Under Locke

by Mariana Zapata

  I almost asked what the hell else they would want. I almost also asked who "they" were. But my survival instincts said this wasn’t the right time to ask so I bit back the questions and nodded at him.

  “Babe, this place is about to get packed. Got any errands or something you can run before you go to the shop?” he asked me in that same soft tone he’d just used.

  I didn’t but obviously he didn’t want me to be at the house when the other guys from the WMC showed up. But if it helped Sonny, then I’d move back to Fort Lauderdale or drive down to Venezuela if that’s what he wanted.

  “Yeah, I can go do a few things.” I just didn’t know what.

  His head tilted down so that he could look at me through his long, dark eyelashes. “All right. Already talked to Blake and he’s openin' with you instead of me but put my phone number in your cell so you can get in touch with me if you need to.” He pinned me with this concrete-like look, his tone attempting to be reassuring. “Don’t worry about Sonny. We’ll find him."

  I wanted to believe him, but those were pretty much the same words Sonny had told me right before he’d let some assholes do who knows what to him.

  ~ * ~ *

  “Babe.”

  Make it stop.

  “Babe.”

  Oh God. Please. Stop.

  I’d barely fallen asleep following an hour long staring contest versus the ceiling. The tension in my body after my shitty day had finally seeped out of my bones enough to let me relax. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Sonny. Kidnapped Sonny. Missing Sonny. Possibly injured Sonny. I wouldn’t let myself even think that something else could happen to him, but wasn’t that what people did in movies and in real life? Torture and… do other things?

  I buried my face deeper into the pillow.

  All day, I’d been worried sick. After Dex had pleasantly kicked me out of the house, I’d gone to the mall. I watched a matinee by myself at the theater to kill time until work while also distracting me just a little from the uneasy goldfish swimming around in my stomach. I couldn’t remember anything clearly, not the movie or the things I’d seen in the stores, or even the customer’s faces I’d helped throughout the day at Pins.

  Blake and Blue must have known something was up because they’d been even nicer to me than usual. They gave me space by not asking a million questions I couldn’t answer but came by to sit with me silently each opportunity they had. I'd tried calling Dex a few times but he'd only answered the first time, sounding annoyed beyond belief but promising to call me if he found out anything. I never got such a call, so I called him again and got no answer.

  Fucking Sonny.

  The more I thought about what happened, the more pissed off I got. He’d known they were out there. The men hadn’t broken into the house and taken him. Sonny had to have walked out of the friggin’ house and gone to them. What the hell had he been thinking? Obviously, I wasn’t the only one who was an idiot.

  So I stewed all day. Thinking about friggin’ Sonny and how much of a dumbass he was. Thinking about what reasons those men could want him for.

  Sonny didn’t tell me enough about what he did when I wasn't around or when he magically disappeared at night, so I had no idea the kind of crap he got into. Mainly, it was blind trust between us. Neither one of us was used to having someone to answer to.

  As soon as we closed down the shop that night, Blue had asked me if I needed anything—which was extra sweet because she rarely spoke to anyone, much less me—and then we’d all gone our separate ways. The thought of not going to Sonny’s hadn’t even entered my mind, so I drove straight there, showered again, forced myself to eat two-day-old leftovers, double-checked to make sure all the locks were secure, and went to bed. The bed where I tossed and turned for more than an hour before I somehow managed to fall asleep, pushing away that little voice that warned me here was someone else that I cared about that I could lose.

  And now, I was quickly losing that sweet reprieve from reality.

  “Honey, wake up,” someone whispered in the dark.

  Someone?

  Shit!

  I knifed up in bed, my heart jack-hammering against its house of bones. I blinked away sleep, expecting to see one of the bikers, or I don’t know, a serial killer sitting on the bed next to me with his hands on my arm, thumbs making lazy circles on my skin.

  “What the—!” I panted, blinking in the dark to see that strikingly familiar facial structure inches away.

  “Chill, Ritz,” Dex murmured gently, thumbs still circling.

  My hand flew up to press against the skin over my heart, willing it to slow down. “Jesus, you scared me,” I panted.

  In true, normal Dex fashion he didn’t smile in amusement or apologize. "What are you doin' here?"

  "Sleeping?"

  He sighed. "Blake didn't get my text?"

  What was he talking about? I shook my head.

  “Get up,” he ordered. “You need to go talk to your bro before we get outta here.”

  I blinked again slowly as his words settled in. Talk to my bro? "Sonny's here?" My voice hitched up.

  Dex nodded. "He's packin' some shit up. Pack a bag so you don't have to come back here for a while, then go talk to him."

  Confusion swamped me in a million different ways. Where was Sonny going? Where the hell was I going? But mainly, I was wondering what was going on, period. There was too much secrecy to make me feel good.

  Like a good girl, I tried to focus on what to pack so I could figure things out as soon as possible. Luckily, I had enough good sense before falling asleep to keep a pair of sleep shorts on because I usually slept in just my underwear and a bra. Dex flicked the lamp on while I grabbed a bunch of random clothes from the dresser.

