The thin, high wail of a nearby car alarm sounded.
Chapter Three
Minnie’s kidnapper shoved her ahead of him, into the parking lot. She didn’t know if the giant stranger across the street had heard her scream for help.
Acres of cars stretched out around them, in grey, red, black, and white, but there were no people. Her kidnapper dragged her between trucks and cars, moving fast. If the giant followed them he would never find her. She stumbled deliberately, slowing their pace, but her kidnapper just pushed her forward. They finally stopped beside a black panel van, the kind you always saw in HBO reenactments.
“I’m not getting into that!” Minnie tried to bolt but his fingers bit deep into the flesh of her upper arm. He flung her hard against the side of the van. Minnie’s head whipped back, banging the metal panel. When she bounced back towards him, his hand connected with her face with a crack.
Minnie fell to the ground, gravel digging into her bare knees. Make-up was never going to cover all of her bruises. The world spun around her. “This face is worth a lot of money,” she yelled up at him. Nobody had ever struck her before. She dabbed at her mouth, feeling a small wet trickle. Why wasn’t she crying? She was staring at the red liquid smeared across her fingers when she noticed the green-and-black sign on the side of the van. Striker Car Alarms. Her kidnapper fitted alarms to cars. Her brain was signaling that that was important. Why? Because that sign meant that he probably had an alarm in this van. A nice loud alarm. She pulled herself to her feet, using the van for support. Her kidnapper was patting his pockets with his gun-free hand, searching for his keys, his attention diverted from her. His gun was pointed downwards, sticking out from the denim jacket covering his arm. She rammed the van hard with her hip.
Nothing.
She did it again. Harder.
Nothing. Her captor jerked his head left and right, trying to keep an eye on the lot, while he rummaged in his pockets. The giant man who had yelled her name, had made him nervous. Her captor finally fished his keys out of a jacket pocket.
Minnie flung herself back against the van-
The alarm wailed.
Her kidnapper swore at her, fumbling with his keychain. The alarm snapped off. “You’re going to pay for that,” he said, starting towards her.
The world was still unsteady and her head hurt but Minnie faced him, clenching her hands into fists. This was her last chance to—
The giant man came out of nowhere. One moment, it was just her, her kidnapper, the van and the gun, and the next, her kidnapper was flying through the air. There was a satisfying metallic boing as his head connected with the van. His gun clattered to the ground near her feet.
Minnie bent and snatched it up. Got it. She stood. Now what?
Chapter Four
Her kidnapper was splayed at her feet, moaning softly. Her rescuer was looking at her, his head cocked to one side. Omigosh, he was huge.
“D…d…don’t move,” she said, pointing the gun at him. He had yelled her name earlier, but that didn’t mean she could trust him.
Minnie waved her gun at the giant to show she meant business. He didn’t look scared. He didn’t look like he was feeling much of anything. He was obviously a biker. He wore jeans, a black leather jacket and his outsized feet were shod in biker boots. He had broad, slightly flattened facial features. His eyes were deep-set and shadowed under a prominent brow bone. His skull was shaved bare. That blunt-hewn face — Slavic ancestry? — was impassive. Minnie would have retreated a few precautionary steps but she was already pressed up against the side of the van.
He raised an eyebrow. At least he had two of them. The quirked eyebrow was a tiny movement but it seemed almost… polite? It dawned on her that he was waiting for her to say something. He didn’t seem to understand that the person who had the gun was the person in charge. Big men sometimes weren’t very bright. Like too-big trees where the topmost foliage withered because it was too far from the roots. She had given up dating NFL players for that very reason.
She had to make it clear to him that she was in charge. Minnie aimed the gun at his head, squinting along the barrel to show she meant business. No, it’d be more professional to aim it at his chest. She shifted the barrel downward to center it on his impossibly wide chest. His leather jacket was open. Beneath it, he wore a white t-shirt. The wind pressed the thin fabric of his t-shirt against his skin, hinting at a torso cut with impressive muscle. Focus! Aiming the gun at his head was scarier. She jerked it up again.
