Serving the Bad Boy: War Hawks MC

by Carmen Faye

  As the doors parted, I was surprised that the woman waiting to greet me was smiling warmly. I stepped out of the elevator to her extended hand, ready to shake mine.

  “Hello, Ms. Beckwith. I am Catarina Credence,” she said in a pleasant voice. “Mr. Poole was not expecting to meet with you and Tarek until this evening, but Tammy tells me that you say Tarek is in trouble. I spoke with him earlier, and he seemed fine.”

  “Well, that must have been before Perry Hamilton’s men abducted him and took him to a strange office building,” I replied.

  “That information had not been given to us,” she replied, beginning to look worried as she made her way to a nice open office space she had.

  A set of large frosted glass doors stood a few feet off center behind her.

  “I don’t mean to be rude. You seem to be taking me seriously and to actually know who Tarek is. I just know that time is precious and he doesn’t have much of it left. If Ali can do anything, I need to speak to him sooner rather than later. We need to move,” I said, following to her desk and watching as she stepped behind it and called a number.

  “Tarek, it’s Cat. If you get this, call me immediately,” she said into the phone somewhat panicked.

  “Are you going to help me?” I asked, beginning to feel slightly relieved at the possibility of having help of any kind.

  She was already pushing buttons on the phone again.

  “Mr. Poole, Ms. Beckwith is here to see you about Tarek,” she said.

  Apparently, she did not like his response. She stood at her desk looking at the wall but seeming to focus on something in the distance.

  “Ali Poole, I know that you were meeting them this evening. I schedule your life. I’m telling you she is here now, alone, looks injured herself and says that Tarek is with Perry Hamilton,” she said through clenched teeth.

  There was a click on the line, and she hung up.

  “What did he say?” I asked, feeling my stomach begin to knot again.

  Before she could answer, the door to the office swung open so hard that it banged loudly against the wall. Catarina and I both spun on our heels at the sound. I felt myself jump a foot in the air, afraid that there was more shooting or another bomb.

  Instead, there was a man who looked like Tarek, but shorter and slightly aged. He was thinner, and his face looked unrested. He stood in the doorway unsteadily, looking at me.

  “Annie,” he said, making his way to me unsteadily to shake my hand. “I’m Ali. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  ***

  Tarek

  I gripped the doorknob hard twisting it and shaking the door to the hinges. It was locked from the outside, and nothing I tried was working.

  I began frantically grabbing things from around the room trying to detach the knob or wedge between the door and the latch bolt.

  “Why have a door that only opens from one side?!” I yelled, slamming a fist against the barricade.

  I paced over to the redhead who was still gagged. “How does it open?” I asked, ripping the fabric away from her mouth.

  I looked down at her face angrily. She looked at me, blissful as ever. She was still enjoying it all.

  “Oh, I don’t know if I want to tell you. You weren’t really being very nice to me. You planned to trick me and leave me tied here,” she replied coyly.

  “I figured you would like it,” I replied, not giving a damn.

  I stepped away from her again and began rethinking my options for escaping the room we were in.

  “You can’t get out of this room without myself or Dr. Hamilton. All the rooms on this hall are designed that way,” she said casually. “Patients in this area are treated to our best care by our best members of staff, the doctor and myself.”

  “I suppose you for your bedside manner,” I said offhandedly as I rifled through another drawer.

  “Me because I’m the only one here who can withstand the doctors S&M obsessions coming and going,” she said, her voice sounding suddenly rational, without any teasing or premise.

  I turned to face her. It was like looking at someone suddenly sober, only faking drunkenness to blend in.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “I came to Perry Hamilton because he promised he could help me. The truth is, I was his every fantasy all in one. He keeps me here. I treat it all as a game, so I don’t go insane,” Nurse Fleiss replied, looking away from me for the first time.

  “I don’t understand. The look you two shared and all this throwing yourself at me in here,” I said, trying to gather the words to ask her to explain.

  “I enjoy giving Perry Hamilton back the pain he gives everyone else. He needs someone to hurt so he doesn’t hurt more people worse.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  She took a deep breath and rolled her head to look back at me again.

  “I don’t actually feel anything,” she said.

  “What do you mean you don’t feel anything? You’re flesh and blood. You can’t just tune our when someone is abusing you.”

  “I can.”

  I could see that she was weighing up what she was telling me.

  “I have congenital insensitivity to pain partnered with varying degrees of apathy linked bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. I don’t feel anything he does to me and other than the fact that I just know this is all supposed to be wrong, I don’t feel a damned thing about it,” she said.

