by Leah Ashton
As if on cue, some heavy metal music suddenly blasted through the vehicle. There was a speaker somewhere in the back of the SUV, and Damon felt the beat all the way into his bones.
Maybe Beth did too, as she stirred against him.
Gaff had tied her wrists, too, but in front of her body, and while they’d taped her mouth – understandably - they hadn’t bothered binding her ankles, clearly not considering her much of a threat, although he wasn’t entirely sure of that.
He doubted she knew how to fight, but she certainly didn’t back down. Part of him had applauded her bravery in his foyer – the way she’d stepped out and proclaimed she didn’t lie.
And she was a total liar too – she would’ve called the cops the instant she could. But that was clear to everyone in his house, and not just him, unfortunately.
The other part of him had wanted her to stay behind him, out of sight of the foul men who’d now kidnapped her, but that wouldn’t have helped for long. He’d failed at protecting her the moment he’d dragged her inside without noticing there were four armed men in his house. Some elite cop he was. He’d be lucky if E-SWAT would want him back.
But his career was the least of his worries. Survival was in the number one spot.
Beth began to wiggle in earnest, her butt rubbing up against the front of his jeans. They should be in his bed right now. Naked, in each other arms. Not like this. Nothing like this.
She groaned softly, and jerked her hands in her restraints.
“Shh,” Damon said into her hair. “We’re in the back of a car. I know where we’re going, and I’m going to do everything I can to get you out of this situation safely. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
A new song started, even more obnoxious than the last.
“I just need you to trust me,” he continued. “Can you do that?”
She began shaking in his arms, big shudders of fear and shock.
Each reverberation was like a knife in his gut.
But he had to push aside his guilt, and he had to push aside his fury with himself. Instead, he had to use everything he knew – all his training, all his skills – to get this woman safely home.
“Can you trust me?” he prompted again.
But even after the song had finished, she still hadn’t responded.
Chapter Three
It took a long time for her body to stop shaking.
Beth had never felt like this before, and she never wanted to feel like this again. She was so completely helpless, so completely vulnerable.
And all she had was a total stranger – a bikie – to protect her.
I’m going to do everything I can to get you out of this situation safely.
He’d said that, and not “It’ll be okay” which she appreciated was impossible for him to guarantee, but still, it was not at all reassuring.
Can you trust me?
She sensed he was still waiting for her response, because she could feel his body heavy with tension behind her. She’d tried to shimmy away from him, but it had barely been worth the effort as now the back door of the SUV was pretty much right in front of her nose. But at least now her butt wasn’t pressed against his crotch.
How could she trust him? She’d just met him, and apart from what – even now – she couldn’t deny was the hottest twenty minutes of her life, she knew nothing about him. The ability to give her a great orgasm didn’t negate the fact he was a criminal.
On the flip side, he hadn’t exactly lied about that. She’d asked him nothing about himself before going home with him, and that was on her.
But also, he’d called her a slut.
It had felt like a slap in the face at the time. But if she looked at it differently – through the lens of someone who was going to do everything I can to get you out of this situation safely – it made a bit of sense. If she was worthless to Todd, then she was worthless to these goons.
In theory. But it hadn’t worked of course. Here she was, kidnapped by bikies.
“I need you to trust me,” he said again, murmuring behind her. His body was like a furnace against her back, because despite her shivering finally coming to an end, she felt ice-cold. “I know you have no reason to do so, but working together is the only chance we have. Trusting me is the only chance you have.”
Beth closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
She had no other choice, because she realised this man spoke the truth.
If she didn’t trust him, she was going to die.
She was destined to be the collateral damage the gunman had mentioned so casually. The bikies didn’t give a shit about her. They didn’t care about her life, her family, her future.
Probably the man behind her, who radiated tension, didn’t care much about that either.
But he’d told her he’d do all he could to save her. Maybe because of guilt. Who knew? But it was all she had.
All she had to do was trust him.
Beth nodded.
“Thank you,” Damon said.
I’d die before I’d let them hurt you.
But those words remained unspoken. They would be meaningless to her, anyway – she wouldn’t believe him. But it was the truth.
He was trained to protect the innocent, so the sentiment wasn’t truly about her. Although also it was. She had no idea how many filthy teenage dreams she’d starred in, but that wasn’t really why he’d never forgotten her. More importantly, she’d unknowingly changed his life. To her, he would’ve just been one of the troublemakers in the back row of her classroom, but he had been paying attention in her classes. Enough of the time anyway. And despite his behaviour, she wrote something in his report that shocked him - If Damon applied himself to his studies, he has unlimited potential – not that he’d listened at the time.
But those words had stuck in his brain for some reason. When the senior sergeant at the local police station had inexplicably seen something in him too and given him a second chance rather than sending him to juvenile detention – having two voices he respected believe in him had been everything.
Because no one, ever, had believed in him before.
Unlimited potential.
