He snorted and pitched his voice high. “Oh Carson, I’m just what the doctor ordered.”
Skin was every-fucking-where. Boobs, ass, hell, I saw a few nipples. Freaking Halloween. Last year, I was in fucking heaven, and this year was hell because the only skin I wanted to see was covered up by a massive Hello Kitty costume.
“Lavin!” The high-pitched screech sent a ball of dread sliding down into my stomach. Shane turned wide eyes at me, shifting them to Hello Kitty just as a body showing way too much skin came flying through the crowd in my direction.
Hayley, Vince’s little sister’s best friend, slammed into me, her arms wrapping around my waist while I stood stick-straight. “I missed you!” She beamed up into my face. That was when I got a good look at her costume. Well, what little there was of it. She was in a black and white striped bathing suit like an old-time Barbie, complete with her blonde hair in a high ponytail and heavy eyeliner. She was cute—okay pretty—and I’d definitely thought so last semester when she’d visited and we’d drunkenly dry-humped in the upstairs hallway. If the look on her face was anything to go by, she was hoping for a repeat. Fuck a duck. I was very aware of Hello Kitty’s furry arm, right there beside me, brushing the biceps of my suit jacket.
I didn’t want to hurt Hayley’s feelings. She was a nice girl, but her eyes were already glassy from Vince’s famous jungle juice. Unsure what else to do, I set her away from me and patted her head. Patted her head. Awkwardly. With the flat of my hand. Shane shook his head and rolled his eyes to the ceiling.
“Hey there, Hayley,” I glanced at Bianca, but the damn costume prevented me from seeing her reaction. Fuck. Seriously? I didn’t get around, so chances of running into girls I’d hooked up with were slim. Hayley went to some private school a state away, but of course, she was here where I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, which was throw my arm around Bianca and make it clear I was taken. I imagined if the roles were reversed and I was in that Hello Kitty costume watching some guy plaster himself all over Bianca, I’d want to break something.
Hayley closed the distance between us and ran her hands over my chest. “Superman. I like it.”
“Actually I’m Clark Kent.”
She blinked at me. “Huh?”
Christ, her boobs were touching me and I could see her nipples through the thin bikini top. I wasn’t aroused. I was fucking terrified. “Never mind. Look, uh, it’s good to see you. Nice costume. I’m seeing someone, though. She couldn’t make it, but I’m on my best behavior tonight.” I hoped my words cut through her jungle juice fog. She screwed up her face and for one horrifying moment, I thought she was going to cry. Then she shook it off like a champ and said, “Okay. Your loss.” And flounced off. Actually flounced. She bounded away like a little bunny on her black heels.
I exhaled, stealing a look at Hello Kitty who hadn’t moved an inch. Shane clapped me on the back. “Did good, Saint.”
Dre gave me a chin lift of approval, and Zac murmured, “Awesome, thanks,” and took off into the crowd after Barbie. Well then. Call me matchmaker.
I spent the next ten minutes talking to my teammates and introducing Hello Kitty around as a high school friend from home. Frankly, it kinda sucked. Would I have loved to show off Bianca on my arm? Hell yeah. But what I hated the most was that I knew Bianca couldn’t be enjoying this. She couldn’t talk, or drink, or party. She was stuck in that stupid costume as a silent observer.
When we finally had a break, her furry paw gripped my arm and tugged me down a hallway. “Where you going, Saint?” I heard someone call behind us.
“Bathroom! He needs help with his costume.”
We ducked out of sight into a bedroom, and I had just turned around from shutting and locked the door when Bianca—minus the costume head—slammed into me. Her mouth was on me, hot and pressing, her tongue diving into my mouth. I gripped her face and walked her backward until we tumbled onto a bed.
I pulled away to catch my breath and brushed Bianca’s sweaty hair off her forehead. “Not complaining, but what did I do to deserve that so I can do it again? Like every day?”
She laughed a husky laugh. “So, Barbie?”
I pressed my lips together, thinking this conversation was going to go south. “Yeah. Barbie.”
“I’m assuming you…”
“Last semester.”
