While she followed, loafers tapping up the step, her hand went on instinct to the phone in her skirt pocket, but at the padded and bulky feel she remembered that would be impossible. The phone was locked in a Kevlar pouch. Word should be given to India and Abby, but how would she do that?
The man with the mask led redhead Kelly past the security guard at the arched doorway that opened into one of the wings. Angel sped up, but went straight to the guard standing with no expression in his black suit, hands clasped at his front.
“Um, hi,” she said, out of breath, “I’m supposed to follow them,” she gestured to Kelly and the man, one hand presenting the medallion on its ribbon, “but my friends are outside dancing—they won’t know where I am.”
The man watched her, blank, said nothing.
“So I guess . . . can I get past?”
The security guard still said nothing, but she could see a passing amusement on his face.
“I can come back out if I want?”
He nodded, gestured for her to enter the hallway.
One more look back hoping to see India’s or Abby’s face in the ballroom crowd, then she was off to follow Kelly hoping India wouldn’t be mad at her coming out to find the couch empty.
The wing’s hallway was wide, perhaps fifteen feet or more across. The ceiling vaulted high above, and there were doors down the hallway as far she could see, interspaced and opposing each other almost every twenty feet. Around each doorway, partygoers were gathered. No sense of organization, just a haphazard semicircle of onlookers, spectators obviously who were watching something happening within each of the rooms.
As she hustled along the wide carpet runner that traveled the length of the hall, she tried peeping in the rooms each time she passed a huddle of people. There was never a chance to see what was occurring within, but she could hear. One room she heard moans. Another room she heard a man protesting, a slapping sound followed. The crowd bristled as she passed. Had the man been struck? Tightness worked inside her, but she gained on Kelly and the man with the demon mask. Once she was right behind them, passing more doorways, more potted plants, more huddles of people, she watched the man’s polished leather shoes clopping on the red wool rug.
The man turned sharply at a T intersection, going left, pushing Kelly ahead of him still holding her by the hair. Kelly took quick shuffling steps while the man strode. Her calf muscles flexed, walking on her toes so the hair pulling wouldn’t hurt as much. Occasionally she would grunt, but the man didn’t slow.
The hallway they’d turned into was quiet. There were doorways down this hall, but only one door was open and by it stood an older gentleman in a tuxedo. Not a black tie, but a white tie and white vest. As they drew nearer, he gestured a white gloved hand for them to enter the room’s double doors. Angel looked to the man for confirmation that she was accepted as well; he gave her no response, but didn’t stop her either. She slipped in behind Kelly and her tormentor.
The room was large and quiet. A tall room, a high coffer ceiling, the spaces between the wood beams painted with Victorian images; rose bushes and fruit and bugling angels with red wings. . . . At the back of the room sat a large full-size grand piano in shining black, the lid open, the keyboard and seat unattended. Past that were windows that must look outside to the eastern part of the estate’s grounds. But the towering curtains were closed, showing only their dull bronze color embroidered with paisley shapes.
People were gathered there waiting for their arrival.
Propped in the center of the room was what looked like a table cocked upright at a 90° angle. Eight feet tall, six feet wide, polished wood set on a metal stand that braced it from behind. Next to the upright table sat a push cart lined with instruments. This spectacle was arranged on the center of a large Persian rug. Around the perimeter of the rug, sitting on chairs, some standing, were an arrangement of a dozen people, mostly men, though there were three women in ball gowns and eye masks. The men wore various costuming, and the crowd looked international. A wealthy man in white robes who looked like he might own oil fields in the Middle East; an octogenarian with a broad face and black sunglasses blotting his eyes who wore a gold trimmed kufi on his graying head, looking like an African dictator in white robes and wooden jewelry, seated on a chair with his legs apart; behind him a much younger woman in bright satiny robes and a teal head wrap; a trio of Asian businessmen in black suits and white shirts buttoned to the collars, no ties, faces expressionless; three gangster-like men in their fifties, large and foreboding, arms hanging apish in their tight suits, balding, small black eyes . . . Close to the table, standing in an arrangement like a boys choir, were half a dozen young men nearer her own age. Close to college-age, seniors maybe, or older than that but not over twenty-five. They were clean-shaven, light brown or blonde hair brushed back from their faces, Aryan, with sharp chins and pronounced cheekbones. Handsome, though. handsome in the way that intimidated her.
Like a cast of suspects in a Sherlock Holmes mystery.
