Depravity (The Captive Series Book 2) Read online

  DEPRAVITY

  The Captive Series, Book Two

  By Penelope Marshall

  DEPRAVITY

  Copyright © 2016 by Penelope Marshall.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: December 2016

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-920-7

  ISBN-10: 1-68058-920-2

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To my husband who serves his country and his family every day. Who puts up with the long nights of a bright computer screen, and the long days filled with endless typing and phone calls to fix story holes. Lastly, to my children who never cease to amaze me with their unfettered kindness and positive outlook on life.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PARTING GIFT

  BLAX’S ONE RULE

  CHAMPIONS STRIP CLUB

  SOLD

  THE CABIN

  STOLEN

  BREAKING RULES

  KNOW ME

  DEPRAVITY

  CONSEQUENCES

  EPILOGUE

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  Poor as I am, I own one thought and one thought alone—it’s wise and clear and not clouded by inconsequential gains or meaningless bouts of depravity. It holds true when held up to the sun and doesn’t waver by the pull of the moon. The one thought that I hold onto so dearly my love—so tightly my knuckles turn white—the one thought I own—is of you.

  PARTING GIFT

  “Just do it, muthafucker,” he said, kneeling on the ground, his wrists restrained behind his back.

  “Don’t you tell me what the fuck to do,” I said as I landed another jab to his gut.

  Blood spewed from his mouth and onto the concrete in the alley behind the club.

  “You hit like a fuckin’ pussy,” he said, spitting a mixture of blood and saliva at my nice new suit.

  The anger shot through me like an erupting volcano when I saw the mess he had just made.

  “You nasty fuck!” I pulled the handkerchief from my blazer and wiped off the mess, then threw it on the ground. “This was a new suit.”

  “Just a little parting gift.”

  Straightening out the lapels of my blazer, I said, “I’ll show you a parting gift.”

  Using his head as a kickball, I planted the heel of my size ten wingtips across his disrespectful mouth.

  He sailed back onto the ground, his mouth bloodied, and missing one of his two front teeth. I picked up the plastic bottle from the ground and stepped toward him, squeezing the clear liquid all over his body.

  “I hope what you did was worth it,” I said as I pulled out my lighter.

  “Fuck you!” he replied.

  I chuckled as my thumb applied pressure to the spark wheel, rolling it down to create a flame.

  “Enjoy,” I said, throwing the lighter onto his chest, watching as the flames took hold, roaring into a massive fire.

  Black smoke filled the air, accompanied by the aroma of charred meat. His screams echoed throughout the entire length of the alley, spurring potential witnesses to shut their windows.

  A smile crept over my face as I took one last look at my work, then turned and walked away, his wails still piercing the night.

  BLAX’S ONE RULE

  Mace

  It was one of those days I should have just stayed in bed. As soon as my eyes opened up, I knew. I just knew…

  My name is Mason Asher, but my friends call me Mace, and I work for a private security contractor based out of the US, called BlaX; short for Blain’s ex-SEALs. Blain is my boss and was my mentor when I was in the Navy; a burly fifty-something-year-old hard-assed former SEAL and the owner of BlaX, which provided security for high valued targets; targets which their respective governments would rather not be linked to. Compared to the shit I saw in war-torn Afghanistan or Ebola-ridden Africa when I was a SEAL, this was as cushy a job as a guy like me was ever gonna get.

  I was a glorified bodyguard, usually providing security for scrawny hackers who hadn’t seen the light of day in years, or for a high ranking official who wanted to get their rocks off at the local massage parlor; but it beat the hell out of being shot at.

  Yeah, I already know what you’re gonna ask; how can you go from being a proud SEAL to babysitting little piss ass whiners who didn’t need the protection in the first place?

  I could say something plausible like the money was good; which it was. I could also say the job kept me in tip top shape because I basically got paid to work out when we weren’t on a contract. But the truth was, I didn’t know how to be anyone else. I knew one thing and one thing only. I knew how to kill a man in a crowded space and be invisible when I did it. The Navy didn’t teach me how to push around papers and sharpen pencils in an air-conditioned office. Unless that sharpened pencil could be used to stab someone in their carotid artery.

  Back to BlaX. Blain had one rule and one rule only: No wives or girlfriends. They were a distraction, and he didn’t want any distractions in the field, having seen the effects a nagging wife or girlfriend had on a man in the throes of a mission. Blain found himself having to bury some good men in shallow unmarked graves before he came up with the rule.

  Women were nothing but trouble in my book, and the closest I would let them get to my heart was about three inches below my belt buckle, so I totally understood why he had the rule. All the guys on the team did, and we wholeheartedly agreed. Well, that and I had the utmost respect for Blain as a man and as a soldier, so I found myself at times blindly following any order he threw out without much question.

  I was brought onto the team by my best friend and old Navy brother, Derrik, whom I had met when I was stationed in San Diego. He was one crazy son of a bitch.

