“Yeah, you will.” Her voice was part understanding, part knowing, and part threat. I could live with that.
After a few more moments of silence, she said, “It’s been a while since you’ve had anything to eat, and it was only sandwiches. Take me somewhere I can get a soup and salad, and you can get large quantities of some kind of dead animal.”
Keisha
We were both in good spirits when Darnell pulled into his driveway, but my breath caught in my throat when I saw Darius’s bike in front of my porch, and him sitting on the steps.
He looked like a wolf prepared for a fight.
I waited until Darnell pulled into the garage to ask, “Ya’ll aren’t going to fight, are you?”
“I don’t intend to. If we do, it’ll be okay. Just stay back.”
“Oh, hell no. If ya’ll start fighting I’m getting on your bike and leaving. I refuse to watch two grown men act like children.”
“My wolf wanted to spank you for taking the kind of risks you did, driving so fast on mountain roads.”
“I was fine.”
“I know, but you’re human and breakable.”
“You refused to change me!”
He sighed. “Yeah, because the last time we seriously discussed it, you were twenty-eight years old with zero self-control. You’d have never been able to take on the responsibility of a wolf, much less handle the impulse control not to rip out the throat of everyone who annoyed you — or to pounce on and eat the neighbor’s German Shepherd.”
“You’d do it now?”
He turned sideways and nodded. “Yeah. You’ve grown up and you have more self-control than I’d have ever believed.” He turned the engine off. “If Darius and I work together, we can take care of you while you gain control. You’d need to take off work at least four months, though. Maybe longer, but you’re strong and disciplined. I think you’ll gain control fast.”
I nodded. “Okay. Not this year, and probably not next year, but we’ll figure something out in the next five years. I don’t want you to have to live fifty or more years after I’m gone.”
He seemed to deflate in the seat beside me for a few seconds, and the next thing I knew he was out and around the car, pulling me out in a gentle bear hug. “God, Keesh. Thank you.”
“I didn’t agree to help turn her.”
We both looked to the driveway to see Darius standing with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Okay,” Darnell told him. “If you won’t help, there are others I can ask.”
He shook his head and put his hands on his hips. “You should’ve come straight to me about the tracker, Dad. Pulling our organizations into it was overkill.”
“He didn’t know you’d put it there, and they were trying to figure it out.” I told him. “The Drake people said they needed to get you involved since I kind of belong to you in their eyes. You weren’t available, and Brain told them it was an RTMC tracker.”
Darius eyed his father as if weighing how pissed his dad was, and Darnell glanced at me before telling our son, “I get it. You didn’t think my tracking went far enough, so you supplemented where you thought I fell short.”
“We good?” Darius asked.
“We need to talk about how to handle things from here forward, but I’m not going to jump you for tracking her purse in the past. We need to fix our relationship though, so we can come to each other and talk about this shit in the future. We’re on the same side, son.”
Darius looked to me. “Did you know dad was tracking the bike and your phone?”
“No, but we’ve had our own discussions about it since I figured it out, which means I understand why you did it as well. I need to know what you’re doing in the future.”
“Not the way it works,” Darius told me. “If you’re kidnapped by supernaturals and they ask you how you’re being tracked, it’s kind of important that you don’t know all the ways we can find you.”
“Let’s move this inside,” said Darnell as he pulled me towards his kitchen. I hesitated, but realized with the three of us, it would be easier to explain why I was in his house.
“We just ate,” I told Darius, “but I can make you something if you’re hungry.”
He grinned. “What is it with mothers always wanting to feed their kids? I love you mom, and I’m good. You’re really not pissed at me?”
“I’m disappointed, and at first I wanted to shake you… but I guess I’m also glad you were worried about me.”
He pulled a small watch from his pocket. “Would you be willing to wear this? If you get in trouble, you tap it three times and it’ll send audio to the RTMC control room, along with your location. It also sends your location at random intervals, but no one keeps track of it unless you’re missing. Tapping it three times, or pushing any of the buttons three times, is like sending out a nine-one-one call to the RTMC.”
I looked at Darnell, who said, “I have similar options I can offer, but I think our son needs to do this for you.”
Chapter 21
Keisha
Three evenings later, Darnell rocked and melted my world by tying me up and blindfolding me again, and then kept an eagle eye on me afterwards. When I went downstairs to pee in the early morning hours, he went down with me.
“I’m okay,” I told him with a roll of my eyes as I came out.
“Would you’ve let anyone in prison roll their eyes at you like that?”
I stopped and considered the question. “Kim could in private, but not in public.”
“The others?”
I shook my head. “No. Depending on who it was, they may have gotten away with a warning the first time, but… no.”
“You get how you and I are different, right?”
I smiled as I reached up to cup his chin. “I know. I get it. It’s about fun with you. It’s different.”
He breathed out as if relieved. “Okay then. I think perhaps we need a morning round. Get your ass back up the ladder, woman.”
