On the Run (Big Mike and Minnie Book 1)

by Kelly, Susan Amanda

  She could make a run for it but there was no way she could outrun Big Mike. And she couldn’t scream for help, not now that she had an unconscious biker to explain. There was no way she’d risk drawing police attention to a biker war that involved her family’s club, Hell’s Crew.

  Her eyes were drawn back to the inside of the van. Big Mike crouched over her kidnapper and flipped him onto his stomach, as easily as turning a pancake on a griddle. “Wait… lemme up,” the TDR biker said, struggling weakly. Big Mike slammed his head against the inside wall of the van. He went limp and Big Mike snapped handcuffs around his hairy wrists. Big Mike crawled back to the edge of the van and leapt out, his boots crunching on the ground. He landed lightly for such a big man. He locked the van doors and crouched next to the rear right wheel. Minnie heard the keys jangle as he slid them out of sight, under the wheel arch.

  Big Mike straightened, pulled a cellphone out of his pocket and walked a few feet away from her. He was calling her brother. She couldn’t hear the conversation, but she knew he was describing the van and its location because she saw him read off the plate number. This was how it worked in her family’s world. You didn’t call the police to sort out your problems. You did it yourself.

  She waited for Big Mike to hand the phone to her so she could speak to Crash, but he didn’t. He ended the call and put his phone back in his pocket.

  “Who was that?” she asked, but she knew the answer.

  “Your brother. He’s going to send someone to pick up the van and its contents. Then he’s catching the next plane out, to tie you up and drive you back across country. I get the pleasure of guarding you until he arrives.”

  Minnie looked up at him, dismayed. He had just consulted with her brother about her future, in front of her, and the two of them had made a decision without her input. She wanted to smash something over his large, bald head. She took a deep breath and put a leash on her temper. “I’m sorry.” She let her eyes fill with tears. “I’m selfish and thoughtless. Crash must be worried sick. I’ll co-operate. I’ll leave on the next flight to L.A.” She’d let Big Mike book her a ticket, then she’d wave goodbye, check in for the flight, wait half an hour and just walk out of the airport.

  He tilted his head, his face impassive, but his eyes were assessing.

  She let her tears brim over and trickle down her cheeks.

  Big Mike reached out and brushed them away with a big thumb. “Crash said not to trust a word that comes out of that pretty mouth.”

  He thought her mouth was pretty. The thought came out of nowhere. She squashed it back into the place she tried to keep the rest of her inappropriate thoughts. Like the thoughts that kept urging her to touch those tattoos on his arms…

  “Now hand over the credit card you stole from him,” he said.

  “Come and get it,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  Chapter Seven

  Minnie berated herself for being chicken-hearted. The second Big Mike moved towards her, seemingly intent on frisking her, she fished the stolen credit card out from between her breasts and handed it to him. It was because she didn’t want his giant paws mauling her, she told herself. Or maybe she did.

  He pocketed the plastic rectangle. “Got anything else hidden in there that I should know about?”

  Sasquatch was teasing her? “There isn’t room for anything else,” she said.

  “Cellphone?” he said.

  He expression must have given her away because he held his hand out.

  “I’ll scream down the place and you can explain yourself to the police,” she said.

  “Yeah. The cops will be real interested in your family’s relationship with TDR. Then the cops will call the FBI’s Organized Crime Program. They’ll want to have a long chat with you about your family and transnational crime.”

  She extracted her cellphone from her pocket and slapped it into his outstretched palm.

  “I can also outrun you,” he said, putting her phone in his pocket. “In case you’re thinking of trying to make a break for it in those impractical shoes.”

  She wasn’t. She knew her red Louboutins weren’t designed for speed. Based on the sheer scale of him, she wasn’t foolish enough to think she could defeat him in any kind of physical contest. “If you want to trail me around for the day and waste your time, that’s fine with me,” she said. She would find a way to lose him. He was brawny, but not bright.

