by Ada Stone
The gate.
“Oh shit,” I said, realizing that my whole plan wasn’t worth a damn if I had to scale that gate, too. Whoever was manning it today had certainly been told not to let me out. And I couldn’t climb it. Climbing down from my window to the ground was one thing, but up and over a gate? Impossible. There was no way in hell that I was going to succeed.
Maybe I can find a door or slip between the bars, I thought, the ideas pretty unrealistic given the circumstances and my slightly swollen belly. I was small, but I wasn’t that small.
But despite that sudden, glaring flaw in my plan, I knew I had to get the hell out of there. Even if I got caught at the gate, I had to at least try. Knowing that my father had officially left, I went to the door and cracked it just slightly. I peeked out to see if my dear new friend Chad was still there. He was, and he didn’t glance towards me even once, just looking down the stairs which he stood in front of.
I prayed he would stay that way.
Closing the door again, I locked it and went back to the window. I checked to make sure that once again no one was there. When it looked like the coast was clear, I tied my sheet rope to the leg of my desk, scooted as close to the window as I could get it, and threw the whole thing over the side. It tumbled down and I noted that it stopped just shy of the ground. I frowned and hoped that it was close enough.
Taking a deep breath, I hoisted my backpack up a little higher, then slipped over the edge of the window. I reminded myself that I’d done this a thousand times before and with a lot less thought put behind it, too. I’d snuck out with the girls and not cared in the slightest if I fell. But I’d never been pregnant either, I thought grimly. Shaking away my fear as best I could, I forced myself to move. Slowly, I maneuvered myself down the rope towards the ground.
I held onto the rope with both hands, wishing suddenly that I’d had rougher sheets instead of the silky ones that I so preferred. They were slippery beneath my hands and difficult to hold onto, but I did my best. Leaning back slightly, I put my feet against the wall. But that pushed me out too far. I felt the rope slide from somewhere above and let out a small cry. I let my legs curl so that my knees were against the wall instead of my feet, then stilled, waiting to see if anyone had heard my panicked cry. No one came.
Taking in a deep breath, I started again, hoping that the damn sheets would hold.
I shuffled down the wall, using my knees to brace myself. The roses growing up the trellis scraped at my skin and tore at my jeans. I was sure that some of them drew blood, but I didn’t care. I kept going.
I kept telling myself not to look down. Doing that would just make me freak out, so I clenched my eyes shut and kept going. I told myself that I was doing fine, that everything was okay.
Then the sheets tore.
I let out a half scream as I went tumbling down to the ground, feeling as though I was falling a thousand feet. But I didn’t hit the ground. Instead, I fell against a hard body, cradled haphazardly in strong, muscular arms. The man let out a grunt as he caught me and instantly I was furious. My plans had been foiled by my damn jailer, my new friend Chad.
I started to struggle, flailing my arms around in an attempt to break myself free from him. Maybe this plan wasn’t so completely botched if I could only get free. “Let me go, you asshole! I’m not going back!”
I was half dropped so that my legs hit the ground. I considered this a victory despite the strong arm around my waist, until the hand that had just been freed slapped across my mouth. “Shh! Lia, it’s me!”
My eyes snapped open and I stared into the face of the man I loved. “Luke!” I cried, my voice muffled thanks to his hand.
He grinned at me. He looked a little stressed, but otherwise good, healthy. And very much not in prison. I threw my arms around him and held him as tightly as I could. He held me back, burying his face in my hair and my neck, holding me as closely as he could. I wanted to get lost in that moment, but I knew we had to get out of here.
I pulled back reluctantly, missing the embrace instantly. “We’ve got to go. The baby…my father…I have to save this baby, Luke!”
He nodded as though the same thoughts had been running through his head. “I know. Let’s go. I’m taking you back to the Road Roses.”
I didn’t hesitate. When he took my hand in his, we ran.
Chapter Twenty
Luke
We went to Garrison’s house, because we knew both the tattoo shop and my house would be the first places that the police would look for me. And since I was now on the run as an officially escaped prisoner, I doubted that they weren’t going to take this seriously. Especially since the mayor had a vendetta against me.
As soon as we arrived, I told the boys to start talking about a plan to get Lia out of there. I had to change. I wanted to shower, too, but I didn’t want to waste the time. I had to clean up some just because riding around in an orange jumpsuit with a bleeding forehead and glass glittering in my hair wasn’t a smart move. It was a little too noticeable, and if I was going to save Lia from her father, then I was going to have to blend in a little better than that.
When I was dressed plainly in jeans and a t-shirt, I headed back downstairs. My guys were gathered in the living room, tossing ideas back and forth, doing as I’d asked.
“What do we have?”
