The Bullet Catchers #3: Take Me Tonight

Prologue
If tenacity had a face, Lucy Sharpe was looking at it.
A tornado of determination brewed in angry eyes. A defiant jaw set against anything that got in its way. Even her delicate nostrils flared as Sage Valentine leaned over Lucy's desk and declared, "You owe me, Lucy. Big."
A hundred responses echoed through Lucy's mind, a thousand ways to say hello for the first time in thirteen years, a million ways to reach out to her sister's daughter and close the chasm that time and blame had formed between them.
She remained as impassive as she would be with any other potential client being turned away. "I'm sorry. I can't help you."
"Can't or won't?" Sage crossed her arms and peered down at her aunt, tilting her head. "Big difference."
Tenacity and attitude. Sage didn't look like Lydia Sharpe, but she obviously had a few of her mother's traits. "This job isn't right for the Bullet Catchers," Lucy said. "My company is a security firm."
"I thought you did investigations."
"Only as it relates to the security of our clients and the principals we protect."
"Come on, Lucy." Sage tapped the desk impatiently. "With all your contacts in government and law enforcement, after all those years in the CIA? You have to be able to get information I can't." She closed her eyes with a whisper-soft sigh. "I wouldn't ask you if it weren't important."
Lucy almost smiled. "I did check the temperature in hell when you called."
Sage dropped into the guest chair that she'd refused two minutes earlier, leaning elbows on the colossal writing table between them. "Proof that I am desperate."
Proof that she was resourceful. Another trait of Lydia's.
"Let me tell you what I have." Inches from Lucy's fingertips lay a file folder with details about www.takemetonite.com, a fantasy website run by computer nerds and supported by young women with more money than common sense. The file contained nothing that a dogged journalist like Sage couldn't have figured out on her own. For a Bullet Catcher file it was remarkably thin, but Lucy's sources had revealed enough to know that her niece was wasting her time seeking retribution and responsibility where there was none to be found.
"Takemetonite.com is a privately owned business set up to conduct mock kidnappings and subsequent fantasy rescues strictly for personal entertainment," Lucy said. "They check out and are, for lack of a better word, legitimate."
"So who owns it? Who does these kidnappings? Who polices this? How can it be legal? And who kidnapped my roommate the night she died?" Sage's frustration was clear in the last question.
"The site is owned by a company called Fantasy Adventures, a division of a large software gaming company in Southern California. FA has about forty employees who staff four operations in the U.S., including one in Boston, with plans to open about six more in the coming year. They are profitable and private about what they do."
Sage leaned back in the chair. "And what they do is kidnap women."
"Yes. No doubt you've heard of thrill sites, where people can arrange to do or experience just about anything for a price?"
"Anything," Sage said pointedly. "Including commit a murder."
"True. Those sites are hidden deep underground and are most definitely against the law. But takemetonite.com is much more mainstream, a company that will arrange for someone to have the experience and adrenaline rush of a nonviolent abduction, followed by a rescue performed by handsome young men. And what these young women do to...thank their rescuer is paid for on a sliding scale."