28-year old Claire Thompson pulled aside the curtains to glance out the window. She watched as the bright yellow school bus drove by and smiled. Her husband, Scott, had already left for work, the work-aholic, and now her son and daughter were on their way to elementary school.

She turned from the window and walked into the living room. She was completely alone in the house, at the moment. In contrast to the usual cacophony that filled any house with two children, the only sound was the hum of the air conditioning.

Claire sat down in one of the arm chairs and leaned back, sinking into the sinfully confortable upholstery. She glanced over at the small end table next to the chair, overflowing with pictures. The told the story of her life, or at least showed the characters of it; her and Scott at their third anniversary, the two kids beaming up at her from the swamp they'd made of the backyard one summer, her parents, one dead the other in a retirement home, her older sister Katie, at one of the odd family reunions where she actually showed up…

Claire sighed, softly. She couldn't sit here wool gathering forever. She had a ton of things to do today; she had to vacuum; do the laundry, it'd been piling up lately; she had to run to the craft store to get supplies for Jamie's science fair project. She knew all that, and yet she couldn't resist pausing a moment to relax and enjoy the silence for a little bit longer.

That silence was suddenly interrupted by the sound of the front doorbell. For a second, Claire was tempted to just ignore it, wait for whoever was there to go away, but the doorbell rang again, the second ring right on the heels of the first. Whoever was there wasn't going to go away in a hurry.

Grumbling softly to herself, Claire stood up and tied the sash of her bathrobe tighter around a waist kept trim with periodic visits to the gym. She also hadn't put on any makeup or done anything with her hair either… well, nothing to be done. She just had to hope whoever it was wouldn't think she looked like Frankenstein's monster, as she opened the door.

A young woman, several years younger than Claire, dressed in the jumpsuit of a delivery girl stood on the front porch. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail sticking out the back of her baseball cap. She'd been looking down at her clipboard when Claire opened the door. The young woman glanced up, revealing a face full of freckles.

"Hello," She said, smiling widely. "Are you Mrs. Thompson?"

"Yes I am." Claire replied. "What is this about?" She asked.

"Package for you."  The woman replied. She gestured over her shoulder, where another delivery girl, a brunette, was unloading a large wooden crate from a truck onto a trolley. She wheeled it up the walkway to the front porch.

"That's odd," Claire said, frowning, "I wasn't expecting anything. This had better not be another one of Katie's packages…" she muttered to herself. Her older sister was always travelling, not just to the usual tourist spots, but some places really far off the beaten path. God knew what she did for a living. She never visited the family reunions but once every three or four odd years. She'd stand in the corner, like a fish out of water, never answering any questions Claire asked her sister, always changing the subject.

Worst of all, she kept sending Claire these packages. Inside would be a lockbox, locked of course. She'd asked Claire to hold onto it for a few days, or sometimes even a few weeks, than tell her ship it to the other side of the planet, and never an explanation. Claire didn't think her sister was doing anything illegal; she couldn't imagine her big sister breaking the law; but all the cloak-and-dagger mystery just made Claire frustrated.

"Sign here, please." The young woman said shrugging sympathetically, and handed Claire a pen and the clipboard. Claire took it and signed. "Where would you like us to put it?" the young woman asked, as her partner wheeled the box inside.

"Oh, I don't know…" Claire turned and surveyed the entrance hall, trying to find someplace to put her sister's junk. With her back turned, she didn't notice the young woman pull a syringe from her jumpsuit, until the woman clamped a hand over Claire's mouth and jabbed the needle into the older woman's neck.

Almost immediately, Claire began to swoon. She didn't pass out, not right then. She was still conscious enough to see and feel as the two women went to work. They quickly stripped Claire naked, pulling off her bathrobe, followed by her pajamas. Blondie balled up Claire's underwear and stuffed it in her mouth. She pulled out a roll of duct tape and plastered several strips over Claire's lips, sealing the disgusting package inside.

The whole time, Claire was helpless, unable to move, as Blondie quickly wrapped her wrists and ankles with more duct tape. Brunette, meanwhile, opened up the crate, which proved to be empty. The two women picked up their limp captive and manhandled her inside the cramped box. They had to pull her legs up, pressed against her bare chest, to get her to fit, and closed the lid, leaving the silently panicking woman trapped in the dark.

