The Girl Who Made Them Pay Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  The Girl Who Made Them Pay (Red Heeled Rebels Novels, #2)

  Books by Author

  Part ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part TWO

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part THREE

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Part FOUR

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Part FIVE

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Part SIX

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Part SEVEN

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Part EIGHT

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Part NINE

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  The Girl Who Fought to Kill

  The Red Heeled Rebels Novel Series

  How would you like to write your own life story?

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Previously titled ABDUCTED.

  This is the second book in the Red Heeled Rebels series. This can be read as a standalone novel, but you’ll enjoy it more if you’ve read the previous book.

  You can learn about the full series here.

  www.RedHeeledRebels.com

  HAVE YOU READ THE PREQUEL story to the Red Heeled Rebels yet?

  A gift for you!

  Grab a free copy of The Girl Who Crossed the Line to get Asha’s backstory and learn why her past haunts her.

  Download link is at the back of this book.

  Formerly titled Shattered.

  Books by Author

  The Red Heeled Rebels Novels

  The Girl Who Crossed the Line (formerly Shattered / Beginnings)

  The Girl Who Ran Away (formerly Betrayed / Disowned)

  The Girl Who Made Them Pay (formerly Abducted)

  The Girl Who Fought to Kill (formerly Exiled)

  The Girl Who Broke Free

  The Girl Who Knew Their Names

  And more to come.

  An Anthology of Travel Short Stories

  The Accidental Traveler - based on the authors travels and sojourns around the world.

  The Rebel Diva Empowerment Nonfiction Series

  Your Rebel Dreams: 60 Days to discover your purpose and passions and power up your life.

  Your Rebel Plans: 30 Days to create a masterplan for your career and life change.

  Your Rebel Life: 100 habit hacks to transform the ten most important pillars of your life.

  Bust Your Fears: 3 easy tools to conquer your fears and upgrade your career and life.

  Collaborations

  The Boss Chick’s Bodacious Destiny Nonfiction Bundle

  Dark Shadows 2: Voodoo and Black Magic of New Orleans

  Part ONE

  The going from a world we know

  To one a wonder still

  Is like the child's adversity

  Whose vista is a hill,

  Behind the hill is sorcery

  And everything unknown,

  But will the secret compensate

  For climbing it alone?

  Emily Dickinson

  Chapter One

  The man in the black suit pushed Katy toward the airport doors.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Stop!”

  Two smartly dressed women walking into the business lounge glared at me as they passed by.

  Why can’t they see what’s happening?

  “Let her go!” I yelled louder, waving my arms. “Someone help!”

  I wasn’t watching where I was going and hit a trolley piled with luggage. The handle bar whacked into my stomach and I doubled over.

  The trolley rolled toward a man reading the flight display screens, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. I straightened up and kept running. I dodged a bunch of kids walking through the terminal with their noses stuck to their phones. They didn’t move an inch. Didn’t even look up.

  “Stop!” I shouted again, my voice getting hoarse.

  Who’s this guy? Where’s he taking her?

  From the corner of my eyes, I saw the vague shape of a man in a blue uniform at the other end of the corridor.

  For half a second, I thought of turning around and sprinting that way to ask for help, but the brief distraction cost me. My heel buckled and I tripped. I caught myself before I hit the floor and looked up to see the man in the suit pull my best friend outside.

  Why isn’t she fighting back?

  Ignoring the searing pain in my ankle, I crashed through the main doors, just as he pushed Katy into a black London cab.

  “Katy! Come back!”

  The cab door banged shut, catching Katy’s bright red scarf on the door well. The man jumped in front and the car pulled out.

  “No-ooo!” I screamed. Everyone turned to look. “Stop that car! Help!” I spluttered, pointing.

  A group of businessmen waiting in the limousine line looked over with smirks on their faces. Others turned away as if embarrassed by the spectacle. I didn’t care. I dashed across the road.

  With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I watched as the cab gathered speed. Katy’s red scarf fluttered from the door well like it was giving me the finger.

  “Katy!” I screamed as the car turned the corner and disappeared from view.

  Chapter Two

  None of this would have happened if Katy had followed me inside the café.

  But a fancy shoe store had distracted her and shoes for Katy were like crack for addicts. She didn’t make a lot of money at Dick’s Next Day Catering Company back in Toronto, but she’d rather starve than forgo a pair of sexy new heels even when the world was crashing around us.

  Only a day earlier, four men had chased us across the city of Toronto to the airport, where we’d hunkered down in a women’s washroom overnight. We’d barely evaded them on our way to the boarding gate.

