by Anne Conley
“Don’t get distracted, son. We’re busy tonight.”
Chagrined, Jonas made a note to memorize everything about the bitch. She was his, regardless of the men she called brothers now. She would do well to remember that.
Chapter Nine
Zack followed Ryan and Bonnie up the stairs after the argumentative bouncer suddenly had a change of heart. It didn’t bode well, but he couldn’t say anything to Ryan about his qualms with Bonnie on the stairs between them. He hoped Ryan had picked up on it as well and was keeping his eyes peeled. Because Zack sure couldn’t.
He suddenly wanted Bonnie as far away from this mess as possible, but didn’t know how to make that happen. It had all been fun in the second-story rooms, where they’d joked and teased each other. But this floor was quieter, more serious, and the sense of foreboding in his gut roiled around like a hurricane.
A voice greeted them at the top of the stairs. “Good evening, Miss Pierce. Would you care for a private room?” The fact the woman greeted Bonnie by name told Zack everything he needed to know. Someone had been watching them enter and had given the go-ahead, even without the necessary checks and whatever shit they did here. And that someone knew Bonnie.
He tightened his grip around her waist and felt Ryan’s nearness on the other side. Good. He was playing into the threesome cover and saw the danger to Bonnie.
She answered, and he didn’t have a clue if she saw the danger or not. “Uh, is there any way we can just look around first? I mean, we do want a room, but I’ve never been here before, and this scene looks cool.” Her voice had gone all breathy, and Zack was utterly confused. What scene? He could only assume there was something happening. And it pissed part of him off that he had to be blind, and here on a fucking assignment, instead of just here with Bonnie for fun.
A sharp smacking sound filled his ears, and he turned his head. He didn’t even try to make out shapes because the lights were so dim up here. But the way Bonnie curled into him as Ryan came up on the other side of her and put his arm around both of them said they were blending into the playacting part, at least. He knew Ryan saw the seriousness of the situation, but what was Bonnie seeing?
“Absolutely. Just don’t wander into private rooms unattended. When you are ready for one of your own, I’ll show you to it.” The smile in the woman’s voice relaxed Zack somewhat, but he still felt way out of his element.
As if reading his mind, Ryan growled in his ear. “This was a bad idea.”
“What do you see?” Zack asked, dying to know.
“Small crowd, lots of leather and skin, and a goddamn bullwhip.”
Bonnie shuddered under his arm.
Quinten came through his earpiece. “You still have my sister with you?”
Zack rolled his eyes, ignoring Quinten. Ryan asked him his location, and Quinten answered, “Outside door number six down the west hallway. Huge Hispanic guy just walked in there, and I heard crying when the door opened. I’m pretty sure that’s our girl.”
Zack was feeling everything and knew it was going to fuck it all up. Here, in this club, with these noises surrounding him and the scent of sex in the air, there was no way he was concentrating on the job, especially with the Viagra-induced hard-on he was sporting. He could blame the hormones, but the fact he was standing curled up with Bonnie was fucking with him beyond measure.
“I’ll be there in thirty seconds,” Zack spoke low into the mic when Bonnie looked up at him. He needed to get away from her. This was his chance to prove himself, both to the Pierce guys and Bonnie. Never in his wildest dreams had he realized he’d have to do it at the same time. His priorities were split, and he had much to lose if he screwed up either one.
“Be where?”
“I’m going to get the girl with Q. Ryan will get you out of here.” He planted a kiss on her lips, but it wasn’t enough. Pulling her closer, he gave her a real kiss—one that spoke of his intentions later, when this job was done, when he had her alone, when he could get her into that damn yoga thing at her house.
“Stay safe,” she whispered around his kiss.
He winked, knowing she couldn’t see, and left with a warning glare to Ryan. All pointless expressions with the sunglasses on.
Bonnie squelched the disappointment at Zack’s hasty departure. She had to remind herself they had a job to do, and she was probably in the way. She knew now she’d messed everything up by insisting on following them, but what was done was done. Bonnie was here and would do what she could, even if all she could do was stay out of the way.
