Page 43 of Spies Like Us

“I guess they probably don’t have the manpower to have them watched around the clock. It makes sense to have them focused on the cells and inside the club, if that’s what that space is.” He falls silent as we arrive back at the place where we left Lathan and Max. Neither of them are around, but the door is cracked. Ry slides his hand into it and goes to pull the door open when I hear something. I hold my hand up in a fist, and he freezes. We stand there, and I strain my ears to listen, but I hear nothing again.

“Must be the wind in the tunnels.” I wave for my teammate to head through the door. We enter into what looks like a long hallway. Max and Lath are nowhere to be seen, so we follow the passage. On either side are doors. Ry stops and turns the handle on one, pushing it open. It’s hard to make out what’s inside with the goggles on, so I pull them off as Ry takes a flashlight out of his vest pocket. He turns it on and flashes it around. I wrinkle my nose at the smell. It’s definitely been disinfected. The room shows a hospital grade bed with plastic coating on the mattress. On a side wall, there are a number of BDSM tools, including floggers, whips, and hand and foot restraints ranging from zip ties to leather and metal cuffs. The floors are cement, and there is a drain in the middle of it.

“Fuck,” Ry hisses as his light catches on the drain. “That’s not good.” We pull the door closed and move on to the next one. “I wonder if they are all that clinical.”

I open the door to the next room, and this one is even worse. There’s no bed, just chains hanging from the ceiling with sharp hooks on them, and another drain in the floor directly below the suspension apparatus. “God, I’m going to be sick.” Ry gags.

I look at the room, trying to get a handle on my emotions. I have to look at this objectively for now. I can get angry and grossed out later. I enjoy tying my partner up as much as anyone, but this takes it to a whole new sadistic level. “We need to check the hospitals in town and the surrounding areas. People must require medical attention after this kind of thing. Where are they being treated? There have to be records.”

Ry pulls the door closed. “We’ll get Lath to do a search when we get back. I don’t know if I can handle looking at the other rooms.”

“We need to. If they are all like this, then they are going to expect something different from Max when he joins. Domination is not going to be enough. They may expect blood to be drawn. Mac and Miller could be in danger. We may have to change tactics.” I am more than a little worried for my teammates now. This is becoming way darker than I expected.

The flashlight is illuminating Ry’s face, and I see him blanch at the idea of his boyfriend and the girl we are all growing to care for being subjected to any of this.

“Fuck!” He turns and heads along the corridor, opening and shutting doors. He gets two more down and stops, and then he turns to look at me, and I see his horrified expression. “I found how they are being treated.”

I move over to him and peer over his shoulder. The powerful flashlight is illuminating a hospital room with shelves full of bandages, gauze, medicine, and vials of drugs.

“They must have a medical practitioner in their pockets, maybe a disgraced doctor or nurse, because no one with a valid medical license would be happy treating wounds caused by this kind of abuse.” He sounds completely freaked out.

“You have to remember though, Ry, that some people actually get off on pain and degradation. Hopefully most of what goes on down here is consensual.” I try to reassure him, but I don’t think it’s working.

“Not if they are making their sex slaves perform. Those kids being auctioned off don’t have a choice,” he argues.

“Yeah, I don’t know, man. I have a feeling that what happens in this club and the auction may be completely separate enterprises.” I’m starting to feel doubtful about what we know about the club. “There’s no way they could keep everyone’s mouths shut about this. Look at how many rooms there are, and we haven’t gotten to the main club section. That’s a lot of people to blackmail. This club may be an underground sex club, but I don’t think it and the auction operate together. They have to be separate things, even if they are run by the same people.”

“Well, I guess we’ll know a lot more after Friday night. Try not to worry about it. Miller and Mac can handle themselves, and you and Max are going to get an invite. Between the four of you, I’m sure you can work something out,” I reason, but I can see his mind is running wild.

He closes the door and opens the next one down from it. He heaves out a huge sigh of relief and steps aside. This one is more like a mainstream sex club. It has a normal bed with just a protector sheet, a set of blankets, and things to make it. There’s a St. Andrew’s Cross in the corner of the room and an adult-sized cage, as well as a weirdly shaped chair. I can see the potential to its shape and how it may be used. More bondage equipment is sitting on shelves, but there is no drain in the middle of this floor. There is, however, a big picture window showing the room next door, which is similar to this one. I’m sure it’s for voyeurism.

“Come on, let’s go find Lathan and Max. They have to be here somewhere,” I tell him. We could use the comms, but they wouldn’t have left without us, so they must be farther ahead.

He pulls the door closed, and we keep moving. There are three more sets of doors before we get to the end of the corridor. Another door bars the exit, so I push it open, and we both blink at the sudden onslaught of brightness. Thankfully we had both removed our infrared goggles, otherwise we would have been temporarily blinded.

This room is large, with overstuffed cushions and a lush, carpeted floor. There is a bar on one side of the room, and various fixtures to perform sexual acts on are scattered throughout the space—another St. Andrew’s cross, a set of stocks, some spanking benches, and a main stage with a sex swing currently hanging above it. Another small stage in one corner contains a stripper pole, and there’s also another large birdcage suspended in the middle of the club.

It’s lush and luxuriously appointed, with stylish wall sconces to allow lower mood lighting when the main ones have been turned off. I can hear voices in a room beyond this one, so Ry and I head in that direction. Through a double set of doors, we find Max and Lathan in a small room off what looks like a main foyer. There’s a reception desk with a coat room behind it. Through the open doors, I see that there is a changing room off to the side and a set of elevator doors directly on the far side of the foyer. That must be where everyone enters from. Max’s and Lathan’s voices come from another small room past the coat check.

“Hey, we found an exit. I’m guessing it’s where they took Bishop’s body out. It was a loading dock with low traffic,” I tell them as they look up when we enter.

“Did you check out those rooms?” Ry asks, and Max and Lathan shake their heads.

“No, we were going to look at them on the way out. We found all their security tapes and where they store their blackmail material.” Max nods at a large storage section at the far end of the room, while Lathan continues to look through a video on the screen in front of him. “We were right about blackmail material. Each thumb drive is labeled with a name. This one has Brock Marshall’s name on it. I wanted to see what the little creep was into.”

Lathan hits a button, and the video on the screen starts to play. It shows the guidance counselor at the school, and he’s dressed in a pair of boxers, his fat belly hanging over the waistband. He’s on his knees, his hands are bound behind his back, and he has clamps on each of his nipples. A woman wearing black stilettos and a see-through black bodysuit walks around him with a flogger in her hand.

“God, you are a useless piece of crap. Sniveling and worthless. You can’t do anything right,” she sneers at him before lashing his naked back with the flogger. He cries out, and tears stream down his face. She’s wearing a mask across her eyes, but I recognize her short red hair. It’s Isaac Palmer’s wife. She stops right in front of him and holds out one of her stiletto-clad feet. “Kiss my foot, you ungrateful wretch.”

We watch as he leans forward and does as instructed.

“I guess he must be into degradation,” I muse.

“Maybe, but then there’s this.” Lathan speeds the film up until it changes, and instead of him kneeling on the floor, he’s on the bed, and he’s fucking someone underneath him. He’s grunting and panting out dirty words.

“That’s right, you dirty bitch, take my cock like the whore you are.” We can hear the girl sobbing, even though she’s not struggling or fighting him or saying no. She’s kind of just lying there and taking it.

Lathan shudders and fast-forwards it so we don’t have to listen, but he must come, and when he gets up, we can see the girl. Her makeup streaked face looks familiar.

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