Copyright (c) 2007, all rights reserved

        Hines backed the car carefully into the narrow space between two hulking SUVs.
“Well, here we are,” he announced cheerfully as he switched off the ignition.

       “Here we are, but why are we here?” Ron asked. He looked around. This parking garage had so many levels and was so poorly lit that he wasn’t sure if they were still below ground or not. The place smelled of old oil, grease and the gritty dirt accumulated over years.

       “We’re just here to show you how we do things in the city,” Hines answered. “It’s not like the north woods. It takes a lot of work to set up an ambush.” He opened the driver’s door. “C’mon,” he said. “We gotta sit in the back seat so we don’t get spotted.”

       Ron shrugged and opened his own door. He didn’t know how easy Hines thought it was to do things in the wilderness, but he was sure that Elf-Girl would have given him a fresh perspective on everything if he were trying to catch her. He moved to the back seat with Hines and instantly regretted not pushing the passenger’s seat forward while he’d had the chance. He sighed and resigned himself to sitting hunched over and uncomfortable for however long this would take.

       “Quiet, man,” Hines whispered hoarsely. “You’d be surprised how sound can carry in places like this.”

       “Sorry,” Ron whispered back. “But just what are we waiting for?”

       “You should’a got the info at the apartment.”

       “I didn’t.”

       Hines shook his head. He was a much smaller man, and he didn’t seem at all uncomfortable, only very alert and watchful. “This is a custom grab,” he went on, still in a whisper. “The client picked three possible ways to get taken. Three, so she wouldn’t be sure which one we’d use. We got a four-day window. Could’a grabbed her yesterday, but we didn’t, so now she’s getting’ a little edgy.” He chuckled. “We never grab ‘em on the first day or the last. Keeps ‘em on their pretty little toes.”

       “Who is she?”

       Hines shrugged microscopically, still peering into the gloom. “All I know is she’s a repeat, late twenties, supposed to be a good looker. Seen ‘er picture. She ain’t bad.”

       “And I’m here just to observe. What are you here for?”

       “Same thing. Here she comes.”

       He heard the tock-tock of her heels on the oil-stained concrete a moment before he saw her. In the dim lighting he couldn’t make out many details. She looked to be average height, with short dark hair cut in a way that reminded him of the old cartoon character, Prince Valiant. With the bulky coat she was wearing, he couldn’t tell how she was built. He could tell that she was nervous. She kept looking around as she approached. Well, maybe that was just learned behavior from living in the city. He was reminded of how he’d seen deer act when they knew it was hunting season. Well, you always had to watch out for predators, no matter where you were.

       She had her keys ready. More learned behavior, he guessed. She aimed her remote at a light-colored sedan. He saw the interior lights come on. Then, somewhere in the cavernous garage, a car alarm began to sound, blaringly loud, repetitive, insistent. At the instant she turned her head towards the sound, two men clad in black, right down to black ski masks covering their faces, burst out of a patch of deep shadow between a black van and the wall. The bigger of the two grabbed her around her neck with both hands while the second seemed to clamp his hand over her mouth. That could get you bitten, but he took his hand away almost immediately and Ron could see a strip of silvery duct tape sealing her lips.

       Even in the dimness, he could see her eyes, wide with shock and fright. Her hands clutched at the hands around her neck, but when the smaller man grabbed her coat and yanked it roughly off of her, she lost her grip. As soon as her coat was off, she tried to pry those hands from around her neck again. If she was making any noise, even with that strip of duct tape across her mouth, the car alarm was drowning it out. The two men seemed to be working together in complete silence.

       The bigger man used his grip around her neck to try to bend her over backwards. She fought that, and he quickly switched to pulling her forward and down. She couldn’t recover in time. Very quickly, she was lying facedown on the dirty concrete. She’d put her hands out to keep from landing too hard, but it hadn’t seemed to be necessary. The bigger man held her down with a booted foot on her hair and helped his compatriot drag the woman’s arms behind her. They secured her wrists with a plastic police restraint. A moment later, her ankles were similarly bound.