Plus, she remained the hottest woman he’d ever seen. Or kissed. The way she’d been in his arms tonight – beneath his fingers … it was literally the stuff of his fantasies. There were infinite reasons why he wanted to survive this clusterfuck, but right near the top was the need to finish what they had started.
Outside, street lights had become much further apart as they left the inner suburbs. The awful music continued to pound around them, but at least it allowed him to speak to Beth.
“The drive will take several hours. Sleep if you can. Nothing will happen while we’re in the car. You’re as safe as you can be.”
Given you’ve been kidnapped by the Notechi and all.
She nodded again, but it took a long time for her body to begin to relax.
But eventually she did. And in her slumber she snuggled back against him. Soft, and warm, and perfect.
I’d die before I’d let them hurt you.
It was mid-morning when they arrived at Tiger Snake Station.
The station didn’t actually contain any tiger snakes, as they were a day’s drive from the temperate, coastal habitats that the lethal tiger snakes called home. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, lived the equally venomous western brown snake. Damon could only assume that Knife hadn’t liked the sound of ‘Brown Snake Station’.
The station had been named before Knife had formed the Notechi motorcycle club, but they were linked. Notechis was Latin for Tiger Snakes – it was the genus or something, Damon had never really cared enough to confirm. Unsurprisingly, Knife hadn’t given a shit about accuracy either when creating the name, as he’d dropped off the S and butchered the pronunciation to No-ta-kai. And he went absolutely apeshit should anyone dare to pronounce it incorrectly.
Beth had slept all the way from Perth to Kalgoorlie – more than a six
-hour drive – but had woken as the dawn light slid through the SUV’s windows, laying silent and tense beside him for the remaining three or so hours of their trip. Any small doubt Damon may have had about their destination had been extinguished long ago, as even in the dark and in the boot of the SUV, he knew this journey. He’d driven – and ridden his Harley – along these roads many a time and knew exactly how the landscape changed in the 1,000 kilometres journey from the city to Tiger Snake Station. They were in what was once gold rush country, the far northern goldfields, and about thirty kilometres past the nearest tiny town of Laverton, population 400.
This wasn’t the lush landscape of the Western Australian coast. It was spinifex plains, scrub, red dirt and desert – the outback – the real outback, nowhere near anything, right in the middle of Western Australia. A state more than three times as big as Texas. Harsh, brutal – and here, right in that bleak nothingness, sprawled Tiger Snake Station, covering over 250,000 hectares and nudging up against the edge of the Great Victoria Desert.
Gaff and the prospects had said little for hours, and the heavy metal soundtrack had long been switched off. The atmosphere in the vehicle had become tense the moment they’d bumped over the cattle grids into the station, and with every passing kilometre – there were thirty to get from the entrance to the homestead – the tension thickened.
And that tension was not just coming from the hostages.
That was the thing about the Notechi President – he ruled with a fucking iron fist. He was as brutal as the sun that beat down on his land, and every member of the Notechi both feared and revered him in equal measure.
Except Damon.
He’d never feared Knife. Maybe because he knew his time in the club would end, and that his life didn’t truly exist purely at the whim of the leader of the Notechi. Maybe.
But mostly because he thought Knife was just fucking pathetic. Knife was a smart man, brilliant really, but unforgivably cruel. His taste for violence and his hair-trigger use of it was weak. Damon had learnt long ago exactly how weak it was to use your own strength to exploit the defenceless.
Knife may use other’s fists, or knives, or guns, but he hadn’t learned that lesson yet.
He probably never would and then one day soon, Elite SWAT would put him in prison for the rest of his life, and he’d be just as big a piece of violent shit on the inside as he was in the real world. But with Knife in prison – or in the bin as E-SWAT called it – the Notechi would disintegrate. The Notechi was Knife, in a cult-like way, and that was why Gaff and his cronies had stopped their dumb, toxic-masculinity 101 banter an hour out of Kalgoorlie, and why Damon could bet they all sat stiffly in their seats, in equal parts anticipation of Knife’s praise, and dread they’d somehow fucked their president’s instructions up.
The SUV rolled to a halt beside a scrubby excuse for a tree that provided totally inadequate shade to the vehicle. All four of the men climbed out of the car, and several booted feet crunched away on the gravelly, sandy soil, but at least one remained nearby, thwacking his hand against the back window of the SUV just so Damon knew he was there.
Beth mumbled something through her mouth tape that could’ve been, What do we do?
But that was the thing. He didn’t have a specific plan. He didn’t know exactly how many people he was dealing with, where they were going to take them, and most importantly, what they were going to do to Beth.
“First, I’m going to try to make them believe they’ve made a mistake and I’ve done nothing wrong.”
She made a noise that sounded like a snort of disbelief.
“I’ve got to try,” he continued even though he agreed with her. “If they trust me, I can talk us out of this.”
Another mumble that could’ve been, But what if you can’t?
“Then we escape,” he said firmly. “I know where we are. I can get us out of here.”
