Chapter 4

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”

Dana wasn’t sure whether the predator-prey connection she had with Valerie counted as the girl being her “enemy-” but she supposed it must, because her plan had just fallen apart completely.

It wasn’t that anything had gone wrong, per se. Dana had driven Valerie back to her home without a problem. The girl’s Subaru was stashed in the detached garage, out of sight. The battery was disconnected just in case someone did try to use the car’s old “connected safety” system to try and track it.

Valerie had been deposited in the room- the cell- prepared for her. A basement room, bare concrete, with a thin mattress and a variety of steel attachment points spread around the walls and ceiling; unused for now, but ominous promises for the future.

No, it was Dana herself that had not gone according to plan. She had deposited the girl on the thin mattress; had felt the softness of her skin and the warm beating of her heart; had manually measured her pulse, to double-check the digital monitor. As Dana backed out of the room, Valerie looked so small and helpless that something within Dana shifted, her perspective tilting in a way that she didn’t think could be undone.

Dana felt like she understood more about Valerie’s life than Valerie herself did. She knew where the girl came from, knew how hard the girl’s transition and coming out had been, and how clever her mind was that had dragged her by sheer force of will out of that eastern Oregon redneck town- different from all those neo-nazi Idaho farming communities only because of the line on a map.

As Dana had learned more and more about Valerie, she had developed a certain amount of respect for the girl, and she’d always thought that would be a bonus. She thought it would give her a sense of pride in ownership of her new possession, her new toy. She was, if anything, a collector of prized objects, after all.

It was only as she stood in the doorway, watching the rise and fall of the girl’s chest – still wearing the threadbare, over-sized band t-shirt that she’d put on to sleep – that she realized that even while she planned all of this around her own kinks, her own fetishes; she’d been trying to rescue Valerie at the same time. Even if the details differ, Dana had come up in a similar upbringing. She knew that but for some dice that came up lucky for her and unlucky for Valerie that their roles in life could easily be reversed.

Dana had thought that nobody would miss Valerie if she disappeared, but she was now realizing that wasn’t true; that there’s one person that would miss her… and that the plan she was in the middle of would not honor those feelings.

Dana’s plan had not failed- it had worked perfectly. The unforeseen hitch was the smoldering of warm emotions in Dana’s heart, an incessant rumbling that Valerie deserved better out of life. Dana had convinced herself that she was a cold predator and that this could be some natural order come to pass- but she was finding that to make that true, there was a part of herself that she would have to kill off.

She closed and locked the door behind her and retreated to her office. She was not willing to give up the core of the idea, but she needed a new plan, and she knew this would be even harder and more dangerous than the original.

–

Valerie woke up groggy, and confused. She felt like she had half a hangover, but didn’t remember drinking last night. Her shoulder ached from laying too long in one position, on what she quickly came to realize was a thin mattress on a concrete floor in a bare, windowless room. As she shifted to a sitting position and the bruised injection site on her leg twinged in pain, the confusing blur of memory came back to her. She’d been taken.

She didn’t have long to spiral and panic before she heard the sound of the door unlocking. This side of the door bore no handle or keyhole, just a small square of dark glass that she guessed was a sensor of some kind, and hinges recessed into the door frame. There was nothing to pry or gain purchase on. The door swung open into the room, and a tall figure was silhouetted briefly in the brighter light from outside it. She stepped into the room and the door swung shut behind her. Valerie’s eyes adjusted and she could make out the woman clearly for the first time.

Valerie expected herself to be angry, or frightened.. and she was those things, to be sure, in some measure. What she didn’t expect was to be stunned by how attractive she found the tall woman. She was wearing a black tank top and dark jeans, and leather combat boots with just enough of a heel to render them feminine and punk rather than strictly utilitarian. Her bare shoulders made Valerie think of marble draped in silk. She couldn’t help but imagine those sculpted arms pinning her against a wall.

Valerie had to remind herself that this was her attacker- her captor. This wasn’t another kinky fantasy she was imagining to get herself off, even if a certain part of her was feeling uncomfortably - and inappropriately, she thought - tight.

