“He’s going to k-k-kill me,” Izzy whimpered, and my blood ran cold. I believed it. There were rumors about everyone in a motorcycle club. The wild things we’d done. With me, yeah, okay, there were a few brawls checkering my history, some drunk and disorderly, and a few counts of theft and trespassing…but it was nothing compared to what people said about Alex Cantrell.
He’d spent his whole life stupid, and he couldn’t handle it. Couldn’t handle the judgment or the stress, and he lacked the forethought or the afterthought to successfully clean up after himself. He was a killer, the kind of guy who’d see red and just come back to his senses later. He was a killer, and a sloppy one at that.
And he’d kill Izzy.
I was as sure of it now as I had been in Moab.
There was a crackling over the phone line, and a husky laugh crawled into my ear. I winced as my own sight fogged red for a second. I couldn’t let myself be as basic and animal as that clown…but I wanted to. God, I wanted to.
“This can all be avoided, Ash, and I think you know how,” Alex added. “You killed Jared Wayne—the president of the mother-fucking Valiant—and you need to pay. You need to turn yourself in, and do your time, brother.”
“Don’t call me brother,” I commanded him acidly.
But Alex only laughed. “Don’t think you’re in a position right now to be making demands,” he reminded me. “You, or your little princess, either.”
My eyes bulged, and I wondered where he had her. Was she hurt? Or just restrained? Had he done anything to her? Had he touched her? Hit her? Groped her? Holy fuck, I was going to murder the man.
But—but there was nothing I could do, was there?
I didn’t know where he was. I only knew what he wanted—and the stakes if I denied him. I didn’t have the time, or the means…I didn’t have any other choice.
“Don’t do anything rash, Cantrell,” I soothed the maniac. “Just wait. Okay? Can you just wait while I make some phone calls? It’s not like—not like I have Agent Harrison on speed dial or anything.”
“I’ve got all the time in the world,” Alex crooned. “But your old lady over here? She…she’s only got an hour. Isn’t that right, cupcake?” I heard her howl in the distance, and wondered what he’d done to her.
“All right!” I cried. “All right, all right! Just…wait, okay? I’ll—I’ll call her back, or else, just watch your television for the fucking news. I’m going to do it, all right? I’m going to turn myself in. And when I do, you’d better believe that I’m going to tell them about how my beautiful, sweet, innocent captive, Isabelle Turner, was abducted in Las Cruces. And if they find her body, it’ll be on your head. I’ll make sure the world knows your name first—and nobody cries over a motorcycle thug like they cry over a sweet girl from a dairy farm, you feel me? Jury wouldn’t even flinch before injecting your ass, Cantrell.”
“Big words,” Alex jabbed. “But the only words I’m interested in hearing are ‘I’m turning myself in.’ Make it happen.”
The line went dead, and I stared dumbly at the phone for a moment. The convenience store which had become my world suddenly telescoped away, and I punched Jade’s number across the pad.
It rang three times.
“Hello?” her spritely voice came over the line.
“Jade, thank God,” I breathed.
“Hey, hey, what’s up?” she asked, a rare streak of concern running through her tone.
“The Valiant have my girl,” I told her, running a hand through my hair. “They’re gonna kill her for real if I don’t turn myself in within the hour.”
“Jesus fuck, man,” Jade winced. “What are you going to do? Should I call your brothers? Get Hell’s Ransom involved?”
“You don’t need to worry about what I’m going to do,” I told her. I suddenly felt more resolute and clear-headed than I had in a long time. With Isabelle’s life on the line, the cacophony in my head had settled into a vast and brilliant silence, and I was able to see what really mattered. The only thing that mattered. “All you need to worry about,” I instructed Jade, “is what you can do for me.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Isabelle
Alex migrated away from my cot, toward another area of the crowded basement, where the unearthly glow of the miniature television fluctuated on the wall. I couldn’t see the screen, or Alex anymore, but I could hear the voices of commentators: news. He was watching the news. And they were, in fact, talking about the escaped convict, Ashton Carter (“wanted murderer,” they called him) and his “hostage,” Isabelle Turner, and the multiple sightings that had come through the area. But, alas, there was no mention of any recent developments.