“It’s better to point it at the biggest target area. Less chance of missing,” he said. His voice was deep and rough, like he didn’t use it much. Was that a faint west coast accent she heard?
“I don’t think it matters what I aim at. It’d be hard to miss a target as big as you at this distance, Sasquatch,” she used the gun to punctuate her words.
Good, her voice was steady. “How about you tell me how you know my name and what you’re doing here?”
Chapter Five
Sasquatch? Big Mike was slow to respond. In part because he generally didn’t speak unless it was essential. In part because he was having trouble reconciling those biting words with this angelically pretty woman.
She rolled her eyes and sighed, as if she had made some kind of judgement about him. He put his mouth in gear, “Sasquatch? I just saved you from him.” Big Mike jerked a thumb at the semi-conscious man splayed at Crash’s sister’s feet. The motion was deliberately slow. His size intimidated women so he was careful not to startle them. “Your brother, Crash, sent me.”
The gun in her hand wavered. She wanted to believe him but didn’t. He checked the time on his watch. The target had been acquired and secured in a minimum amount of time. But now he had to convince her he was her ally, clean up the scene, and put her on a flight back to her family. He was going to be very late for his appointment with Rocco. He noticed Minerva Coolidge was shivering and he momentarily forgot his pressing schedule. No wonder she was cold, there was more function in his chunky steel wristwatch — reverse GPS, sun compass and three time zones — than in all of her clothes. They had no purpose apart from decoration. She couldn’t run in that footwear, and her little skirt and brief top weren’t doing anything to keep her warm. Decorative and useless. Much like her.
“Am I keeping you from something?” she said, waggling the gun.
He bet this was the first time she had ever held a firearm. “I hope the safety is on, on that weapon.”
She looked blank. He guessed she didn’t even know where the safety catch was located on the gun.
“You want some proof that I know your brother,” he said. “All right. I met him in the army. He’s certifiable. One-hundred-and-ten percent crazy.” Some of the members of Crash’s platoon used to half-joke about killing Crash and burying him in the desert as a service to humanity. Big Mike didn’t share that information with Crash’s sister.
“Everyone knows Crash is… different,” she said, keeping the gun more-or-less centered on his chest.
Her eyes were the same color as her brother’s. Bright blue. But where Crash’s eyes were empty, hers weren’t. She didn’t want to use the word nuts or crazy about Crash. Loyalty. He approved. He needed to tell her something more personal about her brother. But what? He wracked his brain and hit on the perfect thing to say. “Crash told me that you stole his credit card.”
Crash’s sister lowered the gun to her side.
He closed the gap between them. She was tall for a woman but her head barely reached his shoulders. She peered up at him. “Were you raised in the lee of a nuclear power plant? Any yellow, luminous, contaminated water supplies nearby?” she said.
“You’re welcome,” he said pointedly. He took the gun from her hand as gently as he could. A faint lemony scent teased his nostrils. Her shampoo. He resisted the urge to inhale deeply. He stepped back, flipped the gun’s safety on and tucked it into the back of his jeans. He noticed her eyes lingered on his stomach as his t-shirt stret
ched tight across his abdominal muscles.
“What’s your name?” she said, bringing her eyes back up to his face.
“Everyone calls me Big Mike.”
“Because you’re so tall and strong?” she widened her eyes flirtatiously.
Decorative, useless and Trouble-with-a-capital-T. “No,” he said shortly.
She laughed. “I’m usually called Minnie, not Minerva,” she said.
He nodded stiffly. “Are you hurt?” he said.
“I’m fine.” She bent and brushed at her knees, loosening gravel. He should have hit her abductor harder.
She straightened and rubbed her bare arms. Big Mike shrugged out of his leather jacket and offered it to her.
She didn’t move.
