A Question of Time, Ch. 01

Maggie wasn't thinking about anything.

Friends, work, stress, worries, cares, troubles, fears, all of them gone.

She was dancing, eyes closed, feeling the beat thrum through her body like a wave breaking over her, moving like a puppet on a string and loving every moment of it, feeling like a hand in a glove, a flash in the pan, a storm in a teacup, a needle in a haystack, a prize for the winning, a dead for the raising, a catch for the chasing, a jewel for the choosing, a man for the making in this blistering heat...

Then someone touched her shoulder. "Hammering In My Head" continued to play, telling her to sweat it all out, but the moment was lost. She turned around to look at the stranger behind her.

He was older than she was--perhaps late thirties, perhaps late forties, but it was difficult to be sure. His face had a timeless quality about it, like a rock that had withstood the harshness of wind and water so long that it had been worn down to its elemental qualities. He was dressed simply; a t-shirt and jeans, with a black leather jacket over the ensemble. The only touches of individuality came from the cowboy boots he wore, and the matching hat. She might have thought "Village People", except that he had an air of command that almost seemed menacing. She couldn't have imagined laughing at him. She couldn't have imagined doing anything at that moment except staring at him. Despite the heat of her dancing, despite the crowded warmth of the club, she felt her arms run cold with goose bumps.

He stepped closer to her. "You're in grave danger," he said, his voice rough like sandpaper. "You have to trust me implicitly, or you'll never make it out of here."

Maggie blinked. The words didn't seem real. Nobody ever really said that to anybody. It was just something that happened in Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, and bad detective novels starring Mike Hammer. She wasn't in any danger. She was a data processor for a check recovery firm. Nobody cared about her enough to want to kill her. This whole thing was crazy. She just had to explain that to this...whoever, and then he'd go away. The thought crossed her mind for a moment that he might be crazy, but she was in a public place, surrounded by people. He wouldn't try anything here, even if he was insane.

She opened her mouth to tell him that, but before she could get out the first word, he pressed a finger to her lips. "Don't look around," he said. "Look at my wristwatch; I've angled it so you can see him in the reflection."

Maggie looked down at the wristwatch. The reflection of the nightclub's harsh spotlights caught her eye for a moment, blinding her, but then he moved his wrist ever so slightly, and she saw him. "Frank?" she said. "I know him from work. I didn't know he went to this club." She started to turn, but he grabbed her chin and forced her to face him.

"I told you not to look around. If you don't listen to me and do everything I say when I say it, you don't stand a chance of escaping him. You think it's a coincidence that he's here? He's come here to take you. I would have come sooner, but I wasn't sure you were his target until tonight."

"Take me? What are you talking about?"

The man's eyes narrowed. "That man, the one you call Frank. He's a slaver. The data processing job is a cover for his real work--he procures women for the wealthy and unscrupulous, people who want trophy wives or sex slaves or...other things..." She didn't like the sound of 'other things'... "and you fit all the parameters. You're young and pretty; you have no family, no close friends, nobody who'd make serious inquiries if you were to vanish. And, of course, there's the stories."

The goose bumps covered her body now, and she felt a pit open up in her stomach. This wasn't real, please, let it not be real... "Wh-what stories?" she asked, trying to sound confident.

The man flashed anger. "Don't be an idiot, girl," he said. "You're in enough danger. Don't make it worse for yourself by trying to lie. I know that for the past three years you've been a member of seven different mailing lists, all with an interest in the same sexual fetish--mind control. You've visited mind-control fetish websites on a weekly basis for the past five years, and you've contributed three stories yourself, all under the pseudonym 'Skydiver'. Your particular fetish involves being made over into a mindless sex slave. Did you really think that you could be that public about it without drawing some attention?"

"I...how...how?" The words wouldn't come anymore. There was just fear now, choking and sickly, wrapping itself around her throat and tightening.

"Profiling. Some of the people on those mailing lists are professional slavers on the lookout for new victims. There are hidden programs in those websites that send a cookie back to them. They keep track of the people who visit, and use it as the starting point for their captures... you won't be able to resist them. Part of you already wants what they're offering. It's like a crack in your armor, and they'll take full advantage of it. They'll take you, remake your mind in their image, and sell you off as a blowjob machine in the Far East or somewhere. And you'll love it. Unless you come with me, right now."

Maggie felt like she was drowning. None of it made sense, and yet...and yet...she clung to the stranger like a life preserver. "Alright," she said. She tried not to think about the idea of her as a mindless sex doll. It wasn't fair, dammit! She didn't want that, not really, but it wasn't her fault that the idea got her hot... "Where are we going?"

