Without Consent

By Marion Scherer

One year ago, an innocent teen girl escaped the sinister men who trafficked her for sex. Today, she found out the same men have recruited her little sister.

Suzanne DeMarco was once a squeaky clean fifteen year old dealing with dysfunctional alcoholic parents who don’t have time for her...the perfect prey for men who can make millions peddling flesh in the seedy underworld. Finally free of that life, she returns to her small Northern California hometown to restart her life.

When her younger sister Beth runs away, Suzanne goes looking, fearing the worse. The search takes her to a Caribbean island where vulnerable teen girls, recruited through modeling school ads, begin their "training" to be escorts for the rich and powerful.

The resort where the girls attend school and will work is nearly impregnable, though. Worse, once found, Beth doesn't want to leave.

Can Suzanne save her sister from the same terrible fate she suffered?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marion Scherer
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781733373531

Marion Scherer

MARION SCHERER is a long-time writer, director and actress. She has penned and performed several plays on social justice issues throughout California and in Washington DC. Her portrayal of the feisty Angela in Sean O'Casey's "Bedtime Story" garnered the Drama-Logue Award.She previously has had recurring roles on "Days of Our Lives" and "The Young and The Restless" and several guest appearances on television shows – including "CHiPs," "Little House on the Prairie," "Rhoda," and "Nine to Five" – and T.V. Movies of the Week. She holds an MA in Theater from Illinois State University.The three plays she has written address topics ranging from the death penalty to stem cell research and human cloning while her first novel, “Hello, 31” tells the tale of a woman who confronts her younger self on her wedding day. "The Cage” is her second novel.

Book preview

Title-Page

This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright© 2023

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may

Not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

Without the express written permission of the publisher

Except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Cover Design by Damonza

First Edition: May 23, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-7333735-2-4 Paperback

ISBN: 978-1-7333735-3-1 Kindle

Psychological thriller, suspense fiction

To the three who make

My life

Worth living:

David

Sasha

Millie Peaches

"Because hate is legislated…written into

the primer and the testament,

shot into our blood and brain like vaccine or vitamins

Because our day is of time, of hours—and the clock hand turns,

closes the circle upon us: and black timeless night

sucks us in like quicksand, receives us totally—

without a raincheck or a parachute, a key to heaven or the last long look

I need love more than ever now… I need your love,

I need love more than hope or money, wisdom, or a drink…"

Walter Benton

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER-TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

BIO FOR WITHOUT CONSENT

PROLOGUE

I just want you to be you baby, I know you can do it.

Julius’s arms were enveloping her, his sonorous voice caressing her. He cradled her in his arms; she almost relaxed.

Do what Julius? Already she was afraid.

Baby, just one more time… one more time and we’ll be rich and fly to Hawaii and eat lobster and drink champagne.

The tone of his voice had become gradually more macabre even though what he was saying sounded so pleasant.

I can’t anymore Julius, she said.

I’m so tired, so exhausted.

He said nothing, but when he spoke again, she knew.

You don’t need the cage, do you, honey? I don’t want to do that to you anymore. You’ve graduated, you’re a star.

His embrace had tightened, and there was no mistaking his intent.

Then the surrounding walls started closing in. Walls upon walls cracking and swaying until they all came crashing down on her, as she screamed and screamed. Those screams eventually woke her in her flimsy little room, the one she grew up in Paisley Falls. They didn’t wake anyone else up. Her mother was out on too much booze, and as she shook herself out of bed, she gasped in horror at the open door and empty room of her little sister.

2 a.m., and Bethy was gone.

CHAPTER ONE

Back in Paisley Falls after more than two years of pure chaos, Suzanne marveled at her survival. Oddly, she feels stronger after being brutalized by the monster Julius. Constantly, she reminds herself that he is dead and that there is no piece of him that belongs in her. She thought she’d never come back to the tiny Northern California town after so much had happened, but here she was. She walks the lonely streets of Paisley Falls by herself, population 26,000, elevation 1,778, a little Sierra slope town tucked in the foothills above the Northeast Sacramento Valley. Sometimes she walks in the rain, whenever it does rain, to feel that she is more solidly connected to the ground. She runs into no one. Covid had sent many people indoors. The town itself had pulled up its rugs and retreated. So many businesses were closed forever. The Mall stood out like a wrecked battleship blasted out by an economy that couldn’t support it, its hull a symbol of worn-out greed. Every place she walks holds a memory — the church graveyard where she and her high school friend Sandy had wandered late at night staring at old tombstones and smoking dope that marked the passage of others long gone, the high school she’d never graduated from. How was Miss Eirheart doing, she wondered? She wished she could find her old English teacher and tell her about the stories and poetry she wrote that were real. Her words and only hers. There would never be another chance to explain.

