Defending Allye

by Susan Stoker

  Rubbing his hands together, Nightingale left the enormous underground bunker and headed up the stairs.

  He closed the innocuous door behind him, knowing no one would ever guess that below the San Rafael Exotic Animals Refuge were his greatest treasures.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Allye knew her breathing was too fast, but she couldn’t help it. She walked faster than normal down the sidewalk toward the Dance Theatre of San Francisco. She’d come straight from the airport, and Ball had driven her as close to the theatre as he could. He’d had to drop her off a block away because of traffic, though, and every time Allye passed a guy, she wondered if he was Nightingale.

  Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore a pair of jeans and a formfitting blouse. She carried her purse and fiddled with the strap as she walked.

  She knew the guys were out there, watching. Meat was in the apartment next to hers, monitoring her on his computer. Rex’s contact, who’d turned out to be a veterinarian, of all things—the irony wasn’t lost on her—had met the plane and come aboard and inserted the tracker into the back of her thigh.

  It hadn’t hurt all that much, merely like a regular shot. But she’d seen for herself the small dot on the map that had indicated it was working. Her thigh itched, but she tried to ignore it.

  She was on her way to the theatre to see the other dancers for the first time since the abductions had begun. She didn’t know what her reception would be. Didn’t know if they were aware the kidnappings were related to her—if they’d blame her and hate her for them, or if they’d be glad to see her.

  She took a deep breath and opened the door. She walked through the lobby and the door off to the side that said “Employees Only.” She continued past the dressing-room doors and went straight to the common room. She took a moment to calm herself before entering.

  Immediately, she was engulfed in hugs, and everyone was talking at the same time.

  “Oh my God, girlfriend, welcome back!”

  “We’re so glad you’re here.”

  “Did you hear about Jessie and the others?”

  “I can’t believe Robin is missing now.”

  She gave everyone hugs, then answered their questions about her absence as best she could, leaving out the fact that their friends had been kidnapped and killed because someone was obsessed with her.

  Hours later, after she’d had her fill of everyone, it was time to go. They’d spent the afternoon talking about what was happening. It was a giant counseling session of sorts, but by the end of the day, Allye certainly didn’t feel any better. Everyone had formed a kind of buddy system, which she was gratified to see. No one went anywhere by themselves. They came to work in pairs, and they left that way too.

  Allye knew Ball and Arrow and the others were watching out for her, but she still felt safer walking out with a young dancer named Boyd when it was time to leave. He lived a couple of blocks from her and was happy to share a taxi.

  Allye hadn’t been back to her apartment yet, but was actually looking forward to it. It wasn’t much, but it was her space. She’d gotten used to Gray’s huge house, and thought her studio apartment was going to feel a little claustrophobic, but she supposed she had to get used to it.

  She hadn’t decided if she could forgive Gray yet. She had thought she’d known the kind of man he was, but now she wasn’t so sure. He’d hurt her. Bad. But even though she was upset with him, she still wished he was with her. The conflicting feelings only confused her more, and she vowed to not think about it right now. She’d make a decision after Nightingale was dead. She knew without a doubt that he would end up that way. And she was glad.

  “It really is good to have you back,” Boyd said as they exited the theatre and said their goodbyes to the other dancers. Some were headed to the BART, and others were walking home. She and Boyd headed to the lone taxi sitting at the curb.

  “Thanks,” Allye told him.

  Boyd leaned over when the driver rolled down his window, and asked, “Franklin and Washington in Nob Hill?”

  “Sure,” the driver said. “No problem.”

  Allye didn’t bother looking at him, other than to notice he was older than she was by a couple of decades. He had unremarkable black hair and looked to have a slight paunch. She figured it probably came from sitting all day, driving a taxi. Hard to get exercise when you were in a car.

  She scooted over, and Boyd climbed in next to her.

  “Long day?” the driver asked.

  “Yeah,” Boyd said. “But good. My friend here has been gone, and it’s her first day back.”

  “Welcome home,” the driver said, looking at her through the rearview mirror.

  The taxi had a plastic divider between the back seat and the front, probably to protect the driver from any crazy people he was transporting. There was a small sliding door that was currently open, allowing them to talk back and forth easily.

  “Thanks,” Allye returned.

  “Where you been?”

  “She was in Colorado,” Boyd answered for her. He’d always been super friendly, and was very popular with the patrons at the theatre because he was so upbeat and happy. “She met a boooooy,” he teased, smiling at Allye.

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Shut up, Boyd.”

  He laughed.

  “A man, huh? Things didn’t work out?” the driver asked.

  Allye shifted uncomfortably. She’d never been one to talk about herself with strangers, and the pain of her fight with Gray was still just too raw. She shrugged.

  “Yeah, uprooting your entire life for someone is never a good idea. It rarely works out.”

  Allye pressed her lips together, not wanting to discuss it.

  “But you’re a pretty little thing, so I’m sure you’ll find another boyfriend without too much trouble. Maybe you two are dating?” the taxi driver asked, his eyes flicking from the road to the mirror.

  “Us? Naw, she’s the wrong gender,” Boyd teased. “I like my partners a little more manly.”