  On the plane, I tried to forget our worries while Katy switched on the little screen to get lost in the movies. But I never relaxed, and I saw Katy’s eyes flit from the screen to the aisle and back again as if she was afraid the men would somehow appear in midair. When the plane finally touched down at London’s Heathrow Airport, we stumbled out, burnt-out and nerve-racked.

  My hastily packed backpack weighed me down and the wheels on Katy’s fake Louis Vuitton su
itcase made a racket to wake the dead. It was a relief to find our departure gate to Goa, but that was when Katy spotted the flashing red sign over Air India’s check-in counter.

  “Oh, no!” she cried out.

  We’d been so desperate to get out of Toronto, we’d taken the only seats available, which were standby. This meant everyone else had first dibs and the airline could bump us as they wished.

  I ran up to the desk. I hated these high service counters because they made me feel even smaller than my five feet. I got on my tiptoes. “We’ve got boarding passes, but they’re standby. Could you find seats for us, please?” I asked, with a smile on my lips and hope in my heart.

  The attendant didn’t even touch my ticket. She wrinkled her nose like it smelled of bad cheese. “Do you not see the sign?” she said, pointing up. “The flight’s full.” Her tone was crisp. Final.

  “Is there any way you can squeeze us in?” I asked, unbeaten. “It’s just two of us.”

  “We’d fit anywhere. We’re on the smaller side,” I heard Katy say from behind me.

  The attendant didn’t look amused.

  “It’s an emergency,” I said. That wasn’t a lie. Dick and Jose, who owned the bakery in Toronto where I baked cakes and Katy kept the books, had plans to sell us like we were nothing more than lemon tarts or plum pies. I had no idea how far their reach was, but I didn’t want to hang around to find out. “It’s really, really urgent,” I said to the attendant.

  She sighed and snapped her fingers. “All right, passports and boarding passes please.” Her fingers flew across the keyboard while we stood by, our own crossed tightly.

  “Sorry,” she said, turning to us. “There are absolutely no seats on this one. But—” She stopped to squint at the screen. We waited, holding our breath.

  “I see a couple of seats in the next flight departing to Delhi. You won’t be sitting together and I can’t promise anything because you’re on standby. That flight’s tomorrow at thirteen hundred hours.”

  “Tomorrow?” I said. That would give Dick and Jose ample time to figure out where we’d run off to and catch up.

  “Don’t you have anything today?” Katy asked, in a plaintive voice.

  “Booked passengers get priority,” the ground attendant said. “Here are your new boarding passes, and ladies, don’t be late tomorrow.”

  I took back our papers with shaking hands.

  “If you need a place to stay the night, the airport Sheraton’s right up—” She paused and looked us over. Our wrinkled, hand-me-down clothes were a dead giveaway. Lowering her voice, she said, almost sympathetically, “Girls, there are quiet lounges in Terminal Three if you need some rest for the night.”

  She glanced at the line that had formed behind us and snapped her fingers. “Next, please.”

  Katy and I stumbled to the closest waiting area and collapsed.

  I swung my feet out and leaned against the back of the seat, my right foot clinking as I shifted. My ankle bracelet had been a gift from my cousin Preeti, a gift for my wedding day three years ago, back in Goa, the day I made the biggest escape of my life. That was also the last time I saw Preeti.

  “What’re we gonna do now?” Katy asked.

  Dark circles ringed her bloodshot eyes, making her look years older than nineteen. I was only six months younger than her but I must have the same ragged look, I thought.

  I pulled my bag off my back and rubbed my eyes. “Find a place to sleep, maybe?”

  “Way too stressed for that.”

  “We could go hide out in the washroom again,” I said with a weak smile.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Katy said.

  We sat silently on the stiff bench seats for an hour, leaning against each other, not sure of what to do or what to say.

  Around us, businesswomen and men in sharp suits marched up and down, pulling their laptop bags behind them. Families hurried by with fussy kids in tow, toward departure gates. Couples with arms intertwined walked by on their way to honeymoons or romantic destinations. Occasionally, a harried soul stumbled by looking as jet-lagged and beat as we were, but they were few, and they seemed to know where they were heading, unlike Katy and I who felt totally lost and alone.

  We must have looked a strange pair.

  She was a sinewy redhead in a miniskirt and her signature three-inch red stilettos, all found in a consignment store, but as good as new. She’d dressed for a date with Jose, a date that never took place. And never will, now she’s found out what he really wanted to do with her.

  I sat next to her, a petite half-Indian girl in a hand-me-down miniskirt and more sensible red pumps. I couldn’t afford to wear high heels like Katy, because while she sat at her desk in the bookkeeping anteroom most of the day making client calls, I spent most of mine bustling between the bakery’s kitchen counter and oven.

