Chapter 31

January 3, 1998 – Taipei, Taiwan

The used car market in Taiwan was at a high in the late 90s, drawing vehicles worldwide. There were so many opportunities that importers for car auctions had stacks of cargo carriers filled with cars that were sometimes not unpacked for months.

However, one container earmarked for the auction block in April was opened early because of the smell emanating from it – the smell of death. When the owner of Container TGUH 759933 O 45G1 cut the seal and surveyed the inventory, he was met with a grim discovery. The body of a male, wrapped in plastic and badly decomposed due to the heat, was found in the trunk of a classic 1967 Royal Blue Ford Mustang Convertible.

The only thing on the container owner's mind was, 'What a waste of a great car.'

January 3, 1998 – somewhere in Turkey

What you don't know WILL hurt you.

She had not been chained for several days now that she had been moved to a more permanent location. The new bunch of captors, to whom, she assumed, she and ten other women had been sold, dragged them by night to this encampment. Kate estimated that at least five of the other females were under sixteen, and the others varied in age from nineteen to twenty-five. She was the oldest at thirty-one, making her wonder what they had wanted with her.

The first day the eleven of them arrived at the compound - situated somewhere in the middle of Nowhere, Turkey (she guessed, considering the clothing and architecture) – they had all been allowed to shower if one could call it that, and were issued new clothes. Kate had been wearing the same clothes since she was abducted.

The only resemblance to bathing in the past two months had been the occasional bucket of water thrown on her. She had learned early to move into the onslaught headfirst to keep down the mites, the itchy scalp, and the matting. The effort did little to relieve any of it. The clothes she'd had to nearly peel off under the cold shower smelled of sweat, urine, and excrement and had begun to stick to her skin in places. She had a yeast infection for sure, not to mention a UTI. The pain and itching were enough to drive a person mad. She was sure there were other things wrong with her, but they weren't so pronounced or annoying. Now she was suffering from sleep deprivation because of the constant itching.

Although terrorized and spat upon, at least she hadn't been assaulted in all that time. Yet. Not like many of the others, the younger girls and women, whose terrified screams she'd had to bear until they turned into sobs and moans. Again and again and again. It was only carrying herself out of that grimy hole through thoughts of her sister and more innocent days that had kept her from ending it all, and not wanting to abandon the children who were being terrorized and raped only a few cells away.

She screamed inwardly again at the thought and made herself a solemn vow. It was that vow that would sustain her.

She knew she had been drugged – Scopolamine, Ketamine, something in the Benzodiazepine family, also known as date rape drugs. Scopolamine was called 'Devil's Breath.' Those were the drugs of choice for traffickers - and lying bastards like Joe Lance.

How could she have been so stupid to think she had it under control? Why hadn't she told Enos, or somebody, what she was doing earlier? She knew the answer, of course. Enos was the only one she knew she could trust, implicitly, without question.

None of that would do her any good, at the moment. However, it did provide the incentive to live and get the hell out of wherever this was, to bring that worthless use of skin down along with Etienne and whoever it was that he was dealing with in Atlanta.

She should have brought Enos into her confidence, but he had already been through enough thanks to her, and he was the only other person who knew about Mignon and the only one who knew where he had hidden her. She had given Mignon a new name. The rest she had entrusted to Enos Strate.

When it was done, he had given her a key and told her that there was a safe deposit box with all the information she needed to find Mignon if anything happened to him. She had committed the bank's name and the box number to memory. There would be no paper trail. He had already set up her authorization - everything she needed to access the box. She did what she did on her own because she couldn't risk anything happening to her and Enos. If they both died - Mignon would be out there somewhere, vulnerable and alone.

The night she was taken, she was supposed to be meeting Lance, laughing contemptuously at both herself and the thought. Detective Lieutenant Joseph Lance, LAPD Major Crimes. Legit credentials – but as dirty as a cop could get. The more she thought about it, the angrier she became...at him, at herself, at a world that both created and tolerated such heinous monsters.

Lance had approached her a few weeks before Halloween to ask for her help gathering intel on Victor Mollaret. He was, supposedly, building a case against the asshole she knew as Etienne Hebert – or so he said. She'd begun to suspect his motives and tried to play him for more information before she went to Enos.

Apparently, she wasn't as good an actress as she'd thought she was. Or she was so far from the person that she was nine years ago that she couldn't fake it anymore. Whatever the reason, Lance must have figured out what she was up to.

The last two months in the depths of Hades had given her a great deal of time to think – and plan. It no longer mattered to her what her fate was – she deserved whatever it would be for being so stupid.

But she would be damned if she would let them win.