  “You have been relishing in my pain since I got here,” I replied in disbelief. “Even if that first bit was true, why should I believe you about the rest?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe I am just as crazy as you think I am,” she said with a shrug. “Or maybe I know exactly how crazy I am and can read how crazy other people are or what they will respond to. Look at me. I have way more scars than most women my age.”

  I looked at her arms and legs more closely. Aside from marks that looked like they were from the time she might have spent with Hamilton, there were several faded scars that looked years old.

  “Some people are clumsy,” I replied. “Maybe you really do just like to play a little more roughly.”

  “I used to hurt myself all the time as a kid. I had no idea,” she said, shaking her head and shrugging for emphasis since her hands were still restrained. “I had to inspect myself every time I fell down because I wouldn’t feel if I had a scratch, a bruise, or worse. My mother took me to the hospital for burns because I wouldn’t sense that my bath was hot, but couldn’t feel the water burning my skin, cooking me.”

  “So, that makes you a perfect candidate for Hamilton’s interests, but the rest is what?” I asked. “You have mood swings and a few quirks.”

  “I came to Hamilton because when my mother died, I felt nothing. The woman who had birthed me, clothed me, saved me from myself was gone, and I felt like it was any other day of the week. I don’t feel in any way that I am supposed to,” she said, meeting my gaze again.

  Her face seemed calm, almost sedate.

  “So what’s with the act?” I asked, beginning to wonder whether I should believe her story. “Hamilton couldn’t help you?”

  “He didn’t want to help me,” she said simply. “Once I was finally able to meet with him it was only to satisfy the curiosity he had about me. He was excited to see if I really was insensitive to pain. The things he did to me the first night we met would have probably made anyone else black out from the pain or go into shock, I imagine.”

  Her eyes began to look distant as she rolled her head back to center. She gazed at the ceiling.

  “He finally met with me, an appointment scheduled at the end of his business day. I told him my story, certain he doubted me until I learned he had a chair customized for the occasion. It was randomly sticking me in the bottom with pens as I sat the entire time,” she paused and chuckled softly. “He thought it was broken until I turned to leave. My white pencil skirt had dozens of red blood dots where he had rapidly been pressing the button
under his desk.”

  I sucked in my breath slightly at the image it conjured in my mind. A younger version of the woman before me seeking help, but being treated like a pincushion first to prove her sincerity.

  “He apologized and had his staff tend the wounds and provide me fresh clothes. He took me to dinner that evening to further discuss my condition and my mental disorders. He took me back to his home. There, he brought me to a room very much like this one. He overpowered me, hitting me harder and attacking me more violently with numerous objects becoming aroused to the point that he eventually took me. He took me again and again, and then took my womanhood from me so he could use me as he pleased,” she said in a manner so calm that I felt a chill run down my spine.

  She seemed so distant from this moment, and she talked about the memory with some distance as well.

  “He gave me a hysterectomy that night, wide awake,” she finished. “I didn’t feel a thing. I have never felt anything he has done to me.”

  “So, why tell me this. Are you offering to help me now?” I asked.

  “I know something is wrong with me, but I also know the difference between ethically right and wrong,” she said, looking at me again. “I know that people aren’t meant to go through life unable to feel the experience. I came to him for help and have only been taken farther from what I was seeking. I knew if I waited long enough there would be someone who would come through these walls that could do something about Perry Hamilton if they wanted it badly enough.”

  “Seems like you have been in the perfect position the whole time,” I replied. “You probably could have killed him ten times over, or you could leave. That would probably be the best thing for you.”

  “Mr. Poole, there are things much worse than death,” she replied. “The idea of death is enough when the threat is real. For example, I have a chip he attached to my spine after an escape attempt. I leave the perimeter of this property, and an electric current will run through my body killing me.”

  “You can’t feel anything; I could fish it out of you,” I said, wanting to help her now.

  She shook her head and said, “It’s programmed to detonate if removed without the doctor’s override.”

  “So, what can we do?” I asked.

  “I came to prep the room, but I still need to open the panel and let it scan my retinas to leave. If you work with me, we can shut this place down and free everyone. I have access to every computer file and everything in his office here. I have been hiding things all over this building waiting for an opportunity,” she said, beginning to wiggle on the table. “Untie me. The life I had was bad, but it held things I wanted to feel, not things that made me glad I couldn’t. That’s no way to live.”

  Chapter 19

  Annie

  “I thought we had dinner plans for this evening. You and my brother were to occupy yourselves until we could meet,” Ali said, stumbling back to his office.

  His walk was strange his muscles seemed stiff, but weak. Each step looked like a challenge to bend and move, but then somewhat wobbly on the landing. Catarina walked close to him but did not offer any aid. The expression on her face implied that she knew better than to acknowledge his difficulty.