She looked at Ryan with a shrug. “I suppose we leave and act like he found a better offer?”
“I’m down with that. This place is giving me the oogies. Big time.”
“You’re married, aren’t you?”
He offered her a small grin and sheepishly said, “Yeah. She will laugh her ass off when I tell her about tonight.”
Taking her elbow, he started to lead her down a hallway back toward the stairs they’d used earlier. They were almost to the stairwell, where the girl who had greeted them was standing, and Bonnie quickened her step, anxious to get down.
A click between her and Ryan had them freezing in their steps. The girl, who had previously been watching them with a smile, blanched and turned her back to look down the stairs.
Bonnie’s stomach dropped.
“Inside the door to your left, please,” a low voice sneered from behind her.
Without a word, Ryan shot her a look that promised to get her out of here and to just do what they say. The sight of the man over his shoulder was creepy enough to make her do almost anything.
With a face heavily tattooed in red ink, a bald head with horns implanted under the skin, and his teeth filed into points, he was the stuff of nightmares. Bonnie briefly wondered what it would take for a person to maim themselves that way, then corrected herself. Body art. But was it? It looked like a rather permanent intimidation tactic. Whatever. It was working. She was totally intimidated. But then again, the gun jabbing into her ribs was scary, too.
Wordless, Ryan and Bonnie both entered a barely furnished room with a bed and two chairs. There was a cross nailed to the wall with cuffs and stuff on it, for bondage play, Bonnie assumed, but she couldn’t look at it long. The next face that came into her vision was a blast from her past she’d never wanted to see again.
“Hi, Bonnie,” Jonas Prestley said, affable as always, the friendliness of his tone belying the menace behind his eyes.
Bonnie’s eyes flashed between Jonas and the red man, back and forth, trying to gauge which was the most dangerous to her. They both had guns, but Ryan seemed to be holding his own at the moment.
“Just cooperate, Bonnie. Let’s see what they want.” He must have been able to read her mind because she was about to take out Jonas, even if he was holding a gun to her. Blind rage at the fear this man had inflicted on her in years past rose to the surface, and her vision clouded with red fog seeping into the periphery. She blinked, trying to clear it. Bonnie couldn’t let that sort of thing get in the way of her thinking process.
“Yes, see what I want. What a novel idea.” Jonas pressed the gun to her chin, lifting it. “I want you to suffer, actually.”
He closed in on her, and Bonnie swallowed. She couldn’t do anything. He could pull that trigger before she moved.
“I never understood why.” She really hadn’t. He’d stalked her in Waco, at Baylor, and had her coming back home with her tail tucked between her legs. She’d never gotten his motivations, though.
The creepy red guy was holding his gun steady on Ryan, watching the room silently.
“Honestly, you’ve come at a bad time. I was sort of in the middle of something. But I’ve got what I need from you now.” He smiled, and the evenness and whiteness of his perfect teeth chilled her. “You know, I looked for you for a year after you left. You’d covered your tracks well.” He opened his jacket pocket and pulled out a small sheaf of papers—the ones she’d filled out. �
��Thank you for this.” He waved the papers slightly before kissing them and putting them away. “V will escort you out. But we’ll be seeing each other again. Soon.”
Zack was nuts to butts with Quinten outside the door where Quinten had seen the man go in and heard the crying girl. Zack was thankful to be focused on something besides the erection poking his friend’s backside.
“Ready?”
At Zack’s nod against his shoulder, Quinten reared back and kicked open the door. They spread out, guns drawn, and pointed inside. Zack’s only real defense was nobody knew he was blind. His gun wasn’t loaded, but he could play the part with the best of them. Of course, he had no idea if he was being drawn on, most of the time, but that was Russian Roulette, wasn’t it?
So far, so lucky.
“Freeze!” Quinten’s voice echoed through the room, right before a thick Hispanic accent filled Zack’s ears.
“Diplomatic immunity! Diplomatic immunity!”