  “You’re going to have to trail me awhile,” he said, checking his watch yet again. “I’m late for an appointment. Maybe you should take the time to think about what would have happened to you if I hadn’t intervened this morning, Minnie?”

  Since he was distracted, Minnie judged it safe enough to stick her tongue out at him. If there was anything worse than an overbearing biker, it was a smug, overbearing biker.

  Chapter Eight

  Thirty minutes later, Big Mike paid their cab driver and let Minnie precede him out of the cab. The wind instantly disordered her long, golden hair, turning it into a whipping mop. She scooped it back with her hands but that left her skirt untethered and free to flare up high around slim thighs. This was that time of the year when the city blocks functioned as wind tunnels. Big Mike stepped between Minnie and the frigid blast, giving her a chance to get her hair and skirt under control. She huddled close, wrapped in his leather jacket, using him as a wind break, running her fingers through her hair and pressing her pink skirt back against her legs. This climate was another reason not to take the job. There was nothing redeeming about this city—

  He sniffed. A faint lemony scent teased his nostrils.

  “Are you sniffing my hair?” she said, giving him a haughty look.

  “It smells like lemons. Like your nature.”

  “So give me back my credit card and phone, and I’ll get out of your hair.” She scowled up at him.

  Her cheeks and the tip of her nose were reddened by the cold but she was still the prettiest creature he had ever seen. Maybe this city had one redeeming feature. He reminded himself she was a pretty nitwit with a psychotic brother. “It’s not your credit card,” he said.

  She dismissing that piffling fact with a regal wave of her hand, peering past him. “Where are we?” she said.

  The address the cab driver had taken them to, was a multi-story, concrete-and-glass tower with no identifying marks on the outside. The street was deserted. Big Mike headed for the entrance of the building. Minnie kept pace, keeping him between her and the wind. “I’m here to see a friend,” he said.

  “This is why you keep checking your watch?” She didn’t wait for a reply. “His boss makes him work the weekend?”

  “Rocco owns the building. He is the boss.”

  She waited.

  He waited.

  She sighed. “Big Mike, when two people have a conversation, it involves give-and-take,” she said.

  He opened the heavy steel-and-glass door for her and let her precede him into the foyer. “You want to know why I’m here. Precisely.”

  “Yes,” she said, looking around at the double-height foyer.

  It was vast, with soaring walls clad in cream, black-streaked marble, and empty except for a long desk against the far wall. Three security guards, all dressed in black, sat behind the desk. These weren’t pudgy, retired cops manning a security desk to supplement a pension. The guards were all in their mid-thirties and had the bearing of fit, ex-military men.

  “I’m here for a job interview,” he said. He guided her towards the security guards but slowed their pace as if out of consideration for her impractical shoes. He wanted time to assess his environment. Security cameras. Check. Laser lines. Check. Steel interior doors, probably fitted with maglocks. The glass on all of the windows would be unbreakable, barring a hit from an RPG.

  Why did Rocco have this level of fortifications on a building in Manhattan? Paranoia? There had been rumors…

  “You’re here for a job?” Minnie said, surprise in her voice.

 
“Yes.”

  She paused for a long moment and then made an impatient noise.

  He guessed she wanted more details. “This is Vitruvius. It’s a private military company. Rocco named it for Marcus Vitruvius, a Roman military engineer. Vitruvius served under Caesar. He specialized in the construction of war machines specifically for sieges. The ballista-”

  “Rocco is your friend?”

  He nodded. “As I was saying, the ballista and scorpio artillery-“

  “He’s another army friend? Like Crash?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t seem that interested in the details about Vitruvius. “I haven’t seen Rocco in years. I work overseas, mostly.” It was hard to keep in touch with friends when you were always on the move.

  She traced the edge of one of the tattoos on his bicep. “That’s why you’re tanned.”

  He held his breath until she lifted those teasing fingers. Did she know her touch disturbed him? She’d use it against him if she did.

