Page 9 of Dark Auctioned Mate

He turned on the engine and said, "When we're clear of the area."

Alanis watched the city move past the window while she counted intersections. A couple of minutes later, Rael pulled into an empty parking lot and turned off the engine.

"I know what you’re thinking, but I am not a buyer," he said.

“Oh yeah? Then shit, I must be Aphrodite.”

Rael gave her a side-cutting glare. “This isn’t funny.”

“Trust me, I know. You just paid fucking one hundred dollars for me at an auction! So, forgive me if I’m not exactly pleasant right now!”

"I've been investigating that operation for almost a year.” He said evenly. "I was there for intelligence. I go in as a buyer, observe the event, document what I can." A pause. "And then I saw you on that stage."

She held his gaze. “So, you rescued me?”

"Yes."

"From an operation I put myself into deliberately."

"I-uh-didn't know that."

"No, you didn’t." She pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose, feeling a wave of frustration and anger. How dare he show up and disrupt her plan? Throwing around that kind of money like she was some sort of charity case. “And the other women?”

A muscle in his jaw ticked. "Still in there."

"Then we have a problem, because I am not going anywhere until we do something about that.”

Chapter 5 - Rael

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

Alanis was seated in the passenger seat with bound wrists and a stormy expression.

It did not take a rocket scientist for Rael to figure out she was pissed, and he could not understand that. “You’re angry? Because I rescued you? Because I saved your ass?”

"I'm angry," she said, "because you pulled me out of an operation I planned, that I had handled by the way, and then you left seven whole women in a building with people who are going to sell them!”

He held her gaze and recalibrated. Her jaw was set, and what he was reading off her was not wounded pride.

He looked out the windshield. The structure's concrete columns made shadows across the hood of the car. His mind was already running the numbers he'd run in the venue—thirty-eight buyers, three handlers on the floor, security at two points. He'd never done it alone. In every previous operation, he'd had Silas or Javi or both of his brothers, and the decision to move on a venue had always been collective, planned, and resourced.

He thought about the women he'd watched come through that side door tonight. He thought about Alanis sitting next to him, having apparently put herself in a holding facility on purpose for a reason he wasn’t aware of. Deep within him, Rael knew he didn’t stand a chance. He could not say no to her, but the problem with the plan forming in his head was that it required him to go back into a venue where he'd just made an extremely visible purchase and leave a trail of freed women behind him, which would alert the network and would cost him whatever remained of the intelligence opportunity.

"Stay in the car," he ordered.

"Absolutely not."

“Alanis, you—"

"I know the layout," she urged, her tone desperate. "I know which of those women are in a state to move fast and which ones will need direction. You don't." She held up her bound wrists. "Also, cut these."

“Fine,” he took a pair of scissors from the backseat and cut the zip tie. “But you follow my every move and do exactly what I tell you. Are we clear?”

She gave him a terse nod. “Crystal.”

They went back on foot, which added eight minutes to the timeline but meant the SUV wasn't in the lot when things went sideways. Rael had learned early that the most reliable variable in any field operation was the exit, and exits required vehicles that hadn't been noticed.