Still, Alex dutifully hovered in wait.
Waiting for a story that would never break.
I pursed my lips, and hot tears crusted over my eyes and darted down either temple.
Maybe Ashton Carter loved me enough to fuck me, and maybe he loved me enough to let me tag along on a road trip, and maybe he loved me enough to even throw a few hundred to get me my very own gun…but he didn’t love me enough to get tossed back into federal prison. He didn’t love me enough for that.
He was just going to run.
It was what he was good at, wasn’t it? Running?
He had the fake identification from Arlo in Albuquerque. He had several hundred dollars in cash. He was within an hour and a half of the goddamn border.
He was just going to run, and…forget about me.
Maybe he’d let me flutter through his thoughts late at night, during sad movies, or whenever he’d see a Mexican girl with greenish eyes, but then he’d shunt those thoughts out of his conscious mind and back down into the depths. He’d move on. He was a loner, and a fugitive, and a criminal. Moving on was a field in which he had to excel by nature.
Shut up, an inner voice instructed me, crystal clear and filled with disgust. Stop pitying yourself. Stop worrying about Ash and what HE’S going to do. He’s not YOU. Are you a thing? Are you alive? Can you think, and feel, and move? Great, stupid! So shut the hell up and start thinking about the important things. What are YOU going to do?
My eyes fluttered around the room, taking stock of the surroundings. Was there anything of which I could take advantage? Busted springs on the cot poking into my back: no. Fan blades idly whipping overhead: no.
I allowed myself just a few seconds more of wallowing in self-pity. What was I going to do? I was completely fucking immobilized, with the exception of a tiny sliver of wiggle room in each bond. I had no weapon. Beyonce was completely out of reach. A gun can’t cut through tape, anyway. So what good was she? What was I supposed to use? The blade was in Alex’s waistband, and like hell was I going in there. So what was I supposed to use? Shit! I had nothing…nothing. The only thing at my disposal was this frayed, rigid cot, with its sharp metal frame and its paper thin mattress and its broken spring right between my shoulders—
And its sharp metal frame.
Breath quickening, I began to wiggle and saw my arms back and forth, back and forth, feeling the thick tape give, thread by thread, with each thrust.
Ash wasn’t going to get me out of here…but I’d be damned if I was going to let that oily fuckwad put a bullet in my brain, after everything I’d lived through. I’d be damned if I was going to endure witness relocation just to get murdered for something entirely unrelated.
Chapter Forty-Three
Ashton
Every time I called her back, the rat-tat-tat of a keyboard sang music to my ear. Jade was doing it. Jade was getting it done. Thank God. I’d never been a religious man by any means, but I was about to become one.
“Any luck?” I asked—for the fourth time.
“Well, Ash, it’s the FBI,” she muttered, having lost her characteristically spritely attitude. When it came to computers, she shifted into a humorless and stoic worker bee. “It’s going to take me a minute.”
I winced. “I know, I know.” But it had already been over half an
hour. We were running out of time, and I needed a direct line now. There was no room for more firewalls, no room for encryption. “Is there anything I can do, maybe, to—”
“Shhh,” Jade commanded.
I frowned. She had never shushed me before.
“I’m almost through,” she added in a whisper, and I immediately dismissed any ill will that I felt toward her. “Just give me one…more…” The tapping of her fingers on the keys reached a crescendo, and then: “Yes!”
A pinch of gratitude snagged at my chest. It was crucial that I give myself up directly, because the circuitous process of the tip-line, and being on hold, being verified, paperwork—it was almost as if the bureaucratic aspect of the federal government didn’t want a criminal to make the rash decisions for which we were known, and give themselves over to the law.
