WARNING! This story features some nonconsensual bondage and deals with themes of kidnapping and trafficking. Please read on at your own discretion. That doesn't mean its not a good story, just be aware

Chief

The police captain furrowed his brow as he stared at the report that had been handed to him. Two more women had disappeared, with the same sealed letter left in their stead. Every letter was the same, closed with a red wax seal, stamped with an emblem featuring the letters ‘B’ and ‘S’ entwined together in rope. Everyone knew it stood for ‘Bondage Syndicate’, but they didn’t know who or what was behind it.

These kidnappings were the latest in a series that had ransacked the town. One or two women had been kidnapped every month for the past year, and the police were still just as far from discovering who was doing it as they had been when the first women had been kidnapped.

“We need an expert”, the chief finally decided after appearing hard at thought. “You!” he said, pointing at an officer near him. “Call in Detective Wilde!”

Wilde

A week later, the detective strode into the room quietly, everyone’s eyes on her. As she entered, they all stood. She was a sight to behold: she wore black pants and a black jacket with the hood up. Over her face was a black mask, concealing her identity. It looked similar to the mask a superhero would wear to keep their identity secret, but Wilde did it for a much more practical reason: her expertise was working undercover, and the less people that knew her identity the better.

Her soft leather boots padded softly on the floor as she pulled her leather gloves from her hands, pulling each finger delicately. She glanced around, nodding at the officers. They took the hint and sat back down, still keeping an eye on her.

Wilde heard whispering as she passed through the room, heading towards the chief’s room.

“Is that Wilde?”

“She’s put more people in prison than there are cells in prison…”

“Who is she?”

“Nobody knows…”

“What’s with the mask?”

“She’s a legend…”

“Shhh!”

Detective Wilde smiled under her mask. She enjoyed her status among the other officers. She rarely did, but whenever she made a public appearance, it meant that something big was going down. Her jacket swished up behind her as she entered the chief’s office. She closed the door behind her as the chief greeted her.

“Ahh, I’m glad you could make it on such short notice, Wilde”, he said, shaking her hand. She nodded her head curtly and sat down.

“Not much of a talker, eh?” Wilde remained motionless. The chief and her stared at each other for a moment, sizing the other up. “Ah, well, I guess it goes with your ‘lone wolf’ status, huh?” Wilde remained silent, prolonging the discomfort.

“Well, let’s get you debriefed then.” The chief pulled a large folder out of his desk and set it in front of himself. He took a second, equal-sized folder and set it in front of Wilde.

“For the past year, we have had a syndicate terrorizing the town, they call themselves the ‘bondage syndicate’. I’m sure you’ve heard about them, they made national headlines last week. They aim for college-age girls usually, but that’s pretty much all that we know. Most people they take are last seen around bars late at night, but their targets have been pretty much random beyond what I’ve told you.

“Something we do know is what happens to the girls after they are kidnapped though. The kidnappers take a photo of the girl, then request a ransom. If the ransom isn’t delivered, the woman gets sent out of the country somewhere. If the ransom does get delivered, well, the same fate occurs.” At this, the chief opened Wilde’s file and flipped to a packet of photos. Wilde picked them up and leafed through them. Her body remained expressionless, but her face beneath her mask was filled with alarm. They were pictures of the girls, all dressed up for a night out at the bar, bound and gagged.

“This is why they call themselves the ‘bondage syndicate’”, the chief explained. “They always, ahh… I’ll let you look at them”, he said, shuddering as he turned away. Wilde inspected the photos. The girls were bound in a bunch of different things, ranging from rope to leather to metal. Every girl was completely and hopelessly restrained. One in a yellow dress had tape wrapped around her legs and her arms, with her hands wrapped in more tape, and her elbows covered with even more. Another girl wore a mass of leather over her arms. A little note on the side of the photo called it an ‘armbinder’. She had a panel of leather over her face, pressing over her mouth, gagging her. Just enough of her head was exposed to identify who the girl was.

Wilde flipped through similar photos of women bound and restrained in elaborate bondage, before setting the photos back down and looking at the chief.

“Your mission is to discover who these people are. We are completely lost as to how to get into their group, so we are going to give you free reign. We are entirely at your disposal. Anything you need, we will get it. Name it and it’s yours.”