  “Where was he?” I asked him while stuffing my duffel with what I’d absently picked. I couldn’t even look at Dex as I asked him the question, it made me too nervous. I'd ask if Sonny was fine but he wouldn't be home packing if he wasn't.

  “County hospital.”

  My spine snapped up to standing, the muscles along my back tensing. "What?" I'm pretty positive I screeched out the words.

  "The county hospital, babe. Some lady found him by the park unconscious this mornin' and called in an ambulance for him," he explained.

  Without even thinking about it, my legs became unglued and started leading me around the bed to skip the whole packing thing and find Sonny instead. But Dex held up his arm, blocking me from going around him. "Calm down, Ritz. He just had a little concussion, a few bruises. He's all right," he said softly. "Finish packin'."

  What the ef constituted a little concussion?

  I was going to be sick. Breathing in and out of my nose a few times, I looked up at Dex's eyes to see if I could catch a hint as to whether he was being honest with me or not. Those fathomless dark blue eyes were intent and clear in a challenge of the wills, like he could tell I was trying to catch him in a lie.

  "He's okay," Dex insisted, nudging me back with the muscles of his forearm. "Finish up, babe."

  Holy crap. He probably wasn't lying. For about the hundredth time in five minutes, I nodded, pushing back that sickening sensation in my chest again. “Okay.” Zipping the bag halfway, I yanked it off the bed and looked at him. "I think I have everything, I'm going to go hunt this moron down."

  I didn't bother waiting for a response before I took off down the hallway to the opened door of Sonny's bedroom. The fan light was on, illuminating the room and the figure sitting on the edge of the bed with a duffel bag next to him. Even from behind, his features looked loose. Tired. Worn-out.

  But it wasn't until I rounded the bed and saw the side of his face that made me gasp. "What the hell, Son?"

  His cheek was swollen to twice the size it should have been. The skin was broken and purple, only slightly worse than the awful split on the corner of his mouth. Yet, he managed to give me a little grin out of somewhere.

  "Ris," he greeted me in a lower voice than usual. He patte
d the bed. "I'm fine, kid. Come sit down."

  "My ass you're fine," I told him, taking a step to stand in front of him.

  Sonny tilted his head back to give me a better view of the ass-beating those sons of biscuit-eating whores gave him. The entire right side of his face looked deformed from the swelling. I was kind of worried that maybe he'd lost some teeth but I couldn't be sure.

  "I've had worse, believe me," he argued softly. "Come here and quit worrying."

  I gave him a look that said it'd be a cold day in hell before I stopped worrying about him.

  "C'mon, I don't have a lot of time before Trip gets here," he said, patting the bed again.

  I wanted to argue with him but logic told me not to. My poor, poor brother looked like complete crap. It made my stomach tense horribly, like I was having contractions or something. My hand was out and clinging to Sonny's instinctively.

  "You remember I told you the sperm donor came down and asked me for money?"

  Like I'd forget. "He asked Luther for money too, right?"

  Sonny nodded slowly. "Yup, and he didn't give it to him either," he explained. "He didn't want to tell anybody what the money was for, except he just needed it real bad."

  "How much was it?"

  It looked like he tried to make a face but immediately stopped the effort once he remembered he looked like the Elephant Man's cousin. "Ten grand."

  An ugly guffawing noise sprang out of my throat. "What?"

  Sonny nodded again. "Exactly. No one in their right fucking mind is gonna let him borrow that much money for no damn reason. So nobody in the Club did." And I suddenly had a really bad feeling about the word choices my brother had chosen. No one in their right fucking mind...

  "So what does that have to do with you exactly?" I asked him hesitantly.

  "It turns out this wasn't the first time dear old daddy asked for money. A few months ago, he'd come down and borrowed a healthy chunk from the Reapers."

  Oh crap. Oh boy-crap.

  I'd never heard of the Reapers before but the puzzle pieces were making too much sense. "Those men?"

  He sighed. "Yeah, Ris. Daddy didn't stick to the payment plan, and from what Trip figured out today, they aren't exactly happy that he came into town, and then bailed. They want their money."

  This had to be a bad dream. An awful dream.

  "But you don't even—" What was I going to say? That he didn't matter to our father? It was the harsh truth.

  He must have known what I was trying to explain because he lifted a shoulder in lame agreement. "I know, Ris. I know. But I'm not paying for his shit, and I'm not lettin' them come after you next now that they know you live here. I'm sure they know you're his too."

  I gagged, earning a slap to the back from my brother.

  "Quit it, kid. It's fine. I'm gonna go find this motherfucker and make sure he pays his shit now. I’m not sitting around, waiting for God knows what to happen. The last thing he deserves is to get rescued by one of us. I’m not paying for his mistakes any longer and neither are you,” he stated evenly.