“Get off the girl. She’s coming with us.” Quinten moved over toward a shapeless blob Zack had long ago come to associate with a person. This one was large, shaped weirdly, and had his hands in the air.
A soft whimper came from the area, and Quinten started cooing to Macy, “It’s okay. You’re safe with us. We’ll get you back home.” To Zack, Quinten continued, “He’s not armed. Take him, Zack.”
That was all Zack needed. Taking steps toward the blob, who began his litany about diplomatic immunity again, Zack simply nodded. “Look, asshole. We’re not cops. We don’t give a shit about your diplomacy.” And then he punched the blob in the gut, then the chin, then gave him a mighty shove against the wall and listened to the satisfying sound of sheet rock crack. “You got Macy?” Zack turned his head to where he thought Quinten was.
“Yep. Let’s get the hell out of here. Bonnie and Ryan went dark a while ago.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, fuck. Why the fuck did you bring her to a place like this anyway? You should fucking know better.”
“She followed me and Ryan. Just like she used to do you and me. I can’t tell her shit, and you know that. Give me a break.”
They walked down the stairs, with Quinten growling and telling people to fuck off intermittently. Zack assumed it was people walking up about to ask about the girl in his arms, but didn’t say anything. They were jogging, and Zack pushed past a soft woman who smelled like a stripper, probably the chick who’d greeted them. The bouncer just let them pass, thankfully; he was suddenly tired of using his fists. When they finally got outside, the air was crisp, clean, and fresh—a stark contrast to the dusky haze of wantonness that had consumed the club.
“Do you see Bonnie?” Zack asked Quinten, still following the massive bulk of white polo shirt into the parking area.
A low, inhumane voice had both their heads turning. Manicotti Man. That creeper douchebag was everywhere tonight. “Fucking pretty boy. Should have just shot you.” Then a sickening, smacking, flesh-against-flesh noise sounded. Ryan grunted with exertion, and then the sound of a body hitting concrete met Zack’s ears. Good. Ryan had kicked some ass. Which meant he was protecting Bonnie. Relief flooded Zack as he registered what the sounds meant.
“There they are,” Quinten muttered. “Stay here.” He placed the warm body of the girl in Zack’s arms and stalked off to wherever the sounds had come from.
“Macy? Can you stand?” Zack asked. The girl in his arms nodded against his chest. At least one thing was going right tonight. He settled her on her feet but kept his hands on her arms. “Did they hurt you? Do you need a hospital?”
“I just want to go home,” Macy answered, her voice small.
Quinten came back up behind him. Zack could hear the heavy breathing of Ryan, who’d clearly been injured, and the lighter breaths of Bonnie. “She needs to go to the hospital and then to the police station. I’ll call her parents on the way.” Quinten’s matter-of-fact statement had Macy stiffening in his arms.
“It’s okay. He’s right. We’re the good guys here.”
Ryan was huffing and puffing. “Yeah, we’ll get you somewhere safe. Promise.” His voice sharpened as he turned his head to Zack. “You need to get Bonnie somewhere safe and stay with her until we all meet.”
Shit. Something had happened with Bonnie. He knew he shouldn’t have left her.
“I’m okay, Zack. But he’s right. Can you take me back to your place?” Her voice sounded way too complacent for his tastes.
Quinten’s massive bulk straightened in Zack’s peripheral vision and he asked Ryan, “What the fuck happened to you two?”
“I’ll tell you on the way to the hospital. I think that douchebag back there broke a rib.”
“Pussy,” Zack mumbled under his breath.
“Fuck you, man.”
They fist-bumped and parted ways.
“I’m parked about two miles off. Don’t think a cab is possible right now. You good to walk a little?” Bonnie’s false cheer was starting to grate on his nerves. Zack had no fucking clue what was going on, and the idea of a two-mile hike wasn’t appealing. He needed to be alone with her, hold her in his arms, and hear what had happened in the ten minutes he’d been away from her.
“Yup. I’m golden.”
Chapter Ten
The drive home was too long. Bonnie drove, acting like nothing had happened, and Zack sat there, desperate to process everything.