  “I did not realize,” I said, trying to speak calmly. “I left before Tarek could tell me about the plans for the day.”

  “You left?” Ali asked, pausing a moment to turn and look back at me curiously.

  I looked at Catarina, uncertain if I had said the wrong thing. She pursed her lips and lowered her head. I had said the wrong thing now and done the wrong thing this morning.

  I had left.

  I left his brother after we had been in a dangerous situation. I left him after he had taken me with him everywhere to keep me safe, and now he was the one in danger. I probably came across as a horrible person at that particular moment.

  “I left. I was afraid, and Tarek couldn’t tell me anything more reassuring than that I had to trust you,” I explained. “I didn’t know who you were though, and the things he had told me about your arrangement didn’t exactly paint you in the best light.”

  “What did Tarek tell you?” Ali asked somewhat curtly, seating himself at his desk.

  “Ali, likely he didn’t tell her much of anything at all. Tarek has always honored your agreement,” Catarina said, defending Tarek in his absence.

  I wondered if she was fonder of him than Ali realized.

  He took a deep breath to calm himself and motioned for me to have a seat in one of the chairs opposite his desk. Catarina brought me water from a small wet bar that was in the corner of the office.

  “Thank you,” I said, accepting the water.

  I sipped it to buy a little time to think, but Ali was impatient.

  “What did my brother tell you, Ms. Beckwith?” he barked, rapping a hand on the desk.

  Then he sat back. He jerked as he crossed his legs. He seemed uncomfortable and then jerked again as he placed both feet back on the ground. Finally, he leaned forward and rested his head on one of his fists.

  “He told me that he does favors for you and cleans up certain messes from your work in exchange for a loan you gave him to open his restaurant. He’s the leader of the War Hawks,” I said, speaking more softly as I tried to observe the way he occasionally jerked and twitched. “He told me that Perry Hamilton was dangerous, and now Perry Hamilton has him.”

  “I was going to take you for a nice meal. You have been staying in my homes. Now, you leave my brother, and he is taken?” Ali seemed to be trying to wrap his head around things.

  “When you say it like that, you make it same like he was taken because I left,” I said, reeling from the possible accusation.

  “Well, no one had him while you two were together. He has never been abducted before,” Ali said coldly. “Why did you leave? You had decided to join him for some reason. So why suddenly leave?”

  The muscles around his eye seemed to spasm. He shuddered quickly as if trying to shake something off. The more I watched him, the more he seemed to be an attractive version of Tarek on drugs. It was if he couldn’t make his body do the things he wanted and other things it did of its own volition. Catarina looked like it took every ounce of restraint in her to keep from trying to help him or reach out to him.

  “I was concerned. From all that Tarek had been through, and then seeming to be placed in the line of danger at the gala, I didn’t think the guy he was describing, you, was really trying to help him very much at all. It sounded like someone moving around a pawn until the moment it was time to get it off the chessboard,” I replied.

  I couldn’t tell if he was upset with me. He seemed like he wanted to reply but couldn’t find the words. He opened his mouth as if to speak but then closed it again without uttering a word. He looked as bothered with himself as he seemed to be with me.

  Catarina stepped forward to interject on his behalf.

  “Mr. Poole has a lot on his mind and is aware of the gravity of Tarek’s situation. He is going to do all that he can, but he needs any details you have on where Tarek might be or what Perry Hamilton may have done to him,” she said, taking a stance of authority at Ali’s side. “I can assure you, his brother is not simply a pawn in a game to him.”

  He looked up at her slightly and seemed to feel more himself again. He appeared to sigh with relief regarding how she had been able to clarify and interpret when he was unable to.

  “Mr. Poole should speak for himself then and explain why he would allow his brother to get into such a mess,” I said. “Why have you been placing him in harm’s way?”

  “If anyone has placed my brother in harm’s way, Ms. Beckwith, Annie,” he said in a low, angry tone, “it is you. My brother and I do have an arrangement, but our arrangement channels his wild side. Our arrangement keeps him accountable. Our arrangement teaches him value and keeps his focus and hope. Since the event, you, whom I had never even heard of until after shit hit the fan, have been at his side ever since. Uncharacteris
tically so, in fact. You may not have been with my brother long, but you definitely don’t seem to bring anything good into his life.”

  “And, Mr. Poole is right,” Catarina added, playing devil’s advocate and changing sides. “It is strange that when most people would have fled for home or the nearest phone or police, you got on the bike of a stranger. Furthermore, you left him as randomly as you joined him.”

  “Well, maybe we have all misjudged each other,” I said, considering matters from his perspective. “Maybe we can work together to bring Tarek back. We could even grab that dinner you were talking about and get to know each other. Maybe we will start to understand what Tarek sees in each of us.”