by Naomi West
Fuck.
This was more, much more than just a physical attraction, and the emotions she was feeling terrified her.
She didn't have time to think much about how she felt, though, since Tanner came back and knocked urgently on her apartment door. Pounded, almost.
She smiled to herself, despite how upset she was, and wiped the remaining tears from her reddened eyes. They were probably all puffed up and almost shut from the all the crying, but she would worry about that later. What was most important, she realized, was his coming back to her. His coming back to, hopefully, help her figure this out.
There was one strange thing, though. She hadn't heard his bike come rumbling back up to the front of the apartments. Over the last few weeks, she'd learned to recognized his bike out of all the other vehicles that passed by. Normally, she would have heard him coming from a mile away.
She didn't worry about not hearing his bike, though. She'd probably just been too wrapped up in her own tears to notice his arrival.
Star went to the door and opened it without even looking through the keyhole.
Tanner shoved his way through, throwing her back against the wall as he bum-rushed his way in.
“What the fuck, Tanner?” she nearly screamed as he slammed the door shut behind him. And, that was when she realized Tanner hadn't been the man outside. Far from it.
Instead, there loomed over her a giant she'd never seen before. He was solid, too, with no extra fat on his massive frame. He wore an MC vest just like Tanner, but the colors were all wrong, different from the Blood Warriors.
“Hello, hello, little Star,” the man said with a grin through his thick beard. He peered out at her with bloodshot eyes full of loathing and hate. Those eyes were pure malice, the type that belonged to a man who would kick a dog without a moment's hesitation or afterthought.
“Wh-who the fuck are you?” Star asked as he stalked back and forth, her voice quivering. She didn't know where Tanner was, or who this man might be, but she knew in the pit of her stomach that this wasn't good. This wasn't good at all.
“I'm one of Tanner's old friends,” he sneered. “Doesn't he ever talk about me? Mention me around the dinner table? Or do I not warrant any appreciation?”
She shook her head. “You-you're not one of the Blood Warriors. You're one of those Wolves, aren't you?”
“Got it in one,” he said and laughed, his voice a little crazed-sounding, like what she'd expect to hear in the psych ward on a Saturday night . . . not in her own living room. It was surreal to have that kind of world invade her own.
Her blood ran cold. She glanced from him to the door and back again. She had to get out of here.
“Don't even think about it, little Missy,” he said, wagging his finger “no” at her. “You and me, we're gonna go for a drive. A nice, long drive down memory lane, so Tanner can see just how serious I am.”
Star had never been one to listen to other people’s advice. Patricia could attest to that. She lunged for the door, despite his warning.
He was fast as a rattler, and snatched her wrist before she could even get close to the door knob. He gripped her tight and yanked her wrists up and over her head.
She winced and cried out, pain shooting through her.
“Told you not to go for it!” he shouted. “Didn't I? No one ever listens! Now, stop, before I really get pissed, you little bitch!”
She had to think of the baby, had to think of the consequences for the child she was carrying. She stopped struggling and tried to bring her breathing back down to a normal rate.
“Good girl,” he said, his voice quieter now. He towered over her, dwarfing her with his size. “Think your man is going to come help you? Going to come save you on his white horse?”
“He'll come for me. He'll find me.”
“See, I bet he won't. Not for a while, at least. He's gotta get that shining armor all polished up, after all.”
“You'll regret this,” she said. “He'll find me. Then, he's going to find you asshole. He's going to find you and finish this.”
“Really? You think so?” he asked, a genuinely perplexed look coming over his bearded, gnarled face. “Cause the asshole ain't found me yet, and him and his whole crew been looking for fucking weeks now. Guess we're gonna find out . . . ain't we?”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Tanner
After his meeting with the rest of the Blood Warriors, Tanner rode back to Star's place. He was still pissed off, mainly at the Roaming Wolves, but he realized in the last hour that he was redirecting his anger onto her. And she didn't deserve that. He felt just like his father, a man who could lose control at any moment.
Of course Star wasn't ready for this kind of thing. Who would be? She wasn't a biker, and hadn't ever been some other biker's ol' lady, before. Shit, he'd kicked a fucking hole in her wall like some raging asshole. He probably terrified her with his outburst. He'd be lucky if she'd see him again. Ever.
And, honestly, he wouldn't have been able to blame her if she didn't.
He pulled up in front of his place and got off his bike. Her lights were still on, just like when he'd left. He was hoping she was awake still, and that maybe they could talk things out after their argument. Of course, he had more than just relationship patching to do. He had a hole in the dry wall to fix, too. But that could wait till morning.
He headed up the little walkway, past the poorly landscaped flowerbeds, and went to her front door.
Something was off. Her front door was slightly ajar. He walked up and called her name.
No answer.