Beth wiggled and shifted beside him until she could twist her neck and shoulders to look him in the eye. She didn’t try to talk this time, but her question – and her desperation – was in her wide gaze. How will we escape?
He couldn’t answer that. He just looked into her eyes that now sported smudged mascara smears beneath her lower lashes.
“Trust me,” he said. “You can trust me.”
Now she did speak. Who are you?
She spoke louder this time, and the words were almost clear through the heavy-duty tape that completely obscured her lips.
“I’m a random stranger you met last night and know nothing about,” he said firmly. “That’s the truth, and it’s also for the best.”
Her eyes narrowed as her forehead creased into a frustrated frown.
But no way was he revealing anything to her. If she knew the truth, she was even more vulnerable.
Although he doubted that would fly with her given she was tied up and helpless in the back of an SUV. He could almost hear her asking him, how much worse could this get?
Unfortunately, the answer was – much worse. Much, much worse.
Booted footsteps – close again to the car – meant he should shut up. But she was looking at him so intensely, with such a mix of fear, confusion, scepticism, and anger that he almost said something stupid. Like, I’m an undercover Elite SWAT police officer.
Just so she had more confidence in him. Just so she knew her trust was not misplaced, because he could see in her stormy blue eyes that she was questioning her decision with every breath she took. And also because he hated the idea that she thought he was some arsehole, pond scum, bikie, even though he knew she didn’t remember him.
But all of that was about his ego, and not about keeping her safe.
So he remained silent.
With a clunk, the back door of the SUV was unlocked and opened wide, and suddenly Damon and Beth were bathed in outback sun, dry heat, and the scent of dust and distant cattle.
“Get the fuck out of the car,” spat Gaff.
The heels of Beth’s fancy shoes wobbled with every step on the red dust and gravel road. She was following behind the head goon with the rest of the goons behind her. Todd was right at the front, the cable ties cut from his ankles so he could walk. The head goon would push him between the shoulder blades for absolutely no reason every few steps, but Todd somehow kept his balance.
But he never made a sound each time he stumbled, or looked back.
Beth could see a gun shoved down the back of the jeans of the head goon. In theory, if she didn’t have her hands cable tied, she could almost grab it. But she did have her wrists cable tied and so the gun was of no help to her and instead was just really, really frightening.
Although, being frightened – terrified, really – had become the status quo now, after the how-many hour drive in the back of the SUV. She had no idea where she was, all she knew was that it was a long way from Perth, and it was very, very hot. It was late March, which was very warm in the city, but out here – in the desert, she presumed? – it was properly hot. Even this short walk from the car to the white-painted weatherboard house before them had made her skin uncomfortably warm, and she knew if she stayed out beneath this brutal sun much longer, her olive skin would burn.
The house before her had a couple of slender gum trees to one side, and a few tufts of some spinifex-y looking plant dotted beneath the verandah. It had a dark green tin roof, and the weatherboard looked freshly painted. In fact, the house was actually very nice. The kind of sprawling home you’d imagine generations of a farming family living in, or hosting a very expensive bed and breakfast operation. It also looked utterly out of place in the almost perfectly flat and barren landscape. Apart from those few lonely gum trees and some little bunches of scrubby, smaller trees and bushes nearby – there was nothing around it. It felt as if the flatness, the nothingness, stretched forever in every direction.
The isolation of this place was as frightening as the gun in head goon’s jeans.
How were they ever going to escape?
Or were
they already doomed? Her fate sealed?
Beth squeezed her eyes shut.
She couldn’t think like that. She had, for too long in the SUV, but spiralling panic and anxiety wasn’t going to get her out of this alive. Nothing else might either – but she’d decided she had to have hope.
And her only hope was being frogmarched in front of her.
Head goon shoved him again – harder this time, and the man couldn’t keep his feet.
He tried, valiantly, but failed, crashing to the ground in a bit of a rolling action so he avoided landing flat on his face and instead took the brunt of the fall on his shoulder. He was back on his feet incredibly fast and shook his head to dislodge the red dirt from his dark hair. The mouth tape she already knew was loose had fallen off completely. He looked at head goon who had come to a stop along with the rest of his entourage.
“Was that really necessary?” Todd asked.
“Was snitching to the cops really necessary, Crawls?”
He shook his head. “I would never do that to the club.” He held the goon’s gaze as he spoke, strong and steady. It was pretty convincing, Beth had to admit, but she didn’t believe him.
Maybe just because she had to believe he wasn’t all bad, in order to be able to trust him. He might be a filthy bikie, but he was prepared to work with the cops. That made him not entirely irredeemable, right?
Or maybe she was just back to trying to not feel so stupid for going home with this guy.
Head goon shrugged. “Knife thinks you did, so you did.”
Knife?
If this wasn’t so real – from the gritty dirt that had ended up beneath her toes in her narrow shoes, from the sun that beat down on her shoulders, to the gun still not even a metre from her grasp – she would’ve laughed.