  Allye smiled at Boyd and tried to ignore the driver. She could feel his eyes on her through the mirror as she and Boyd talked about nothing in particular. All too soon, they pulled up in front of Boyd’s apartment complex.

  “I’ll come by tomorrow morning, and we can ride in together,” Boyd told her. “Eight o’clock work?”

  Allye nodded. “That’s great. Thanks, Boyd. I appreciate it.”

  “No problem,” he said. He pulled out some cash and handed it to her to pay for his portion of the taxi. He then leaned over and gave her an air kiss. “See you later, girlfriend.”

  He shut the cab door behind him, and Allye watched as he put in the building’s door code and entered his complex.

  “Where to?”

  Allye jerked in surprise, then laughed uneasily at herself for being so jumpy. “I’m only a couple of blocks away, on the other side of Lafayette Park. On the corner of Webster and California.”

  “Just sit back and relax, pretty Mystic. I’ll have you home in no time.”

  She nodded and sat back, leaning her head against the headrest and closing her eyes. She was exhausted. It seemed like it had been forever since she’d had the fight with Gray, instead of that morning.

  She felt the car begin moving, and sighed. She had no idea what she had to eat in her apartment after all these weeks, but she’d make do.

  Allye was thinking about what she wanted for dinner when she heard an odd sound. She opened her eyes and picked up her head to see that the driver had closed the plastic partition between the seats.

  He was looking at her in the mirror again . . . but this time there was something in his eyes she didn’t like.

  Suddenly, she realized . . . he’d called her Mystic.

  How did he know her stage name? She hadn’t told him, and she didn’t think Boyd had mentioned it.

  Just then, a plume of smoke rose from the floorboard.

  She coughed and immediately went for the door handle and t
ugged. The door didn’t open, and they continued driving down the street as if nothing was wrong.

  Allye pounded on the plastic partition and tried to open it, but the handle of the little door was on the other side. Smoke was filling the back seat now, and she lifted her shirt to put it over her nose and mouth, but it was no use. She began to feel dizzy and nauseated.

  Recognizing the buildings they were flying past, she knew they weren’t headed toward her apartment complex anymore. They were going the wrong way.

  This was it. She’d known it was inevitable that Nightingale would have her captured again, but she stupidly hadn’t expected him to do it so soon.

  She tried to roll the window down, but it, too, was locked. She could barely see through the thick smoke encasing the back seat now, but she looked up into the mirror and saw the man watching her once more. A sense of satisfaction was easy to read in his expression.

  “Let it happen, pet. Don’t fight me. You’ve led me on a merry chase, but now you’re mine. All mine,” he said as his eyes flicked between the road in front of him and the rearview mirror.

  Horrified, Allye realized that the taxi driver wasn’t just an escort.

  It was him. Nightingale. He’d come for her himself this time.

  Blackness began to creep in at the sides of her eyes, and she fell over onto the seat cushions, still coughing and trying to fight whatever drug he’d used on her. But it was pointless.

  Her last thought before she passed out was that she hoped Rex’s men really were watching her, because she was in big trouble.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gray paced back and forth in front of the San Francisco International Airport. He’d had to fly commercial since the plane and pilot Rex usually used had already left with the rest of the team and Allye. Arrow was supposed to be picking him up, but he’d been waiting an hour and hadn’t seen him yet.

  Anxious to see Allye now that he was in California, and apologize, he resented the wait. Even worse, no one was answering his texts or phone calls—and that worried him. A fuck of a lot. Especially because Meat always answered. The man was glued to his cell as if it were another appendage. For him not to answer meant something was seriously wrong.

  And he had a bad feeling it had to do with Allye.

  After another fifteen minutes of waiting, his phone finally rang. It was Ro.

  “Ro, thank fuck. Where are you guys?”

  “He got her,” Ro said, not beating around the bush. “We were tracking her, but then everything became a huge clusterfuck.”

  “What?” Gray said, outraged. “How the fuck could you guys let him get his hands on her? I thought you were all watching her?”

  “We were!” Ro insisted. “Arrow was in a taxi behind the one she got into with another dancer. But apparently his driver was a stickler for following every single bloody traffic light, and Arrow fell too far behind Allye’s taxi to keep his eye on them. Black was outside her apartment, posing as a homeless guy, but of course the taxi never stopped there. And Ball was following in a rental, but someone ran a red light and sideswiped him.”

  “And you, Ro? Where the fuck were you?”

  “I was waiting outside the theatre. I was supposed to escort her back to her apartment on the cable cars, but at the last minute, she sent me a text and told me she’d be going with one of her coworkers, to try to disguise the fact that she had a bodyguard.”

  “Dammit!” Gray swore, running a hand over his head in agitation. “Was she going out of her way to try to get kidnapped?”

  “Honestly? No,” Ro answered as if Gray’s question wasn’t rhetorical. “She met my eyes before she got into the taxi, as if making sure it was okay with me. I didn’t want to make a scene outside the theatre . . . but obviously I should’ve hauled her ass out of that taxi and taken her home myself.”