  I remember deploying with him and five other men to a remote village in Malaysia, where we were to extract a CIA operative who had been kidnapped during an undercover mission. Her cover had been blown, and she was brutally tortured and raped while being held.

  We were inserted into the humid jungles, parachuting off a transport plane, where we stealthily approached the heavily guarded compound where the vetted Intel had sourced her to be. The compound was surrounded by a chain-linked fence, barbed wires and, from our Intel, IEDs.

  We waited in the surrounding jungle for two days disguised in ghillie suits, reconning the site, to make sure we weren’t walking into a trap. It was decided we would strike in the dead of night to mitigate loss, and since we had the added benefit of night vision goggles, we felt pretty confident about the extraction.

  At go time, our sniper neutralized the few guards positioned on the side of the compound we wanted to enter. Luckily, they fell dead without giving off a sound or shooting off a round. It was not a sophisticated security system, so they were quickly taken out.

  Derrik had the lead on this mission, and was the first one in, room-clearing, and the first to engage several enemy guards standing watch inside.

  Finally making it to the room we suspected she was being held in, a grenade was thrown into th
e open window, landing on the dirty wooden floor right next to Derrik. My eyes widened, knowing there was only enough time for me to get out, since I was nearest to the door.

  The next thing I heard was Derrik yell, “Get the fuck outta here, Ash.”

  With no time to hesitate, I took a step back as I watched him throw his body on top of the grenade to shield me and the operative from the blast. I ran as fast as I could down the hall to get away from the blast, but after a few palpable moments, I realized that grenade hadn’t gone off. I hurried back into the room and pulled him off of the floor. His eyes were still closed, waiting for the blast to go off.

  “You crazy son of a bitch,” I yelled.

  “Hey, muthafucker—you would have done the same for me,” he replied.

  I shook my head and proceeded to untie the operative, who was naked, bloodied, and bruised, restrained by her ankles from the ceiling.

  I laid her on the ground and covered her with a tablecloth I found nearby. “Are you okay, Hendrix?”

  She didn’t reply. Her right eye was swollen shut, and she was in and out of consciousness.

  “Hendrix,” I repeated.

  She gave off a little moan.

  “I need you to tell me what your mother’s maiden name is.”

  She moaned again, lurching her head away from me as a tear rolled down her temple, and into her ear.

  “Hendrix, I need you to confirm before we can take you. Your mother’s maiden name?” I asked softly.

  “Jack—”

  The coms clicked in. “You need to get the fuck outta there.”

  “Let’s ask this shit when we get the fuck off this piece of shit island.”

  I turned to him. “It’s protocol.”

  “She fuckin’ said half the shit, let’s go,” he yelled, standing in the hall right outside the door, looking through his scope.

  I shook my head and scooped her battered body from the ground, cradling her in my arms. She was complete dead weight, so she must have weighed double what her small frame gave off. I looked down at her as we ran to the extract point, realizing there wasn’t one inch of her body that hadn’t been beaten to a bloody pulp.

  “Tell them to be ready,” Derrik yelled through the coms as we made it out into the open.

  The sound of the helo nearing calmed my knotted stomach, but not until I saw it descend from the sky to pick us up did I feel any sense of relief. All five of us loaded into the helo, surrounding Hendrix’s body, acting as a human shield.

  I leaned over and asked her again, “What’s your mother’s maiden name?”

  Her lips parted and mouthed a word. I leaned in close, positioning my ear next to her lips.

  “Jackson,” she exhaled.

  I smiled and looked into her half open eyes. “Welcome home, Hendrix.”

  She fell back unconscious after that, and luckily the rest of the extract went off without a hitch. We made it to the carrier without any further gunfire.

  I didn’t know what happened to Hendrix after the mission, but I will never forget Derrik jumping on the grenade to save our lives.

  Like I said—one crazy son of a bitch. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when Derrik up and left BlaX about a year ago. The last time I spoke with him, he had supposedly met the woman of his dreams. But I never met the girl, so I couldn’t tell you.

  The thing that pisses me off the most about the whole thing was that he never said goodbye. A man so willing to jump on a grenade for me, was too scared to say goodbye? I found his dog tags and a note trapped under my windshield wiper, which had two words and two letters written on it:

  M. I’m out. D.

  Why wouldn’t he just walk up to my door? Was he afraid I would talk him off the cliff he was about to jump off of, breaking the one and only rule Blain had?

  I would’ve never expected Derrik, of all people, to desert BlaX—to desert me. Let alone for a woman. But the fact he left his dog tags added insult to injury, since his whole life was the team, but I guess a woman trumped all that. I never saw or heard from him again. Not a wedding invite, bachelor party, Saturday afternoon barbecue, not even a fuckin’ phone call on my birthday.

  We had the same fuckin’ birthday. Fuck Derrik, and fuck the woman who took him away.

  If I ever see that muthafucker again, it’ll be too damn soon.