She knew she needed this time to find herself again. Or at least settle down with what she had become. People had come, gone, and changed. Bethy, her younger sister who had made such a stand begging her to come back home and be with her, was nowhere to be found. Once Suzanne had agreed to return home, it satisfied Bethy that the family was whole again and she had taken off, disappearing easily into the framework. Suzanne was left with her mother drunk, usually on the floor, and her father dying in a rest home. Sandy had stayed in L.A. with her newfound love. They talked by phone, but it wasn’t the same. Relationships never were the same when one found a partner.

Suzanne had slowly been keeping up with the gossip and what had happened in the two years that she had been absent. Dr. Wilson, the town’s ER physician, a nefarious black sheep, had been leading a double life. Dedicated doctor by day, total pervert by night, two guys ambushed him with knives in a dark alley because of all the pain and suffering he had caused. Grudges never die, but he did. Suzanne hadn’t known Nadine Hines personally, but in her previous profession, she knew the type very well. Lost girl, no self-esteem, willing to give-up her soul for a penny. Slimy Dr. Wilson had picked her up, trolling for beer outside the neighborhood watering hole, the Loosey Goosey Saloon. Suzanne had never entered that place as a girl, but now she found her way in one day.

I’d like a chardonnay please. She sat with all her newly acquired fake assurance.

The bartender looked at her with veiled interest, and after a calculated moment, nodded and placed the drink on a napkin before her. I guess you earned it, miss.

The grimy place made her feel at home. Bars were places that had become a kind of landing ground where she had met johns. Erase it, get away from your memories! Just eject useless information out of your mind, purge it from your soul. She’d thought more than once that she had been sent back to Paisley Falls for a purpose. What was there to learn by being here?

As far as she was concerned, everything in her life now was on a calculated timeline.

Finish the task of life and move on. The townies at the Loosey-Goosey looked at her with anticipation. So tell us, they said.

And she said, let’s all talk together.

When she got home after midnight, such an empty place without Dad, she quietly wandered down the hall to the family room where her mother sat unresponsively in her recliner.

Where you been? Rhonda sat up attempting a sober look.

Nowhere special, Mom. Why don’t you get yourself up to bed?

Suzanne reached over to the butt filled ashtray and stubbed out the smoldering cigarette.

It’s too lonely in there, Rhonda barked, getting ready for a tirade.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to be so alone? No, of course not. It was you who put my husband in a rest home. You’re killing him as much as if you put a knife in him.

Suzanne has heard this all before. So great to be back home, Ma. Good night!

Suzanne walked past her sister’s bedroom and peered inside the half-open door. Bethy’s room was sparsely furnished. Simple decorations of papier-mâché were stuck on the walls, creating a textured look, a leftover from art class. A poster of Billie Eilish was pinned haphazardly above her bed, as though Bethy thought if she dreamed of Billie while she slept, she’d wake up looking like her. A badly made twin bed and a rickety dresser were the only furniture. She did her homework on the kitchen table. Suzanne thought when she left for good, her younger sister should move into her room. My room’s bigger, and she’ll have more privacy when I’m gone, she muttered as she came to the place she had locked herself into so many times. Her room had stayed untouched. Everything was how she had left it over two years ago. How melancholy of me. Her fingers touched the nightstand that held the water pitcher and basin she’d been careful to fill each night before bed. I was pretending to be Jane Eyre and living in a fantasy world. Fantasies turn into nightmares and burn your eyes out. Panicked for a moment, she gasped and turned away from her bed. Nothing in this room meant anything to her anymore. Coming back here had been a mistake. A sense of dread overpowered her. Shaking her hair loose, she tried to erase the growing fear. She was completely alone now. Her father was dying, her mother was comatose, and her sister… it was after midnight and her little sister was missing!

CHAPTER TWO

As soon as she thought those words, she heard the slight sound of a key turning in the front door and saw sleepy looking Bethy sauntering down the hallway. The clingy smell of pot emanated from her body.

Have you been smoking dope?

Well, I guess if it smells like it, I have. She giggles.

Don’t tell me you’re gonna start preaching to me now. Bethy stumbles and leans into the doorway of her bedroom. I mean, who are you to talk?

Bethy, I–

Hey, don’t call me Bethy anymore. It’s Beth. I’m a brave girl now, like you. She chuckled, walking down the hall.

I know there’s no point in… of course… good night.

Suzanne knows better than to try to tell her younger sister about how she should live her life.

Good night, Suzanne. I’m glad you’re back, really I am.

I wonder what it is I’m supposed to do here now, Suzanne pondered, as she closed the door to her own lonely bedroom.