The last thing she heard before passing out was the metallic jingle of the crate being locked shut. Claire felt her whole world tilt as her kidnappers wheeled her outside and back onto the truck. Finally, the drugs took over and she passed out…

***

"EEEELLLPPPHHHMM!!!" Claire screamed into her gag. She'd been screaming for the better part of ten minutes, and no help had arrived. That did little to help calm the rising panic within the young woman. Claire wasn't a particularly brave woman. She was scared of rats and mice and spiders. She got positively terrified whenever she heard on the news about a burglar or a rapist and had insisted Scott install security alarms in the house, much good they'd done.  

She'd been kidnapped! From her own home, no less! She had no idea where she was, or how long she'd been out. During her kidnapping, she had some vague memories of coming to inside the wooden prison her abductors had locked her on. Bright light had blinded her for a moment as the box was opened, followed by the sharp pain of a hypodermic needle. Blackness had claimed her.

Claire didn't know how long she'd been out. It could have been a couple of hours; it could have been days! For all she knew, Scott and the kids had discovered her missing and were worrying about her right now! However long it had been, she'd awoken in a small room, only a little bigger than her closet. The walls, floor and ceiling were bare concrete. A single, naked bulb overhead lit up the small room.

Claire was standing in the center of the room, bent over. Her hands had been bound behind her back with rope, which ran up to a pulley hanging from a hook in the ceiling, down to a winch attached to one wall. The rope had been cranked up until Claire was bent over into a tight strappedo, perched precariously on the toes of her tightly bound feet, which were tied to a ring in the floor of her cell.

The young woman's reddish-brown hair had been pulled into a ponytail with a long cord. The other end of the cord had been tied to her bound hands, forcing Claire to pull her head up, painfully, and stare at the metal door to the cell. It was bare save for a narrow viewing slit, thankfully closed at the moment.  

Her gag was still the same, though, duct tape plastered over her mouth, sealing in her underwear. Several times since she'd come to, Claire had had to fight down the urge to vomit, fear of choking being greater than her disgust at the foul, humiliating gag.

Claire shivered, not entirely from fear. She was still naked, and the cell was, if not freezing cold, then enough to raise goose bumps on her bare skin. As she grunted again into her gag, the viewing slit slid open. Claire saw eyes looking in at her, and her face blushed red with embarrassment. Bound like this, she could do nothing to cover her shamefully exposed body.

The viewing slit slammed shut quite suddenly. What did they want with her? Claire wondered fearfully. She wasn't rich. Scott had a good job, but he didn't make enough money for her to be worth ransom. Claire remembered a late night documentary she'd seen once about white slavers, who kidnapped young women for horrid black market brothels god-knew-where.

She'd been horrified by the thought of young women and girls kidnapped to be sold on the black market slave auctions as prostitutes. Now, potentially facing the real thing, she was practically shaking like a leaf with fear.    

Claire jumped with fright as the door to her cell opened with a loud shriek of unoiled hinges and rusted metal, or rather, she would have jumped if it had been possible, tied up like she was. She shook with fright as a middle-aged man dressed in a worn, but well-made suit, stepped through the portal. Despite having more grey hair then black, the man still moved with a vitality that belied his years.     

Behind the man was Blondie, one of the girls that had kidnapped Claire. Despite her fear, Claire managed to glare angrily at one of the women responsible for her current predicament. The young woman, however, merely giggled.

"I don't think she appreciates our hospitality." She said to her companion.

"You don't, eh?" The man asked Claire, looking down at her with sharp, hard grey eyes. The captive woman cringed fearfully beneath the man's hard gaze. "I'll admit the living conditions here are a bit Spartan." He glanced around the room with a smirk. "But I'm afraid you'll have to get used to it for the time being. It may be a while before your sister finds out you've gone missing and comes looking for you. In the time being, I don't want you running off."

Her sister? What did her sister have to do with this? How did she know this man and his associates? Her confusion must have been apparent on Claire's face, because her captor grinned and continued.

"Oh, she hasn't told you what she's been up to, eh? I suppose she hasn't. There's not a whole lot of room for family in the spy business." Kaite, a spy? Claire thought disbelievingly. There was no way her sister was a spy, like in the movies. It was too crazy to be true. But if it wasn't, then why had Claire been kidnapped?   

"You know, you really do look a lot like her. She's caused me and my business a lot of trouble over the years." The man continued anger apparent in his voice. "So I've decided she has to be taken care of, and that's where you come in. You see, I'm planning on setting a little surprise for your big sister, and you'll make the perfect bait…"

***

Claire shivered. She pulled the ratty blanket they'd given her tighter around her otherwise naked body, trying to keep as much heat in as possible. It wasn't easy, sitting on the bare concrete of her cell. She supposed she should be grateful they'd untied and ungagged her when they were sure she wouldn't cause trouble. Her left ankle was locked in a metal cuff, connected by a short chain to a ring set in the floor in the center of her cell.

