Page 26 of Her Mercenary
“Define decent.”
“As you know, Conor has demanded that she be kept in clean shape. Unharmed, unmarred.”
“Aside from losing her finger,” I snapped.
Lucas was silent for a moment, and I made a mental note to rein in the ridiculous emotions this girl ignited in me.
“It’s all part of it,” he said eventually. “She will be branded soon, you know. They are all to be branded before they get shipped out.”
I closed my eyes, forcing my jaw to relax.
It doesn’t matter, I reminded myself. Conor is the main target. Conor, Conor ...
“How many slaves are there total?” I asked.
“Sixteen.”
Blinking, I stilled. “That’s four more than you originally told me, Lucas.”
“We made some stops on the way.”
“Stops that you failed to communicate.”
“They were unplanned.”
“That’s no excuse. How many and where?”
“Two stops. A few refugees and an American tourist.”
Fucking Christ.
“Have you confirmed the sale?”
“Yes. As you know, the transport is scheduled for six days from today. The girls will be loaded up in the same van they arrived in last night and taken to a dock in Tampico. About a fifteen-hour drive.”
“How is Conor planning to get past Port Authority?”
Lucas lifted his hand from the steering wheel and rubbed the tips of his fingers together.
Money. Conor paid someone off to look the other way.
“From there,” he said, “they’ll board a fishing boat, then be taken to a cargo ship that will take them the rest of the way.”
To the Gauteng Province in South Africa, he meant, one of the largest, most savage human-trafficking markets in the world. There, humans are sold to the most immoral vile traffickers, who sell the women to sweatshops to work twenty hours a day under inhumane conditions, to baby farms where they’re raped and impregnated repeatably, or to twisted doctors where they’re murdered, their organs sold on the black market.
If Samantha Greene thought her captivity was hard now, it was about to get much worse—if I didn’t get her out in time, while somehow keeping my cover.
“There are two auctions Conor is planning to attend once there.” Lucas swatted a fly from his face. “The slaves will be split between the two. One caters to a much more sophisticated crowd.”
I snorted. “You mean politicians and businessmen?”
“Something like that.”
“What are his plans for Samantha specifically?”
“As I understand it, she will go and be trained and bedded by Conor himself, will be taken with him wherever he goes once there. Once she has supplied him adequate offspring, she will be sold. She will go for a very high price, considering her connection to Conor. White women are sold the quickest too. Also, she’s beautiful.”
A sharp pain scissored through my gut.