  “I thought you were a club enforcer,” she said.

  That irked him. A club enforcer was the security arm of an outlaw motorcycle club. They functioned like sentinel wolves on the outskirts of the pack. “I’m not a club anything.”

  “Oh,” her mouth rounded in surprise. “You’re not a biker?”

  “No.”

  They reached the desk. None of the security guards smiled or greeted them. They were not there to guide tourists who wondered in off the streets, to convenient restrooms. They were the first line of defense. Against what?

  “Michael Williams,” Big Mike announced. “I’m expected.”

  “I.D.” one of them said without inflection. They were all the same physical type, clean-shaven, dark hair. Forgettable except for alert, restless eyes. Big Mike retrieved his driver’s license and pushed it across the desk. He tapped the desk, casually. His tap returned a solid sound. The desk was fortified, probably bullet-proof. The guard held his license up against the computer screen in front of him, looking from one to the other and back again.

  “I’m his prisoner,” Minnie said.

  None of the men even blinked at her announcement. The guard who had verified Big Mike’s I.D. slid it back across the desk along with two white, plastic security badges. “You’re both expected. Elevators in the corner. You are cleared to access the thirtieth floor only. Please wear your security badges at all times.”

  Big Mike took his I.D and the two badges, grabbed Minnie’s arm and pulled her towards the elevators. Her heels clattered on the floor. “He kidnapped me,” she yelled over her shoulder. Then even louder, “He wants to make me a sister wife and take me to live in the backwoods with him.”

  Sister wife? Why would any sane man want two women? One was trouble enough. “I’m your rescuer not your kidnapper, Minnie.”

  “Funny how I can’t tell the difference.” She shook his hand off her arm.

  A steel elevator door, one of three, slid open as they approached. He pushed Minnie inside, ahead of him.

  “What’s wrong with them?” Minnie looked back, past him, at the three men, still sitting immobile behind the desk, their eyes on the front entrance. “They’re like Stepford guards or something.”

  “They’re well trained,” he said. The elevator had no buttons on the wall. The doors slid shut and it started to rise. “You’re clearly not a prisoner. You walked into the building with me, talking to me. You’re wearing my jacket. And Rocco was expecting you.” He had texted Rocco, during the cab drive, explaining Minnie’s presence.

  She leaned back against the brushed steel, back wall of the elevator, her mouth sulky.

  “Do you want them to call the police? What about the FBI taking a close interest in your family?” he reminded her. She must have the attention span of a gnat if she had already forgotten their earlier conversation about not drawing attention to her family.

  “I didn’t give them my name and I wouldn’t have waited around for the police. Those three men would have locked you up in a room while they called the police. I would have had time to escape. Out a restroom window or something.”

  He was surprised at her reasoning. It was sound and if the men had taken her bait, she probably would have escaped exactly as she planned. “And the next time TDR attacks? You got lucky the first time when your abductor accidentally triggered his car alarm-“

  “I triggered his car alarm,” she said, straightening. “I saw the sign on the side of the van that said he installed alarms so I bumped the van with my hip a few times until it went off.”

  She had been hauled at gunpoint into a deserted parking lot and had been slapped, but she had managed to keep her head. Not a pretty nitwit after all.

  Chapter Nine

  It was a mistake to have told Big Mike that she had triggered the car alarm. It had been an automatic response because he was underestimating her. But it would be easier to escape him if he underestimated her. Because this building was like Fort Knox, her next best opportunity would be on the way to her apartment. Maybe if she forced him to stop for coffee-

  The elevator door opened with a discreet ping, onto a large waiting area. They trooped out. It was decorated tastefully and forgettably, in beige. The room was divided into three seating areas, with low beige couches arranged around low glass coffee tables. The carpet was beige colored, shot through with gold thread. It had a reassuring air of corporate affluence, like the kind of corporate offices one saw pictured in brochures for investment funds, but there was no company logo displayed on the walls.

