Page 5 of Defending Van

“Bethany,” the woman from the mattress piped up. “I remember waking up in the back of a van. There was a man driving us, and then we stopped, and another man threw you into the back with us.”

“Me?” Makayla asked.

“Yes. Everyone else was already there when I woke up,” Bethany explained.

“Did they say anything?” Makayla asked, information was what they needed more than anything else right now. It would be a whole lot easier to figure out a plan if she knew exactly what they were fighting against.

Bethany’s brow furrowed for a moment. “The guy who had you said you fought back, you must have hurt him somehow.”

“Kicked him a couple of times in some specifically chosen areas,” she said with a smile, and beside her, Cecilia actually chuckled.

“Good for you.”

“Didn't stop him from taking me, though.” If she got out of here, she was going to double down on her self-defense training because it clearly wasn't good enough. “What else did they say?”

“That six was enough for now,” Bethany replied. “That they had to set up somewhere. That a man named Griffin had tested someone and that another man, Mateo, had disappeared from Azure. Two men had gone in the last few weeks.”

“Azure?” one of the women from the corner of the room asked.

“That’s what they said,” Bethany confirmed.

“Do you know what Azure is?” Makayla asked. The name sounded familiar, like she’d heard it somewhere recently, but she couldn’t seem to place it.

“They’re a sex trafficking ring,” the woman said softly. “They take women with blue eyes and sell them off to men overseas in countries where blue eyes are seen as more of an exotic type thing. They’ve been all over the news lately after a reporter did an expose on them.”

A sex trafficking ring?

That’s why they’d been taken? To be sold off to some sick pervert who got off on buying a woman and then forcing her to cater to his own sick whims?

Maybe her mother had been right. Maybe she really was cursed, because she sure as hell seemed to attract the worst the human race had to offer.

August 25th

7:51 A.M.

“You coming to watch us get them prepped?” Henry asked, sticking his head into the room Van was trying to set up as the guard station.

That was where he’d spent most of his time back at the warehouse. Some of the guys thought it was because he got off from being so close to the caged women, but it was nothing of the sort. It was just the best location to watch the camera streams without drawing undue attention.

Everyone else thought he was spending his days streaming movies or watching YouTube videos, but he rarely did either, although he always had something playing in the background that he could switch to at a moment’s notice if needed. But tech was his thing, and he’d planted several hidden cameras around the warehouse in addition to the main security system. He watched them religiously, hoping to find something they needed to get the name of the head of Azure.

Griffin may be the one in charge, but everyone knew he was just the frontman, second-in-charge at best. But he worked for two men from what Van had been able to gather, who were the real owners of the ring. If they wanted to shut Azure down for good, they needed those names, needed proof the men were behind the trafficking organization. While Van was more than happy to just kill everyone involved, he’d take that information when he got his hands on it and turn it over to the proper authorities.

Wanting to take vengeance went against his whole don’t feel anything ideology. It wasn't his place to punish others for their sins. It was just his job to gather the intel needed and pass it along to the relevant persons, and then move on to the next job.

Since they’d had to set up the factory in a hurry, it didn't have the individual cells that the warehouse had, so the women were all being kept together for the time being. Perhaps they wouldn't spend long here, maybe they would. The shortest time anyone had spent before being sold was a week, but most of the women had a little fight in them and were usually with them for at least a couple of weeks before they were deemed ready for sale.

While everyone else was anxious to set up the torture rooms, or “training” rooms as they were called, Van was more interested in setting up his cameras. They were the key to this. It was how he’d pegged Nathan as one of the other undercover operatives. He’d heard the man whispering reassurances to women after they were sold and tagging them with tracking devices that Prey would use to find them. It was also how he’d pegged Mateo as another of the undercover team, because he’d seen the man planting bugs that tracked the names, addresses, and accounts of Azure’s clients. In the end, it was going to be his cameras that brought this whole operation crumbling down.

But because both Nathan and Mateo had abandoned their posts, tensions were high inside Azure. No one knew what had become of Nathan, although they didn't seem to suspect him of being undercover, more that he’d developed an attachment to one of the women and gone off the deep end. On the other hand, everyone did seem to believe that Mateo was dead, along with the woman—Ally—who he had known before she was taken by the ring.

So to that end, Van nodded. “Sure. I'm bored, guess I could do with a show until I can get everything set up.”

“You and your movies,” Henry said with an eyeroll. “Do you even realize you have a whole movie of your own you could star in right here? Maybe you should spend more time with the real-life starlets we have at our beck and call rather than watching a dozen movies a day. I swear you’ve probably seen every movie ever made at least three times.”

“What can I say? I'm a heartthrob in the making, just haven’t got my calling card yet.” Pasting on one of the empty smiles he knew scared even some of the other men working at Azure, Van breezed past Henry. Even evil could sense emptiness. And that was what he was, an empty vessel who worked hard at the only job he was suited for. Even the military hadn't loved having him. He was too emotionless, too cold, and when he left after his term was up, no one had been sad to see him go.

Not that he was sad to see any of them go, either.