by Paula Cox
A chill that had nothing to do with the night air ran through him. There was something going on, something much deeper than he’d realized. When Grace and Laurel were taken, he’d thought it might have to do with him, or perhaps someone looking for leverage on The Satan’s Breed. When Billy was killed, he’d thought perhaps Billy had been trying to relay information about the club, or something else that was happening. That there was some other story he hadn’t heard about yet. But now, this attack on the clubhouse as well?
Someone was trying to start a war. It could be someone on either side or someone outside of the group. But it wasn’t going to be pretty, whatever it was. Because someone was trying to start a war, and someone else would have to stop it.
“Naveena,” he said, quietly. “I need a meeting with Marv.”
She shook her head. “Even if I gave a shit about you, Gunner, I couldn’t do that. Who am I? None of the guys here give a shit about me.”
“Can you tell me where to find him?”
“Can’t and won’t. You get a twofer.”
He clenched his jaw and fought back the urge to scream. She had probably lost people she cared deeply about today. Shouting or hitting her wouldn’t help her — or him — feel any better. “I didn’t have anything to do with this, Naveena, but I’m going to find out who did, and I’m going to make them pay. Okay?”
She glared off into the distance, but she didn’t argue with him.
“Do you have somewhere safe to go?”
She pointed into the wreckage, without saying a word. What was there to say really? He wanted to see this girl safe, but he was also itching to get on the move again. This puzzle was a hell of a lot bigger than he’d thought, and he needed to bring it to a close as soon as possible. Before more innocent people were hurt.
“Give me your phone,” he said. She handed it to him without any real contact, and he opened up the notes app, tapped in an address and a passphrase. “Go there,” he said. “It’s a motel. You can stay the night, sleep safe, and then get in touch with me in a few days, at that number. I’ll make sure you’re okay.”
He thought about trying to make her promise that she’d do as he said, but what was the point? She didn’t owe him anything. He didn’t owe her anything either, but she truly believed that he was putting her in danger. This was the least he could do.
She took the phone back out of his hand with a little bit of a yank, but she didn’t immediately delete the note. She stayed on the ground, her gaze focused on the squatting black horror of a building as he stood. He didn’t quite run back to his bike, but the heels of his boots made a double time clack as he rushed back. As quickly as he could, without giving in to the rising panic, he mounted the bike, kicked it into gear, and sped back towards the safe house. Where he hoped Lola would still be, peacefully asleep.
If he’d put her in even more danger, he wasn’t at all sure he’d manage to forgive himself.
Chapter Fourteen
When the door shut, Lola stirred, but it wasn’t enough to wake her up. Not until she stretched, and her hand brushed over the second pillow. The one which should have held a second, sleeping head. Dark, tousled hair, round, wide-set eyes, and a smile, even in sleep. Maybe he should’ve been watching her; maybe he should’ve still been resting, ready for her to wake him with a carefully positioned hand or mouth. Or anything, really, other than clearly not present.
She opened her eyes and saw what her exploring fingers had already found: a pillow that didn’t look like it had been slept on, sheets that hadn’t been disturbed, and a cold, empty space beside her in the bed. It shouldn’t really be surprising; it wasn’t like they had some kind of commitment to one another. He’d probably gone and slept on the couch or something.
Only it was still dark out, and she hadn’t been asleep for long. And there had been that sound. Like the door had just been opened and closed. That was what had woken her up. Where the hell would he have gone?
She sat up in bed, clutching the sheets to her breasts. It was very different, being naked in a strange house that she didn’t really know instead of naked with a man that seemed to light her body on fire. She felt odd and exposed now. It didn’t help that she’d been in such a state when Gunner drove them through town that she didn’t really know exactly where she was, or how to get back to home.
He wouldn’t just abandon her. That wasn’t his style. She pushed away the fact that she barely knew anything about him, and focused on the sense of him, which had been her guiding light all through this catastrophe. He seemed to care very much about his sister in law, and about his daughter. A man wouldn’t care that much about those two women, and then dismiss her out of hand. He wouldn’t leave her somewhere she could get hurt. She needed to believe that. As hard as it might be.
There was a bureau in the room. She tugged the sheet off the bed and wrapped it around herself to see if someone had conveniently left behind some generic women’s clothing. This place seemed to be well stocked, overall, from what she’d seen of it. It didn’t seem to be outside of the realm of possibility.
She managed to come up with a plain T-shirt, jeans that would fit her hips, and underwear that were still in the package and therefore didn’t feel too freaky to put on. No bra and her clothes weren’t in the bathroom. That was okay. They’d been filthy. Vomit. Blood. Had there been blood or had that just been her imagination? Thinking about it made her stomach roil, and she decided she didn’t need to go that far down the mental path.