“Well that kiss was for saying you had a girlfriend but also doing it in a way that didn’t embarrass her. You weren’t a dick. I liked that.” She bit her lip. “I mean, of course I wanted to yank her arms off and beat her with them when she hugged you, but the rational part of me knows that’s not right. And I hate when guys are dicks just to be dicks.”
“I’m glad you’re happy that I let Barbie down easy. Dracula out there?” She nodded. “That’s his little sister’s best friend. I’m not about to be an asshole to her. Vince would have my balls.”
She reached down and squeezed through my suit pants. “Your balls are nice where they are.”
I shifted away from her touch. “B, swear to God, you can’t do that right now. I can’t walk back out there and have everyone thinking Hello Kitty gives me boners.”
She cackled, rolling away from me.
“Hey,” I said. “You sure this is okay? I feel bad that you can’t really enjoy the party.”
She sighed, kicking her furry feet. “I mean, no, it’s not great, but I’d still rather be here with you than at home. It’s fun to watch you with your teammates. And you know I love your roommates.”
“Did you see Zac take after Barbie?”
She braced her head in her fist, eyes sparkling. “I did. Go Zach. She’s cute. Good taste, Lavin.” She punched me in the arm and I attacked her, trying to tickle her but the damn costume prevented me from really doing any damage.
She shoved me off her with a laugh and we both lay panting. I reached down and held her hand, as much as I could with her costume. “Next year,” I said. “Next year, we’ll plan our costumes months in advance and do Halloween right. Together. What do you say?”
I rolled my head to face her, and nearly melted at the grin on her face. “I say perfect,” she whispered.
* * *
Two hours later, I chugged the rest of the cup of beer and chucked it into nearby trash can that was already overflowing with red Solo cups. I didn’t even bother looking in the direction of the bathroom—I already knew there was a line of about a dozen girls deep ready to use the toilet.
“I gotta piss,” I said into Hello Kitty’s eyeballs. “I’m going to head outside. You okay here?” The head nodded, and a furry hand squeezed mine. I shot her a grin before heading for the back door. Along the way, I met Dre’s eyes, and gestured toward Bianca. He nodded and made his way toward her, leaving a girl with moon eyes behind. Fuck, he was a great friend.
I shoved through the door and stumbled a bit down the stairs. Shit, how much had I had to drink? Beer pong always made me drink more than I meant to, which I guessed was the point of the whole damn game—to forget you were drinking cheap lukewarm beer.
A couple was making out against the house, and I wrinkled my nose at the sound of their sloppy drunk kisses. A few other people were milling around talking, but not many. Later, when more people were too drunk to feel the cold, the backyard would be full. But even at eleven o’clock, it was too early now.
I made my way to the back of the yard where some overgrown bush had embedded itself in the wire fence. I lowered my zipper and exhaled as I relieved my full bladder. Damn beer pong. As I zipped back up, I turned on my heel to walk back into the house when I heard a sniffle and a few muttered words in a feminine voice.
I froze, and then heard the sounds again. Shit, a girl was crying somewhere. I followed the sound out the opened back gate of the fence into a small gravel lot. The only light was a dim orange bulb hanging off the neighbor’s detached garage, but I made out the form of a girl huddled on the ground along the edge of the alley between the lot and another house.
“Hey, you all right?” I said, walking toward her, my hands up so she didn’t feel threatened. I tried to walk as straight of a line as possible. Luckily, the cold sobered me a bit. As I drew closer, I saw she was crouched over a sewer drain. Her makeup was smeared and mascara-tinted tears tracked down her face. She shifted back onto her high heels and wiped her nose with the sleeve of her pirate wench costume. “I dropped my keys down the stupid drain.”
I glanced around. “What are you doing out here?”
She sniffled. “I was walking home.”
“Uh, in the dark? Alone?”
She shrugged and straightened her spine. “I’m a big girl.”
I didn’t reply to that. I turned on the flashlight on my phone and peered into the drain. I could just make out a little set of keys on a ring. “Go inside and ask if the guys have a wire hanger.” There had to be some hangers in that house—we all owned suits for soccer events. “We should be able to get your keys out.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, I didn’t think of that.” She stood and wobbled before shooting me a look. “I’m, uh, okay.”
