Then, I lay my head back against the wall, thinking. My mind is filled with the gun and the man I was forced to service, and my stomach roils uncomfortably again. I swallow hard and force myself to think of zombie movies, instead. E. I don’t know what movies begin with E. This one will require some thought. Maybe something with “Enemy” in the title.

I ponder this for minutes, staring at nothing, when there is a knock at the door again. I get to my feet automatically. God, I hope it’s not the man with the gun again. I don’t think I could stomach seeing him twice in one night.

But when the door opens, it’s not Freeze.

The man that steps in is unexpected. He’s accompanied by Senhor Gomes, the master, a man I have only seen once but hear about all the time. Gomes looked me over when I arrived and then left, as if I were an uninteresting piece of property.

The man with him is tall, good-looking, and wears a casual suit. He’s got nice brown hair, sharp eyes, and I can tell immediately from the cast of his features that he’s American.

What the fuck. Not again. Not another American jackass. It doesn’t matter if he’s American—he’s here to rape me like all the others before him. Except this time? I’ll know all the nasty, shitty words he yells into my ear.

And later, when he’s done with me and leaves, I’ll feel even dirtier because he’s only made things worse.

He looks me over, his gaze sliding to my star-spangled bikini, and I can’t help myself. “What’s the matter,” I ask, “international pussy not good enough for you?”

Two

Daniel

SHE’S A BITER. THAT’S THE warning given when I point to the blonde with the glazed green eyes in Senhor Gomes’ book of whores. He shakes his head and says that he has access to dozens of others that are better and all willing to engage in whatever perverse activity I want. He brags that there isn’t a sick sex act I can think of that Gomes can’t fulfill. I like home cooking, I tell him. A Texan in Rio sees a lot of beautiful Brazilian women, but sometimes you want a little star-spangled banner in the rotation.

He nods as if this makes sense to him, but I think it’s the money that I’m flashing that he understands. We walk up to the second floor and down a narrow hall toward the back, a windowless part of this brick and metal building. I can’t call it a home or even a brothel. It’s a dingy place where men with deep perversions but shallow wallets can get their rocks off.

I don’t want to have sex here, I’ve explained to Gomes. I have a thing against hellholes and having sex in them. I wave around a lot of cash, and Gomes nodded and asks no more questions.

We’re a strange parade—Gomes, me, and some house mom trailing behind. He stops at the second to last door and removes a key.

I’ve seen pictures of Regan Porter before, and not in Gomes’ look book, but nothing prepares me for her full-fledged, magazine-quality beauty. She hasn’t been eating well; her delicate bones are beginning to look sharp in places—at her shoulders, ribs, and hips. But there’s no denying her breathtaking looks. Her blonde hair is damp and small strands stick to her perfect skull. Her oval face, with its pink cheekbones and lush lips and eyebrows that look like wings, stands out like a piece of fine china at a flea market. Though she’s thin, there’s a delicious curviness in the slope of her side as it dips into the waist and flares back out to form a cuppable roundness at the hip. And those endlessly long legs.

Shit. I close my eyes and swallow. No decent man would be standing here thinking about those legs wrapped around his waist. But then again, I’m not decent. I’m no longer army sniper, Special Forces Daniel Hays who may have once been lauded as a hero for killing insurgents in Afghanistan. Now I’m Daniel Hays, mercenary who kills people for money and spends all his spare time in brothels and flesh dens like this one. Decency is a word I don’t even know the meaning to anymore.

It’s been too long since I’ve had a woman. That’s my only excuse. That and I’m becoming the monster that I’m hunting. I focus on the bruises on her knees that are scraped red and raw from time on the floor and the manacle around her ankle. Any feelings of arousal are jettisoned by the obvious signs of abuse.

Glancing sharply at Gomes, I wonder how he’s come to possess a beauty like Regan Porter. Gomes is a small-time flesh peddler, stuck up here in the slums, with a house full of females—half of which are missing their teeth or are too old or too broken.

He usually gets what the market calls second-hand goods, the girls that no other house wants. But Regan Porter is gorgeous, and while she looks a little rundown, she’s still model beautiful with big pink lips and wide green eyes.