"Mexico," he responded, taking her by the hand and dragging her through the crowd. "If we can make you vanish, completely and totally, there's a chance that they might not be able to find you again. Either way, though, girl...your life as you know it is over."

They burst out of the club into the relatively fresh air outside, but Maggie still felt like she couldn't breathe. Her knees felt weak and ragged, and it seemed as though the ground was bucking beneath her as they walked. Nothing felt solid anymore, nothing seemed stable. "Who are you?" she asked, desperate for some point of contact with the man who was saving her from...her mind shied away from the concept.

"Call me Burke," he said, heading to a BMW infiniti that was parked across three spaces. He unlocked the doors and ushered her in, then got in himself. "We'll need to make a few stops first."

"My apartment?" she asked, thinking clothes, checkbook, towel, the stuffed bear she'd had since she was six that was her last reminder of her father, her CDs, one last chance to see her life spread out around her...

"No," he said with an icy finality. "They'll have it watched." He was driving far faster than she was comfortable with, but he maneuvered the car with an easy confidence. "If you go home, you won't get the chance to leave again. We need to stop at an ATM, and a pay phone." He pulled into a gas station. "Give me your bank card and PIN number; I'm going to go withdraw all your cash."

She blinked. The instincts of the urban jungle told her that she should never give either one of those away, let alone both, but she found herself reaching into her purse for them without a moment's thought. "Why can't I do it?" she asked.

"Because you're going to call your job and tell them you quit, and it'll save time if I withdraw the money while you do that." He took the outstretched card, and opened the door. "Make it a good performance," he said. "They won't question it if you get really pissed off at them."

*****

They were on the interstate now, driving south at 95 miles an hour. Burke had said that he hoped to be in Mexico in two days. He'd given her credit cards away to a couple of unsavory men and told them to go have fun. Apparently, if they were charging things on her card and leaving a paper trail, while she spent only cash, it'd help to confuse Frank and his friends. (Frank had told her to have a nice night. He'd been wearing a San Diego Chargers sweatshirt. White slavers weren't supposed to like the Chargers, were they?)

It had all been too much, too fast. From "It Girl" to fugitive in thirty minutes flat, fleeing south with a strange man in a strange car and no change of clothes and the $2000 that was all the money she had in the world now, everything she had in existence now, and it just didn't make sense and all she wanted to do was curl up into a little ball and pretend none of it, none of it had happened. She was still dancing, she thought. Still in the nightclub, still listening to the music and remembering what it felt like to be complete for once in her life...

A question popped into her head, and without thinking, she asked it. "How did you know that I was their target?"

For a long time, Burke didn't respond. "Frank," he said at last. His voice wasn't the same tone of icy command that she'd already gotten used to. It seemed almost...vulnerable. "I've known who he was...what he was...for a long time. Tried to keep as many people as possible away from him, and his kind." He sighed, and for a moment she felt immeasurably close to him. "It hasn't always worked."

"But if you know, why don't you...I don't know, go to the cops?"

The tone of impatient condescension was back, like it had never left. "I thought you read all the stories, girl," he snapped. "They're untouchable. Any cop who goes to investigate comes back saying that the claims are totally groundless--and if they're young and pretty, then they quit the force a week later and start working as a porn star for some producer who knows the right people. You can't fight them...if you try, they'll just make you into a slave and that's the end of it."

Maggie shuddered. It was like she'd dropped off the ends of the earth. They owned the cops, they owned the law, they knew where she lived, and they were after her...and she couldn't fight them. All she could do was run. (Once again, she ignored the tiny little voice that asked, "Why run?" It wasn't her fault that the voice was there. It wasn't her fault that there was some little part of her that got off on the concept. It wasn't her fault.)

Burke had turned on the car stereo, apparently assuming that the conversation was over. Depeche Mode blasted out 'Master And Servant' as they whipped past a road sign that said, 'Speed Limit - 70.' Suddenly, Maggie pictured them being pulled over by a cop with a blank, vacant stare and the fear squeezed at her chest again. "Shouldn't we slow down?" she asked. "I mean, they could...send the cops after us, couldn't they? Catch us, and..." she shied away from the concept again, and her brain found refuge in another question. "Burke, how come they've never gotten to you?"

Burke spoke to her without looking at her, making his voice heard over the car stereo. "Get some sleep," he said. "You don't know when you'll need it."

There was no way she could sleep, she thought, as she listened to the pulsing bass of the music through the car speakers. She'd never be able to sleep again, not with the music so loud, and the situation so crazy, and the seats so comfy...

Maggie drifted off at 95 miles an hour, heading south towards Mexico.

TO BE CONTINUED...