Darnell left my bed around seven so he could go into the office, and I slept until nine since I had to be at work at ten. By this time I was used to working full days, but I was still exhausted when I left the shop at seven that evening. I’d parked the bike around back, and I admit to not watching my surroundings as I stepped out and put my helmet on. I’d grown complacent since getting out of prison. No one had threatened me, so I had no reason to keep up the level of alert I’d had to maintain behind bars.
As soon as the door closed behind me, my arm was wrenched up painfully behind my back as something soft went over my mouth and nose. I held my breath and used my other arm to try to elbow my assailant, but someone else punched me in the stomach. I gasped air in from the pain. My foot was in the air heading towards the man who’d punched me, but my limbs went weak as it made contact and I knew I was in trouble. It took four or five seconds for me to lose consciousness, but nothing worked during those horribly-long seconds. My arms and legs were numb, tingly, and too heavy to move.
I awoke in the back of an SUV with zip ties holding my arms behind my back and my ankles together. I was clearheaded surprisingly fast, and I immediately pushed a button on the side of my watch three times.
“Who are you?”
“Shut up, cunt.”
My blood ran cold as I recognized the voice. Taylor, one of the guards from the prison.
Should I let him know I knew who he was? Or wait to see how this played out? Help should theoretically be on the way, so it might be better to keep from pissing my captors off.
I stayed quiet and closed my eyes against the nausea I felt. Whatever they’d used to knock me out wasn’t sitting well with my stomach.
I’d ate some pistachios and drank most of a Coke towards the end of the day, between working on people. Three curves later I knew they were coming up.
“I’m going to be sick,” I warned. “Can you roll me on my side?”
“Fucking bitch.” Taylor’s hands grasped my right arm hard enough to brui
se it as he rolled me onto my side facing away from him, and as soon as I was clear, my stomach emptied itself.
“Nasty. Fucking nasty.”
God, Taylor was such an asshole, but I kept my mouth shut. Was he getting revenge for Gallagher? Or making sure I didn’t have him beat up, too? Darnell had told me the other guards would be transferred to the men’s prison — did Taylor find out I was behind his transfer?
“Damn,” the driver said. “What the hell?”
“Bitch puked. Good thing I got you to steal a car. We need to dump it and find something else.”
The driver muttered something under his breath, and Taylor growled, “Don’t fuck with me, Smith. You want me to give your brother a good report, you’ll do everything you promised.”
“I’m here. You have me. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“What are you going to do to me?” I asked. “Isn’t like you haven’t already raped me more times than I can count. What the fuck, Taylor?”
“Shut the fuck up!”
“What are you going to do to me?”
“Make sure you pay for getting me moved and demoted.”
“What the fuck? How could I do that?”
“Someone knew I’d fucked a prisoner. That’s why they moved me to the men’s prison. Fucking maximum security, and they keep me behind a damned monitor all goddamned day. I’m on camera every fucking second. Compared notes with another guard who got moved with me, and you’re the only one we have in common who’s made it out.”
“I didn’t tell anyone what you did to me, Taylor. Seems to me, if they knew what you’d done, you’d be in jail, or at the very least fired.” A mind-reader got it out of my head. I hadn’t told anyone Taylor’s name.
Motorcycles roared up behind us and surrounded the SUV, drowning out whatever he might’ve said, and I sent up a silent thank you to whoever might be listening to my prayers.
Taylor screamed at the driver to floor it as I slid forward and into something hard because the driver slammed on his brakes. I was just beginning to worry the cavalry might get me hurt worse when I heard sirens and saw blue lights, and I closed my eyes and sent up a prayer to please fix this clusterfuck so I didn’t go back to jail.
I heard cops yelling for everyone to show their hands, and I closed my eyes and hoped I didn’t get hurt.
There were only two cops, and seven men on motorcycles. I guess the cops and bikers soon figured out they were on the same side and worked together to surround the vehicle. One biker pulled the driver out, a cop held Taylor at gunpoint to get him out, and another cop cut me free of the zip-ties and had me sit on the edge of the back of the SUV because I wasn’t sure I could walk. Darius was close, but the cops ordered everyone to stay back until they’d checked me over and asked me what happened. I told him how they’d gotten me into the SUV, and I heard someone call for an ambulance.
“No! Please cancel the ambulance,” I told them. “I’m fine and can’t afford that right now.”
“Sorry ma’am. You need to get checked out.”
“I’m her son. I’ll be sure she sees a doctor,” Darius told them. “He’ll be a helluva lot cheaper than an ambulance and trip to the emergency room.”
Thankfully, the officer cancelled the ambulance.
Darius was finally allowed to come to me, and he sat with me and held me as more officers arrived en masse and took custody of the driver from the biker holding him on the ground.
“Do you need anything?” Darius asked.
“Whatever they knocked me out with made me puke. Any chance I can clean up a little?”
“I’ll run to the store and get baby wipes and something to drink,” one of the bikers said. “What do you want?”
“Water or ginger ale, please?”
“Be right back.”
“We have audio from inside the SUV. She had an emergency button she pushed once she woke up,” Darius told the officers. “They abducted her, as you likely guessed from the zip-ties.”
