Chapter 7

Alvin didn't panic. Miss Alex couldn't have disappeared into thin air. She had either been taken outside or was still inside the club. He immediately barred the door, then stepped into the tiny security office and rewound the surveillance tapes for the past 10 minutes. He only ran the one for the door and that at high speed.

As he suspected, only one exit was made during the time he was away from the door. The two homosexual Doms were escorting their sub out the door. Fucking assholes had refused to tie down her legs while they branded her. They were intending to brand their names, Bruce and Martin, up one side of her pussy and down the other. On the third letter, she had reconsidered and kicked Martin into the hot coals. Bruce, going over to help his lover, fucking stood on the hot coals and burned his feet through his fucking expensive boots. Alvin shook his head remembering the look of surprised indignity on the asshole's face when he felt the heat through his expensive kickass boots.

The three of them together could hold each other up, barely, and had rushed out of the club. Just as he was about to fast forward again, Alvin saw a blur on the screen. Someone had entered as they were leaving. He wouldn't have thought much of it but it placed the person at the right time and in the right place. With a cold knot twisting in his stomach, Alvin slowed the tape down and replayed it. He almost got sick when he saw it was that little shit, Lewis.

Lewis was on Alvin's black list. He couldn't prove anything, but a couple of months ago they had found a waitress badly beaten, raped and tortured. Broken bones, teeth knocked out and bleeding vaginally and anally from a brutal sexual assault. She was also bleeding from being whipped within an inch of her life. One eye was useless, the lens dislocated from a direct hit with the tip of a crop. The only reason it didn't explode from the impact was that she was wearing a blindfold.

Alvin had asked several of the people in the club if they had seen anything that night. Obviously, the private parties like this one frowned on tapes of what went on inside the club and regardless of his recommendation, Mr. D made him turn off the cameras. The little shit wouldn't have got in at all if Mr. D had sprung for the triple door security checkpoint. He had demonstrated to the boss just how easy someone could get in unchecked with just two doors. Just like now. But he had demurred.

The BDSM Club members reluctantly agreed to security tapes of the outside entrance, but the tapes and cameras had been off during the party that night, like they were tonight. In his investigation, Alvin had narrowed it down to a couple of unlikely possibles and one very probable culprit. Lewis. The guy had had the opportunity and was a mean little shit. Loco. Crazy. Nuts.

Quickly determining that Miss Alex was still in the building, Alvin set out to find her. He systematically scanned through the public areas nearest the door, examining and eliminating every female regardless of clothing, hair, skin or build. She wasn't in the public areas close to the door.

Next on his list were the closest less-public areas. He barged into the women's restroom, then the men's, checking every stall and every trash can for evidence. Hair dye, discarded clothing, large chunks of beautiful reddish hair. He found nothing.

He went back to the starting point, the front door. He was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. Too much time was passing. Mr. D was off the phone now and was walking towards him. He had just looked to see that Miss Alex missing and saw the look on Alvin's face. To his credit, the cold bastard had blanched white as a sheet when he saw she wasn't where she should have been.

Just then, there was a noise from out in the club. Why it caught his ear, he didn't know, but he knew it was Miss Alex.

Alvin was flying through the crowd, knocking people over, hurdling the Subs crawling on hands and knees. He reached the room with the hanging hook and saw her, Miss Alex. She had been strung up tighter than he would have believed possible, her feet shackled tightly to the floor.

Alvin lowered his shoulder and put his whole being into getting into that room. A crowd had gathered around. The macabre always attracted a crowd. The unsuspecting spectators gave with a groan. One huge black hand swept low off the ground and came thundering up, catching the shit with the flat palm on his chest. The fucker lifted off the ground, sailed over the ducking onlookers and crashed solidly into the wall, his erection a fading memory. He didn't seem to be into pain nearly as much when it was his own. The crowd, not wanting to be witnesses, dissolved into the anonymous hubbub of the party.

Alvin hit the emergency release and the strain came off Miss Alex' screaming muscles. Her legs were too widely spread to allow her to sink down and she just hunched there, moaning softly behind the gag. Alvin fumbled with the shackles, then finally just ripped them from their anchors. Miss Alex collapsed into his arms and he was cradling her protectively when Mr. D finally made his way into the room, pushing past the dispersing spectators.

Two legs were flopping in spastic panic over against the wall. One leg was bare and hairy, the other had a pair of cheap leather leggings around the ankle. The rest of the body was deep in the shadows of the room

Damon saw the big man holding Alex, one hand covering her lower nudity in a manner so chaste, he almost laughed. Covering her but not touching. The look in his bouncer's eyes told him not to try to take her from him. It wasn't romantic. It had been his job to watch out for her and right now it looked like the man had fucked up royally. That wasn't like him at all. Damon decided to wait and hear what he had to say. Then he would kill him. Or someone. Someone was going to pay, that much he knew.

Alvin motioned with his head at the legs on the floor. The man's dick was glistening, droplets of fluid refracting the harsh spotlights even from the side of the room. Damon went cold. Someone had touched Alex, his Pet. Effortlessly, he began the process of picking up the struggling man. Finally upright, the light in the room revealed a hopped up prick he had seen a few times before. Bad news. No one liked the little fucker. He smelled, too, and Damon looked down at what he was standing in.

While the little shit got his pants on and laced up, Damon used a piece of discarded cloth on the floor to wipe up the puddle of urine the guy had been laying in. It took him a minute to comprehend that it was the shithead who had pissed himself, not Alex. Somehow that made him feel better. Not much, but a little.

A firm grasp on his arm propelled the man out the door, down the hallway, and into his office. A forceful hand in the chest had flattened the jerk into a chair in the center of the room.

"Stay there!" There was no misunderstanding the order, high on drugs or not.

Damon went next door. He suspected Alvin had already taken Alex in there. Knocking twice, he waited. Alvin opened the door and stepped outside.

"She's alive and appears to be in one piece. The guy in your office is named Lewis something or other. Give me a couple minutes and I'll come in and give you a report." Seeing the look on Damon's face, he added, "A full report." He knew Damon would want to know who, what, why and how this had happened. He also knew his boss wouldn't like the report.

The bouncer slipped back into the dimly lit room. Damon turned and went slowly back to his office. He had known Alvin for several years and the man had never lied to him once. There was no reason to believe he would start now. If anything, Damon and he had had some heated disagreements about the security arrangements for the club, the manager always arguing for better security for the customers. But it was expensive. They had discussed this very thing happening. Even after the incident with the waitress, Damon hadn't relented.

Now it was personal and close to home. He had an uneasy feeling he wasn't going to like the full report Alvin had promised him, especially as Alvin hadn't seemed worried. Damon knew the manager was getting constant updates over his wireless. No doubt he had made several inquiries about the little shit in his office. Alvin didn't usually hesitate to state what he felt was the truth and to name names. Even when the name was his own or Damon's. Odd, he reflected, it was that very trait of integrity that made the bastard so fucking indispensable.

What he couldn't let Alvin know was that the first thing that had gone through his mind was not about Alex being OK, but that if anything happened to her now, the whole scheme of the newly hatched insurance scam he was building around her would be fucked up. A delay was almost as bad. The bitch Marcy could only put up with that prick Wilson for so long. It was going to cost a bundle to keep her on the team, and, after talking to that asswipe of a husband on the phone for nearly an hour, he couldn't really blame her. What a jerk. Cute trick, though, putting Viagra in his morning coffee.