  “What kind of job are you applying for?” she said. It was hard to believe he wasn’t a biker. He looked and behaved so much like the men she had been raised among. Deliciously non-tepid. If he wasn’t a biker than he wasn’t off-limits…

  “I don’t know.”

  She was about to tell him that it was silly to attend a job interview for a mystery job, when a dark-haired man, about the same age as Big Mike, appeared around the far corner. He was so handsome that Minnie did a stutter-step. Big Mike noticed. A tiny crease appeared between his eyes. “Your friend?” Minnie whispered, barely able to take her eyes off the man long enough to register Big Mike’s displeasure. “He’d make a terrible wingman.”

  “Wingman? He isn’t a pilot.”

  She gave him a pitying look. “A wingman is the average-looking friend you take with you to a singles bar so you can approach twosomes. Your friend is too handsome to be a wingman.” Even in candlelight, Big Mike was never going to rate more than a four. His wingman would have to be a two.

  “Why do you need to take a friend to be able to approach two women in a bar?”

  “Because they’re intimidating,” she said.

  “They are?”

  There it was, that biker-like attitude. Yum.

  “Rocco’s short,” Big Mike said, out of nowhere.

  Rocco approached and slapped Big Mike on the shoulder, “I still owe you a drink for Karshi-Khanabad.”

  “You never met a Chinook you didn’t like,” Big Mike said and gave Rocco a return buffet on the shoulder. Rocco staggered back a step.

  Minnie hoped they weren’t going to bore her with obscure army in-jokes. She cleared her throat. Big Mike introduced her to his friend.

  Rocco smiled at her. She blinked. He had a square jaw, crisp dark hair, and dimples. He was a smidgeon shorter than her. “Hard to believe this beautiful woman is Crash Coolidge’s sister,” he said, taking her hand in both of his. “I can see why he never told any of us about you, Minnie.”

  Big Mike made a restless movement beside her. She had a strong intuition he didn’t like his friend hanging onto her hand. Interesting.

  “Big Mike kidnapped me,” Minnie said. She put a convincing hitch in her voice.

  Rocco’s dimples deepening with amusement. “Really? You’re wearing his jacket and you were chatting to him as I approached. You’re very good at concealing your fear of him.”

  Minnie withdrew her hand from his. “You’re handsome enough to
be a model,” she said, “if only you were an inch or two taller.”

  Rocco looked uncertain. “Er… thank-you?”

  Big Mike snorted, beside her.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile before,” Rocco said, staring up at Big Mike. But when Minnie turned, Big Mike’s face was impassive again.

  “He smiles, but it’s on the inside,” Minnie said.

  Big Mike looked down at her, still impassive.

  “Now he’s totally startled that I know that about him,” she told Rocco. She reached up and patted Big Mike on the cheek. “Michael, most people can’t tell that you have expressions. You’re like one of those stone Easter Island heads. You should emote more.” She looked around. “Since nobody is going to help me escape, I’ll wait out here while you talk about this mysterious job.” Minnie flung herself onto one of the low couches. It was surprisingly squishy. Her skirt settled in soft folds high on her thighs. She shrugged out of Big Mike’s black leather jacket and lay it on the cushion beside her.

  “The doors lock automatically, Minnie, with maglocks. They consist of an electromagnet and an armature plate. You’d need an explosive charge to break through them once they’re locked. This is the thirtieth floor and there are no opening windows. There are security cameras in each corner of this room.” Big Mike explained all of this slowly and carefully.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said, selecting a magazine from a pile on the glass coffee table. It was the latest Vogue. Goody. “Can we get just get this part of my hellish day over with? Whoever-you-are,” she addressed Rocco, “Big Mike doesn’t really want your mystery job so you’re going to have to work hard to convince him. He also doesn’t like the city. It’s too noisy for him.”

  She settled back and crossed her legs. Big Mike stepped in front of her to block Rocco’s appreciative gaze.