Page 20 of Convict's Game

A message dinged on my phone.

Shade: One of the last two applicants for the game is coming in for his interview this evening. Last minute, but better than nothing. He’s all yours.

Shit. I had to carry out that interview. My crew came first, even if it meant spending more time away from watching Mila.

I replied that I’d be there, and Shade gave me a one-hour countdown. I made another choice.

I had to see Mila again.

If I didn’t, I’d go crazy. But something slowed my steps. Not Tyler’s warning to stay out of trouble. Not the fear of people I might run into, not now my strength was returning hard. It was a trip to the wardrobe Dixie had mentioned by the strip club.

I needed to change my shirt.

Chapter 7

Mila

Something was wrong. First, the delay. I was supposed to have been picked up last night, yet they’d made me wait, and I was still here in the holding house but now with three other women.

Esther was a last-minute add-in, she’d told me.

Gloated, if I thought about it.

I’d been shocked to see her. Then again, she was the reason I’d found this place. I’d known her since school, and it was her I’d gone to for access. When she was sixteen, she’d bragged about how she’d been approached by Rhys Jacobs. He was a few years older and rumoured to run a sex auction where businessmen bought schoolgirls. A startling claim few of us believed.

Esther did. She had preened and boasted how she was obviously the prettiest girl in school because she’d been singled out, and how she’d make a bundle selling her body. I’d been fourteen and horrified.

Even worse was when she came back to class after the weekend with a new phone, jewellery, and bruises that she’d covered with makeup. That confidence? It had been replaced with a brash edge she still wore today.

I’d changed schools not long after, but her abuse had never left my mind. She’d acted like she was the winner, but someone had used her, and Rhys Jacobs had taken a cut of her pain.

A decade on, and it was him in my headlights. I needed to see him for reasons of my own, and he’d vanished from all but a few key places which assured me he was still around, just in hiding. Esther was my last chance of a way in.

She’d provided me with the details then obviously decided to enter the event once again herself—this auction being an anything-goes sale, rather than schoolgirls. A sense of worry dogged me that my question had led her back into this, but though her being here bothered me, it was nothing to my fear for Annabelle who’d arrived moments before her.

She was a kid. Though she wouldn’t admit it, she couldn’t be more than sixteen. Twice, she’d mentioned a boyfriend then clammed up. She was doing this for the money, but also because he was making her. I was almost certain. She had no idea what she was getting into.

I couldn’t stand by and watch her go through with this. I might never have had a sister, but I’d stand in front of a vulnerable girl any day of the week.

All of which meant I now had two goals—to locate Rhys Jacobs and to get Annabelle out of here. They were completely at odds with each other.

While the women talked, and Annabelle played with a bracelet of plastic hearts, my mind raced over the problem. If she went out the window, like Convict had come in, she might be able to climb down. But then she faced the problem of walking the alley alone. If she was seen, she’d be, what, brought back up? Worse? That was if I could even persuade her. I needed to at least try.

“Hey, that’s pretty. Did your boyfriend give it to you?” I tapped her knee and gestured to the jewellery.

Annabelle lifted her shy gaze to mine.

“Oh, I love it. Let me see.” Esther reached across and snatched Annabelle’s bracelet, sliding it onto her wrist and holding it out for admiration.

The door to the room flung open, and our guard appeared. He pointed in my direction. “Follow me.”

I stood on shaky legs. “Just me?”

At his gruff nod, I trotted after him. I had no choice. At last, it was happening. I’d wanted this, but it meant my time to act on Annabelle was up.

Outside in the hall, the guard trudged the bare floorboards to another door. He pushed it open and gestured for me to go inside. At a table, an older man waited, some kind of medical kit laid out in front of him.

I stalled. “Who are you?”