They’d saved the girl. That had been the goal. Bonus was, he’d found Bonnie and reconnected with her, something he’d been trying to do for months. But something had happened while he and Quinten had been getting Macy, and Bonnie had yet to clue him in. They were on their way to his apartment, and he really needed answers because this hard-on was still raging and he couldn’t be distracted with sex when he wanted to start something real with Bonnie.
“What the hell happened back there?” Zack’s voice sounded more demanding than he’d intended. The day’s efforts had taken a toll on him. For a while, his ribs had been feeling better, or he’d forgotten about them or something. But now, the sharp pain was back when he breathed.
Bonnie sighed, a soft sound in the silent car. “It’s a really long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He looked at her to show his earnestness and found her watching him. They were stopped at a light, and the red glow brought out some weird highlights in her hair that weren’t normally there. They showed in a beautiful halo around her shadow.
“In Waco, the first two years of college were awesome. My junior year, I caught the eye of some guy who decided stalking me would be fun. It got really scary because he was clearly delusional. He thought I was someone, or I reminded him of someone, something.” Her voice had started out strong but suddenly got quiet. Zack could barely hear her. He reached over and squeezed her thigh encouragingly. “Anyway, he started threatening me. Apparently, someone had left him and he thought I was her. And he was pissed about it.” She laughed, a weird cackle that filled the car with discomfort. “If that’s how pissed he got at me for looking like her, I can imagine why she’d leave. He was off his rocker.”
“What did he do?”
Bonnie shrugged. “It started out with stupid stuff—leaving me dead flowers in my car, those creepy notes with newspaper letters clipped out, stuff like that. He called me his pretty girl. It was weird.”
Didn’t sound stupid or even weird to Zack. It sounded fucking creepy.
“But when I called my brothers in for help, he painted my apartment door with blood and broke in and trashed the place. That’s when I started not feeling safe.”
“Who was it?”
“I’m not sure. His name is Jonas Prestley, but that’s just a name. Not even sure it’s his real name. The thing is, when the apartment incident happened, I called Simon. He came down and raised a huge stink, and the college didn’t do anything about any of it. Started spouting confidentiality and shit like that. Quinten came and gave them his lawyer mumbo jumbo, and they just told us it had bee
n handled, that the guy was transferred out. We never learned who it was.”
This was all well and good. It made Zack feel like utter dog shit for not being with her through all this. But it didn’t answer his initial question.
“So what happened tonight?” he asked, even though he felt sure he could guess.
“He was there tonight.” Her voice went quiet again. “He pulled me into one of those rooms. He had a guy with him who looked super scary with tattoos and those horn implant things. The scary guy held Ryan while Jonas threatened me, promised me he’d get me, but he was busy tonight and was letting me go.” She pulled into the apartment complex Zack lived in and he pointed out where she should park. “He just scared me. With all the other stuff …”
Zack’s hands were clenched into fists as Bonnie’s voice trailed off into silence. He forced them open and opened his car door and went around to open hers for her. Of course, she’d already gotten out by the time he felt his way around the car, so he held his elbow out for her to take instead, balling up his fists again as he walked her to his apartment door.
His complex was specially designed for impaired people. He hated it, all first-level apartments with courtyards and ramps and shit. Most of the people who lived there were elderly or severely handicapped, but it was something his mom and dad had lined up for him when the degeneration had gotten really bad with his eyes. State funding and all that shit.
His living quarters were a constant reminder he couldn’t fucking take care of himself.
Zack had to shove those thoughts aside, though. They’d messed him up years ago by crippling him emotionally and forcing him to push Bonnie away. Now, look what had happened. If he’d stuck with her, that crackpot never would have set his sights on her because she wouldn’t have felt the need to go so far away to school. He had her back now, he couldn’t screw this up.
“Watch out. Shania’s liable to bowl you over when I open the door.” He unlocked his door and pushed it open. Sure enough, a golden ball of fur jumped up on Zack, licked him once, then turned her focus on Bonnie, whose face lit up like the sun, spouting giggles that made Zack’s heart swell.