Another officer was looking through the van and turned to say, “Chloroform, zip-ties, condoms.” He looked to the officers who had the men on the ground in cuffs. “Read ‘em their rights. We’ll start with kidnapping and assault.”
Another officer looked up from his phone. “Victim’s a felon, recently paroled.”
I looked up to my son, and he met my gaze and then turned to one of the other bikers and practically barked, “We need Zeke.”
“He’s on his way. Brain already called him.”
“Ma’am,” one of the bikers said, looking at me. “On the audio, you told the man he’d already raped you. You know him?”
I nodded and looked to the officer. “He was one of the guards in prison.”
“He raped you when you were a prisoner?”
I lifted my chin. “He gave me a choice of submitting or being written up. He didn’t view it as rape. I did. Later, when I was trying to get into the cosmetology program, he wouldn’t give me a favorable report of my non-violent status unless I agreed to let him have his way with me a few days in a row.”
The officer sighed. “It’ll look better if you call your parole officer instead of me.”
Darius started to protest and I cut him off. “He has to be notified of any interaction with law enforcement. The officer’s right — the sooner I call him, the better.”
Darius glared at the officer. “How did you know to pull the SUV over?”
“Drake Security’s control room reported a probable kidnapping in progress and gave us the location and the direction and speed of travel. Wasn’t hard to figure out which vehicle once we saw the bikes. They advised you were likely launching your own rescue.” He looked to my kidnappers, now in the back of two squad cars. “Lucky for them, we got to them before you.”
“The driver was being coerced,” I told the officer. “It sounds like his brother’s in jail and Taylor was offering to give him some kind of good report in exchange for the brother’s help.”
“Anything else you can tell us that might help?”
“I don’t think so. Darius said they have audio. You’ll hear it for yourself.”
Darnell came zooming in, his car rocking to an abrupt stop as he jumped out, and the cops all went for their guns as I said, “No! It’s okay! He’s my ex-husband.”
I said the last word with purpose, so he’d remember we weren’t supposed to officially be an item.
Darnell slowed and I looked to the cop beside me. “He works for Drake Security. His trackers on me are probably why ya’ll were called.” Though I still hadn’t figured out how Drake Security had known there was a problem. Would they have sent cops just because my purse was travelling without the bike?
“Ex-husband? Really?” asked one of the cops.
“Mother of my child,” Darnell said as he approached. “She needed help getting on her feet and I gave it.” He looked at me but stayed a few feet away, though I could tell it cost him something not to pull me into his arms. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Someone went to the store for baby wipes and some water. I guess they knocked me out with chloroform, and I puked when I came to. Otherwise, I’m good.”
A bike came roaring up as I finished my sentence, and a large, bearded man opened a water and handed it to me, and then gave the baby wipe container to Darius.
I was shaky, but I walked to the grass so I could rinse my mouth and spit a few times, and when I finished, Darnell was standing beside me with a handful of wipes in his hand. He clearly intended to clean me up, but I took them from him and cleaned myself. The Coke and nuts hadn’t been terribly disgusting coming back up, but it felt good to rinse my mouth out and clean up.
“Thanks guys.” I looked to the police officer. “What else do you need from me?”
“He’ll need a statement,” a man in a suit said as he approached us. “And I’ll be by your side for all of it.” He offered his hand to me. “Zeke McPherson.”
I looked to Darnell and Darius, and they both n
odded as Darius said, “He’s good, mom. Listen to his advice.”
The next four hours were awful, but I survived. A few cops treated me as a felon who got what I deserved, but most approached me as a victim and — though they were all businesslike and coolly professional — they weren’t assholes.
I had to tell them about the watch, and the tracker on the bike, but they kept demanding to know how Drake Security knew there was a problem. All I could do was keep repeating they’d have to ask my ex-husband or Aaron Drake, as I wasn’t made aware of the specifics.
And Zeke was great. Neither Darnell or Darius could go with me into the back, but Zeke was with me the entire time. He’d let them ask a question a few times and then make them stop. They kept coming back to the one about how Drake Security knew, but the other questions, once Zeke put his foot down, they accepted my answer and let it go.
My parole officer eventually showed up, and he actually took my side, proclaiming I was a victim, and he assured me this wouldn’t affect my parole status.
Apparently, Darnell had talked to my parole officer in the lobby, and he’d explained the situation before he even made it back to me. It was through him I discovered how the Drake Security patrol room knew there was a problem. The bike was programmed to phone the Drake control room if someone other than my weight or Darnell’s weight was on it — or the two of us combined. Taylor had ridden it a few blocks from the hair salon and dumped it off the road in some woods before the SUV picked him up. So, it had the wrong weight, it went off the road, and I kept travelling away from it. They didn’t have anyone close, so they called the local police chief and explained they had reason to believe there was a kidnapping in progress. He sent officers to check it out.
When the interview finally ended, I wanted nothing more than to fall into Darnell’s arms, but he kept his distance. It turned out okay, because Darius came to me as soon as I stepped into the lobby, taking me into his arms and making sure I was all right.
“You need to come back to my place and stay with Hailey and me. I don’t want you going home.”
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