A new sense of dread overtakes Suzanne. Earlier in the day, she had gotten a mysterious text from someone she didn’t know. At first, she thought it was a joke. She checks her cell again to read the message: It’s time to visit your dad. Open his nightstand and read the letter.

She had been to visit her father, and it hadn’t been a good meeting. He looked so frail. He seemed to have aged twenty years in the time that she had been gone. The room he was in was nicer than she expected. How were they affording this, she wondered. But the weirdest thing about him was the shiny medallion he waved in front of her. His shaking hand had held it up to her in the light. The shiny gold object hanging from a necklace chain had no meaning to her, but to him it was most important that she look and understand it.

This, he said. This is for you.

What is it?

For you Suzanne, just for you.

He continued mumbling incoherently for a little while longer before he fell into a troubled sleep, mumbling under his breath about an organization for the good of all. She had no clue what he was talking about. But the urgency with which he told her gave her the chills.

Now with her sister obviously learning to live her own life, she takes this is a warning that she should not forget the tremendous turn her own life has taken. She closed the door to her room and turned the latch, as she had instinctively done all the years that she had lived here and vowed that tomorrow she would visit her father again and read the mysterious letter, if there was one, in the nightstand.

CHAPTER THREE

Careful now, don’t hurt your head coming in. Lulu deferentially holds the curtain open for the new immigrants crawling through the hole in the back-alley side of her apartment in Sacramento. This had been a contact place for johns to pay visits to Suzanne, Lulu and any girls Julius, their former pimp, had kidnapped for his trafficking business. Lulu had cleverly dug a hole in the closet wall in one of the rooms when she and Suzanne had been there with Julius. It was one of three locations they frequented. After Julius’s death, Lulu had escaped the authorities in Los Angeles and returned to the hideout. She peered at the newcomers with an authoritarian air, wanting to reassure them they were in the right place, with an honest person.

She greets the young Guatemalans with faltering Spanish. They are terrified, as they have been throughout this journey, but the nice, kind Chinese woman makes them feel a bit more at ease. They crossed over the border at San Diego and were immediately taken to Sacramento by truck, a vehicle Lulu had secured with her renewed relationship with her old pal, LJ. After he nearly died, LJ had whisked himself off to Mexico with the aid of a crazy young nurse who was hot for him. It felt much easier to surface again after he learned they had killed Julius in prison. He’d ditched the nurse; their romance had run its course. Nothing felt safer than to return to the old haunts that he and Julius had set up. Silver Lake was out of bounds. Their old apartment was crawling with FBI, but Sacramento was so well hidden from anyone that it was the perfect hideout. No surprise that he ran into Lulu, who at first tried to shoo him out. They discussed the Make A Bed Inc. business that Lulu had patrolled and thought of new projects they could invent together.

Nice doing business with you again Lulu, he said, as they smiled and shook hands over the new deal. Lulu wasn’t holding any great feelings of confidence at LJ’s new partnership, but he’d do for the time being. She filled him in on her plans to infiltrate immigrants smuggled into the United States. Some of these she discussed with LJ, some she did not.

Lulu, I always knew you had a shrewd brain behind that great Chinese ass.

Comes from my upbringing LJ. I learned how to survive by the time I was two.

Her poverty-stricken family had trafficked Lulu as a baby living in a fishing village in the eastern province of Shandong, China. She had learned early on that the only one she could ever count on was herself.

LJ and Lulu combined their great minds and came up with a plan. LJ would hunker down at the Mexican border and wait for the bodies to cross. He’d pretend he was their next contact and take them into the States in the back of his truck. He’d sold his plane; it had become too easy to trace him. The truck was a purchase he and Julius used to transport the girls off the docks at Long Beach and then across America for a form of human slavery known as human trafficking. Big business, bigger money, and something for everybody.

Lulu didn’t trust LJ, and LJ didn’t trust Lulu. It was a relationship made in sex trafficking heaven.

But Lulu needed more help than just smuggled immigrants. She needed Suzanne’s expertise. Fragile little victim that she was, Suzanne was the key to Lulu’s burgeoning industry. She knew the ins and outs of prostitution better than anybody, a tough cookie who had seen and done everything. So, Lulu texted the best person she knew for the job.

*

Suzanne started the next morning by making breakfast for her younger sister.

Does Mom make anything in the way of food for you these days? she asked Beth.

Mom just does mom, whatever suits her. I don’t expect anything, so I’m never disappointed.

I’ll make some eggs for you.

Suzanne opened the fridge and found almost nothing in it. She stared vacantly into it for a moment, trying to make sense of something. Didn’t I go to the store yesterday?