All attendees watched Kelly being marched into the room by her hair, tapping along in her expensive red sole tiptoes. The man with the mask shoved her, releasing her hair, and Kelly stumbled forward, coming to rest in the center of the rug standing next to the tilted table. She looked worried, hands clasped in front of her with fingers woven together. Her eyes traveled all those watching her and none of them showed a friendly face. But she didn’t ask or babble about what would happen to her, didn’t question why she was brought here, just stood there waiting . . .
The man with the demon mask said nothing, had so far been voiceless, and now he walked around her, looking her up and down, and Kelly dipped her chin in a timid pose. The man circumambulated, hands behind his back, then came around to stand before her. Fully a head taller, Kelly’s eyes lingered somewhere in the center of his chest.
He touched a knuckle under her chin and tilted her face to look up. When she did, he pushed her backward, guiding her to step an arm’s breadth away. Her lips trembled. The man touched her neck, his huge hand spreading down her collar between her breasts. He tucked a finger in the center V of her dress’s blouse, where it plunged to her sternum. He ran the finger up sharply, following the dress’s bodice, swooped to her shoulder then tugged it down her arm. Her flesh shook, her black bra exposed, creamy bosom swell cupped in its lacy embrace. He touched the finger along the bra’s hem, peeled downward until Kelly’s nipple appeared. It was cherry pink; the bud hardened like the cherry’s pit.
He did the same with the left side of her dress’s bodice, but this time tugged forward sharply, making Kelly stumble a half step toward him, putting her hand on his stomach for balance. He allowed it, then pushed her to stand back, exposed in her torn away dress that hung over her hips at the dress’s belt-line. She was bare from the waist up, wearing only her bra, one of her breasts exposed now, spilling out over the constraint of the black lace.
Angel looked at the gathered people, gauging their response. Was the woman an actress? Was this the audience? Who was the audience? Perhaps Angel was . . .
The man now wound a black leather finger in the air like helicopter blades, indicating for Kelly to turn around. She shuffled in place, turning till her backside faced them all and she stared at the blank glossy table. The man tossed her hanging tangle of beautiful copper hair over her shoulder, put spread fingers in the center of Kelly’s naked back, urging her forward, and as she did, he grabbed the bra strap and ripped it apart. Kelly yelped, and Angel hissed knowing the pain that must cause, all those sharp fabric edges cutting into your skin . . .
Kelly’s arms raised, Angel knowing Kelly was folding them across her bare breasts. The bra fell to her feet.
From the table now, the man with the mask picked up what looked like a horse riding crop. He patted the shaft’s end with its looped leather tongue against his gauntlet’s palm. It snapped threateningly. He studied Kelly now, dipped the end of the crop downward, touching the hem of Kelly’s dress behind her knees. He lifted it upward, raised it to reveal to everyone the backs of her thighs. Alarm rippled through Angel, making her arms shake. Her fingers went to pins and needles. Her lips grew cold.
With the riding crop, the man made Kelly’s skirt dance higher until the triangle of her underwear was revealed where it curved over her ample and shapely bottom. Now members of the crowd shifted. Angel saw one of the women spread her fingers over her collar, and her cheeks had gone red.
She stepped closer, now standing on the carpet herself, very close, including herself in the gathered audience.
The man patted one of Kelly’s ass cheeks with his gauntlet hand, and Kelly moaned. As she moaned, she tilted forward and put out a hand to brace herself on the facing table. The man came closer behind her, pressing his chest to her back, guiding her forward until her front touched the table. Her bare breasts were cuddled with one arm, the man taking one of her wrists and raising it overhead, his black cape swishing. At the top of the table, chains and loops of metal dangled; now Angel realized they were manacles. The man cinched one around Kelly’s wrist, then put an arm around her to wrestle her other wrist, forcing it above her head and manacling it beside the other.
Now Kelly faced the table, pressed against it, both her hands extended above her head standing on tiptoes, her bare breasts squashed against the polished wood so that they ballooned around her rib cage. She breathed heavily, her ribs pressing out against the skin, her shoulder blades twitching as she tried to be comfortable bound the way she was. The man tucked his riding crop under an arm, went to the table and returned with small garden shears.
Seeing the blade edges gleam in the chandelier light above the table got Angel’s knees shaking. The man wedged the nose of the shears down the waistband of the dress where it still cinched Kelly’s waist. He scissored, the shears eating their way down to Kelly’s knees, until the dress was cut free, the fabric hanging in unseemly folds pinned against the table.
The man pulled the fabric free, and now Kelly was naked, pressed to the table wearing only panties. She had such a beautiful figure. It got Angel chewing the inside of her cheek seeing something so precious as this woman she met in the ballroom treated harshly, subjugated . . .