Wilde nodded, deep in thought. She picked the photos back up, looking through them for some hint to point her in the right direction. In the photo of the girl with the yellow dress, she spotted something in the top right corner. She looked up, making up her mind. She nodded and shook hands with the chief, before closing the file and standing up.

“Good luck detective, we hope to hear from you soon.”

Wilde opened the door to leave the office. The room snapped quiet as she entered, everyone looking at her. They had evidently been discussing her. She strode through the room, ignoring everyone around her, lost in thought. She knew exactly where she would begin…

Wilde

Two months later, Wilde strode back into the office. She looked identical to her first visit, and she received the same reaction from the officers cluttered in the room. Three more women had been kidnapped since Wilde had joined the case, and it had become a nation-wide story. However, Wilde and the police chief had developed a plan.

Inside the office, the fat chief stood behind his desk, talking to a younger, much slimmer woman. She was a similar size and height to Wilde, but wore a suit jacket, matching skirt and heels. She looked like a lawyer, or a secretary.

“Ah, Wilde, glad you’re here. Meet Emily, our informant.” The officer, who Wilde now knew was Emily, stood up, shaking her hand.

“Nice to meet you detective Wilde”, she said strongly. Her voice was filled with professionalism and much more force than that of a secretary. Wilde supposed she was a fellow detective.

The product of two months of work had established Emily inside the bondage syndicate as an informant. Emily was entirely a digital agent and never interacted with the group in any physical way, but she coordinated the movement of assets, which so far had been only money and equipment. But now, she had gained their trust and was now tasked with moving another victim, and a plan had been formulated around it…

The chief began to talk, pacing behind his desk. “The actual victim, who will be delivered to Emily’s location, will be swapped out with you, Wilde. You will have a tracking device planted on you, and you will be shipped to the next exchange zone. Unfortunately, Emily was unable to acquire the coordinates of their headquarters, so we need the ‘package’ to tell us where that location is.”

“We were initially going to send in the victim with a tracking device, but we can’t warrant sending a civilian into certain danger, after we had the chance to rescue them”, Emily followed up. “The syndicate has a thin web of traffickers who move victims around, so I don’t know what state the victim will be in when they reach me. You will need to be ready to change everything to match with the victim, in case the runner before me sends ahead photos. Luckily, the victim stays hooded until they reach the warehouse, where they are then photographed and the ransom is demanded.”

Wilde remained silent. She was used to being sent in as a ‘victim’ to dig up information. Her skill set made her the best option for it. Wilde hesitated before nodding, thinking back to the photos that she had taken from the chief and were now pinned up in her apartment that she had rented for the past two months.

“Wonderful. Let me debrief you on what’s going to happen…”

Wilde

A week later, Emily sat in the front seat of a food truck, which was parked underneath an overpass. It was nearly 1am, which was when the exchange was to be made. The chief of police sat in the passenger seat, and Wilde was standing in the shadows a hundred yards away. Down another road, a camouflaged SWAT truck with a dozen officers was parked, hidden in an alleyway. Wilde occasionally glanced back and forth from the food truck to the swat van. She was completely shrouded in darkness, so she knew she wouldn’t be spotted.

Checking her watch, Wilde glanced back at the food truck. They were now ten seconds away from 1am. Emily had stressed on the punctuality that the syndicate operated with, and she claimed that there would be an error of less than a second from the agreed-upon time. The second hand ticked 10, 9…

Headlights appeared at the end of the street as a white van came quickly up the road. It braked silently behind the truck, coming to a stop as Wilde’s second hand clicked to 1am precisely.

Watching from the shadows, Wilde watched as the driver of the van and another passenger hopped out and spun around to the back. Emily and the chief jumped out of the truck and pulled the doors to the back of the truck open. As they did so, the pair of men pulled a large black duffel bag from the van and threw it into the truck. All parties returned to their respective vehicles and closed all the doors. As the vehicles entered into motion, Wilde glanced at her watch again. Precisely 30 seconds past 1am. She was impressed.

The van whipped a U-turn and sped off back down the road. As the food truck turned the corner Wilde stepped out of the shadows and grabbed onto the side of the truck. She held onto the side as the truck accelerated, the chief pulling her into the cab.

