Foster Care: A Marketplace Tale, Part 5

{Foster Care is fanfiction based on Laura Antoniou’s Marketplace series, a fictional world in which there is a large and secret market for consensual slaves who serve their owners under contract. In Part 4, Bette and Kelly’s personal chemistry begins to reach the boiling point, but here in Part 5, a new danger threatens to separate them forever.}

In the morning, I get the call I’ve been dreading from Chris Parker about the status of Kelly’s contract. I’ve sent Kelly off to the depannéur to pick up my morning coffee and run some other errands, and told her not to come back until I call for her. I don’t want her to hear this conversation.

“Technically, MacFarlane still owns Kelly, and his other property. I don’t think he’s going to come back to claim them, considering the fact that if he comes out of hiding he’ll almost instantly be thrown in jail to await trial for murder,” Chris says.

“But she never signed a new contract,” I said.

“Nor was she released,” said Chris.

“I don’t get it — if MacFarlane is in hiding, and can’t or won’t reclaim his property, why is Negel getting involved?”

“Well, Negel recruited MacFarlane to the Marketplace, and as the buyers’ rep for an owner who bought sixteen slaves over only two years, he made a lot of money in fees from MacFarlane. As the buyers’ representative, he also has an option to place a temporary hold on a slave whose owner is, well, indisposed.”

“Whatever happens, MacFarlane isn’t going to be buying any more slaves, so why does Negel care about keeping MacFarlane’s property from going back to the block? It’s not like he has to stay on the guy’s good side.”

“No, but if he represents an owner, and he takes possession of a slave for that owner temporarily, he’s guaranteed a bounty even if the slave is never reclaimed.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I say, putting my forehead in my hand.

“How much is it?” I ask.

“It can be a lot, depending on how much the property is insured for,” says Chris. “And Negel’s training house and brokering operations — well, a lot of people speculate that they might have turned into a Ponzi scheme. He’s in trouble with money, and he needs more of it to keep everything going.”

“Great. Just great,” I say.

“The thing is, if you can hang on to her for the full year of the foster term, you can exercise your option to buy Kelly’s contract.”

“But only if I hang on to her.”

“Correct.”

“Got it. Thanks, Chris. Let me know if you hear anything from Negel. Or about Negel, for that matter.”

“Will do.”

I hang up and immediately dial Kelly.

There’s no answer.

It takes about three beats for me to hit full panic. Shit!

I throw my coat on and jam my feet in my boots. I run down the stairs, half falling down the last flight, and bust through the door, which I don’t even bother closing behind me. I run across the street to the depannéur.

“Did the young woman with the curly hair come in this morning?” I demand of the old guy behind the counter.

“Mademoiselle Kelly?” he asks. “Non.”

She’s been gone for twenty minutes. It doesn’t take twenty minutes to cross the street.

I flip open my phone. I installed a locator app on it, just the way I had on Diana’s phone. Looks like Kelly’s still got her phone. The dot is moving, rapidly, toward the airport.

I streak back across the street at full speed and get in my car, a tiny Fiat, and blast it right over the curb into the street, nearly sideswiping a recycling bin. I go down narrow, cobblestoned St. Sulpice the wrong way and swing onto the highway.

I have no fucking guns! I think. Fucking Canada! I didn’t bother to try to bring any up here, or buy one on the black market while I was here. Shit!

My phone, mounted on the dashboard, shows that whomever has Kelly got off two exits before the airport. The dot’s not moving now.

I get off the highway and roll into a district of distribution centers and warehouses sandwiched between the airport and Montreal’s major rail yard. Following the line on the map, I pull past a warehouse where the garage door is still open. I see two men in long coats standing in the doorway, their breath making steam in the frigid air. I pull around the block and into a narrow alleyway beside the building and cut my engine. I open the door to my car and shut it quietly, creeping along the side of the building, wishing fervently that I had a gun.

“We have to wait until she wakes up to get her through security at the airport. If we tried to take an unconscious person through security, we’d never make it.”

“How long will it take? We don’t have that much time before the flight.”

“Listen, if we have to buy another ticket, we buy another ticket. The fee is big enough — the cost of the ticket is nothing compared to that.”

I take the chance of peeking around the corner. Felipe! One of them is Felipe, the Marketplace doctor’s assistant!

Fuck, why don’t I have a gun? Felipe is huge — there’s no way I can take him, let alone him and the other guy.

I get an idea. I run back to my car and get inside, locking the doors.

Making police siren noises? There’s an app for that. I swear silently at my phone, urging it to download the app faster. It installs, and I play it — loud, but not loud enough. I take out a cable and plug it into the sound system of my car, roll down all the windows, and turn the volume up to 11.

I blast the siren sound at top volume. I hear panic inside the warehouse, and a black Town Car pulls out, trunk still open and flapping. But Kelly’s dot never moves. Thank goodness, they’ve left her behind.

I get out of my car and run toward the open garage bay of the warehouse — and straight into Felipe.

It’s like running into a brick wall. Felipe towers over me — he’s got at least a foot on me and probably close to 100 pounds, too. He cuffs me across the face with his massive hand, and I fly six feet sideways, my head hitting a 55-gallon drum. I see stars, but I don’t lose consciousness. I throw up my hand, pulling myself up on the edge of the barrel and I feel something on top of it.

Whatever it is, as Felipe comes towards me, I grab the handle and swing it at him as hard as I can.

It’s a pipe wrench, and I think I just broke at least three of Felipe’s ribs. I scramble to my feet while Felipe rolls back and forth in agony on the concrete floor, gasping for breath. I run back into the warehouse, still holding the pipe wrench. I kick open a flimsy office door and Kelly is inside, on a cracked vinyl couch.

I’m not a big person. Kelly’s a little taller and bigger than I am. But in the Army I trained to carry guys almost twice my size. I throw her over my shoulders in a fireman’s carry and run for it. Felipe’s on his hands and knees as I run by him, a puddle of barf between his hands. I have no time for him and not a single fuck to give about his predicament. I round the corner back to my car, piling Kelly into the front seat. I jump into the drivers’ seat, throwing the pipe wrench in the back, and I floor it, leaving a plume of dirt and gravel behind me.

Once I get a few blocks away, I pull over. I put my head on the steering wheel. Snot is streaming from my nose and there’s a cut on my head and blood trickling down the back of my neck. I lean Kelly back in the seat and buckle her seatbelt. I take her pulse — she’s alive, and it’s steady. I lift an eyelid and her pupils react, but she’s still out cold from whatever they gave her. I imagine Felipe had access to plenty of things from the doctor’s office, and I see a small puncture mark with a circular bruise on her neck.

They must have gotten her coming out of the apartment, I think.

I dial 911 and make a report of a man in distress at a warehouse on Pike Avenue. As I drive away, I hear sirens for real this time.

Lily Lloyd is the author of  Discipline: Adding Rules & Discipline To Your BDSM Relationship . You can find more of her writing at  The Black Leather Belt .