Huck

by Jessica Gadziala

  Right.

  Because I'd had the original replaced months before with one that was steel plated with locking security bars.

  "What happened?" Che said as he and McCoy made it into the room.

  "Someone took Harmon," Remy explained.

  "How?" McCoy asked even as I was moving around the room, looking for any possible clues as to what happened.

  And then I saw it, something black wedged half under the bed, likely dropped and the owner of it didn't want to waste time looking for it with two pissed off bikers in the basement.

  I leaned down, grabbed it, finding some kind of flashlight. Or so I thought until I turned it on.

  It wasn't a flashlight. It was one of those things women sometimes carried that flashed rapidly to try to disorient a mugger or rapist.

  "That explains the vomit," Che said, pointing. "They used that to try to disorient her, not knowing about her condition, and she had a seizure."

  "That was the thump we heard," Remy said, putting the pieces together. "Her falling."

  "They couldn't have dragged her seizing down the stairs. She gets too stiff," I reasoned.

  "Yeah, but that part didn't last long. The part after was when she was out of it and unresponsive," McCoy said, "and that would have been the perfect time. She wouldn't have even been able to fight."

  "Goddamn it," I growled, charging out of the bedroom, making my way down the stairs. "The camera outside, that is working, right?" I asked, finally seeing how right McCoy was, that I had been distracted, that I wasn't on top of knowing this kind of shit, enforcing it.

  "Yeah. The one is. Had an electrical issue with the other one," Seeley explained. "I figured one of you could help me with that when you got back. But the one that is up is by the garage. It should have caught a plate, if not the people themselves."

  "Good. Figure it out," I demanded, going outside, pacing. "Why take her?" I asked, looking at my men. "Seeley and Remy were in the basement. Why aren't they dead?"

  "Easier target?" Remy suggested.

  "Holding her for ransom?" McCoy said, making my stomach tighten.

  We had some funds. We were doing pretty well considering all the hiccups we'd had. But if they were going to start to ask for something in the millions, we weren't going to be able to pay that yet.

  I mean, we could call in a favor with our mother chapter, get a loan.

  We would do that if it came to it.

  "What is this?" Che asked, making me turn to find a car pulling into the driveway.

  "No, wait," McCoy said when I went to reach for my gun again. "That's Arty," he said just before the door swung open, and we all got to see for ourselves.

  He'd showered and changed, but didn't look like he'd gotten any sleep.

  "Hey. I got something," he said, giving up a victorious smile as he carried his laptop away from the car, walking up the driveway.

  "They took Harmon."

  "Who's Harmon?" Arty asked, then shook his head. "It doesn't matter. Anyway, I found the footage of the car leaving. And I finally got them at the right angle to get a plate."

  "Tell me you could run it," I demanded, stomach tightening, hand itching to grab my gun, to put some nasty holes in anyone who thought they could put their hands on someone who belonged to me.

  "I ran it," Arty said, smiling as he turned the screen toward me. "Comes back to Emiliano Gomez. He was shot down three weeks ago. But he was in a small off-shoot of one of the cartels. And from the looks of it, he has a little brother who is hungry to work his way up the food chain."

  "Is that the address?" I asked, already moving toward my bike.

  "Yeah, but..." he started to object.

  But I wasn't listening.

  I was already on my bike and driving off.

  A couple seconds later, McCoy, Che, and Remy were coming with me.

  And we all missed the dozen or so calls from Arty and Seeley.

  Chapter Twelve

  Harmon

  The guys were making a lot more racket than I thought they would. I considered not recording, but a part of me knew that once Huck came back, we would be spending a day or two in bed if possible. And I really needed to get a video up. Like it or lump it, you had to stay relevant in my field. There was always someone coming up and a lot hungrier than you were, so you had to have that competitive edge, you had to keep your audience engaged.

  So I got my makeup on, changed into shorts and a tank, and got on my computer.

  Possibly for the first time ever, it actually felt like work.

  In the past, gaming was my escape. It relaxed me. It got me out of my head. Sure, sometimes it was a pain in the ass to deal with the video part of gaming, but it still always felt like something I did because I wanted to.

  But this was work.

  And it showed in my repeated failure.

  "Wow, I am off my game today," I told the camera, shaking my head as I waited for my body to regenerate, using up the last of my previous and rare healing potion it had taken me months to find.

  "Oh, wow," I grumbled when I somehow missed the quicksand, seeing myself slip under just minutes after I finally got moving again. "I guess I should just call it a day, guys. You can't win them all."

  On a sigh, I ripped off my headphones, leaning back in the chair, letting my mind wander since it was determined to do so anyway.

  See, the problem was, I'd slept well.

  Not only did I sleep well, but I woke up feeling calmer, more at peace than I ever remember feeling.

  That was the reason I had slipped out from under Huck's arm, off of his chest, taking myself into the bathroom to attempt to reason with myself.

  It was all the feel-good sex hormones. They were tricky little bastards, firing off all your nerve endings, making you think things you had no business thinking, believing things that simply weren't true.