She was ungagged, though the two female kidnappers guarding her had made it clear if she so much as uttered a word, they'd gag her with a horrid pecker gag that made her wretch as the rubber plug pressed against the back of her throat and wore out her jaws. After they'd done it once or twice, one time forcing her to sleep gagged like that, Claire had stopped talking fast.  

In the days since her kidnapping, she'd come to hate the two women assigned to guard her. The way they leered at her whenever they came into her cell left Claire with no doubts about the two bitch's preferences. They seemed to enjoy tormenting the older woman too. If she gave them any excuse, even none at all, they'd put her into stringent, tormenting bondage and spend the evening tormenting their helpless prisoner before leaving her to try and catch whatever sleep she could despite her bondage.

Claire thought it had been about two weeks since her abduction, though she had no way of measuring the passing of time except her guard's routine. Twice a day, the two would give her some horrid slop to eat, forcing her to scoop it out of the pan with her bare hands or worse, lie on her belly and lap it up like a dog humiliatingly. Twice a day, she was let out to stretch and use the bathroom, always with one of her guards watching. Whenever she was let out of her cell, she was gagged, and her hands and feet shackled. They were taking no chances of their bait escaping before they could set their trap.

Claire laughed softly, bitterly to herself. As if she had a snowball's chance of hell of overpowering her guards and escaping. She had no choice but to do as she was told and hope they'd let her go when they were done with her. A slim chance she knew, but false hope was better then nothing.

From snatches of conversation overheard by her guards and their boss, she learned her captors' names. The two women guarding her, the blonde was named Jane, the brunette Mary, though Claire thought those were false names. They were hired muscle, mercenaries, brought in for this job only. Their boss was named Mr. R. He was a major crime boss, specializing in white slavery, abducting young women and girls to supply high-class underworld brothels and "resorts."
The facility she was in, she still had no idea where it was, was a holding facility for freshly abducted captives. A few days in the cells, bound in agonizingly restrictive bondage, of which Claire had only been given a taste, to break their spirits before they were shipped to one of Mr.  R's many secret training facilities to be trained for their new lives as sex slaves.

Claire's sister, Katie, according to her captors, worked for a non-governmental agency that, among other things, was trying to put a stop to the white slavers, Mr. R's organization in particular. Katie had been among the most successful of this group's agents, capturing or killing dozens of Mr. R's "recruitment agents", breaking up his secret, black market slave auctions, and rescuing hundreds of innocent women from their horrifying captivity.

And now, Mr. R was determined to put a stop to her actions, once and for all. Claire was almost angry at herself, for playing such a large role in stopping her sister, acting as the bait to draw Katie into a trap. She was forced to remind herself she didn't have much choice in the matter anyway. She had no way of warning her sister.

Part of her was guiltily glad she couldn't warn her big sister, hoping that somehow Katie would manage to escape the trap, with Claire to. Otherwise, whether their trap worked or not, Mr. R and his associates would have no further use for their captive then. The best she could hope for was a bullet in the back of the head and a shallow grave. Worse, she might find herself on the auction block, facing a life of sex slavery. It was to horrifying to even contemplate.

Claire was interrupted from her thoughts, as the door to her cell opened. Rather than one of her guards, perhaps hoping for some amusement from the helpless captive, it was Mr. R. He was talking to Mary, "We have to move fast. Agent K picked up Daniel from the club, right on schedule. We've got maybe three or four hours before he cracks and tells K where we're holding her sister. Time to set the trap…"

Things proceeded at a blurring pace for Claire. She was dragged out of the cell, the shackle on her foot unlocked. Before she could do anything, the two female guards had her tightly trussed up with rope, gagged and hooded for transport. One threw the older woman over her shoulder and carried the kicking, struggling captive out of the dungeon.

Outside, a helicopter was waiting. Claire could hear the whine of the engine despite her hood and feel the wind from the blades as she was tossed on the floor of the helicopter as Mr. R and his two henchwomen piled in. Claire's stomach lurched as she felt the copter lift off. They were in the air for the better part of an hour, before it touched down. Claire found herself dragged out of the helicopter. Her hood was removed.