She swallowed, nervously, and stood up shakily. The room threatened to turn sideways in a way that she didn’t anticipate, her balance thrown off as whatever drug she’d been given still worked its way through her system. She focused on trying to stay standing and conscious, and was too distracted to notice the brief moment of nervous panic flash over the other woman’s face.

Dana, herself, was prepared for Valerie to jump at her and attack, or perhaps scream and try to run, or cower. She wasn’t sure what to make of the wide-eyed and borderline slack-jawed look the girl gave her from the floor. As the other girl stood- barely- she suppressed an impulse to run over and help steady her. She swallowed a mix of fear and guilt. She was already regretting her choices today, but it was too late for regret to do her any good. The only way out, she thought, was through.

“I…” she licked her lips, much less collected than she’d like to be. “I have an offer for you.”

“..offer?” Valerie repeated back, still bleary.

“You’re about to get fired.”

“..fired?” Drugs and fatigue magnified how jarring and out of place this conversation seemed to Valerie, given the surreality of what had just happened.

“You don’t have any savings. Your credit cards are all but maxed out. You’ll have a week or two of leeway and then you’ll get evicted, and you’ll be homeless.”

“I’ll find another jo- who the fuck are you?” The emotions shifting were almost visible as Valerie wraps her head around the situation. She felt an absurd sense of pride that she managed to get a full sentence out. More or less.

“My name is Dana.” Originally she thought the girl might never know her name, never see her face. A mysterious owner, a godly force of control. The new plan is different. “You’re Valerie. I have an offer for you.”

“Unless your fucking offer is to let me the fuck out, I don’t want to hear it.” Valerie was consciously choosing anger over fear. They’re barely-different sides of the same coin, anyway.

“Yes, that’s part of it,” Dana conceded.

Valerie can only blink back at the woman- that’s not what she expected to hear.

“You have two choices. I have a contract ready, that you can sign. One year of employment- one million dollars.”

It’s not the unimaginable fortune, in that day and age, that it might have been once; but it would be more than enough for Valerie to pay off her debt. She could buy a small place, have enough left over for surgeries that she had long since stopped hoping she could afford. The idea, the fantasy, was almost painful to think about, and she felt tears prick the corners of her eyes as it the idea dredged up abandoned dreams.

Questions bubbled over in Valerie’s mind. The strangeness of this, this place, how she was taken. She was rightfully dubious.

“What’s the other choice?”

“You can leave, and never see me again. Right now. Your car is here- you can go home. File a police report, if you want. Maybe they’ll even believe you. Maybe they find me, maybe they don’t. You’ll still be alone. You’ll still be fired in a couple weeks. That’s nothing to do with me.” She speaks in a measured pace. Not slowly, but she wants Valerie to understand that she’s being offered another path here.

Valerie swallowed, some of the work stress that she’d momentarily forgotten washing over her again. Her stomach tied itself in knots and she felt her heart racing. Her vague plan to make it through hinged on trying to find another job, but it would be impossible to apply, to interview, while she was killing herself working eighty-hour weeks in-office.

“What’s.. the job?”

Valerie’s voice was small, maybe even defeated, and Dana’s heart twinged. She wanted— suddenly, unexpectedly— for Valerie to want this, or at least — she didn’t even dare think the word “consent” — to not to be forced into it. Originally she planned to give the girl no choice. To simply take her, and re-make her into what Dana wanted. This new plan is… softer. A velvet glove, but the iron fist isn’t of her making; it’s just society and capitalism putting Valerie in a bad situation, and Dana’s heart aches for her, surprising herself more than anything.

She changed the plan again.

“I’m.. going to leave. I’m going to leave your keys here,” she squatted slowly, dropped the keys on the ground, scratched carabiner clinking on the concrete.

“And leave the door unlocked. You can go. I’ll be in touch in a few days—” she pauses. “Just a phone call, this time. I’ll tell you what the job is then.”