  Still, I'd had sex before. I'd had great sex before. And I never woke up feeling like I was feeling then.

  Light.

  Happy.

  It was dangerous to let myself feel that way, to get any more wrapped up than I already was.

  Huck was not a settling down sort.

  For all I knew, when he woke up, he would decide he was done with me.

  That thought sent a stabbing sensation through my chest that I pretended to ignore as I took a shower, brushed my teeth, got dressed, then made my way downstairs, hoping some distance would get my mind right.

  And then I promptly decided that I wanted to make a giant breakfast for him, but disguise it as food for all of them. Because that was normal and everything.

  This whole thing was going to blow up in my face—likely sooner rather than later —and I was going to be a lot more upset about it than I had any right to.

  It wasn't helping that we were, in a way, playing house. It made everything feel a lot comfier, cozier. I mean it was usually months before I ever stayed more than a night over someone's house, and by then, feelings were usually expected.

  Everything was just accelerated here.

  And, I reminded myself as I reached for my headphones again, planning to hop on to film something short for my Patronage-Only subscribers, get ahead of things, get my mind occupied so I didn't start a doom-spiral about what could—and likely would—happen when all this went down in flames while I was still in Huck's house.

  I'd just finished filming a The Wheel of Life discussion when I heard the door open.

  My damn heart skipped at the idea of Huck being back, about him maybe grabbing me by the throat like he had in the kitchen, pushing me up against the wall, and fucking me until I forgot all about how bad of an idea it was.

  But it wasn't Huck.

  I knew it when I heard footsteps rushing forward that it wasn't him. Because Huck just wasn't the rushing sort. But also because the footsteps seemed too light. Huck was not a small man. When he walked, you heard him. So when he ran, I imagined it was loud as well.

  I started to whirl around just as I saw a f
lash of a body right at my side, making a shriek bubble up and burst out, knowing that Remy and Seeley would come running, would save me, would get Huck, so they could make the people who meant me harm pay. If for no other reason that I was his guest, that it was a matter of reputation.

  Then I saw the flash, and had the moment of panic, knowing what was going to happen, before there was nothing else.

  I woke up with pain pinging off every nerve ending.

  My head, as I expected, was splitting. But there were other pains too.

  It wasn't unusual to wake up with various aches and pains after a seizure. I tended to bang myself up here and there.

  But this felt worse than usual. My head hurt, yes, from the migraine, but the side and back of my head hurt too, the way bruises hurt. And speaking of bruises, my shoulders, back, hips, and ass were aching. My arms and legs weren't feeling great either.

  In fact, practically my entire body was hurt.

  What had happened to me?

  In a moment of blinding panic, my hands moved toward my lower body, feeling a small wave of relief when I found my shorts and panties still in place.

  In fact, that whole area might have been the only part of me that wasn't sore. So that was one thing going in my favor.

  I attempted to roll onto my back to try to look around at my surroundings, but the movement made a wave of nausea wash over me, making me move back to my side, taking slow, deep breaths to try to fight the bile rising in my throat. From the seizure, from the migraine that was forcing me to keep my eyes closed, too afraid of any light until the pounding lessened slightly. But a huge part of me knew that was a pipe dream, that the only thing that stopped the migraine was some medicine and sleep.

  I didn't have medicine.

  And I couldn't risk sleep.

  I was just going to have to find the inner strength to work through it.

  If there was ever a situation where I might be capable of finding that motivation, it was when I was being kidnapped.

  Kidnapped.

  The word felt awkward in my head. It was simply not something you ever thought you would experience. No matter how much true crime you consumed, there was always a certain level of detachment.

  I'm careful. That could never happen to me.

  Yet here I was.

  Involved with a biker, and kidnapped by his enemies.

  A low, pathetic whimper escaped me as I pressed the heels of my hands against my forehead, feeling a small bit of relief.

  I couldn't let myself wallow for long, though, no matter how awful I felt. There would be time to cry about it when I knew I was safe.

  Because, clearly, I'd been taken.

  So Remy and Seeley either hadn't heard me, or they had been taken out.

  My heart seized at that idea, making me work to push the thoughts away, not letting myself be any more negative than I already felt.

  There was hope.

  Maybe they hadn't heard me since they were a couple floors below, because they were banging around down there, and my shriek had been so short thanks to the flashing light.

  Wait.

  A flashing light?

  It wasn't like it was by accident.

  It was a special type of flashlight meant to strobe like that.

  Why would some low-level criminal carry something like that? These people who did things like drive-by shootings? That didn't seem to match up.

  I needed to force my eyes open, to fight through the nausea, so I could get my bearings.

  Gritting my teeth, I let my eyes slit open, slow-blinking into darkness, finding no light source anywhere.

  Which was great for my headache, sure, but not so much for figuring out where the hell I was.

  I stayed there for a long moment, making sure I wasn't going to be sick, not sure I could take it if I was locked up with my own festering throw up for any length of time, before finally folding slowly upward, leaning back against a wall.

  It took another couple minutes in that position before I could do anything but fight back the nausea and the crippling pain in my head.