Beth doesn’t answer as she is finishing up the last question on her English essay.

Well, that’s weird! I’ve got to get some groceries before I can make you some eggs. She turns to her sister with a nervous laugh.

Nah, don’t worry. I’m really not hungry.

I’m up! I’ll make something. Rhonda stumbles in, cigarette in hand, and plops down on one of the kitchen chairs.

I’m going again to see Dad; I’ll pick something up at the store on my way home.

No, don’t bother him! I see him every afternoon. You’ll just upset him!

He’s my father, Mother, and I have a right to visit him anytime I want.

As far as I’m concerned, you don’t have any rights at all. Slamming her palm down on the kitchen table, she leaves in a huff. Beth takes this moment to run out the door. Suzanne grabs her coat and heads for the used car that she bought from the Elite Car Co. when they folded because of Covid.

CHAPTER FOUR

Driving to the retirement home wasn’t where she wanted to go today. Seeing her father in his dilapidated condition depressed her. But she worried about this supposed letter in his nightstand. Gnawing at her all the time was the unsettled feeling that they were all in danger. Nothing made sense. She wished she had somewhere else to go, and she deeply longed for peace of mind. Each day brought another new nightmare. Why hadn’t she remembered about the food in the fridge? Did she or did she not buy groceries? All the terror she’d felt in those first days in the cage always stayed in the background, ready to surface and overtake her. She identified with vets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. My brain is not functioning the way it used to, she muttered to herself. The constant hitting that Julius inflicted on her body in the early training sessions had left more than welts on her skin. She knew that there could have been brain damage. Then she didn’t care. Now healing herself was what she hoped to accomplish. She needed somebody to talk to. Forget about your family, who there would have the ability or really care about what she had been through? She and her best friend Sandy had talked about it when she became more emotionally stable. That was difficult, telling her some of the horrible things that had happened. Margaret Perron, the director at the half-way house, had understood all too well. It had been her journey, too. But regular people didn’t really get it. Until it happens to you, she thinks. Besides, Sandy was living with David now and they had their lives together. She didn’t really feel that her father would have the capability to grasp anything about this experience. He didn’t want to in the first place. Dementia overtook him more every day. All she could do now was visit him and show him she cared and, of course, stay out of her mother’s way.

The nurses at Restful Days were sweet and very nurturing. She could tell they were bothered by her mother’s daily visits. They were judging how much she had changed as well and wondering how she had been used. But nobody asked. Maybe nobody really wanted to know. As she turned the corner of the hallway where her father’s room was located, she bumped into the smiling, cheery face of one of her old high school friends.

Oops, clumsy me! I almost knocked over your cart! Suzanne said and straightened the bottles on the tray. Hi Abby. Cannot believe you’ve already graduated from nursing school. Time flies huh?

Hi Suze, it’s good to see you. Abby blushed and turned her eyes away, keeping the smile however, firmly plastered on her face.

Suzanne understood and nodded. She didn’t even have her GED yet and Abby already had a career going. They had been in several classes together, but Suzanne’s abrupt departure had left her with a stunted future.

Visiting my dad. Is now a good time?

Sure, anytime is good, especially if it’s you. I know your dad’s glad to see you. Be fun to talk over old times sometimes, go out for coffee? There is a new Starbucks in town. It’s about the only thing that hasn’t been shut down totally.

Yeah, it’s crazy what’s happened with Covid. I’m so glad you guys haven’t had to close this place. I don’t know what would happen to Dad.

Yeah, it’s too crazy. Well, see you. I’ve got patients to visit.

Abby smiled again and turned to her cart. She looked so innocent, thought Suzanne. I wish I could look that innocent. But I’m damaged goods trying to fix the merchandise. Will I ever be able to go back to any kind of innocence at all, or will I always be tainted?

She turned the knob on the door of the room where her father slept. It had a stunning view of the lake that surrounded the suburb. A golf club graced the lake, and oak trees lined the Restful Days grounds. Pricey place, she thought, but her mother would sacrifice anything and everything for her husband. She knew that on good days the staff wheeled Evan out and allowed him to sit in the sun enjoying the company of Rhonda or one of the nurses’ aides. It seemed like a very peaceful place for her anxious and troubled father. Suzanne was glad that he had this time to be away from the house and his crazy wife.

Good morning Dad.

Evan opened his eyes as she entered the room. Tricky guessing what kind of mood he might be in. At home, if he had been drinking, he would often be belligerent and angry. Now at Restful Days, he seemed subdued, probably drugged, she thought.

My little girl has come to see me. He tried to sit up but struggled to find the lever to move up the bed. Suzanne quickly moved over and raised the bed, helping him