Vicki Pettersson - The Taken

“Wow,” muttered Courtney. “Vegas is filled with rich sickos.”

The world was filled with them, Grif thought, wishing Nicole Rockwell were here to document it with her camera. “They could drive away in Pintos and it’d still be sick.”

“Yeah, but this is just salt in the wound.”

It was. You had to be birthed with a sense of entitlement to think you could get away with this. How many of these men were considered upstanding? They paid their taxes, went to church, built their companies… and raped someone else’s child in their off-time. And they did get away with it. “Come on.”

“I can’t, Grif.” She pushed some of the hair from her face when he turned, and sighed. “You know I can’t.”

Grif swallowed against the lump that rose in his throat. “She’s in there, isn’t she?”

Her answer was silence, a returned blank stare, and he knew that Katherine Craig-the woman who grounded him and moved him and was more chatty and energetic and deliberately blissful than anyone he’d ever met-was already surrounded by death-telling plasma.

Ignoring Courtney’s heavy stare on his back, he broke into a jog. It wasn’t going to be Kit, he thought, slipping into the building’s shadows. Even if it had to be him.

From the outside, it looked as if jumbo construction trailers had been welded together to create a giant, enclosed octagon. It wasn’t something that would go unnoticed-why would someone create a makeshift space in what was already a makeshift space?-yet the construction crews were long gone, and the abandoned hotel project was as dark and forbidding as an underground cave.

And of course, there was nothing left of the Marquis, where Grif had died. He didn’t even try to picture the old resort. His was an old death, and had nothing to do with tonight. Besides, there was plasma purling in the sky, and the soft, effervescent waves were quickly narrowing into threads above the makeshift dwelling, and slowly sinking inside. He had to hurry.

Grif spotted, and ignored, the prominent and single steel door. No point in announcing his presence to the muscle undoubtedly stationed there. Toeing the shadows, Grif spotted windows on the conjoined trailers, all dark but for a small one that gaped wide. Too small and high for him, he thought, and looked instead for some sort of construction defect. A simple corner that hadn’t been sealed tight, or a place of escape that only someone like Chambers would know about. He’d already proven he had backup plans for his backup plans.

Yet the walls were welded tight, not even a proper peephole to establish the layout inside, so Grif turned his back to the clustered trailers, and spotted the crane. It loomed near the rusting scaffolding of the abandoned hotel, and he might have considered it neglected, too, were it not for the shiny black Mercedes parked, nose-out, right behind it.

“Damned foreign cars,” Grif muttered, but he was already connecting the dots-car to crane to ladder to trailers. Crouching low, he rushed the vehicle.

But there was no driver inside, only keys, which he naturally pocketed. At the very least, someone was going to have a hard time getting out of here tonight.

Leaving the car unlocked, Grif turned… and nearly threw a punch at the figure rushing him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, yanking her behind the giant crane.

Bridget Moore jerked away, and almost toppled backward. “You called me, remember? You wanted my help finding your girl.”

He’d left two messages on her voice mail before heading to the graveyard. “If you knew about this place, why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I didn’t know. I called… my mother.”

“Your long-estranged mother told you that Chambers was selling off Charlotte’s virginity tonight?” Grif didn’t believe it. Kit had claimed Mrs. Chambers was in such denial she was damn near comatose.

“No,” Bridget-not her mother’s daughter-shot back. “But she said this is where he comes for his boys’ night out. I’m the one who figured he was doing more than playing poker.”

Grif jerked his head. “Get out of here, Moore. This is no time for revenge fantasies. Kit is in there.”

Bridget grabbed his jacket as he tried to climb up into the crane, tugging him back down. “And so is a little girl who’s scared out of her mind. I was.”

“Don’t try it. I don’t trip over guilt.” He began climbing again.

“You can’t be two places at once,” she called out, her whisper hushed but harsh. Grif paused before he could stop himself. Bridget hurried on. “You save the girl, and you might lose Kit. Or vice versa. Bet you won’t be able to sidestep your guilt if one of them dies because of you.”

Jaw clenched against a curse, he dropped back down. “And what if something happens to you?”

Her hard expression unexpectedly softened, and for a moment the girl she used to be peered from beneath the tough facade. “That’s sweet, Shaw.” Her eyes glittered in the dark. “But nobody’s taking anything from me ever again.”

Which Grif would be doing if he tried to stop her. Sighing, he tilted his head up. The plasma was thickening, and now swirled like fetid clouds above the trailer. “Come on.”

Bridget followed close as they moved from machine to ladder, up and then over. Then they reversed, slipping down onto the trailer, and he was pleased when Bridget landed with no more sound than a cat burglar. She pointed to the entry hatch just in front of their toes.

Testing, Grif found it swung open silently, though he was still careful to lift it degree by degree. His power from Anne lingered, because even though no light filtered in or out, a steel catwalk popped below him like tiles in a Scrabble game. He entered, paused to be sure he hadn’t been seen, then helped Bridget inside, only taking a breath again when she’d closed the hatch behind her. Crouching and silent, they looked around.

There was only one other figure up on the catwalk, and he was hunched opposite them, turned away, thick cables crowding the space in between. Fiddling with equipment, and intermittently putting his hand to his ear, he was clearly engrossed in whatever was being said over a wireless headset.

“Cameraman.” Bridget pointed, and Grif saw she was right. The man had a shoulder cam, another propped on a tripod, while a third could be seen on the adjacent pathways. Yet it was the headset that bothered him most. One low word into that baby and everyone would know they were there.

Grif turned his attention to the room below, spotlit in pastel hues to appear oddly serene, like twilight emerging on a cool summer’s eve.

But this was no day at the beach. Dozens of men flared around the makeshift room in spokes and cushioned chairs, each with a side table holding refreshments and a simple electronic paddle. The floor was carpeted in black, the walls draped in white sheers.

But the room’s center was the real focal point. There, a platform stage sat draped in red silk, a four-poster bed centered atop, dripping with crystals and gold tassels. So there were lights, there were cameras… and there was the promise of action.

Plasma undulated over the sheer, silken walls.

“There he is.”

Following Bridget’s hard stare, Grif found Chambers at the back of the room. His chair was identical to the others, but he’d elevated himself, like he was a statue or god. His shirt appeared blindingly white in the pastel spotlights, though that was because everyone else was in black. It made him look like nothing could touch him, and that alone made Grif want to punch him square.

Chambers leaned back in the plush chair, a gleam sparking in a gaze worn by spoiled four-year-olds and homicidal killers alike. He lifted a microphone, and smiled. “Before we commence the final bidding, I’d like to take a moment to welcome our first-timers. That’s each of you seated in the front row. I think you’ll agree, it’s an exclusive club that you now find yourselves in, so don’t be surprised to find your social network outside of this room greatly expanded. We, men of taste, men of the same taste,” he clarified, “help each other. One final word of advice… make sure your electronic paddles are at the ready. Bidding tends to get… frenzied.”