He was wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt and she seemed to be transfixed by the black tribal marks inked on his bare biceps. He had been seventeen and stupid when he got tattooed. Minnie licked her lips, a small moist triangle of tongue that darted out to sweep over pillowy lips.
Christ. “Cover up,” he said, bundling his jacket into her arms. The sooner he got Crash’s sister onto a plane, the better. He bet there were bodies piled up, back west, of men who had hit on her not knowing that her brother was psychotic.
“Oh. Um. Yes. Thank-you,” she said, taking it from him. She put it on, the motion pulling the sheer fabric of her top tight against her body. Her nipples were hard buds. He dragged his attention back to her face.
He spotted a tiny cut on her lip. “Did he do this to you?” he said, catching her jaw in his hand. She was mouthy and talked a tough game but she probably weighed one-hundred pounds, soaking wet — there was nothing fair about that battle. His thumb brushed over the cut.
She jerked back from his touch, wrapping his jacket tight around herself. It engulfed her, hanging past her hips.
“Sorry,” he said, assuming he had hurt her. He cast a brief, unpitying glance at the man at their feet. “I’ll lock him in the van — I’ll let your brother know where to find him — then we can get you on the next flight out.” Her brother would have her abductor killed. No loss. Another glance at his watch. Rocco was expecting him to be late — he had left him a message — but it still bothered Big Mike.
“I’m not going back to Crash and Daddy,” she said.
“What?” he said. This woman had the survival skills of a hen. It was hard to believe she was a product of the same gene pool that produced Crash. He spoke slowly and clearly, “Your family’s club, Hell’s Crew, is in the middle of a territory battle-“
“Something they never bothered to tell me,” she said bitterly. “They lied to me! They told me that I couldn’t return to New York because personal crime statistics were on the rise. Muggings! Purse snatchings! There was nothing about TDR bikers and a war.” Her face flushed with indignation. “I’m not going anywhere. I have a career here.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
“I’m a model.”
He raised an eyebrow fractionally.
Her mouth thinned. “I’m sure you do something more important. Wait, don’t tell me… let me guess. You use those muscles to lift children out of global poverty?”
He smiled on the inside but it didn’t break the surface of his face. It rarely did. It was just the way he was built. Crash’s sister might not be functional but she was turning out to be surprisingly… sparky. “I do security work.”
“Like a bodyguard?”
“Protection? You could describe it that way. But usually on a bigger scale,” he said. Armies. Keeping the Free World Safe.
She gave him an assessing look. He waited for the next interesting thing to come out of her mouth. He wasn’t disappointed.
“I want to hire you. As my bodyguard.”
“As your bodyguard?” He made sure his eyes didn’t drop over that killer body. It was now obscured by his leather jacket but he had near perfect visual recall.
She nodded. “I want you to protect me from TDR and my family. I’ll pay you the going rate plus twenty-five percent.”
No. But for some crazy reason he didn’t say the word out loud. He wasn’t seriously considering her offer. He was going to listen to Rocco’s no-doubt generous offer, turn him down and fly out that night. He had an interesting, lucrative contract with the State Department lined up. He never stayed Stateside for very long. He wasn’t even sure why he had come back-
She continued, “I’m one show away from becoming a supermodel. I’m competing with the world’s top models to wear the showpiece design at the Delilah’s Intrigue show next week. That means it’s important for me to keep my public profile up this week. I’d take you to every party I go to, introduce you to the other models and A-list celebrities.”
She listed those things as if she were dangling a baited hook in the water and he was a hungry fish. He didn’t understand half of what she had just said — what was Delilah’s Intrigue? — but he sieved out the important bits: Parties. Noise. People. Photographs. “No,” he said firmly. “You’re in danger. You need to go home to your family.”
“Okay, Sasquatch. Thanks for the help. Good meeting you. I’ll find my own bodyguard. I know lots of famous people with their own security teams.”
It was as if she didn’t hear him. She seemed to have two functioning ears so it was the bit in-between those two ears that didn’t work that well. “Celebrity bodyguards are brawny showpieces. They don’t know anything about keeping someone safe. Crash is formidable. You’re safest back home with him,” he said.