“Star?” he called again.
Still nothing.
He suddenly felt like vomiting. Where was she? What the fuck was going on? He pushed open her door and went inside. This wasn't like her.
Her apartment was empty, just like he'd feared it would be. He stalked though her rooms, calling her name, despite the fact that there weren't many places she could have disappeared to in the small one bedroom unit.
“Maybe she just went out with Patricia?” he said aloud to the empty living room. “Or to find a job?” He shook his head. That was ridiculous. The evening was late, and she hadn't mentioned any interviews. He couldn't think of where else she'd be, though.
That's when he saw something on the ground. A piece of notebook paper with a scrawling handwritten note on its surface. He went over and picked the discarded page up, read over it. “You should look after the people you care about – Aaron.”
Aaron. Where did he recognize that name from?
He scrolled back through all his friends over the years, all the people he'd known or made enemies of. One name in particular stood out. A kid he used to run with, way back in the day.
Aaron had been a friend once, long ago. When he was younger, he'd hung out with a bunch of wannabe bikers. Kids whose dads were in MCs, or whose dads had always wanted to be in an MC. They'd ride their little 50cc dirt bikes around out in the woods, smoke cigarettes, drink cheap beer they'd gotten with a “Hey Mister?” from the local gas station.
But, that couldn't have been Aaron in that shitty flophouse apartment. The Aaron he knew was a skinny kid, all bones and sinew. The guy that had attacked him had been a fucking giant. But, now, as Tanner thought about the other biker who'd come after him with a baseball bat, he realized that the batter was him. Those eyes, those crazy fucking eyes that Aaron had. They were still the same, even after all these years.
His gaze had been intense, unnerving. Some of the other guys had been scared of him, thought he was a little too crazy, even for their group. He'd just always been the type of guy to tie fireworks to a cat's tail, or shoot birds with a pellet gun. Kid's shit, but Aaron always took a little bit too much joy in things of that nature.
Aaron.
How could he not have realized who had been terrorizing him all this time, until now? How could he have been so stupid?
He crumpled up the paper in his hand, his face twisting into a grimace as
he roared his pain and anger. This wasn't fair. Star didn't deserve to be a target of this shit. It should have been Tanner, not the mother of his child.
Tanner pulled out his phone and went through the text messages. He scrolled to the series of texts he'd received earlier, when his brother had been in trouble. The ones threatening to get him to overdose.
“A, Roaming Wolf,” the text had been signed.
Not “A Roaming Wolf,” like Tanner had originally thought! Instead, the sign-off had been, “Aaron, Roaming Wolf.” He growled, stuffed his phone away, and began to pace. Okay, this didn't make any goddamned sense. He knew Aaron, that much was clear. And the guy was holding a grudge against him, and his family, for something. But why? And for what? He hadn't done anything to the guy, hadn't ever gone out of his way to slight him or hurt him.
Did he want money? Did he want something to brag to his buddies about? He was a Wolf, so it could be tied to that.
Well, whatever the reason was, Tanner was pretty sure he had Star. Which meant, first and foremost, he had to get her back. That was his main priority. Figuring out the motivations of a fucking psychopath could come later, once he had her back safe and sound.
He pulled his phone out again and started to call Blade and the rest of the guys. He'd need help if he was going to find her and get her back. He couldn't do this alone.
# # #
Tanner had searched everywhere he could think of in town. But, when that hadn't panned out, he started to look over near the university. Restless, he cruised up and down the streets in the early morning, looking for any sign of her. His head swiveled back and forth to either side of the road as he tried to put the pieces together.
No luck. No signs. No clues. Only heart ache and worry. He pulled over at a twenty-four hour diner, one of the late-night breakfast places, and stopped in for a cup of coffee.
“You alright tonight, hon?” the waitress asked as she placed the cup of coffee he'd ordered down in front of him.
Tanner grunted. “Yeah. Just keep the coffee coming. Got a long night ahead of me.”
The waitress, her own long night ahead of her, nodded her agreement to the sentiments.
He took a sip of coffee. As he was setting his cup back down, his phone vibrated. He snatched his cell up, hoping for some news from Blade or one of the other guys.
Instead, there was another text message from Aaron, on that unknown number. His breath caught in his chest. This could be what he needed, good or ill. A clue to find her. A clue to save Star.
“Do you think she'll survive being frozen out like I was?” the message read.
Frozen out . . . sounded like a freezer, maybe. Maybe that, or a refrigeration unit, or trailer. Old meat lockers. It could be almost anything.
He picked up the phone and called Blade.
“Yeah?” Blade growled on the other end of the line when he picked up.
“Tell the guys to check refrigeration units, old warehouses, that kind of thing. Anywhere they can think of a walk-in cooler unit. He said something about freezing out, so maybe that's the clue we're looking for.”