“Sure you are. Just get me a hanger.”
She teetered off, slipping through the gate in the fence. I kept my flashlight on, peering into the grate.
A minute later, I heard footsteps on the gravel. “That was fast.” I looked up, but the person approaching me wasn’t the pirate wench. This body was huge, and I opened my mouth to ask who it was just as a fist slammed into my jaw. I tried to maintain consciousness as a face swam into my vision, but the edges were blurry, dark, and that darkness spread until everything went black.
Seventeen
Regular Ol’ James Bond
I came to in spurts of time. The screech of tires. A car window. The click of a deadbolt.
When I finally opened my eyes and swam to a more permanent state of consciousness, all I saw was an dingy off-white tile wall, the grout gray with mold. Pain registered seconds later, and I bit my tongue so I didn’t make any noise. I was in a small bathroom, my hands zip-tied to a pipe under the sink. The floor was cold and damp under my ass and all I could smell was pee and mildew. Fucking gross.
I remembered the blow I’d taken to the face in the gravel parking lot. Motherfuckers. I rolled my jaw, and tried not to think about the throbbing pain in my head. I was sure I had another concussion. Fuck, a few more and I was going to have to donate my brain to science. Shit. Was Bianca okay? Was anyone else hurt? And where the hell was I? My eyes landed on my wrist, where my Apple watch was nowhere to be found. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I still had on my T-shirt, pants, and shoes, but my suit jacket was nowhere to be found.
Voices filtered through the thin plywood door of the bathroom. I strained to listen.
“…going to do with him? You think she cares enough about him to cough up cash?” Said a man’s voice. Deep. Raspy.
“No, we need her,” said another man. His voice wasn’t as deep. “It must be her.”
“This is bullshit. Then why did you tell me to grab him?”
“To get to her! I’ve seen that little whore all over him.”
I flinched. This had to be Bianca’s stalker. The guy sounded nuts. But cash? What cash were they talking about? She’d never mentioned they hit her up for money.
“I don’t care about the fucking girl. I want the money!” There was a pause. “Don’t you want the money too?”
“Of course I want the fucking money.” The man with the higher-pitched voice huffed, but he wheezed a bit.
My entire body hurt. I didn’t want to panic, but my breath was coming in sharp bursts and spots danced in front of my eyes. I closed my eyes and began to count out my breaths. I never thought Dad’s breathing techniques would come in handy, yet here I was. If only I had some calming oil in a diffuser I’d be all set.
The thought of my parents carved a hollow in my stomach. They’ll be so fucking worried. Pop would go on the warpath. And Bianca… she’ll blame herself.
Okay, I had to stay calm. Pro: I was alive, and they didn’t have Bianca. Con: I was tied to a bathroom sink with two psychos.
I exhaled slowly and wiggled all my fingers and toes to make sure my extremities worked. All good there. I tried to push my brain into planning mode through the fog of pain, but it was damn hard. The zip ties were cutting into my wrists, and the coppery scent of my blood filled the air where the plastic had dug into the skin. Goddamn. This was bad. Real bad. Maybe I should have spent less time considering what weapon I’d use in a zombie apocalypse and more time studying how to get out of real life situations. If I made it out of this, it was settled. Less The Walking Dead and more true crime documentaries.
Boots stomped closer to the door, and my body tensed as the door swung open. A massive frame filled the doorway and then in a deep voice, he announced, “The little shit’s awake.”
First of all, I was not little. I was six-foot and slender, fuck you very much. I blinked up into the harsh fluorescent lights of the bathroom to the very large man looming over me. Very large. As in, fucking big. Club bouncer-big. Brock Lesnar-big. He was a bald white guy with a whole lot of wrinkles from his deep-set eyes up into his scalp. He had damn near a unibrow and a face pockmarked with acne scars. Now I knew why he’d called me little. To him, I was the damn Lollipop Guild.
He frowned down at me like I was shit on his shoe. Then he pointed a thick finger in voice and shouted over his shoulder. “This was a mistake.”