They had arrived at a small, isolated, mountain cabin. She didn't see anyone, but Mr. R told the two female mercenaries to secure her, while he "organized the troops." Obviously, their were other slavers hidden, waiting for Claire's sister to stumble into her trap.

Meanwhile, Claire was half walked, half dragged into the cabin. It proved to be a small, one room shack with one door and two windows. A bed was set up against the wall opposite the door, with the windows on the other two walls opposite each other. A small table was set against the western facing window, with four wooden chairs.

Claire was tied to one chair, set in the center of the room. Her two captors sat at the table, idly playing cards. They'd acquired assault rifles from somewhere, which did nothing for poor Claire's nerves. The hours dragged on, as the shadows in the cabin lengthened. Claire lost the feeling in her arms and legs as they feel asleep. Soon, despite her rather uncomfortable position, Claire found herself nodding off as well.

She was suddenly woken up, a half hour later, by the sound of gun shots. "What the-!?!" Mary asked. She grabbed a walkie-talkie from the table. "Who's firing out there? Is it K? Who fucked up the trap!?!" The sound of the assault rifle fire suddenly cut off. A second later, another guard opened fire, in short, erratic bursts. It cut off.

"Dammit!" Mary swore. She tossed down the radio and grabbed her rifle. "You stay here and guard her." She shouted at Jane, before running out the door. There were more shots, then nothing. Jane had her assault rifle out now as well. She crouched down and walked over to the door, and locked it. Nervously, she glanced at the windows, her eyes darting from one, to the door, to the other.

Suddenly, there was a frantic knocking at the door. "Jane! It's me, Mary. Hurry up and let me in! Quickly!"

Without thinking, Jane rushed over to the door, she opened it. Mary stood outside the door, her hair in tangles, her fatigues covered in mud, gun nowhere to be seen. Her hands were cross behind her back. Before Jane could do anything, Katie shoved her captive forward, knocking both slavers to the ground. Jane tried to get out from under her comrade, who'd been bound hand and foot.

Jane grasped desperately for her gun. "I wouldn't do that if I were you." Katie said, pressing a silenced pistol to Jane's head. The woman slumped down, defeated. She raised her hands in surrender. Katie stood, keeping the mercenary covered with her gun, as the woman stood up. Mary, meanwhile, kicked and struggled on the ground, tied up, swearing like a sailor.  

"Untie my sister." Katie ordered her prisoner. Glowering, Jane walked over and quickly untied Claire. "Katie, it's a trap!" Claire blurted out as soon as her gag was removed.

"I know." Katie said, "and not a very good one either. I already took care of it. Now," she said, turning to Jane. "My sister could use some clothes, take yours off, please…"

Jane fumed, but under Katie's gun, she had no choice but to strip naked. Claire wasted no time in pulling on her former captor's pants and jacket, leaving Jane's underwear on the cabin floor. They were a little tight, but after a week going naked, being eyed by her captors, Claire was happy to be wearing anything other than a gag.

"Don't worry, I'll give you something for your clothes," Katie said, as Jane stared daggers at her captor. "I think those ropes and that gag would look much better on you. Claire, you mind doing the honors?"

With almost sadistic enthusiasm, Claire went to work tying up her former captor. She took a special delight stuffing Jane's panties in her mouth before stuffing the gag in and buckling it as tight as she could get it. She bound the woman's wrists and ankles, if not skillfully, then at least as tight as she could, enjoying the winces of pain from her captor.

"You alright, Claire?" Katie said, while the two mercenaries squirmed around on the floor of the cabin and "mmmppphhh'ed" pitifully into their gags. While Claire had been tying up Jane, Katie had stripped Mary naked as well, and gagged her with strips of cloth torn from her clothes.

"Much better, now at least." Claire said. "How are Scott and the kids?"

"Worried, but they'll be alright now your safe. Claire, I'm sorry," Katie said. "I didn't tell anyone what I was doing, in case something like this happened."

"Don't be sorry," Claire said, "What you're doing is important, fighting these bastards." She punctuated that with sharp kick to the helpless Jane, who howled impotently into her gag. "What I've gone through is nothing compared to the women they've been kidnapping. Besides, even if it is your fault, you did save me. I think that makes us even." The both laughed.

"Well, in that case," Katie said, hauling her captives to their bound feet. "Let's get out of here. These two have a date with an interrogation room, and then a long, long stay in prison awaiting them. Now, get hopping!" she said, jabbing Mary in the back with her pistol. Claire laughed, seeing her former tormentors reduced to this. She followed her sister out onto the porch and smiled. It was finally over…

THE END?