“Alright, we have to go quickly. We have 15 minutes to get you changed and ready to go, Wilde. We meet at 1:16am exactly.” The Chief and Emily rapidly swapped drivers, to where the chief was now driving. Emily and Wilde stepped into the back of the truck, which was connected to the cab. On the floor, writhing around, was the black duffel bag. Muffled cries emanated from the bag as the victim vainly struggled against whatever bondage she was in.

The pair of women sprung into action. Wilde unzipped the duffel bag and Emily pulled the woman out.

“Shit! It’s rope!” Wilde’s eyes grew huge at the sight of the girl. She was a young college student, thin and very beautiful. Her body was wrapped in dozens of coils of rope, her upper body in particular was bound in an impressive complicated weave.

“No no no, not a pentagram…” Emily muttered to herself as she took pictures of the girl as she struggled. A large leather hood was laced tightly on her face, obscuring her identity. Flipping the girl over, her arms were bound in an even more complicated rope net.

“Alright, here’s what we need to do. You cut her loose and I’ll pick the lock on her hood.” Emily leaned down to the padlock that secured the collar (attached to the hood) around the girl’s neck and started to pick at it with a set of tools she procured from her pocket. Wilde pulled a knife from her belt and quickly began cutting at the girl’s bonds. 

“13 minutes!” the chief shouted from the cab. Wilde had to be bound and gagged in the exact same way as the girl when they arrived, or the jig would be up.

The girl was freed in a matter of seconds. The hood was pulled of her head to reveal a beautiful young woman, with a large red ball-gag pressed into her mouth. Her hair was blonde and pretty long, and she had a rough ponytail which came out of her head at an angle. Emily quickly undid the straps and removed it. A sock came out with it.

“Oh my god…”, the girl spluttered. “Are you guys cops?”

“Yes, now we need you to take your dress off and give it to us”, Emily said as quickly as possible.

“I… what?! No way am I doing tha-”

“We’re replacing you. Our double needs to match exactly. We need your dress NOW!”

The girl hesitated. “I paid like 900$ for this dress…”

Wilde had had enough. “We don’t have time for this. Take it off, or I will take it off you”, Wilde said, speaking for the first time in front of Emily. She flourished her knife in a threatening way, and the girl’s face turned pale. She gulped, before saying, “Yeah, OK, I guess I can…”

Emily looked at Wilde with respect. They both turned around to let the girl take the dress off, Wilde tapping the knife against her leg in frustration.

“10 minutes!” the chief yelled over his shoulder. As the girl took the dress off, Wilde pulled her own clothes off too. She took off her boots, her pants, her jacket, and her shirt, until she was standing in front of Emily wearing spandex, socks and her face mask. Taking a breath, she pulled her mask off, revealing her face to Emily.

Emily whistled softly. “You should take that off more often”, she said, smiling.

“Hurry up, we don’t have time for this”, Wilde replied roughly. She quickly pulled on the girl’s dress, which was luckily a good fit.

The girl asked quietly from one side of the truck, “Do you have anything else I can wear?” Wilde silently pointed at a duffel bag as she pulled the dress on. 

“...Thanks”, the girl muttered before sliding over to the bag and digging around inside it. She pulled the hair tie out of her hair and let her hair fall against her back. As she let it down, Wilde noticed how tightly it had been pulled back. Probably for the ransom photo. The girl winced as she rubbed her scalp.

Wilde

“9 Minutes!”

“Alright, I need you to do exactly as I tell you. Cross your arms behind your back, wrists to the small of your back.”

Wilde turned around and copied what Emily had said. Emily whipped rope around her wrists immediately, quickly cinching the rope down. Wilde shifted uncomfortably as Emily worked. 

“This won’t be perfect, but it’ll get the job done. It needs to be genuine, so I won’t be leaving you any backdoors to escape through…” Emily mumbled as she worked. She worked expertly, wrapping rope around Wilde’s chest. She occasionally glanced at the photos she took of the girl as reference for the way the girl had been tied. The girl sat in the corner, her knees tucked up to her chest, silently watching as Wilde was restrained.

“7 minutes!” Emily had already finished Wilde’s chest harness, and was now wrapping rope around Wilde’s elbows. Wilde gasped as her elbows were cinched together tightly, forcing her shoulders to pull back.