Delano snorted. “Basically a fortress,” he told me snidely. “This place is locked up tighter than Fort Knox!”
Garrison shook his head. “He’s exaggerating. It’s more like a high security prison than a vault.”
Delano shot him a look. “Like there’s a difference.”
Ignoring the both of them, Sorenson spoke up. “We’ve got the plans to the house.” I opened my mouth to ask how in the hell they managed that one, he quickly filled in with, “Carson worked with some of the guys who built the house a few years back. He called in a favor.”
I glanced over at Carson, who was standing quietly with his arms folded like this was hardly any big deal. I raised my eyebrows at him. “An awfully quick favor you called in.”
He lifted his shoulders. “I might have guessed you’d need them a little while back.”
Under normal circumstances I might have laughed at that. But today was too urgent and too serious for me to go around laughing at things that were only half funny. So instead I just nodded my head at him in thanks. He returned the gesture.
Turning back to Sorenson, I said, “What does the place look like?”
He shook his head, clearly not looking happy. “To quote Delano, like a damn fortress.” He ran a nervous hand through his hair. “There’s a gate around the whole area. The only way in, as far as anyone can tell, is through the front gate which has a guard tower. Normally, it looks like there’s only a surveillance system and a key pad, but since the mayor took Lia back, there’s a guard stationed there at all times. If you aren’t on his list, you don’t get in. Assuming we get past the guard, there’s a drive that leads to the main house—otherwise known as a mansion to anyone who’s not a millionaire.
“According to the plans, it’s two stories and an attic. It looks like the bedrooms are going to be on the second floor, since that’s where the master is. Downstairs is the kitchen and a few other rooms, one probably an office, then a combo of living and family rooms. I don’t even know what the hell these others were supposed to be. This place has a hell of a lot of rooms for only two people living there.”
“Alright. So Lia’s probably being held on the second floor,” I concluded. “He’s probably got her locked up in her room and feels pretty safe that she’s not going anywhere since it’s the second floor.”
Sorenson seemed to agree and I took a moment to appreciate that for an eighteen-year-old boy, he was pretty goddamned smart. I was grateful he was on my team.
“So what are we going to do?” Delano asked, sitting on the couch with his arms spread across the back of it, looking like we were having brandy and smoking cigars rather than talking about
breaking into the mayor’s house to kidnap his daughter. “Storm the castle? Rescue the princess? Ride off into the sunset?”
I looked at him and smiled. “Pretty much.”
He laughed. “Who knew you were such a romantic?”
…
We road to the mansion that same day, late in the afternoon. I called for everyone to come to a stop before we reached the front gate. We already knew that we weren’t going to be on any guest list at the gate, so I didn’t bother trying to head that way.
Instead, we pulled our bikes up along the side of the road and did our best to tuck them away behind some brush. The lawns were all perfect, the houses all huge, so I was pretty sure everyone and their dog was going to notice a line of motorcycles parked just casually along the street. Hopefully, they were hidden well enough that that wouldn’t be a problem.
From there, we began the plan.
“Kyle, Derek, you’re up.”
They both nodded and headed towards the gate where they would try their damnedest to get in through the front. They were dressed in their finest, which unfortunately meant Kyle looked like he was going to a funeral and Derek looked like a mismatched lumberjack. I didn’t have a lot of hope that they’d make it through, which was why we had other plans going on.
When we saw them round the corner to the gate, we made our move. We got to the gate, picking a particularly overgrown section, and began to climb.
“There will probably be security systems in place,” Carson reminded us as we huffed our way up and over the fence. “Meaning there’s a good chance that everyone already knows we’re here.”
If anyone was actually watching the camera footage—which we had to assume they were—then they would probably come for us relatively quickly. Which meant we were going to have to move fast ourselves.
“Delano, you take Sorenson and go to the front,” I ordered as we dropped down on the other side. I noticed that we were just outside the pool house, where I’d fucked Lia the first time. It sent a shiver of memory through me, her soft skin, her curved body, her long hair spilling across the bed. It made me want to go back to that moment—and do it all differently.
Get her name.
Get her number.
Ask her out again.
Tell her that she was important to me.
“Hey, we gotta move!” Garrison hissed at me urgently as the rest of the group started to break up.
I shook myself free of the memory and focused on the here and now. It didn’t matter how all of this started, only how it ended. Hopefully with a family and a happily ever after if I had anything to say about it.
We darted forward, going our separate ways. I broke off from the group quickly and headed around the side of the house.
I had my boys running interference with the mansion that was currently more like a compound. The mayor had this place locked up tight, clearly determined to keep Lia held hostage until he could do the unthinkable. Until he could kill our baby.
