Free The Doll by Taylor Stevens

mulling irony and cursing fate. To protect the one person who meant more to her than life, shewould be forced to betray the one person she was contractually and morally obligated to save.
    “Human trafficking is a serious crime,” she said. “The whole world is looking for her. If I get caught, I will kiss away years of my life. What if that person in the video doesn’t mean enough? What if that girl in the dungeon doesn’t mean enough? What if I don’t fucking care?”
    The Doll Man’s smile faded only a little. He said, “Hmm,” then stood and walked to a table behind her and picked up one of the dolls. He carried it back to the desk, holding it in the crook of his arm the way one might hold a cat. “You’ll care,” he said. “If not for him, then for another, and then another.”
    He sat again. Stroked the doll’s hair and brushed his fingers along the dress with its intricate lacework. “She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?” he said. “She is perfect to me. I had her made to order. Like the package downstairs, made to order. I’d no idea the problems this girl would cause. I’m late in delivery. You’ll fix it.”
    “You don’t need me to do this job,” Munroe said.
    The Doll Man’s smile remained though his eyes never left the toy child. “You won’t like the mess,” he said. He raised his eyes to hers. “Let’s avoid the mess. It keeps things pleasant for everyone.”
    “Why me?” she whispered.
    “I’ve already explained this,” he said. “You owe a debt, and so for you this is a fair exchange. Your difficulty in understanding baffles me.”
    “I might be more compliant if you’d go over the details of this debt.”
    “What more details do you need?” he said. “Because of you my American facilitator is in jail.” The Doll Man paused, shifted forward, and began again slowly, as if trying to explain quantum physics to a four-year-old. “First the facilitator goes, then the logistic problems begin. After that, the money loss follows. It’s quite simple, really. So I leave it to you to earn the money back. This package is a high-high-dollar shipment. You deliver, we call it even.”
    Munroe sighed and allowed him the visible triumph of her defeat. “Okay,” she said.
    Very few knew who she was or how to find her. Fewer still knew of her attachment to Logan or had the balls to come after her, butthrow a facilitator into the mix and only Katherine Breeden came to mind. In that instant of understanding, Munroe connected this crazy man to Bradford’s files, to the trafficker who made dolls of women; understood now that everyone she cared about was at risk, that agreement was the only way to purchase time, and on behalf of Logan and the treacherous waters they’d now tread, her soul grew heavy.

The door slid open, a hollow metal clank that let in better air, way too much light, and set Neeva’s pulse racing. It couldn’t have been five minutes since that … that person … he, she, “it”, whatever, had come to gawk, and visits were never this close together.
    Teeth clenched, she positioned to a crouch, waiting for whatever would happen to happen:
Bring it on, fucktards, and get it over with
. Bunch of freaking perverts all of them. Carry in a tray of food and then drop your pants, stare at the chick in chains, and jerk off before you go. Reasoning, questioning, none of that seemed to matter here. Even pitiful tears hadn’t worked. And, anyway, these assholes didn’t speak English.
    No matter how many vile names she called them, they never reacted—except for the pretty boy. He’d smiled once when she’d been exceptionally creative, but that was sixteen meals ago and she hadn’t seen him again until today, when he’d brought that … person.
    Maybe that person was the one running things.
    Maybe that person knew the whole point of why she was here.
    Maybe they’d explained the reasons in their gobbledygook and she just hadn’t understood, although that was