“How do you know how to do this again?” Wilde asked roughly as Emily worked with a professional speed.

Emily blushed. “Well, in my private life, I, uhh… I’m a… rigger.”

Wilde turned her head, silently asking the question.

“I do this with my, uhh… friends… occasionally. This skill is what actually got me inside the syndicate…” Emily finished frapping the rope around Wilde’s arms. “Sit down, and put your legs together.

Wilde continued incredulously. “So are you… arous-?”

“I’m trying not to be”, Emily answered in a way that meant the conversation was over. Wilde sat down and tested out her arms. Emily must have been an expert in whatever games she participated in, since this was the most secure Wilde had ever been tied up. And she had been tied up a lot in her line of work. But never like this.

“4 minutes!”

Emily doubled her speed, something that Wilde already thought was impossible. She whipped rope around Wilde’s legs, referencing the photo constantly. She frapped rope around Wilde’s thighs, knees, calves and ankles as fast as she could. Wilde was impressed by Emily’s skill with the rope. Once she was done, Emily threw the extra rope to the side and grabbed the leather hood and the gag.

“2 minutes!”

Emily grabbed the sock that had been in the girl’s mouth and approached Wilde.

“No. Not that.” Wilde was already uncomfortable enough being tied up by someone who liked tying people up, she didn’t need another girl’s sock that was in someone else’s mouth in her own mouth.

“We have to, Wilde. We already discussed this.”

Wilde groaned in frustration. “Use something else.”

Emily swung her head around, looking for something that would work. Her eye’s settled on Wilde’s own feet, which had socks on them. Wilde realized what she was thinking. “No. Absolutely not.”

“It’s either that or these”, Emily said, holding up the soaking, used socks that were dripping with the girls drool.

Wilde groaned. “Do it.” Emily leaned down and pulled both of Wilde’s socks off and quickly shoved them into Wilde’s mouth. She spluttered, throwing an angry look at Emily. Emily shrugged her apology before shoving the ball-gag in place, forcing the socks deeper into Wilde’s mouth. She quickly bound the straps around Wilde’s head, securing the gag in place.

“See you on the other side”, Emily said before pulling the hood over Wilde’s head. Sight and sound were immediately cut out. Wilde felt Emily pulling the laces on the hood, then faintly heard the chief yelling “1 minute!” Wilde felt herself be dragged on the floor, then set down on a fabric. She felt the duffel bag zip close over her, further cutting off her sense of hearing. 

Wilde instantly hopped into her role as a distressed college student, which wasn’t hard to do. She struggled at her bonds, testing them for any sort of weakness. There were none. Emily truly was a master at her craft. Wilde felt the truck slow down and come to halt, and she played up her role. She shouted into her gag, struggling in vain. The socks tasted disgusting and were already beginning to soak through with spit. The ball wasn’t helping, forcing her jaw open painfully. The ropes around her arms were already painful-level, her elbows pinned together, forcing her shoulders back. Her legs were just as restricted.

Wilde heard the sound of the truck door slide up. She struggled and cried out loudly as the duffel bag slid along the floor of the truck and into the air. She was carried somewhere before being dumped painfully into the trunk of a car. She cried out in genuine pain at being dropped as she landed on her shoulder. The duffel bag rolled over, so she was laying with her head into the floor. Wilde snorted for air through her nose, the hood heavily restricting it, the duffel bag and the floor of the trunk restricting it even more. She tried to roll over to get her face off the floor, but her bonds were too tight and the duffel bag was too large. She couldn’t get enough momentum to shift.

The car rocked forward and sped off. Wilde decided that she would just have to get used to her situation, and began to meditate. She calmed her breathing and relaxed her body to try to make it easier on herself, but her breathing didn’t improve. She felt like she was being water-boarded by fabric.

Wilde

An hour later, the car shuddered to a halt. Wilde was still pressed face-first into the trunk. The trip had been one of the worst experiences of her life. Wilde felt the doors of the car slam shut, then faintly heard the trunk creak open. She cried out in alarm when the duffel bag was swung up over someone’s shoulder and carried away. Wilde faintly struggled, her body genuinely exhausted from her stay in the trunk. She vainly tried to stretch her painfully-bound body to loosen even a little bit of the tightness, but her body was held tight.