But if I could talk to Agent Harrison…he would know my voice, my word choice, and he was already in this city. It wasn’t just that he was in the city; he was desperate to drag me back behind bars for a reason I couldn’t even really comprehend. There was something about him. Something that made our every exchange subtly yet perceptibly more than simple business. No matter how clipped and official his tone, there was something else there. He really hated me.
“Agent Connor Harrison,” Jade announced victoriously. “It’s a DC number. 202…619…5555. All fives. That’s Harrison’s primary number…and it looks like…”
Her voice faded out for a moment, and I pressed my tongue between my upper and lower lip.
“Let me get into my GPS module…” she muttered, mostly to herself.
I shifted from one foot to the other as if I needed to pee, begging myself to maintain my temper. She was my friend, and she was helping me immensely, but so help me God, if we didn’t start making moves within a matter of minutes, some of this frustration was going to spill over onto her work desk.
“Yep,” she chirped, and the tension in my chest loosened. Her tone always brightened when she exited work mode—which meant she was done. “He’s still in Las Cruces. Looks like he’s…at…64 Toro Drive. Hmm. Let me get a screenshot of that—”
“Really not necessary!” I barked, overexcited. She was the best, but there was such a thing as too far above and beyond, and I didn’t really need to know what the lame-ass Doubletree hotel on Toro Drive looked like right now. “Thanks, Jade! Love you!”
I didn’t hesitate to hear whether or not she loved me back, whether or not I was welcome for her strife. My fingers moved in a testosterone-infused blur over the keypad, exiting my phone call with Jade and entering a new line, a new number.
Isabelle’s.
Chapter Forty-Four
Isabelle
It was while I was thrusting my wrists up and down, sawing off the last few fibers of the duct tape which held them, still pinned to the sharp metal frame of the cot, that I heard the groan of a heavy chair being pushed across the cement floor, and Alex’s shadow became long across the wall.
He’d stood up, and then, I heard his voice. “Oh, my knight in shining armor,” he greeted someone in a fluty, put-upon falsetto. “Relax, Carter,” Alex chortled, shambling off to one side, almost giddy. I saw that he held a phone to his cheek: a boxy, black burner phone. My phone.
My head was turned as hard as it would twist against the deflated pillow on which I rested, and as Alex drifted behind a stack of boxes and out of sight, I was able to see that he had a beer in his hand. I then heard the sound of aluminum crinkling of a smashed can. He’d killed it off. I wondered if, maybe, he would go for a second, or a third. I could only hope.
My heart thundered in my chest. He was distracted, and he was drinking. Fuck yes. Now was the time. I needed to work hard. Once my hands were free, unfastening my knees and ankles would be no problem. Except the sound of the duct tape ripping apart; if he managed to hear that, he would certainly know. The fans overhead, producing a steady whir of white noise and a vague clicking as they swayed back and forth where they were riveted, could have played to my advantage—but he would need to be unable to see me. He would need to be out of the basement.
I didn’t hear him anymore. Might he have been upstairs?
And then…then the game would change entirely, because I’d be unfettered in a hostile and unfamiliar place. But, with all the boxes around, there were plenty of options to climb, or hide, or use as weapons, depending on what was inside…and Beyonce was out of reach, but she wouldn’t be out of reach for long. She was in plain sight, that idiot. If I could catch Alex unawares, I could peg him with a bullet before he even realized the bed was empty.
And then…then…just find the stairs. Find the door. Probably right behind that big stack of boxes. Then, find the road. There had to be a road; there was always a road. Was it possible that I had been taken out into the desert itself? So disorienting to try to figure out where the lost time had gone. If I could find a road, though, then civilization would spring off it. I’d be able to find someone who might be willing to help me out. Get the hell out of here, basically. Not that hard. Not nearly as hard as Alex believed that it would be—because he overestimated himself, and he underestimated me.