But he underestimated not only how determined I was to get her back, but how loyal my boys were. Strangely enough, my going to prison and my affection for Lia was the thing that cleared up a lot of the dissention amongst my men. That and the fact that Armand, the leading factor in that dissention, had been ousted as the traitor. I still wasn’t sure what had happened to him officially, but I found that I really didn’t care that much either.
Sorenson and Delano were on foot pretending to try and get through the front door. Since they were the closest in age to Lia, we decided that we’d send them in as a decoy. No one really thought they’d get through the front door, just as I didn’t expect Kyle and Derek to make it through the gate, but they could distract the guards there while I tried to get to Lia’s room.
Which I unfortunately didn’t know the exact location of.
I’d been to the mayor’s house once, though I hadn’t known it at the time. Three months ago when I’d first taken Lia to bed, we’d come back to her place. But that had been the pool house, just beside the main house and I doubted that she lived there permanently. And definitely not if her father was keeping her on lockdown.
Still, I sent two of my boys that way just to check and make sure that she wasn’t there. That at least I knew the location of. Three of my guys went to the back, because I figured that was going to be my best entry point.
But before I dove in, I wanted to get a good look at the upper floor. If Lia’s room was upstairs as we suspected, then there would be a window. I wanted to see if I could get a look at the windows and tell which one was hers. Which was probably really stupid, but if I saw even a flicker of pink, I’d assume it was hers—whether she liked pink or not. I doubt her father gave her much say.
As I rounded the side of the building, I froze. From a distance, I saw a small figure on the second floor. The figure was climbing down the side of the building towards the ground, almost repelling along the side of the wall.
Then she slipped.
I raced forward. She seemed to have caught her balance and was once again climbing, but I didn’t stop moving. I didn’t stop until I was right beneath her and by then I could definitely tell that I was right—it was a woman—but also that it was the woman I was desperately searching for.
Lia!
She slipped again and this time she didn’t catch herself. She let out a curdling scream as she fell once again. She must have been positive that she was going to hit the ground hard—and she probably would have. But I was standing there in the perfect spot. I reached out my arms and leaned back slightly so that when she tumbled into them, I caught her half against my chest, bracing myself against the sudden weight and impact.
I couldn’t believe my luck. It was her, Lia, cradled in my arms.
And struggling.
“Let me go, you asshole! I’m not going back!” she screamed at me as she flailed her arms in a desperate attempt to swat at me.
I struggled with her, realizing that if she kept hollering like that, we were going to be overrun with guards. In an attempt to stop her, I dropped her lower half so that her feet touched the ground, though I kept a tight hold around her upper half, my arm dropping so that it clung tightly to her waist instead of her shoulders.
I had just a moment to think, Is her stomach a little rounder? Is that the baby?
Then I clamped my free hand over her mouth so that she would quiet and hopefully still long enough to see that it was me. When she continued to struggle, I said, “Shh! Lia, it’s me!”
She froze in my arms, the only thing moving her eyes. They snapped open and stared up at me. I smiled down at her as I felt her whole body relax against me. I knew that once she saw it was me, she would be happy. Part of me had been worried, worried that maybe after everything that had happened she was having second thoughts, but now I knew for sure. She wanted to be with me still.
“Luke!” she cried, her voice muffled by my hand.
I grinned, but removed my hand, then I pulled her to me and held her like this was the first and the last time I’d ever get the chance. Which was possible on that second part anyway. If I got caught, the police were going to lock me up and throw away the key. Unless I got a pardon of some kind, I was done for. And they’d never let me see Lia or our kid. That didn’t sit well with me and it forced me to pull away from her and remind myself that we didn’t have time.
“We’ve got to go. The baby…my father…I have to save this baby, Luke!” Lia cried, having apparently come to very similar conclusions on her own.
I nodded in agreement instantly and began to pull her along. I would get us both out of here and we’d raise that baby together if it was the last thing I ever did. “I know. Let’s go. I’m taking you back to the Road Roses.”
We raced around the back where we’d come from, heading towards the pool house. I wasn’t sure if Lia would be able to get herself over the gates that surrounded the place—though she had managed to get herself down her window and to the first floor without too much diff
iculty. Unfortunately, the way we got in was the only way I knew to get us back out. The gate went around the whole property and while we could spend the day running around, hiding and dodging the guards, eventually we’d get caught. The police would come, they’d get me for escaping and kidnapping and that would be that.
I couldn’t let it happen, so we had to try and get the hell out of this fortress.
Garrison quickly caught up at him, obvious relief in his eyes at the sight of Lia trailing beside me. “Jesus, this place is crawling with guards!” he huffed in irritation. “We’ve gotta get the hell out of here before they grow a brain cell and call the actual police to come and help, too.”
Running together, we ducked behind the pool house to avoid another guard. “Have they realized we’re here?”