She felt the bag bounce up and down softly for a few minutes, as if she were being carried a long way. All she wanted was to get out of the duffel bag and have the hood taken off. Her jaw hurt from the material stuffed inside that Emily had forced in all that time ago.

Wilde was finally dropped onto the floor, her body slamming into the hard concrete. She cried out into her gag in pain as her shoulder slammed into the floor, the same one as in the car. She played up her part, struggling in her bondage and crying out for help.

Wilde faintly heard the sounds of people around her. Although she was playing her distressed part, she was genuinely becoming more and more  distressed the longer she was stuck in her bondage. The hood was painfully pressing down over her head, every breath was a struggle and there was absolutely nothing she could do to escape. Normally, it was a pair of handcuffs or a zip-tie that she could pick or snap with a well-placed tug, but not this. Everything hurt, everything was sore, and she was completely at the mercy of the people around her.

Wilde felt the bag be dragged across the floor. She laid on the floor for a moment as commotion sounded from around where she was laying. After another minute, the bag was slowly opened. She felt the pressure from the bag release, then she was picked up and the bag was pulled out from underneath her.

Slowly, as if for dramatic effect, the hood was slowly unlaced on the back. Wilde struggled and groaned, begging for it to come off faster. It took all of her professional self-restraint to keep from giving it her all to escape. She was mentally and psychologically rattled from her stay in bondage, and all she wanted was to get out. Only a few more seconds…

The hood was torn off violently, pulling Wilde’s loose hair up with it. A blinding white light was in front of her and she turned her head as her eyes were blinded. Squinting, she faintly saw a video camera pointed at her, just below the light.

“MMPH!!” Wilde cried out into her gag. She squinted around at her surroundings and saw a ring of people surrounding her. Every person wore a mask, like one that kids would wear for halloween. Wilde shifted her body posture to look as insignificant as possible, as if she were an unsuspecting college girl terrified of what was coming next, rather than a cop who knew that she would be rescued in an hour or so.

“Dammit, someone look in the hood for the hair tie. We have to do it again”, Wilde heard a voice resound from behind the camera. She couldn’t see who it was because of the light, but her voice was powerful and confident. Wilde was surprised to hear a feminine voice here.

The person who had ripped the hood off pulled it open and checked inside. Wilde swung around to look at him as he looked for the hair tie in the folds of the hood. Wilde remembered in the food truck that the girl had been wearing a hair tie. She was right, it was for the picture. That’s why it looked so hastily put on, because it was the previous captors who had put it on.

“It’s not here boss”, the man said with a thick accent. Wilde was even more surprised when she realized that the woman was leading the operation.

“Waddya mean it’s not there”, the woman responded frustratingly.

“It ain’t there.”

“Then check the ground or the bag you big monkey,” the woman shouted.

“Yes boss…”

The group of men all started walking around, looking for the hair tie that Wilde should have been wearing.

“It ain’t here boss.”

“Did you look for it?”

“Yes boss, we all looked. It ain’t here boss.”

“Well dammit. Does anyone have a hair tie?” Everyone in the circle shrugged their shoulders and murmured their dissent.

“Dammit! How the hell do none of you have a goddam hair tie?” Everyone shrugged their shoulders again.

The woman was silent behind the light again for a moment. “MMPH!” Wilde cried out into her gag again. Everyone looked down at where she was laying on the floor.

“Why… why doesn’t she have a hair tie on?” the woman said from behind the camera, thoughtfully this time.

“I don’t know boss, it probably fell off in one of the cars–”

“No, how did it fall off. She was in a bag, with a hood over her goddam head. How could it have made it out of the hood, and the goddam bag at the same time?”

Everyone shrugged their shoulders as a thoughtful muttering began to circulate. Wilde’s eyes flew open. She realized what the woman was hinting at.

She thought back to when she had been in the van, getting tied up. The girl she had replaced had pulled the hair tie out of her hair, and Wilde hadn’t been given one.

‘I even thought it was for the pictures!’ Wilde thought to herself. ‘How could I be so careless?’

The woman stepped forward from behind the camera and the bright light. Her face wasn’t covered, the only one without a mask on out of everyone. She walked forward, flipping the camera down towards the ground as she did so, so that she wouldn’t be in the frame. She was a middle-sized woman, with average build and height. She wore tennis shoes and black pants, and a black hoodie, all uniquely spotless when compared to the clothes worn by everyone standing around Wilde. She knelt down next to Wilde and brought her face close to Wilde’s.