And, as impossible as it was to feel this way, I still wanted to get back to Ash as soon as possible, like some pathetic homing pigeon who didn’t know when its master had moved to a new address. I would just drunkenly dial his number again and again, bopping around in New Mexico long after Ash had already crossed the border under the guise of a man named Carmichael. Argh. The man could even leave me for a dead in a basement, at the hands of a thug I’d never even met before meeting his ass, and I’d still want to see him again; what was wrong with me?
Maybe nothing. I didn’t know. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Those shimmering green eyes, sometimes dark with contemplation, sometimes practically emerald with mirth. But it wasn’t just the eyes. It was something unspeakable. I didn’t know where to begin. The easiness of our conversation. The magnetism of our bodies. The helpless way I kept giving a shit about our future. But I’m not one for second-guessing and self-doubt. If I want something, I do it. I take it. It was precisely the frame of mind which got me into all these messes to begin with.
My fist suddenly shot through the air in front of me, released from its silver bonds, and I would have cried out with joy and given myself away if the joy hadn’t been so crushing. All I could manage was a whimper of relief. My wrist was raw and pink from the steady chaffing I had intentionally given myself. But it didn’t matter. It didn’t fucking matter. I was loose.
My free hand went to unwrapping my other wrist, and then I was able to sit up, both hands working to free both knees and my ankles. I winced at the loud ripping sounds each bond made as it came loose. There really was no disguising it.
Sliding off the cot silently, I moved toward the table where I’d seen Beyonce deposited. I crept with the stealth of a panther, closer and closer, on high alert because I knew that Alex might have heard the duct tape being unwrapped.
On the table. There was Beyonce.
And her ejected magazine.
I grasped the gun and snatched up the magazine, frowning.
It was too light. It was way too light.
Shit. He’d taken out the bullets.
I sighed and glared down at Beyonce, trying my damn best to think my way out of this one, when I heard Alex’s voice belt out, “HEY! JUST WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”
I whirled and gaped in shock as Alex’s clumsy sausage fingers came up around my throat easily enough. It looked like strangling someone was one maneuver which required little in the way of grace…
But he didn’t know that I’d taken self-defense from the most formidable instructor America had to offer: her cities.
Hooking my fingers externally into the fleshy inside of his elbows and ripping outward as hard as I could, I simultaneously shoved a knee up into his groin and sent his body both forward and backward. While his arms were affected by the momentum of
my pull, angling him toward me, his hips instinctively bucked back, away from the assault of my kneecap…leaving his body at an awkward and vulnerable angle. His pressure around my throat was broken now, and I pummeled his jaw with my knuckles.
Alex staggered to one side weakly, and I bolted past him, shoving Beyonce’s magazine into her butt, even if I couldn’t use her right now. “Loser,” I breathed, dodging in between two stacks of crates and up a flight of rusted mesh stairs I hadn’t been able to see from my vantage point. The stairwell swayed with my weight as I pounded up toward the doorway—which read EXIT in bright red letters.
I was praying to any deity who would listen that this was not a place The Valiant frequented in packs, but rather, somewhere Alex had found on his own…or maybe a place that had been loaned to him, which was not packed…
I burst through the EXIT door with my Gat drawn, hoping that anyone on the other side would automatically recoil in the assumption that she was loaded. But the upstairs was barren, save a few complex bodies of rusted equipment and broken windows.
He’d taken me to some abandoned factory or warehouse in the boondocks of New Mexico. Of course. It made perfect sense.
I hunted down one of the exit doors and thrust my entire weight against it. Damn! Locked. And I didn’t have much time…Alex would be right behind me…
But the second set of doors came open on their rusted hinges easily, except for the shrill shriek they gave. Warm night air fluttered against my brow, welcoming, reassuring, and I took off, thighs pumping, down the deserted strip of loose asphalt, toward a smattering of lights in the distance.
At the first stoop that I saw, I flung myself onto the mercy of the homeowners.
I pounded without rhythm or cease until the door inched open, and an eye both weary and wary regarded me from the slit. “Can I help you?” the aged voice wondered.
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