She did find her phone, where it must have fallen out of her pocket, under the lip of the vanity in the bathroom. She snagged it with the tips of her fingers and tugged it out. It was off; thinking back, it had been since Gunner had shut it off in Laurel’s apartment. Heat ran back through her, thinking about how he’d pinned her against the door. But it wasn’t entirely the good kind of heat. Yes, the man was amazing in bed and pure luxury between her thighs, but what the hell was going on? Why had he left her here?
The phone took a moment to connect, then started beeping frantically as a truckload of notifications rolled in. It took her a moment to get to them; she’d gotten tons of calls from a number she didn’t recognize, and a mess of texts from Cassidy. The calls made her nervous. Who would call her phone, a bunch of times, when she had no idea who they were? One call was a random butt dial or a missed number, but this person looked like they’d tried to reach her every half-hour for hours. And there were messages too.
It wasn’t sensible, but as her anxiety spiraled up her throat and choked off her air, she tapped the delete button a bunch of times, pushing the messages out of her phone and out of her attention. That was going to just be how it was, she decided. There was absolutely no need to think about who was doing that. Who was trying to reach her.
Her fingers were shaking as she tapped into the texts from Cassidy.
Girl, where are you? Is everything okay? The daycare was trashed.
Seriously, are you okay? I’m super worried. Text me.
Lola, whatever’s going on, you can trust me. Get in touch.
There was more, but it was all along the same vein. She dialed Cassidy’s number, but after a couple of rings, it just went to voicemail.
“Cassidy, it’s me, call me,” she said. And found herself looking around, feeling like the walls around her were just a little more sinister than they had been before.
She pulled up the GPS on her phone, and after some poking, found that she was outside of town, near the commercial district, but a solid half-hour drive from her apartment. She bit her lip. She could call a cab, of course, but she didn’t have her purse anymore. She had left it… somewhere… That’s right — back at the daycare center. Her credit card information was on her phone, though, and she thought there was a cab company that would let her pay by tap. She’d just have to remember which one it was.
There was a beep, and a text from Cassidy showed on the screen. Sorry, I’m out, can’t talk. Where are you? Are you okay? Did someone hurt you?
No, Lola wrote back. It’s too crazy. Can you come get me? I think maybe I need help.
Of course, the reply came back in less than a minute. Where are you?
Lola typed in the address. After a moment, the screen flashed again.
There’s a park, just a block from where you are. Can you get there? I’ll meet you at the bench, near the toddler play area.
It was a good idea. Gunner had called this place a safe house. What were the odds that someone was watching the place, protecting them? If Cassidy just showed up, they might hurt her, or try to keep her contained, or something else equally dangerous. Getting out first would be better.
She wouldn’t be able to go out the front door, though. She made a quick circuit of the small building. There was a back door that led onto a porch. She’d have to hope for the best.
I’m on my way, she typed and then paused for one last minute.
She didn’t believe that Gunner would have left her here if he thought she was in danger. But she also didn’t think that he knew what was going on, not anymore. Not with the way he’d reacted when he saw that dead boy. And the biggest problem was that he wasn’t talking to her. If he would open up and tell her what was going on, she would be able to trust him. Like this, where he was keeping secrets and not trusting her back, how could she possibly believe him?
Nope. She wasn’t going to sit around waiting to be rescued. Absolutely not. She’d get to Cassidy, find out what had happened so far, and then figure out what in the world to do next.
***
The grass was cold on her feet. It was a warm night, but not hot, and there was absolutely no way she was going to try walking in the heels she’d worn to the garage. That just seemed like a dumb idea, top to bottom. Better to risk cutting her foot on something. This was a pretty clean neighborhood, all things considered, so it didn’t seem too risky. Comparatively. She walked on the grass, between sidewalks and neat duplexes, townhouses that had attached garages and small yards. The embodiment of the modern middle class.
She’d grown up in a place that had tried so hard to be like this and had focused more on looking good and rarely on being good. As long as everything looked perfect, no one cared what went on behind closed doors. That had been the hardest thing to understand when she’d finally broken free; that she could actually begin to trust people who represented themselves in a certain way. Before she’d been forced to search every sentence, every thought, for a hidden motive. Now, if she was with the right people, she didn’t have to think that way. It had been odd, but it had become refreshing.
She and Cassidy had become friends when they were both in school. Cassidy was working on her Masters in Education while Lola was pursuing a degree in social work. They’d crossed paths in an early ed classroom focused on motivational research. Cassidy’s family was Dominican and Korean, and the two had bonded over being the only people of color in a lot of their classes. When Cassidy had gotten the job at the after-school center, she’d recommended Lola as another potential recruit from their program. Without Cassidy’s earnest endorsement, Lola wasn’t sure she’d ever have made it through the door.
Neither one of them talked much about their early lives. Cassidy’s parents weren’t together anymore, and Lola knew that Cassidy was responsible for at least one of her younger siblings full-time. She hated that she was dragging her friend into this mess, but it seemed safer than calling a random Uber and hoping for the best. At least she was meeting Cassidy a little way away from the safe house. Hopefully, that would insulate her from some of the potential fallout. If Gunner came back, and she was gone, and he was angry.
