Black Kat by Kirsten DeMuzio

become so far gone that they didn’t even try to leave anymore.  Was this where she would have ended up if Colin hadn’t found her?  Kat liked to think she would have fought against her captors no matter what.  But looking at Jill lying motionless on the mattress so like the one Kat had been found on, Kat wondered if she would have broken too.
    As Kat stared at Jil l and saw what she could have become, she knew her suspicions had been confirmed.  Hers hadn’t been a simple kidnapping by one deranged man.  She had been taken and plunged into the world of sex-trafficking.
    Never before had she considered herself to be lucky.  Someone who had gone through what she had wasn’t inclined to think of themselves as fortunate.  But crouched on the floor of a dirty room that held sins she was intimately familiar with, she thanked a God she didn’t believe in that Colin had saved her.  She wasn’t Angel or Jill or any of the other nameless girls in this hell hole.  She was Kat Rossi, and she had her life.  If her resolve wasn’t already strong enough, she vowed then and there to never stop until she brought the man responsible to justice.  Whether it was Dante or someone else in charge, Kat would bring him down if it was the last thing she did.
    A creaking noise in the hallway had Kat swinging her head toward the door.  Heavy thuds in the hallway alerted her that it was a heavy man walking and not one of the other malnourished junky working girls.  Without a sound Kat moved to the side of the door and reached into her bag for her gun.  There were sounds of the man knocking loudly on the doors and yelling , “Wake up!”  When he slammed his fist on the door by Kat’s head she didn’t even flinch.  Adrenaline and her training kept her calm and still.
    As he moved away to pound on the next door, Kat considered her options.  What she wanted to do was open the door and fire her entire clip into the back of his head.  But that wasn’t the smartest option.  She had no idea if he was alone.  The better option was to get out of the house and call Colin in to handle this the right way.  After all, the man in charge of a sex trafficking ring like this wouldn’t stoop to manage the girls himself.  The guy in the hallway was probably just a hired hand.
    When Kat heard him pound on the door at the end of the hall, she took a deep breath and cracked the door.  She was in the room closest to the stairs, but if he turned around he would see her.  Taking a chance that she was faster and knowing she could use her gun if it came to that, Kat slipped out the door and ran for the stairs.  The top step creaked under her foot and she didn’t stop when she heard a yell from down the hall.
    “Hey!” a deep voice shouted.  In spite of the size of the man that Kat glimpsed as she ran, he was surprisingly quick on his feet.  Kat jumped down three steps to the landing and was immediately body slammed from behind into the wall in front of her.  Her cheek was pressed flat against the mildewed wallpaper, the scent of evil filling her nose.  The man had his thick arm around her throat as he pressed into her with the full weight of his body.
    The feel of a man’s body flush against her was enough to make her stomach roll, but Kat kept her head clear.  From this position she only had one choice, and thank God she already had her gun in her hand.  Shifting to the left as much as she could, K at pressed the barrel of her 9mm to the meaty thigh of the man behind her.  The shot rang out and was quickly drowned out by the sound of pain.
    “Oh, fuuuuck!” the man groaned as he stumbled backward onto the stairs, grasping his leg with both hands.  Kat didn’t wait around to see what he would do next.  Before his ass hit the steps, she was racing down the bottom steps and out the door.  Kat ran until she was at her parked car halfway down the block.
    Bending over she braced her hands on her thighs and took several deep