Page 46 of The Captive Missing

“Thank you, Sir.” Alicia’s voice was whisper quiet.

“Why don’t you stay in case we need a touch up,” Shane said. It was not a question.

“Of course, Sir.” Alicia faded into the far corner.

“I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re here.” Shane smiled down at Val but she knew better than to take the bait.

“No, Sir.”

“Ah.” Shane nodded acceptance of her answer, then bade her stand up. “Do you recognize this dress?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Val followed him like a dog at his heel toward a metal rack where a tiny silk dress hung. It was a dress she had worn before, on a dinner date with Jason. The same dinner that had ended with them surrounded by protestors and paparazzi. The one that had them fleeing to the car where a rock had broken the rear glass.

Reaching out a hand, Val traced light fingertips over the fabric. Without thinking, she checked the label. It was the same designer and everything. Glancing down, she noticed the matching heels. Cambric hadn’t missed a beat.

“Ever since Jason purchased you, we have been inundated with requests,” Shane explained. “Do you have another Val? Can you dress her up to look like Val? Will you put her in the little red number when they ran from the restaurant? Will you put her in the skirt that she wore at the airport? You can imagine the things poor Bee had to do.”

Val’s throat went dry as she listened, but she managed to keep her expression plain, unmoved. Shane was a frightening creature, but above all else he was an obedient arm of Cambric. And Cambric never did anything that didn’t make them money. There was a strategy here, and if she could wait long enough, Shane wouldn’t be able to keep himself from confessing it.

“We’ve done our best in the past several years to meet with this demand. We’ve purchased an increase of brunettes, trained them in the way you carry yourself and put them in your clothes. But it’s not just that these men want to be with someone like you, per se.

It’s that they really want to be Jason. They want to be rich and young, with the attention and the power. Being with a woman that looks like you is one thing, but to actually be with you. To actually have sex with Jason Riggs’ wife. Wow. Now that is worth something.”

“I’m not his wife,” Val corrected.

“The hell you’re not,” Shane whispered just next to her ear. “Anyway, as soon as word got out that we’d reacquired you, our demand tripled. We’ve booked you solid for months.”

Val held her breath, willing the trembling of her knees to go unnoticed. Shane chuckled, lifting the dress off the rack, he handed it to her. She took it quickly then averted her gaze to focus on the far wall.

“The biggest problem we have is that there’s only one of you. And the men willing to pay top dollar for a night with Val aren’t the kind of men that like to be kept waiting. So, to appease them, you will be filming a series of personalized videos to help lead them along. Get changed. Now.”

Laying the silk dress over the black stool, Val stepped out of the high heels of Cambric and began unbuttoning the front of her uniform. Her fingers shook ever so slightly, but Shane’s attention had been diverted elsewhere. He could care less what she looked like naked. He’d seen her that way hundreds of times.

While she shed her gray dress in exchange for the red one, Shane wheeled over a large camera and set up a black screen just beyond it. Heart pounding inside her chest, Val replaced the uniform on the empty hanger and slipped on the new pair of heels. When she was finished, Shane positioned her on the edge of the stool, then continued to adjust the camera.

He made her cross her legs, then uncross them. He had her lean forward towards the lens, then away. Quietly, he ran his fingers through her hair, pulled some to hang over one shoulder, let his fingers trace down her bare skin. She shivered.

Glancing up into his face, she saw a look of primal fascination hanging there. He liked that she was afraid of him. He liked it more than anything.

Stepping away, he grabbed a sheet of paper, then came back and dangled it in front of her face.

“We’ve had twenty-eight individual requests for the red dress. You’ll be reading this script tailored to each and every one of those twenty-eight men. I will give you a different name each time and you’ll need to memorize the lines and then speak into the camera as if you’re talking only to them. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir.” Val swallowed hard.

* * *

For the next six hours, she read the lines. They worked through lunch without pausing for food. Alicia adjusted her hair and makeup half a dozen times, dabbing at the perspiration that seemed to collect nervously on her brow. All the while, Shane paced and prodded, demanded and stared.

She wasn’t being alluring enough, then she seemed too eager. She sounded strained, then too upbeat. At first, nothing she did pleased him. But eventually, he began to interrupt less, complain less, and nod more.

If she felt fear in the beginning, or disgust at the things she had to say, then it slowly ebbed away under a steady stream of frustration. And perhaps that had been Shane’s angle all along. If he could pick at her long enough, make her re-do the same sentence over and over, reposition her for the millionth time, then it brought her out of the reality of what she was doing. After a while, it became a performance. It no longer felt real.

When she smiled into the camera, biting her lip and promising a night to remember, it wasn’t Val herself who said it. It was another woman, the one she had been raised to be, the D2 captive. Unfeeling numb nothingness overtook her.

She performed and performed and performed until Shane was smiling and clapping his hands. Until the last of the twenty-eight names had been read. By the time he released her to go, Val stripped out of the red silk and left it to pool on the floor. Let Alicia pick it up, she thought, that’s her job anyway.

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