  Every minute just seemed to make this entire scenario seem so much more like a dream. A very hard dream that I couldn't swallow. "So we're going to go find him?"

  Sonny didn't agree. The hand he'd left on my back after slapping it, slid up to rest on the shoulder furthest away from him. "No, Ris. I'm gonna go find him. Trip's coming with me. We don't know what other kind of pile he's dug himself into and you're better off staying here with Dex until all this shit gets sorted out."

  The sound that came out of my mouth sounded like a squawk. "What?"

  "You're staying with Dex. The house isn't safe and I don't trust you to stay with anybody else in the Club," he explained, squeezing my shoulder. "Hopefully I can find him in a few days."

  But what would he do once he found him? The old man had obviously taken off because he didn't have the money to pay back the Reaper assholes. I almost, almost asked Sonny but by the look on the half of his face that didn't look like it'd gotten friendly with a baseball bat, Sonny had no limits on what he was capable of.

  So making Curt Taylor find ten grand was going to happen one way or another. Of that I suddenly didn't have a doubt.

  "Shit, Sonny," I whispered. How the hell had this mess fallen on us? On him? The one Taylor offspring who had less to do with his father than the other two. Christ.

  The hand on my shoulder tightened. "Ris," he whispered, pulling me closer to him. The side of his forehead rested against the top of my head. "I'm coming back, all right? I swear to God I'm not leaving you here. I'm just gonna go find this asshole so we can get back to Tofu Tuesdays and shit," he assured me. "I'm coming back."

  The intent behind his words weighed my sternum down. He was leaving. Leaving me in a new city all alone with his friend. I wasn't going to have a panic attack. I had a panic attack once when Will had first left, and then I'd dealt with it. But Sonny was coming back.

  "It's only for a little while," he promised.

  Leaning into his side, I nodded against him. I couldn't remember the last time anyone had hugged me like this. With so much reassurance and promises that I didn't doubt even a fraction that he wouldn't come back. It wasn't at all like when Will left. My own full-blooded little brother who gave me the quickest hug in history and pinched my arm before leaving.

  "Are you sure you're okay?" I asked him, pushing away the fact I hadn't heard from Will in months.

  Sonny laughed just a little, low and pained. "I've been better. I'll be all right once this all gets straightened out."

  I slid my arm around his back. "I'm sorry you got dragged into this mess."

  "Me too, kid, but I'd rather it be me than you who gets caught up in the shit-hole he's dug himself into." Sonny sighed and it pained my heart. "I need to get going though. Stay with Dex until I get back, okay?"

  I wanted to argue with him but what was the point? We all had to do things we didn't want to at some point, and if the Reapers would beat the shit out Sonny for the mistakes of our estranged father, what else were they capable of?

  "Maybe I should go to Lanie's," I suggested. "If they did that to you, won't they try and—"

  "No, Ris. I'm a sign for the sperm donor, and Dex knows better than to be a dumbass. You'll be fine."

  Oh man. This was a mess. A huge, surreal mess all caused by a man that had no connections to our lives anymore.

  "You won't get in trouble at your job?"

  Sonny laughed before loosening his hold on me and climbing to his feet slowly. "Don't worry about it. It's all good."

  I blew out a breath and nodded, getting off the bed. His face looked bad, so bad, but Sonny was his own man. I couldn't and wouldn't beg him to stay.

  "You got all your stuff?"

  I nodded.

  "Your bathroom stuff, too?" he asked.

  In that moment, I suddenly wished that I'd had Sonny in my life from the very beginning. I mean, who else would remember bathroom stuff of all things? "No, I forgot."

  He ruffled my hair lightly. "Go get it and I'll meet you outside."

  I followed after him but split off to grab my toiletries from the bathroom. There wasn't much so it only took a second to put my things into my duffel. Just as I was about to walk out of the house, I heard Sonny and Dex speaking on the other side of the door.

  "—been through too much, man. She doesn't need to go through anything else," Sonny spoke.

  "I said I'd watch over her." That was Dex who replied.

  "Fuck, I'll stay and this one can go with you." Another voice suggested. Trip, probably.

  Dex made a noise I couldn't recognize through the door. "I'm stayin'."

  There was a pause. “Keep your dick in your goddamn pants, Dex. I swear to God…”

  Sonny murmured something else I couldn't hear because he must have been further away from the door than Dex. Feeling creepy enough for eavesdropping, I pulled open the front door to all three of them on the deck. Sonny standing just off the stairs,
Trip and Dex right in front of me—well, the door.

  A tired smile crept over my brother's face. "You ready?"

  "Yeah." I looked over at the blonde standing next to Dex. "Hey, Trip."

  “Hey gorgeous,” he murmured. The color under his eyes made him look like he hadn't slept in a while.

  Dex's hand landed on my lower back, urging me forward. "Let's get going, Ritz. I'm tired."

  "All right." I walked over to Sonny and wrapped my arms around his chest. "Be safe, all right?"