“New York is my home.”
He checked his watch again. He had done all he could, to persuade this pretty nitwit to return home to her family. If she wouldn’t listen, there was nothing more he could do for her.
The man at their feet moaned. Big Mike turned his attention to him. He picked up the bunch of keys lying near the biker, and used them to open the rear doors of the van. Big Mike moved to try and block her view, but he was too late. They both stared into the back of the van.
“I’m putting you on the next flight out whether you like it or not,” he said.
Chapter Six
Minnie squeezed in beside him. Big Mike had made a movement as if he didn’t want her to see the inside of the van. It was empty apart from a custom-fitted, low rail that had been bolted on either side of the van. Handcuffs dangled from each rail. Rusty stains covered the nearest set. As if someone had struggled to get loose until their wrists bled… Minnie felt nauseous.
“I’m putting you on the next flight out whether you like it or not,” Big Mike said. “TDR obviously traffics in human beings.”
She squashed an impulse to scuttle away and hide, something small creatures did instinctively when faced with something large and angry. There was no way she was going to let this giant man push her around.
“It’s a mistake to let someone take you to a secondary location,” he said.
Now he was lecturing her. Blah, blah, blah. She stopped listening, her eyes returning to his tattooed arms. Primitive, black slashes scythed across bulging muscle. She usually dated handsome, almost pretty men with five-hundred-dollar haircuts and five-thousand-dollar suits — merchant bankers and stockbrokers. They were corporate predators but they paled beside the real thing. Whenever she returned from a trip to visit her family, the men in her dating pool always seemed tepid by comparison. But that didn’t mean she was going to start dating giant, tattooed, overbearing bikers. She had enough overbearing bikers in her life already.
Big Mike droned on, “-what he threatens to do if you don’t obey, your odds never get better than where you are now.” His words were disapproving but his face was impassive. That seemed to be his default expression.
Big Mike kept going, “-have had the same gun somewhere isolated, in about ten minutes. And you would have been handcuffed to this rail. Tethered.”
Anyhow, muscles aside, Big Mike barely rated a four. His face was plainer than homemade yogurt and his personality didn’t make up for it.
“I’m putting you on the next flight out,” he said.
She waited. “Oh, is it my turn to speak?” Finally. “Yes, the situation is serious. I’m not stupid. I understand that territory battles are deadly. But I’d have to give up the Delilah’s Intrigue show. I’m probably going to be chosen to wear the Delilah’s Intrigue Dream Bustier.” She considered describing it to him but decided that effort would be wasted. It was a frothy confection of white lace, ribbons and diamonds.
“Is it worth dying for?”
“The biggest fashion show of my career is a week away. I’m not running. I’m a Coolidge.”
“You’re Coolidge-lite. All you have in common with your brother is that he never understands when he’s beaten, either,” Big Mike said. He jerked his thumb at the interior of the van. “You’re going to risk this for a clothes show?”
“Lingerie,” she corrected, stung by his assessment.
He shut his eyes as if trying to draw on inner reserves.
She crossed her arms. “How do you plan to get a screaming, struggling woman on a flight?”
His eyes snapped back open. She noticed they were sherry-brown. It was the kind of color you’d overlook at first glance but that you liked if you bothered to take a second look. Her kidnapper moaned softly. Big Mike bent, lifted him as if he weighed nothing, and threw him into the back of the van. He landed with a clatter and a yelp of pain. Big Mike picked up her kidnapper’s jacket and tossed it in after him. Minnie saw the flash of a TDR patch on the back of it. “Keep an eye out,” he said to her and climbed in after him. Minnie ran her eyes over the acres of cars stretching out in every direction, the sun glinting off chrome bumpers. There was a cluster of people many aisles distant, bending over the open trunk of a red car. No-one else.
On the Run (Big Mike and Minnie Book 1) Page 2