       A gray van pulled up as they were getting her back to her feet. The wide cargo door slid open and she was all but thrown inside. Her coat, purse and dropped keys were tossed in after her. Then the two men climbed into the van. It began to move again before the door had slid completely shut. It rolled away slowly. The car alarm fell silent.

“Wow,” Ron breathed. The whole thing had taken less than twenty seconds, he was sure.

       “I’m impressed.”

       “That was our best team,” Hines grinned. He wasn’t whispering any more. “No muss, no fuss, no interfering bystanders.”

       “I’m properly impressed,” Ron nodded. “Now what happens to her?”

       Hines chuckled as he opened his door. “Before that van hits the street they’ll have her ass up and her panties down. She’ll get one Hell of a ride. C’mon, let’s get outta here. Places like this give me the creeps.”

       “Where are we going?” Ron opened his own door and extricated himself from the cramped back seat.

       “Next stop is The Office,” Hines replied. He slid back into the driver’s seat.

       “The what?” Ron got in next to him and shut the door.

       “The Office. That’s what we call it, anyways. I’m gonna give you the tour.”

       “Where is it?”

       “Don’t worry about it.” Hines chuckled as he put the car in gear and pulled out of the narrow parking space with much less care than he’d used when backing into it.
       “What about her car?” Ron asked as they pulled out into the street. There was a lot of traffic there, as always. It was getting dark out, and most of the cars had their lights on. Snow flurries blew down the street. Pedestrians turned up the collars of their coats and hunched their shoulders against the cold, cold winds.

       “That’s covered,” Hines answered. “We got her keys. They get turned over to one of our decoys. She picks up the car and takes it to our garage.”

       “One of our what?”

       “Decoys. There’s about half a dozen women workin’ for us on the outside. Maybe more, I dunno.” Hines shrugged as if the real number was unimportant. “One of ‘em’ll dress up a little to look like our latest customer there and take the car.”

       “You said: ‘to our garage’.”

       “Yeah,” Hines chuckled. “When the little lady is set free, she gets her car back, all cleaned and serviced…just like she was.”

       Ron laughed. “Who came up with that idea?”

       “Dunno,” Hines shook his head. “Been doin’ that as far back as I can remember.”

       It was a nice touch, but it wasn’t one he would have expected. Ron settled back in his seat as Hines weaved his way through the traffic. He didn’t know the city, and he had no idea where they were going, but he was very interested now in seeing the ‘Office’.

 ***

       “I reviewed your file, Mr. Smith,” Carla said as they walked down another hallway.

       “Please, call me Ron.”

       “Thank you,” Carla demurred. “Although I rather like calling you ‘Mr. Smith’.”

       “Uh…all right, so where are we going again?”

       “They’re just bringing in some new clients. I thought you might like to see the initial processing.”
       “What does that involve?”

       “It would be easier just to show you,” she smiled. There was a door at the end of the hallway. She opened it. “After you.”

       They entered a small room, not much bigger than a passenger elevator and she closed the door behind her quickly. One wall had a large window, which seemed to be made of some kind of one-way glass. Through it, he could see a much larger room. It was dimly lit, but he could just see that it had a bare cement floor with drains set in it at intervals. He could also see chains hanging down from overhead trolleys. Apart from that, the big room was featureless and empty. The walls looked like any other warehouse walls he’d seen.

       “I don’t see anything…” he began.

       “Hush,” Carla whispered. She stood alongside him, and once again he could smell her perfume. It was faint and flowery. It seemed to suit her.

       Harsh, bright lights came on in the larger room. He heard a door bang open somewhere. Then five men entered, hustling along three struggling, bound, gagged and blindfolded women. They were still clothed, but they looked as if they’d had a very rough time: Skirts were hiked up, blouses torn open, and one of them was missing her shoes. As she was half-dragged, half-shoved across the room, he noted she’d lost her pantyhose as well. He thought he recognized her as the woman from the parking garage. The hair looked like the same short cut and color.