  “Rex told me she has a tracker, right?” Gray asked. “Why aren’t you guys there taking care of that asshole and getting her back?”

  “The bloody signal disappeared,” Ro said. “One second it was there, the next, gone.”

  “Fuck!” Gray said, kicking the building he was standing next to in frustration. Rex had briefed him on the tracker Allye had inserted in the back of her leg. He wasn’t happy they were experimenting on her, but on the other hand, he was glad the team had some way of following her every move. He knew as well as all of them did that simple surveillance wasn’t enough. Especially not with someone like Nightingale, who’d gotten very good at flying under the radar. “Start at the beginning. What happened, exactly? How’d Nightingale get his hands on her if she was in a taxi?”

  “She went to the theatre as planned and left with one of the other dancers, as I told you. They took the taxi, and after the other dancer was let out a couple of blocks from her apartment, the taxi didn’t stop at her place. Meat said at first he thought maybe she was going to get something to eat, but when the vehicle went across the Golden Gate Bridge toward Sausalito, he realized something was wrong.”

  “Where are you?” Gray barked, heading back inside to the rental car counter. He was done waiting for someone to come get him. Besides, they were all too busy. He’d prefer they stay on the hunt for Allye, not divert to pick his ass up.

  “Meat is still at Allye’s apartment complex, trying to get the signal to work. The rest of us are spread out around where the signal last pinged.”

  “Send me the coordinates. I’ll be on my way as soon as possible.”

  “Ten-four.”

  “Ro?” Gray said quickly before his friend could hang up.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for being here for her.”

  “We all knew you’d show up sooner or later,” Ro said, no doubt whatsoever in his tone. “You love her, and she loves you. Nothing can get in the way of that.”

  “I’m counting on it,” Gray said. “Send the coordinates. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  “Drive safe. You can’t help her if you get in an accident.”

  “I will.” Gray clicked off the phone and greeted the employee behind the counter. While she was busy getting his rental agreement ready, Gray tapped his foot impatiently, not able to keep still. He couldn’t think about what was happening to Allye. Not now. He had to keep it together. She’d be okay. She had to be. Any other outcome was unacceptable.

  Allye came awake slowly. She was confused for a moment and shook her head, trying to clear it. She started to stretch, feeling cramped, and was surprised when she couldn’t fully straighten her legs.

  Memory came flooding back, and her eyes popped open and looked around in alarm.

  She was in a large cage, just like the man on the boat had promised she would be when she was delivered to her new “master.” That seemed like a lifetime ago.

  She was wearing her panties and bra, but the rest of her clothes had been taken. Her hair was loose around her head, her ponytail holder gone. The cage was in a small room with no windows. There was a concrete floor, and the walls also looked to be made out of concrete. It was chilly, and goose bumps rose on her skin.

  Shifting to her knees, Allye tested the strength of the bars around her. Solid. There was a padlock on the cage door, so she couldn’t get out that way. Sitting back on her ass and hugging her knees, Allye tried not to panic.

  “They’re coming,” she told herself quietly. “They know where you are, they’re coming.”

  The words helped calm her, if only because she fiercely hoped they were true.

  How long she’d been left alone, she had no idea, but when the door to the room suddenly flew open, she jolted in fright.

  Two men entered. They were wearing one-piece olive-green jumpsuits and baseball caps on their heads.

  “Please help me!” she begged as they came toward her. “I’m being held without my consent.”

  The men ignored her and crouched on either side of her cage. They looked at each other, then one said, “On the count of three. One, two, three.”

  Allye squeale
d in surprise when they lifted the cage she was in and began to carry her out of the room.

  “Hey, did you hear me? I was kidnapped! Open this and let me out!”

  Again, they acted as if she hadn’t spoken. She held on to the bars of the cage and frantically looked around, trying to figure out where she was and what was happening.

  The men carried her into another room, this one with a huge window in one wall, and roughly put the cage down. Allye’s teeth rattled together as the cage vibrated with the force of the drop. The men turned to leave.

  “Hey, seriously, you can’t just leave me here! Help me. For the love of God, help me!”

  One man left, but the second turned around before he exited. He looked right at her and said, “Sorry, pet. There’s no help here. You belong to T.B. now. If I were you, I’d do exactly what he tells you to.” Then he, too, was out the door.

  Allye screamed in frustration, the sound echoing in the smaller room. She frantically pulled at the bars once more, but again they didn’t budge.

  At that moment, she wished she’d listened to Gray. She wanted to be back in his house. Waking him up by putting her mouth on him, knowing he’d get rough and take her exactly how he wanted . . . and exactly how she loved.

  She wanted his arms around her. Wanted to be warm and safe. But no. She had to be all noble, and now here she was. She’d made her bed, now she had to lie in it.

  The door opened once more, and Allye flinched. The taxi driver walked in, although now he didn’t look anything like he had before. He was wearing a pristine gray suit with a red tie. His hair was combed, and he looked impeccable. But the expression on his face was one she remembered quite well. Cold and hard.

  He walked over to the cage she was in and squatted beside it. “You’re awake,” he said.