to get some of this rage and fear out of me so I could think again and think faster and better.

The compound is made up of wings, boxes of buildings nearly independent from each other but usually connected. Annie's cell wasn't, because I wanted everything self-contained there. It stood at the northeast of the main house, closer to Las Vegas than everything else. The locked doors were programmed to open in the event of actual emergency but otherwise, she was trapped there. Big, beautiful windows looked out onto empty desert, but the view was seen through bars. Annie's room was mostly one big, hard-surfaced white space. In the corner of the room was the bed and even there she couldn't feel secure, there were cameras trained on it and more than once I'd used them to humiliate her there.

There was a method to my madness. She needed to be broken down completely before being put back together free of the drugs she was addicted to. Even with the rainforest naturals, her mind had to be beaten down and her body with it so the idea that I can beat this thing on my own, mind over matter and all that was proven as false as it is.

Flesh is weak.

Mind is weaker.

We tell ourselves the lies we want to hear (she's all right, she's all right, she's still all right).

And I also kept her there, humiliated and hurt and fucked, all of it by me, because it pleased me.

And though she'd never tell me in a million years, it pleased her, too.

"Fuck!"

I was tearing through the corridors now. Past Annie's bedroom section there was a hallway along the north side of her cell, with a luxurious bathroom and beside it, my office to use when I was there, and the computers she'd broken into and hacked her way through to civilization with. Punishing her for that had been a pleasure. Knowing she had the spark to do it was even better.

Further to the west, up the hallway and north so it didn't interfere with her view of the mountains through the west wall window, there was the room where I took her to hurt her. To tie her to a St. Andrews cross. To take her into another room off the main one and tie her to the four poster bed, sometimes suspended by her limbs, and to cane her. To crop her. To strap her. To whip her.

To fuck her.

The main building past the secure communications room became an almost inward spiral. Hallways turned inward to a few central rooms. One was a medical suite. Best way to never need it was to make sure it was ready and discreet medical professionals could be summoned at a moment's notice, the way they had been with Jason.

And there was another room there.

It belonged to Ariel.

She'd been here longer than Annie had. Ariel had been in residence the entire time Annie had. Annie had no idea.

Ariel was thirty-two. I found her in an alley during a business trip to Chicago. She'd been stabbed during a drug deal and left to die. She was just thirty at the time, beautiful and empty. There was nothing in her life but the drug and selling her body for more of it. She had bruises and scars and someone had robbed her instead of giving her heroin.

Ariel was the first person I'd ever met who wanted nothing more than to blot out every essential spark of life. She didn't want to die. She just didn't want to live.

And she was a pain slut. When she could feel, when she wasn't so zoned out and high or low or whatever it was heroin did to her, she wanted pain. Beatings, fists and wood, canes and straps, crops and whips, anything that would make her scream. She wanted a needle in her arm and she wanted other needles in other places and she wanted to be taken roughly wherever anyone wanted to take her while all that was happening.

I didn't touch her for the first year other than to meet her needs. Blood tests, medical tests, a regimen of nutrition so she wouldn't die.

Whoever had hurt her originally, they'd done far more to her head than anything else.

I wasn't the only person who knew she existed. There were minders who came in weekly to do wellness checks. She had made friends while in captivity because she'd worn out every therapist I threw at her so I just brought in other women I knew from the scene. When it clicked, they kept coming.

Ariel didn't want her life back. Ariel didn't want her life. But we were slowly working toward release, or I was. Her room was large and beautifully appointed, with a skylight for sun and vents she could open and close for fresh air. She had books and streaming services but no email. If she wanted to communicate with the outside world ever again, I wanted to know about it.

So I could celebrate.

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