“Nice tits,” I smirk for Gomes’ sake and her shudder of disgust only feeds into my growing belief that I’m as dirty as the flesh trader beside me. The dark edges of the world that I now inhabit are seeping into my skin like an oil slick covering an ocean. I shouldn’t want to touch her. And if I have to fuck her in front of Gomes to get her out of here—I don’t even let myself finish that thought.

There’s still life in her eyes. If she’s biting and spitting out acerbic insults, there’s spirit left in her, and I don’t want to be the one to snuff out that last flame. Her eyes convey her hate, and if she had a knife, I’d be sliced from my throat to my belly. I stare back, not because she’s fucking beautiful, but because she’s still standing. I’m not sure I would’ve been as strong. I don’t know if she sees my admiration or whether she can only interpret varying degrees of lust and degradation, but she sees something. An invisible string spools out between us and her eyes widen when it hits her like an electrical shock.

For months I’ve swum in a pool of blood and death and ugly deeds, and to hold onto my sanity and maybe my soul, I’ve told myself that saving these doves balances the scale. For every life I take, if I save one then it’s all a wash in the end. Don’t think it’s tallied that way at St. Peter’s Gate, but that’s the lie I tell myself so I can sleep at night and look at myself in the mirror the next day. Regan Porter will either be part of my attempt at salvation or the bloody stone that etches out the words He Failed on my headstone.

“She looks like a live one,” I say to Gomes, playing up my role as the asshole merc who’s just been paid for some godforsaken deed and needs to plow his victory lap into some unwilling broad.

He squints at Regan, tallying up her worth. She’s valuable now because I’m willing to pay so much for her, and Gomes doesn’t really understand why. “Twenty-five thousand could buy you a harem. Her pussy isn’t lined with gold. Let me hook you up with someone different,” Gomes whines.

Don’t know why he wants to hold on to her so bad, but I can see that he’s torn between wanting my money and wanting to keep Regan in the whorehouse.

“I prefer to eat domestic,” I say. Gomes doesn’t really expect a response, or at least he shouldn’t. Buying and selling human flesh requires some discretion, even here in Brazil where prostitution is legal but houses like these aren’t. Gomes and I stare at each other while the bangles on the dirty American flag bikini tinkle in the background. Don’t draw attention to yourself, I silently command the girl.

The urge to beat Gomes until his own mama won’t recognize him washes over me in a red, violent haze. My fist in his mouth, the heel of my boot crushing his dick would be phenomenal. I’ve been in and out of these houses of horror for the last eighteen months looking for my sister. She went on her first and only spring break trip and never came back. I was in Delta Force, playing sniper, when I got the news. I arrived home to find my mother distraught and my dad . . . fuck, I’ll never forget the look on his face. Dad was a hardened rancher who’d held onto his family legacy by the repeated sacrifice of his blood to the land. He’d seen shit and done shit, but the loss of his baby girl had hollowed him out. His eyes looked empty as if the news had sucked his insides dry.

I stayed one night and in the early morning hours of the next day, he walked me out to my truck and told me not to come home until I’d found her. And I haven’t found her and I haven’t been home. There won’t be anything to go back to unless I bring her home.

In the months since my sister was kidnapped from Cancun, I’ve rescued hundreds of girls either in the sex trade or headed for sale. They’ve been grateful, traumatized, and tearful. I’ve never once encountered a mouthy one. Not until Regan. She looks like she might bite off my hand if I try to reach for her.

It took me nearly two months to find her after she was sold from Russia. And that snaps me back. Killing Gomes in a black rage isn’t going to keep Regan safe or help me find my sister.

Gesturing toward Regan, I try to get him to speed up this transaction. “We’re done talking now. Get me a coat for her. I can’t take her outside in that getup. Shit.”

Gomes leans out the door and yells to someone to get Regan a coat. “Depressa! Vai-me buscar um casaco.”

I cross my arms, looking like I’m seconds away from walking on this deal, when really I have my fingers close to the guns inside my coat. I could shoot Gomes right now, and I kind of want to, but hasty decisions like that would only hurt my situation. I learned that early on. You can kill a Gomes but a dozen others like him will rise up from the sewer like an army of rats. If you want to stop something like this you have to find the source of the rats and cut off the damn head and then cauterize it. But I’ll be back for Gomes. I won’t be able to sleep at night until I know the only hole he’s plundering is the asshole of a demon in the underworld.