She didn’t think he was the type to react that way, but there had been plenty of things she hadn’t thought before.
The walk to the park Cassidy had mentioned was short. The night was warm and pleasant, and though her feet were a little chilly from dew, she was warm enough. She found the toddler playground and the bench that faced it and sat down to wait for Cassidy.
She was painfully tired, and as soon as she sat down, her body felt incredibly heavy. She’d been more or less awake for hours, and with some pretty stressful events in between. She meant to stand up, walk around a little, but it felt so good to be resting. Even if she was nervous. Or afraid.
So, she was almost asleep on her own before the cloth came over her face. She bucked once before the smell of rotten, chemical fruit overwhelmed her.
***
The first thing that came back was her hearing. There was music playing. Old music — the kind of stuff Mama had listened to in the kitchen while she was frying hush puppies. She’d danced and waved her spoon to B.B. King and Elvis and more. That kind of hillbilly rock that had been absolutely stolen from black folks and played by clean cut white boys who had never seen the inside of a dive. Lola had watched Mama dance and fry and sing along, and sometimes she’d joined in.
Then she began to notice the movement. She wasn’t upright; she was lying down, and she was swaying side to side. Once she had those fundamentals established, she began to notice a seam pressing into her cheek, and her knees bent, leaning back against something hard and firm. A car. She was in the back of a car.
She opened her eyes too fast, and a bright light seemed to tear her vision apart. The last thing she could remember was darkness, and then a fruity smell, and a sense of vertigo. She’d been drugged. Like Grace had been.
She squeezed her eyes closed until the need to be sick passed, and then opened them again, more slowly this time. She blinked and kept working on her assessment of her body. Her hands and feet were free, not bound.
The motion of the car stopped, and she pushed herself up, scrabbling at the door handle, only to realize it had been broken off. She felt metal slice into her palm, but she didn’t allow herself to notice the pain. She slapped hard at the window, willing it to break under her hand; all she managed to do was smear her blood on the glass.
She turned to the other side, her heel ready to kick out the glass on the other side — her feet were still bare, she doubted she could actually do it, but she wanted to try, she wanted to say she’d tried everything — and it finally occurred to her that cars had drivers. In fact, the driver of this car was turned in their seat, watching her with — it was hard to determine an emotion looking only at a person’s eyes, but she thought amusement was the most likely candidate. The person wore a bandanna over the lower half of their face, like an Old West bandit, and their eyes were crinkling with amusement. In another moment, she might have smiled back at the warmth and light in those dark blue eyes; now she wanted to scratch them out.
But the chemicals hadn’t worn off, and she was suddenly dizzy, spinning in her seat, trying not to vomit. She pushed her eyes off his face, focusing on a small hunk of metal dangling from the rearview mirror. It took a moment to make it out, but the concentrating was good for her brain. It looked like the casing of a small bullet, with a star pattern scratched into the butt end, where the hammer hit. If she had it in her hands, she thought she would’ve been able to tell if it had been fired. Who carried a bullet with them in their car? Unless it was a reminder — but of what?
Her stomach flipped even harder, and she would’ve given in and puked all over his upholstery if she’d been surer of what was coming next.
“I’m really sorry,” the figure in the front seat said. His voice was masculine and much kinder than she’d expected for someone who had, presumably, kidnapped her and thrown her in the back of a car, transporting her to points unknown. “This wasn’t ever supposed to involve you. Or the kid, really. This whole thing has gotten way out of control. You seem like a nice girl. I’m going to cross my fingers you make it out of this whole thing okay.”
She stared at her kidnapper, trying to make all the words line up in a way that made sense. “You — you drugged me and put me in a car, and drove me who knows where, and now you’re telling me you hope I make it out of this okay?” She shook her head, then realized that moving her h
ead was a terrible idea, and held still. “If you want me to get out of this okay, I can give you some pointers on how to help make that happen.”
He laughed, and it was a merry sound, not the slightest hint of coldness in it. Somehow, that made it even creepier.
“I like the way you think,” he said, “But no. I’ve got a job to do, and I’m a man of my word. And they’re expecting you.” He gestured with his chin, and she glanced out the window. The car was parked outside of a big brick warehouse, the sort that was ubiquitous outside the city. Her stomach tied up in knots and she tried to swallow hard and keep the panic where it belonged.
“Cassidy,” Lola managed to choke out. “My friend. You were messaging me from her number, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. “Snagged her phone yesterday. She left it at the daycare. Didn’t think it’d be so useful. I got lucky, that time, yay for me.”
The warehouse door opened, and two big, burly men were walking towards the car. Lola felt her heart begin to slam against her ribs. She meant to hold still, be brave, but her body scooted across the car as if she could somehow get away.