  Right now, my skirt was streaked with white because I’d had only enough time to throw off my apron before running out of the bakery. After that, more important worries had crowded my mind than flour on my skirt or icing sugar in my hair.

  Katy let out a loud sigh. She looked like she was asleep, but I could see her scan the crowd from under half-closed eyelids.

  “Hey.” I nudged her gently on the elbow.

  “Hmm?” She stirred and opened her eyes. Her face looked pale and drawn and I could see visible lines on her forehead.

  “We can’t lounge here all day.”

  “I can.”

  “They’ve probably got a shoe sale over there.”

  “I’m tired, Asha.”

  “For shoe sales?”

  She sat still for a minute, surveying the surrounding area. People were pushing trolleys, pulling suitcases, heads lost in phone conversations. Announcements blared from the loudspeakers: pre-boarding calls, boarding calls, final calls, final-final calls. It seemed like this airport never stopped.

  Katy sat up. “I’m beginning to spot Jose and Dick everywhere.”

  “Me too,” I said. “But I don’t think they’ll come here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—” I paused to find the right words. I’d been ruminating over this for the past few hours. “They only picked on us because we were right there in their store. They won’t spend a fortune flying all the way here after us.”

  Katy raised an eyebrow.

  “We were convenient,” I said. “Plus, you and me have nobody to call for help. They knew no one’s gonna notice if anything happens to us.”

  “You think so?”

  “Who’d we call for help?”

  Katy looked down at her hands and shook her head.

  “We’re not worth the trouble. They probably already found other girls to make money off of.”

  “What a bunch of basta—”

  A loud bang resonated inside the terminal. We both jumped.

  A gunshot?

  But it was only a suitcase that had dropped from a luggage trolley to the floor. Katy and I sighed in relief.

  I sat up. We had to find something to do, a distraction, any distraction, or this paranoia would overtake us both.

  I touched her shoulder. “Hey, let’s get out of here. Come on.”

  With another sigh, Katy unraveled her legs and stood up slowly.

  We spent the next two hours strolling the length of the airport. We had time on our hands now. We stopped for a sandwich and tea at a takeaway booth and walked through the terminals, mindlessly window-shopping.

  Very soon, we’d left the airport’s security zone and stepped into the shopping plaza to gawk at the high-end clothing stores, luggage shops, and shoe boutiques that carried gorgeous things we couldn’t afford even if we worked a lifetime. But looking at them helped us to forget our worries if only for a little while.

  We’d just stepped out of one of these luxury shops when I spotted the café.

  I grabbed Katy’s arm. “Look!”

  Chapter Three

  “What?” Katy whipped her head around. “Are
they here?”

  “Over there.” I pointed at the red-and-white striped awning of the bistro in front of us.

  She looked confused. “You still hungry?”

  “No, but—”

  I paused. I’d seen photos of Chef Pierre’s cafés in the glossy magazines at Mrs. Rao’s upscale, suburban house in Toronto.

  Her home was where I first landed after I ran away from India. I wasn’t the first girl to become a slave housekeeper and cook to Mrs. Rao who’d promised my wages would be sent back to my family in Goa. She’d known how to keep me under her thumb. Experimenting with the recipes in Chef Pierre’s magazines had been my only escape from that hell.

  But I never dreamed to see his cafés in real life.

  The lettering on the window was unmistakable. Inside, pastries of all kinds weighed down glass shelves that extended the length of the store. Golden croissants, colorful fruit tarts, shiny sugar buns, mousse cakes, cheesecakes, caramels, and éclairs sat side by side looking rich and pompous. The heavenly smell of oven-fresh baked things wafted my way. I took a deep breath in and closed my eyes.

  It was my mother who came to my dreams every night, bringing memories of us baking together on lazy Sunday afternoons in Tanzania a long time ago. She’d been in my life for only a short time, but I never forgot her captivating smile, her contagious laughter, and those sweet cakes she loved to make.

  When I was confined to Mrs. Rao’s house and later, when I was stuck at Dick’s bakery, it was Chef Pierre’s recipes I immersed myself in. I could get lost in his cookbooks and foodie magazines for hours. He’d kept me company on days when I felt like the whole world was against me. Everything I learned about the art of baking after my mother died, I learned from him. And it was this skill that had saved my skin every single time.

  “What’s so special about this place?” Katy asked, walking over and pressing her face against the window.

  I stepped up next to her. “It’s Chef Pierre’s café.”

  “Who?”

  “He’s famous. I used his recipes at Dick’s place.”

  Katy pulled her face from the window and gave me a dubious look. “Six euros for a ping pong-sized sugar ball? Seriously?”