“Got it, Tanner,” Blade rumbled. “You holding up alright?” he asked, concern in his voice.
“No,” Tanner said, “I'm not. I'll keep looking out here. If you hear anything, let me know.”
“Yep,” Blade simply replied, then the line was dead.
He tossed his phone down on the table, next to his coffee. He ran both his hands back through his hair, staring down into the deep abyss that was the swirling black liquid in front of him.
That's where she was. In the abyss. Deep enough, and far enough, away that he couldn't reach out and touch her. But all he could do was make a desperate grab for her and try to pull her back to him. The struggle to set things right was all he had anymore.
Tonight wasn't a good night for Tanner Skinner. Or Star Bentley.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Tanner
The sun peaked up over the horizon, sending its wake-up call across town. Tanner, parked at a gas station half-way between the college and home, heard a rooster crow three times in the distance. The previous night had been cold, and mist and dew covered everything in a fine, wet patina.
The last few hours had been for nothing. He'd gone by the crackhouse apartment where they'd found Brendon. The door had been locked up, so he'd gone around to the balcony Aaron had originally escaped out of and broken the sliding glass door. The glass fell in a thousand pieces, covering the floor and the patio.
The apartment was deserted, except for the same sense of despair that had weighed down the air before. Needles littered the carpet, and more cigarette burns scarred the furniture. But, no Star. He'd ducked out before the cops could get called. Which, knowing that place, could take hours. But, there was no sense in taking chances. Especially since he needed to be out to find her.
He wiped a hand down over his face and rubbed his eyes before taking another sip of black coffee.
His thoughts circled back around to Aaron's words: “Frozen out . . . like I was.”
The guys had searched all the frozen coolers they could think of, places that a guy like Aaron could get access to without raising any suspicion. No dice. They hadn't found a thing.
Tanner thought back to his time knowing Aaron. They'd played in the woods as kids, riding around, causing whatever trouble they could get away with. Honestly, they hadn't been bad times. Maybe just misguided. Just the kind of stupid things teenage boys got into when they had idle hands.
They'd had a little spot in the trees, a ways away from any back road, and far enough away from any of the main roads. Giant oaks had surrounded the place, giving them shade throughout the spring and summer, and they'd had a little clubhouse of sorts built around the base of one of them, and a small fire pit just outside for when the weather turned cold. They'd pile up logs and dead branches and huddle in close to the flames, trying desperately to keep warm.
And, man, had it gotten cold out there. One would think that the trees would form a sort of windbreak and offer some protection, but around this time of year that wind would start whipping out of the west like it was nothing.
That was when the realization hit him.
The old woods, where they'd gone as kids.
Damn it all to hell, why'd he have to be so blind?
He tossed his cup and the last of its coffee on the ground, adrenaline pumping through him as a more–than-ample replacement for caffeine, and hopped back on his bike. He took off out of the parking lot and got onto the highway. He opened up the throttle and took off, stitching a line through the early morning traffic.
“Star,” he mumbled against the cold, biting wind, “I'm coming for you.”
# # #
“Star?” he yelled, using both hands as a megaphone for his hoarse voice. So many years had passed, he barely recognized the place. The trail they used as kids to bring their mopeds and bikes down was overgrown and washed out, and he'd had to park on the back road. Now, he was scrambling through the prickling and grabbing underbrush, yelling her name every twenty feet or so.
No luck, though. All he could hear was that biting wind as it laced itself through the trees and sent up a rattling of dead branches and fallen leaves. The trees around him seemed to moan, taunting him with their cries, as the air itself shook them. The place felt deserted, abandoned, dead.
“Tanner?” a distant, weak voice called back from somewhere deeper in the woods. “Is that you?”
He heard the despair in her voice and took off at a breakneck run, low-hanging limbs tearing at his clothes and hair. A big scraggly branch ripped across his cheek, tearing his skin and releasing a trickle of blood. It rolled down his cheek as he sprinted through the tree's grabbing branches.
“Star?” he called again.
“Here!” she called back from somewhere off to his left. “I'm over here!”
He turned her direction and took off at a sprint, batting away branches as he pounded the earth with h
is booted feet. He broke through a line of evergreens and came upon their old clubhouse, its corrugated metal walls and roof rusted through. The old, makeshift structure had barely stood the test of time.
“Tanner!” Star called, drawing his attention up to the little ridge that overlooked the remnants of his youth.
He'd at least left her sitting against the base of the tree, but he'd tied her hands above her head to the trunk. Her legs were coiled in the dead, rotting leaves and grass, with several thick cords of rope looped around her waist to prevent her from moving. Leaves littered her hair, and small abrasions marked where her face had been scratched by the underbrush and dead branches when he'd brought her through.