Part 3:

Sarah felt rough hands grab her and pick her up out of the trunk. Chapman, she assumed it was Chapman anyway, set her down, then cut the tape binding her ankles with a pocket knife.

"Get up!" Chapman growled, roughly hauling Sarah to her feet. He quickly pulled off the tape covering Sarah's eyes and mouth. "We've got a little walk ahead of us."

Sarah glanced around. Chapman had parked the car in between the hulking masses of two warehouses. The sour smell of salt and fish told Sarah they were close to docks somewhere. She shivered. How far had Chapman driven?

                The sun had begun to set, leaving the warehouses in shadows. It had been closer to noon when he'd kidnapped her. They'd driven for hours. To her dismay, there didn't appear to be anyone else around. The helpless captive and her cruel captor were all alone.

"Get moving." Chapman ordered, prodding Sarah in the direction of one of the warehouses. Sarah was marched to a small door on the side of the building. The rusty metal door was locked with a conspicuously new, and sturdy padlock.   Chapman pocketed the revolver while he took out a small ring of keys and unlocked the door.

Sarah contemplated making a run for it, while Chapman's back was turned and the gun wasn't in his hand, but she immediately dismissed the idea. She wouldn't get more than a couple of yards before Chapman noticed and drew the pistol again, not with her legs weak after being bound so long in the trunk. In the parking lot, there was no cover, either. She'd be a neat little target for Chapman to practice his marksmanship on.

Chapman opened the door and drew his pistol again. Sarah sighed, another chance, a slim chance, but one none-the-less, again slipped past her. "Get in." he ordered. Glumly, she complied.

The warehouse was nearly pitch-black inside. Sarah realized it was because someone, Chapman most likely, had painted over the windows with black paint, proof against any prying eyes. A few bare or broken panes here and there let a little light into the gloom of the warehouse.

As Sarah's eyes adjusted, she saw the warehouse was nearly empty, save for about half a dozen large shipping crates scattered around the warehouse haphazardly.

Chapman shut the door behind them and locked it. "Well, Ms. Little, since you've been so curious about my little 'side-business' I think it's only fair that I show you it properly."

"You don't have to!" Sarah bluffed, hoping she sounded a lot braver then she felt right now. "I already know about your drug smuggling business!"

"Drugs?" Chapman scoffed, chuckling. "I'll admit what I trade in is highly lucrative and yes, highly illegal, but it's not drugs." Chapman walked over to one of the shipping crates and bent to unlock the padlock on the double doors. He opened the door and drew his pistol. "Let me show you."

To Sarah's surprise, the shipping crate concealed a stairwell leading down to a basement level below the warehouse. Chapman marched Sarah inside, following her and closing the doors to the crate behind them. For a second, the two were lost in darkness, then, a series of lights set along the wall of the stairway blinked into life.

Doing her best to hide her fear, Sarah descended the steps, Chapman a step behind her, ready to keep her moving with a prod of his gun should she slow down. At the bottom of the stairs, Sarah glanced around, conscious she was in the heart of her boss's illegal operations.

               She stood in one corner of a large, well lit room. The floor, ceiling and three of the walls were made of bare concrete. The fourth wall appeared to have been added later, separating this hidden space from a larger basement.
But what drew Sarah's attention were two dozen or so small, metal cages about the size of a pet carrier. About half the cages were filled; each with a single, young woman.

              "What's going on here?" Sarah exclaimed in horror, seeing the captive girls. She could see that each girl was shackled inside her cage and had been gagged with a large rubber ball gag. Aside from the chains, the girls wore a leather collar and nothing else. Hearing Sarah, a few of them looked up, sadly. Soft moans escaped the cages.

              Chapman grinned evilly, drinking in the shocked horror evident on his captives face. "I'm sure a woman of your intelligence has heard of the human traffickers operating in the remotest parts of the world. There are still some places left in the world where a woman can fetch a high price for her looks and her body, from the right buyers of course, and western women, American's especially, are highly prized on the secret underground slave auctions where they're something of a status piece among the dictators and crime lords of the world."

              "You've got to be kidding me!" Sarah exclaimed, unable to believe what she was hearing. "You can't sell other people!"

              "Why not? It's not like you're in a position to stop me." Chapman mused, holding up his revolver, as if to remind Sarah of her less then advantageous position.  

              "You'll never get away with this!" Sarah cried, hoping she looked more confident the she felt right now. "You'll get caught and then you'll go to prison for the rest of your life!"

                "Unlikely, Ms. Little. This won't be the first shipment of girls I've taken to market, and you won't be the first nosy coworker who's disappeared under mysterious circumstances. I'm too smart and I've taken too many precautions to get caught just now. Besides, another two or three shipments like this," he waved his hand in the general direction of the captive girls in their cages who cringed, "and I'll have enough money to leave this country and spend the rest of my days on an island somewhere, most likely enjoying some of the "fruits of my labor" shall we say…"

               As he was saying this, Chapman marched Sarah to one corner of the dungeon where a pulley had been installed, hanging from the ceiling. The shackles hanging at the end of the rope left Sarah no illusions as to its intended use. If that wasn't enough, the shelf set up nearby, hung with a variety of crops, flogs and whips, was enough to cause Sarah to shiver with fright.