  I tried to keep my head still as I reached out, feeling around, finding a finished wall with nothing on it on both sides of my body as well as a thick pile carpet on the floor.

  Wherever I was, it was finished.

  I guess I had always imagined that should I get kidnapped, I would automatically be kept in a basement or something. That was what always happened in the shows, right?

  But unless this basement was finished and completely lacking windows, it seemed like maybe I was inside of a walk-in closet of some sort.

  I had no idea if that worked in my favor or not. I would imagine that being in a closet put me closer to some form of exit than a normal basement did.

  If I could just get out and find the strength to run. At least I had a chance.

  My hand lowered down, fingers hitting something small sitting beside my body. Curious, I reached for it, my hand closing around what felt like a small plastic bottle.

  Pulling it up, I heard a clattering noise as it moved, making my brows pinch as my other hand moved out to hold the bottle while I tried to open it, twisting uselessly a few times before my thumb felt the little triangle on the cap. Intrigued, I turned it until it met the other triangle on the bottle, and pushed my finger against it, hearing the lid pop off.

  Pills?

  Someone had left me pills?

  I shook a couple into my hand, trying to figure out what kind they might be, but not being able to learn anything about them other than they were oblong pills roughly the same size as your average acetaminophen.

  But I wasn't exactly willing to blindly take pills without knowing for sure what they were, no matter how much my head was jackhammering.

  Oh a soft sigh, I shook the pills back in and sealed the top before getting up on my knees, trying to feel around the walls, see if there was anything around.

  My fingers met wire rack shelves, a forgotten plastic hanger, and not a damn thing else until I got to the door.

  My heart seemed to freeze in my chest as my stomach tensed, not sure I was ready for a mad dash if—by some miracle—the knob turned in my hand.

  But if I had a chance at freedom, I had to take it, no matter how shitty I felt.

  Breath caught in my chest, my hand closed around the knob, tried to turn it.

  And nothing.

  Of course not.

  Why would someone go through the trouble of shoving me in somewhere, if they weren't going to lock the door?

  Taking a deep breath, I turned to go back to my corner when something soft brushed up against the tip of my toes.

  Something jammed under the door, blocking out the light.

  I dropped back to my knees, hands grabbing the small corner, yanking it through, seeing a sliver of light at the bottom.

  Hope bolstering, I dropped to my stomach, trying to see out the crack under the door, praying I saw feet or something so I could figure out how many people I was up against.

  All I saw, though, was the legs of a bed and the bottom of what seemed to be nightstands. Nothing else.

  On a low whimper, I lay back, staring up at the dark space, my head pounding.

  The pills.

  Rolling to my side, I grabbed them, putting them under the door, inspecting the bottle, then the pills themselves, before throwing three of them back, praying for any relief, so I could think straight again.

  It was interesting, the things you think about when you're being held captive in a closet.

  You'd think your mind would be obsessing over what could potentially happen to you, why you were there, who would want to hurt you.

  But no.

  Nope.

  My ridiculous mind was on something else entirely.

  A tall, fit, chiseled-jawed man.

  And what he would think when he got back to the house and found me gone, found his men who were hopefully still alive.

  Would he panic? He didn't seem the sort,
always so even in temperament, but a needy part of me wanted him to panic, to feel lost, to want to turn over every rock in an attempt to find me.

  Would he worry only for professional reasons, or was there, just maybe, a personal response too?

  I shouldn't have needed that for him. Any motivator to get him to find me and potentially save me was welcome, surely. Still, there was this pathetic little part of me that wanted to know he was upset, that he was worried about me, that he wanted me back not just to prove a point, but because he wanted me there. In his house, his bed, hell, even his kitchen.

  Maybe it was all the heightened emotions thanks to the attack, the seizure, the hopelessness of the situation. Or, at least, that was what I wanted to tell myself.

  In reality, I knew what was happening.

  I was facing a potentially life-ending situation. And things that I had been avoiding, burying, and denying were coming to the surface because, well, it might not matter in a few hours' time if I felt them or not. Because there was no guarantee I would live through this.

  I cared about Huck.

  And not just because the sex was good or because he had been a buffer against my terrible family. I just... liked him.

  I had seen the way he'd interacted with his men—authoritative, but kind and fair. He took their opinions and feelings into account, he listened to their worries. But he always made the executive decisions, usually—if you were being objective—the right decision. He was both laid-back and serious at the same time, but could take a joke, wasn't' slow to smile.

  He gave a shit about people. While he wasn't all mushy about it, it was clear he'd been worried about Seeley both times something had happened to him. And Remy had told me that he was worried about some guy by the name of Arty who got obsessive about his work and forgot to eat and sleep. Hell, even after coming out of my seizure that one time, I had seen concern on his face, in his voice. For me, a practical stranger at the time.

  He was a good man wearing a bad boy's clothes.

  And I had known so many bad men dressed as good guys.

  It was new and refreshing and when all that was wrapped up in Huck's outward package? Yeah, it made someone very easy to catch feelings for.