  I reached over to the car radio and tapped on the scan button. These stakeouts were boring as hell. Country, rap, teeny-bopper, music—that’s all these stations had to offer. What happened to Marvin Gaye, Teddy Pendergrass, and the soulful Ray Charles? Not these days. These days, dropping things like they were hot was the new sweet, sweet whisper of a love rhapsody. I banged on the radio to shut the damn thing off.

  “Fuck, when is this fuck gonna come out?” I tapped my thumb on the steering wheel.

  I was waiting for Larry, a pimp and the owner of Champions. Champions was a strip club the BlaX team frequented, the only place we knew of that housed the sexiest women at the cheapest price. Larry had been having trouble with the Italians extorting money from the club which he used as a cover for his prostitution ring.

  His current staff of hare-brained bodyguards weren’t cutting it, so he asked Blain for some extra security. In return, we were allowed to drink and take advantage of the a la carte services provided in the private dance rooms for free.

  The deal sounded top notch to me, and apparently, it sounded top notch to Blain as well, because he took the deal without asking very many questions. Not that he needed to since it was a simple babysitting job. I had been watching Larry for days and I still hadn’t had the occasion to rough anyone up.

  My eyelids were beginning to grow heavy as the morning wore on and I was starting to get a little antsy since I had been sitting in this little ass Mustang for the last ten hours without a piss break.

  Eli, a new guy on the BlaX team and my relief, was supposed to be here half an hour ago, and my blood was starting to boil. I couldn’t stand unpunctual people. Timing could make or break a mission, and I for one didn’t feel like dying because some muthafucker didn’t want to set his watch. I rubbed my baby blues and shook the tired off of my face.

  I saw the door handle turn to the entrance of Champions. Stepping out from behind it was Larry, who was wearing a twenty-dollar gray polyester blend suit with a gold chain hanging from his neck, which got lost in his sea of curly chest hair.

  He looked over at me and nodded. I nodded back and started my engine. Although Larry had all the women in his club at his beck-and-call, he usually schlepped around town alone—probably because he didn’t want anyone to know he got bikini waxes and shopped at the dollar store for his toilet paper and most of his other home goods. I guess he was trying to keep up appearances or something, but that suit wasn’t doing him any favors.

  I followed him around town for about an hour and back to the club where I found Eli parked in my old parking spot. I drove by and flipped him off, angry he had been late, and I was still on babysitting duty. He smiled at me and shrugged like he didn’t know why I was mad.

  I made a U-turn to head home but stopped when I saw Larry beckoning to me from the main entrance.

  “Fuck, what does he want now?” I grunted.

  I parked my ’stang in front of the main entrance, grabbed my cell, and stepped out of my car. “Are you fuckin’ bleeding?” I asked as I walked around my car and over to the entrance.

  “No, why?” he asked.

  “Look here, you little shit. Just because Blain says I work for you don’t mean I wanna die for you. If the fuckin’ Italians are watching, you just announced you have undercover surveillance,” I growled as I shoved him sharply in the shoulder.

  His steroid-ridden bodyguards tried to step up to me, but Larry waved them off. “Man, I’m just trying to be a good host. Get a drink and a girl on me. Eli’s already here,” he said, pointing at Eli’s car.

  “Stop fuckin’ pointing, you little shit.”

  “All right, all ri
ght. My bad. Come in, come in,” he apologized as he kicked open the door and stepped into the club.

  I looked at the time on my phone then turned back to Eli, who waved and blew me a kiss.

  I shook my head. “Fuck!”

  I trailed behind one of the gorillas who led me to the stool Larry was sitting on.

  “Relax, Mace, and go pick any girl. Ladies, ladies, get out here,” Larry yelled toward the back room.

  As if they had been waiting the whole time, a string of women filed out from the hallway, each one more beautiful than the next with an outfit that seemed to require little material. They each put forward their best smiles except for the last one.

  Her name was Tracey, but everyone called her Ty. It probably wasn’t even her real name, but who was I to question someone who wanted to remain anonymous? After all, my job required a certain amount anonymity. Besides, if I had to do half the shit she did, I would probably want to remain anonymous too.

  I’d seen her around the club a few times, the newest addition to Larry’s roster.

  I knew her—but I didn’t—ya know?

  The token blue-eyed, bottle blonde turned out girl next door; always wearing some tight, flashy mini dress to attract a millionaire—a businessman—shit, maybe even the corner liquor store owner. I don’t think it really mattered to her as long as they had some money in their pocket. I’d been all over the world and seen hundreds of women just like her—women who used their looks and their bodies to entice a man’s wallet open.

  Funny the shit a man will do when he’s thinking with the wrong head; things a rational man would never do. Leave his wife and kids, kill, or be killed.

  Not me, though. I’d been around that block a few times, and I swore to myself—never again.

  Honestly, I just wanted to go home, but who was I to turn down free ass? I eyed every woman like I was shopping for a new car, but I wasn’t paying attention. What I wanted to do was get to the end of the line and check out what she had to offer. Like I said, I’d seen her around a few times, but I hadn’t had the occasion to get up close and personal until now.