       “Excuse me,” Carla murmured. She reached past him and flipped a switch set on the wall. Suddenly, he could hear everything that was going on in the big room. Gagged or not, those women were making a lot of noise. It sounded as if they were complaining and pleading at the same time. The men…they were a mixed bag, he noted: Black, white and Latino, all about average height and build…just laughed and made rude comments. They handled the women pretty roughly as they made them stand in a line in the middle of the room, very close to one of the drains. Then they backed away.

       “What…?” Ron began.

       “Sssshhh…” Carla shook her head. “You’ll see.”

       One of the men unreeled what looked like a fire hose from a wall stanchion, then he aimed it at the line of women.

       Ron had been expecting the women to be bowled over by a blast of high-pressure water. Instead, the water came out in a fine mist. The women squealed and shrieked as they were thoroughly wet down. One tried to step away, but she was warned back into place by one of the men. In a few moments, all three women were thoroughly soaked, shivering and sobbing. The man wielding the firehose shut it off and stored it away while three of his compatriots removed the women’s blindfolds and untied their hands. The fifth man, the Latino, stood in front of the women, hands on his hips. He gave the captives a brief chance to compose themselves. All three of them looked bewildered and fearful.

       “You bitches get your clothes off!” the Latino bellowed. His voice echoed in the room. “NOW! Or you get the hose again!”

       That brought another round of wailing from the women, but they began to undress as they’d been ordered.

       Carla leaned closer. “The room is heated,” she said in a whisper that tickled his ear. “But the water is very, very cold. They’d probably want to get out of their wet clothes anyway…” she chuckled, “Not necessarily in there, of course. But we start getting them used to taking orders from the very beginning. The cold water makes them a little more pliable for now.”

        “And later?”

       “Ah…later,” Carla kept whispering. “Later, they’re naked and helpless and surrounded by rough men. They learn to obey, one way or another.”

       “What did those three sign up for?” Soggy clothes were accumulating on the floor at a gratifying rate. The Latino kept barking at the women to hurry up.

       “Ahhh,” Carla breathed. “They have a deluxe package. Two weeks. Well, ten days, actually. They’re going to be trained to be sex slaves…straight, oral and anal. It ought to be very interesting for them.”

       “I think I recognize that one,” Ron pointed. When the shorthaired woman had removed her skirt, he’d noticed she had no panties. She must have gotten quite a ride in that van. “Do those women know each other?”

       “You put them all in the same cage?”

       “Oh, yes! The room their cage is in is a little on the chilly side, so they’ll have to huddle together for warmth.”

       “What if they don’t do that?”

       “They will,” Carla laughed. “You see that one? The one you thought you recognized?” She pointed, as the women were being collared and chained together by their necks. The chains looked heavy. The men took the opportunity to fondle their captives, while the women squirmed and whined at the rough handling. It earned one of them a hard slap on her cute little ass. She yelped and stopped struggling.

       “Yes. What about her?”

       “She’s done this once before. Even if the others are reluctant, she’ll probably talk them into it. In any case, the cage has only one mattress and one blanket. Sooner or later, naked or not…” Carla shrugged and smiled. “You break down one inhibition and it’s a lot easier to break down all of the others.”

       “You seem to have all of this planned out.”

       “We’ve had years of experience. We also have an edge. They don’t come to us unless they already want it, at some level.” Carla chuckled. “We help them find new levels of submission.”

       “What do you do if you don’t have a repeat client available?”

       “We have that covered also,” Carla answered. “We use a ringer then.”

       “A ringer?”

       “Yes. We have some very attractive women working for us. They pose as clients and go through everything that our clients do. They help to nudge them along in the right direction. They can also keep things from going beyond what the clients can handle at the moment.”

       “How rough does it get for them here?”

       “Oh,” she shrugged. “It all depends. For the freshmen and sophomores, it never gets all that rough: Spankings, mild whippings, putting them in some discomfort to make them more pliable…” She paused. “It can get pretty raw for the rest of them, depending on what they say they want and what we think they can take. That’s why we always have a doctor here, just in case.” Another pause, and then she smiled. “But come, let me show you the rest of the facility.”