“Now, I’m not saying this was anyone’s fault…” Todd began. 

“How was I supposed to know the cops had a speed trap set up there…” Hank protested, almost immediately. 

“I said…” Todd said sharply, cutting off the other man. “It’s nobody’s fault…but we’ve still got a major problem on our hands.” 

He looked over to the corner of the rundown garage, the other two men following his gaze. Huddled together there were a dozen or so girls in their late teens. Each had her hands and feet tied with rope, a canvas hood pulled over her head and a leather collar locked around her neck. Below, each wore a cheerleader’s outfit in blue and gold colors. 

It had been the perfect job, or at least it should have been. Todd had gotten an inside scoop on the route the East Valley High cheerleading team would be taking, coming back from their latest away game. It had been a cinch diverting the bus with a fake detour sign onto a remote stretch of country roads where it could be easily waylaid. The men had all the time in the world to force the girls off the bus, package them in ropes, collar and hood and load them onto the kidnapper’s truck to be shipped off. There was a slave auction, next county over that night where the girls, even freshly kidnapped, unbroken and untrained, would have fetched the slavers a small fortune.

Unfortunately, a mile or two down the road, Hank had blown through a speed trap and they’d been pulled over by a local patrol car. They might have gotten away with just the ticket, but the girls in the back of the truck had realized what was up and started making enough of a racket for the cop to get suspicious. Realizing the jig was up, the slavers had blown out of there, fast as they could, but they knew it would be called in. Worse, as they heard on the police scanner in the truck, some local farmer had spotted the bus left on the side of the road and freed the driver who’d reported the cheerleaders’ abduction. A manhunt was being organized all across the state looking for them.

After that, there was no chance of making the auction. Even if they didn’t get intercepted, the gang organizing it would skin Todd and his crew alive if they had risked bringing that kind of head down on everyone else there. After a long and tense night, dodging cops, they’d finally made it to an abandoned garage they’d used as a hideout before, unloaded the girls and sent one member out to dispose of their suddenly-too-hot to drive truck. While the others waited, they planned their next move. 

“We ought to just cut our losses…” Charlie suggested. “Dump the bitches off somewhere and find a place where we can lay low till the heat blows over.” 

“I’d like nothing more than to do that…” Todd replied. “But you’re forgetting that we still owe Big Tony and his bunch 20-large for…you know…” He waved his hand. “

“We can find other jobs…” Hank started. 

“In the next two weeks? While laying low?”   

“Okay…” Charlie shrugged. “So we don’t dump the bitches…can we find another buyer for them?” 

“Not for the full set.” Todd replied. “And not on such short notice. That’s why we were taking them to the auction. We need multiple buyers…with deep pockets.” 

“So another auction then. I hear Harry’s planning one down in Charlotte.” Charlie suggested.

“Nah, that’s not for another month. Even if we could hang on to the girls till then, I don’t think Big Tony would give us that long and personally I’d like to hang on to my thumbs…” Todd flexed the digits in question, which had started to twitch. 

“What about the Highwayman Brotherhood’s sale down in Atlanta?” Hank piped up. “That’s next week.” 

“You’ve been to their sales before…” Charlie countered. “They have, maybe, ten girls, fifteen if they had a good run of hijackings. We roll in at the last minute, dump another dozen slaves for sale and crash their prices, they’re gonna be pissed at us.” 

“Mad Mike’s Maid Market in Montreal?” Hank said, dubiously. 

“It’s in Canada! We’d have to cross an international border to get to that one, carrying one hot cargo. We don’t have the time or the bribes for that.” Todd snapped.

“Ooh! I know!” Charlie said, excitedly. “There’s an outfit I know out in LA. They do a large business selling wanna-be starlets outta Hollywood. I attended their auction last year, they had two or three hundred girls easy! A dozen more won’t make much of a difference.” 

“When is it being held?” Todd asked, hopefully. 

“Uh…Tuesday…” Charlie reluctantly answered. 

“Tuesday!?!” Todd’s jaw dropped. “So we’d have maybe three days to drive a truckload of kidnapped cheerleaders cross country, with every cop in the state, if not the country at this point, out looking for us?” 

He rubbed his temples. It wasn’t like they had any better options, as the silence from the other two slavers showed. 

The door to the garage opened and the fourth member of the group came in. “Well, that truck’s nothing but scrap now!” Al said. “No chance of them tracing it to us.” 

“Good.” Todd said, turning to face him. “Now, get back out there and get us another one. Something big and reliable. It’s gotta make it across the whole damn country, nonstop.” Al gave him an exasperated expression, but turned and left the room again. Todd turned back to the other slavers. “While he’s doing that, you two get these ladies packaged…with extra muffling this time. Soon as Al gets us the new wheels I want them loaded up. We’ve got three days to ship ‘em to the other side of the country!”