             "In fact," Chapman continued, obviously enjoying the growing horror his captive was showing. "You should consider yourself lucky. Were I actually smuggling something like drugs, you would be of no further use to me and I'd have to find some way of disposing of you. As things stand, however, you'll live, albeit with your freedom somewhat restricted."

             'You've got to be kidding me…" Sarah stammered, as the meaning of what her captor was saying was slowly dawning on her. Never in her worse nightmares had she imagined she would suffer a fate so cruel, to be kidnapped and sold into a life of unending bondage and slavery!

              "Why not?" Chapman said with a grin. 'You're young, you're pretty, qualities that will be of value to your future owners I'm sure." He reached into his pocket and pulled out his knife again. He unfolded the blade and quickly cut through the tape binding Sarah's wrists. As he did, he continued. "You're intelligence and that willful, rebellious attitude of yours less so, but this shipment won't be ready to ship out for a few days yet. We've still got a few more girls to pick up. So we've got plenty of time to teach you the proper subservience for your new station."

              Sarah listened in horror, rubbing her wrists to restore the circulation. Her wrists had fallen asleep after being bound for so long. Chapman gestured with his gun to the shackles. "Step over there and put those shackles on in front of you." He ordered.
  
               Sighing, Sarah obeyed not wanting to give her captor an excuse to hurt her. She knew that was a forlorn hope, though. Once she'd been sold as a slave, she knew her future owners would never let her go, never give her a chance to tell the world what they were doing. She would be a slave until the day she died, likely whenever she failed to please her cruel masters. The choice was resistance, and sudden death now, or a slow death after years of horrible slavery.

                The problem of it was, when she got down to it, Sarah still wanted to live. She was too young to die just now. Even slavery was preferable if it meant living, and there was always the forlorn hope of escape or rescue, as unlikely as it was.

                 She stepped to the shackles, which hung at chests height. She doubted they would stay that way for long though. She slipped her wrists into the metal cuffs and clicked them tighter until she was secure.

                 Chapman stepped over to his captive and examined her work. Sarah winced painfully as he tightened them as far as they would go. Even through the sleeves of her jacket, the metal still dug into her wrists painfully. He bent down and secured her ankles in two more cuffs, a short length of chain between them running through a ring set on the floor. He turned and hauled on the rope on the other end, raising Sarah up until she was standing on her tiptoes, before tying the end off to a ring set onto the floor for that purpose.

                 "Now," Chapman said, walking to the nearby shelf of torture devices and selecting a black leather cat o'nine tails. Sarah squirmed in her bonds, terrified of what she knew was coming next. "I've got a couple questions to ask you, then we can set you up nice and snug in your new cage."

                   He swung the flog a couple times testing it out. The ropes hummed as the cut through the air. Sarah flinched, knowing at any moment, those tails would be striking her helpless back. "I know you're not stupid, Ms. Little, you're present circumstances notwithstanding. I know you're smart enough to have realized you might have been caught and set up contingency plans. A friend with backups of any evidence you've found, most likely, with instructions to go to the police if you don't come back, am I right?"

                Sarah was silent. The ultimate shame, on tops of all the horror of her present nightmare, would be to betray Lisa, get her involved in this. Chapman and Griffin wouldn't let her go once they'd got her, any more then they'd let Sarah go. She'd only be condemning her friend to slavery along with her. She heard the swish of the flog through the air and flinched again. If the alternative was torture, though…

                Chapman stepped up behind Sarah and using his knife, cut a slit through Sarah's jacket and blouse. He tore down her back, ripping Sarah's clothes open to expose the helpless skin of her back to the coming torment. "I want that information, Ms Little." He said, stepping back and hefting up the flog. "You can spend the next few hours safe in your cage or here in excruciating pain, you're choice, but you will tell me sooner or later."   

                "Fuck You!!!" Sarah yelled, twisting around as best she could. She tried to spit on him, but missed.

                "As you wish." Chapman said, hauling back his arm to swing the first stroke…

                 "Wait! Wait!" Sarah exclaimed, the panic that had been building in her now finally breaking over her. "I'll talk! I'll talk!"

                "I knew you were smarter than that." Chapman said, lowering the whip.  

                 Hurriedly, not wanting to give Chapman an excuse to hurt her, Sarah began talking, telling him everything about Lisa, her apartment, and the flash drive with all the files. When she finished, tears were streaming down Sarah's face and she shook with sobs, both in horror at what she'd just done and relief that she wasn't about to be whipped.

                Chapman walked over to his broken captive and shut her up by stuffing a large ball gag in her jaws. She didn't resist as he buckled the gag on tightly and locked it in place with a small padlock. He turned away from Sarah who slumped in her bonds, defeated, and pulled out a cell phone. He quickly dialed a number and waited while it rang. "Griffin? This is Chapman. She talked, yes, no problems, just like you said." Sarah listened, miserably, as Chapman directed Griffin to the apartment. "There'll be a woman there, named Lisa. She'll know where the files are. If you think she's worth collecting, bring her back here and we'll stick her with her friend. Otherwise dispose of her…you know how."

                Sarah hung her head low as a fresh wave of sobs overcame her…