I looked beyond him to try to get a sense of where I was being held. We were in some kind of hotel room. But not a nice one. The TV looked like it came out about a year after color television was invented, and the bed looked like it had seen some things. I shuddered.
Near the end of a soiled mattress sheet stood smaller man with a small, pinched face wringing his hands. He was looking at me like he hated my fucking guts. I would have bet a hundred bucks that the little guy was Bianca’s stalker, and he loathed me for being right where he wanted to be. This situation kept getting worse. Goddamn, I’d watched too many mobster movies. All I could think about was Stuck in the Middle with You by Steelers Wheel playing while they cut off my ears with a knife.
Stalker took a step toward the bathroom, his beady eyes taking me in. His skin was pale, like he didn’t get out much. His brown-ish hair was stringy and thin with a receding hairline and thin colorless lips. As he drew closer, I tried to shimmy my body against the wall, straightening my posture as much as possible from my previous slumped position.
I opened my mouth, to scream, to yell, I wasn’t sure yet, but the Not-Brock leaned down in my face. “If you scream, I’ll just break a rib before I knock you out again.” His breath smelled like coffee and cigarettes. I held back my gag reflex and glared at him. I didn’t have a death wish, so I kept my mouth shut. For once in my freaking life.
I already failed Survival 101 which was never let them take you to a second location. Kinda hard to prevent the transportation of my body when Not-Brock had a wicked left hook and I had an apparent glass jaw.
I had to think. There was no way I was just going to magically get out of this. First of all, Not-Brock had a gun shoved into the back waistband of his dirty 501s and what I thought was a stun gun attached with a clip to his belt. They hadn’t bothered to cover their faces or their voices. I felt true and royally fucked.
On top of that, I couldn’t let them get to Bianca. That was the only good thing right now. If they had me, it was because they didn’t have her. Just thinking of Stalker’s hands on her made me want to hurl. I couldn’t imagine how terrified she’d be if she had to face him.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Not-Brock said.
“She wasn’t home!” Stalker said, pulling on his hair. “She was supposed to be home. Alone.”
Oh shit, had they broken into Coach’s house? Now I was fucking thankful Hello Kitty had made an appearance.
Not-Brock threw up his hands and stalked out of the bathroom, but he didn’t shut the door. “You de
al with him. Get him to tell us where she is or we’ll do it my way.” He shot me a menacing look when he said my way, and Stuck in the Middle with You began playing in my head on a loop.
He sank down onto the end of the bed as Stalker drew closer to me. Not too close. I thought I made him nervous, because his eyes kept shifting down my body like I was in any position to fight back. He stayed out of reach of my legs, which was smart, because all I wanted to do was send his nuts into his throat with a solid kick.
“Where is she?” Stalker hissed.
“Are you the one who’s been sending her gifts?” I asked.
Stalker’s eyes flared just as Not-Brock yelled from the other room. “What gifts?”
His face twisted in anger, Stalker lunged at me with a balled first and slammed it into my temple. Pain fired behind my eyes as my head slammed into the wall. “Fuck,” I grunted, my vision blurring at the edges as I sought to maintain consciousness. I felt a trickle of wetness slide down the side of my face.
“Where. Is. She?” Stalker was seething, his face an unhealthy shade of red and purple. A vein on his forehead stuck out, and I wanted to pop it like a pimple. “Don’t be dumb, kid. Don’t play hero for her. She’s just using you to pass the time. She belongs with me.”
Christ, the guy was nuts. This was my purpose here in their eyes—to get to Bianca. There was something not jiving between these two guys though, but my head hurt too fucking bad to think it through.
“You have a future, right kid? I looked into you. You’re from a good family. You want to be a teacher,” he sneered the last word. “So be smart. Just tell us where she is, and we all go home.”
“What are you going to do with her?” I had an idea but I was trying to stall.
Stalker smiled, and the vision was chilling. “Don’t worry. We won’t hurt her.”
All I knew was I had to play this smart. Coach’s words bounced around in my head when he talked to me playing about false nine. I bit my lip as I rolled my neck from side to side, buying myself some time.
FALSE 9: Red Card Series Page 20