“Why don’t you have a hair tie, little girl? Did my friends forget to give you one?” Still a few inches from Wilde’s face, she lifted a cell phone up to her ear. Wilde heard it ring once, then twice, then someone on the other side picked up. The tinny voice of a man came from the other side, “Yeah?”

“She doesn’t have a hair tie, why?”

“Waddya mean she doesn’t have a hair tie?”

“I mean she doesn’t have a hair tie, waddya think it means?”

“Well did you check the hood?”

“Of course I checked the goddam hood, and the bag too before you ask.”

“I dunno then boss, she definitely had a hair tie when we dropped her off with the girl.”

The woman slowly lowered the phone, flipping it closed. She smiled, then spoke, enunciating each word. “Well then, let’s call the new girl then, shall we?” She smiled as Wilde’s eyes filled with fear. She did her best to stay in character, trying to act like she had no clue what was going on, but a dull light in the back of her eyes betrayed her.

The phone rang once, then twice, then thrice. Each time it rang, Wilde’s panic jumped up again. How would Emily cover it up? What excuse would she come up with?

Emily

Emily’s phone rang from her pocket. She was sitting on the back of the food truck parked in a warehouse, watching as rows of SWAT officers were lining up, checking their gear. She pulled her phone out and saw it was the boss. She immediately jumped up and ran towards the communications center. “Chief! I got a call coming from the boss!”

Everyone in the headquarters immediately went quiet as Emily answered the phone. She plugged it into a tape recorder before answering.

“Yeah?” she said in a different voice from normal. It was much harder.

The boss’s voice resounded from the recording device. “How did the package arrive for you?”

“The package was wrapped up in a duffel bag boss.”

“What did you do to it?”

“We threw it in the back of the truck, then drove to our next location.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“The other guy in the car before me.”

“Alright. Did you open the bag?”

“No boss, just like you instructed.”

“Was the bag partially open?”

“No boss, it was sealed completely.”

“You are sure of that?”

“Absolutely boss. That bag was tighter than your wallet. Respectfully.”

The boss laughed, her voice cracking in distortion from the cell phone. “Don’t worry new girl, you’ll be getting paid shortly.”

“Thanks boss.”

The phone hung up with a click. Everyone in the center was silent. After a moment, the chief, sitting at a table near the center, eventually spoke up.

“What was that about?”

“It was a routine call, sir. I was informed I would receive a call following the exchange.”

“They don’t suspect us then? That sounded like there was something wrong and she was questioning you.”

“No sir. It was routine. I was told I would be questioned, and this went exactly as I believed it would have.”

The chief sighed a breath of relief. “So Wilde hasn’t been compromised?”

Emily smiled. “Absolutely, sir. She is secure.”

Wilde

Wilde stared at the woman as she stood up, a small bit of hope sparking in her mind. From what she had heard, Emily had done a good job of covering.

“Well, I know one thing for sure now”, the woman said. She stepped back and put the phone back in her pocket. She smiled at Wilde, looking her in her eyes. “I know you’re an agent.”

Wilde screamed into her gag. Everyone in the circle stepped back, and various people pulled out weapons, like they were about to be raided.

“Boss, are you sure? It sounded fine when you were talking with the new girl.”

The boss smiled as she stared Wilde in the eyes. “There’s two reasons I know how. One is that the hair tie is nowhere to be seen. I would trust that first guy with my life, and he’s made over thirty successful runs. And this last leg of the journey was me. So, that leaves only one place that the hair tie could have fallen out. Which is in the new girl’s segment.”

Wilde stared at the boss in horror. She began to pace around Wilde, forcing her to turn her head around to follow her.

“She said that bag was sealed tight. And it was, when we got it. So there’s no way it could have fallen out. Which means the girl opened the bag. Which means she’s lying. Which means she’s a rat.”

“But boss, how does that mean she’s a rat? She could have been curious on her first run…”

“That brings me to my second reason”, the boss stopped pacing and stared at Wilde with a smile. “I know Detective Wilde from experience.”

Continued in Part 2! You can find that here!