Until Fools Find Gold: A Providence Gold Series and Until Series Crossover

by Mary B. Moore

  Then the door was shut, the vibrations of the thud echoing through my arms.

  I’m not sure if it would have been kinder to use a black bag, but this one was clear which meant that I could see everything around me. If it hadn’t been, I might not have been aware of the fact I was in the dark? Who knows?

  All I knew was that I was going to die. No light. No space. No oxygen.

  And with my hands cuffed above me, there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it.

  It’s funny that just as I thought that, I had an idea.

  Noah

  We’d run through a wooded area once we’d gotten out of the helicopter. The deal was that we were suppose to wait for the authorities, but not even the guy who was a policeman, Madix, followed that order.

  Just in front of us through the trees, we could see what looked like a hunting cabin. It looked innocent enough from the outside, but we knew that the guy who owned it was far from sinless. Downright fucking evil to the nth degree more like.

  “Take this,” Sven held out guns to us, apart from Madix who had his own on him.

  “Handy little fucker, aren’t you?” Archer noted, checking his weapon and getting it ready as we all did the same thing.

  “I know a guy,” Sven replied.

  “You seem to know a lot of ‘guys.’” Levi pointed out, sounding distracted as he looked around us.

  Sven froze and then turned to look at my brothers. “I’ve had to know ‘a lot of guys,’” he growled. “I don’t get involved in that shit anymore, but if I have a friend who can help me or someone else, then I’ll fucking do it. I saw them get married. I saw how much he loves her. Fuck, I saw how happy she was with him. I’ve heard the story from my wife about how Luna has loved Noah for years… so yeah, I’ll fucking dig into the dirt of the world to help him out and get her back.”

  The last words hung in the air, my brothers standing with their eyes wide as they stared at him.

  “I can’t believe she married you,” Madix muttered, breaking the silence.

  Turning to look at him, I raised an eyebrow.

  I was about to say something when there was a movement from the cabin as two guys came running out with guns.

  “You go find her,” Sven ordered, pushing me forward. “We’ll take this.”

  Our plan might have been considered stupid by some people, but we knew that the man holding her, the king of a drug cartel who sold unwilling women, wouldn’t hang around once he knew he’d been found. He was also known not to leave witnesses behind, be they women or children. His last residence had been left with the cooling bodies of nine women, so the chances of him hanging around now were slim to none.

  This also meant that the chances of him leaving Luna alive were not even slim to none, they were just none.

  I kept my eyes on the house as I ran, confident that the others wouldn’t let me come to any harm, and I was right. The only scratch I had on me was the one I’d gotten from a branch that was sharp as fuck, and even then, it wasn’t any worse than you’d get playing with a kitten.

  As I went through the front door, I kept my gun in front of me. We’d been taught to shoot from a very young age. Some people might have thought it was stupid and perhaps irresponsible of my dad to do that, but respect for guns and for the damage that they could inflict needed to happen early in life. If I was blessed with kids of my own, I’d be doing the same damn thing with them too.

  We were confident marksmen, we knew how to operate our weapons, and we really knew the damage that they could inflict on someone after Tate accidentally... let’s just say we respected our weapons.

  And, until that day I’d never wanted to hurt anyone with a bullet.

  Not until I found my wife hanging in a tiny closet desperately trying to get oxygen into her lungs.

  17 Luna

  Desperation makes us do things we’d never normally consider or think of doing. Well, at least that’s what I’d be saying after today.

  Using the shoulder that was on the uninjured side of my face, I trapped the slippery plastic of the bag in place and tried to open my jaw enough to nip the plastic between my teeth.

  The good thing about being cuffed like this was that the position of my shoulder, and the fact it wouldn’t move with my weight hanging from it, kept the plastic in place enough for me to nip and pull back slightly.

  Unfortunately, plastic was slippery and I was desperate for air.

  With a savage tug, I ripped a tiny hole in the bag. Not letting go of the piece between my teeth, I repositioned and tried again. With each tug, the hole got bigger until it was wide enough for me to position near my face. I wasn’t getting nearly enough air, but it was better than what I’d had before.

  Not wanting to move and end up losing the oxygen hole, I lifted my leg up and swung it back so that it hit the door behind me with a thud ignoring the screaming pain in my foot as best I could. If I could maybe open the door, then I could at least see enough to make more holes and try to tear what plastic was left between them.

  Just call me MacGyver!

  Nothing about my predicament was funny, not one bit. But for some reason, this made me want to laugh– not that I could with the damage to my face. Plus, I figured maybe laughing wouldn’t help the lack of oxygen predicament I was in.

  It was on the next kickback that I hit something that felt different from what had been there previously. My foot slipped off it after the initial hit which meant that it was narrow.

  Was the door narrow? No, it was a fucking door, Luna!

  I’d accidentally shifted on the last lunge and lost the tiny hole I’d made. I really wasn’t getting enough oxygen now, and my gasping was pulling the plastic into my mouth with each breath inwards.

  I thought I heard my name, but people hear and see hinky shit when they’re dying, don’t they?

  And then I felt cool air rush over my face as the bag was ripped open from the back.

  “Luna,” someone bellowed, but I was too busy drawing the air into my lungs.

  Now I knew how those people who dive down deep under the sea with no oxygen tanks feel when they come back up again. Who would willingly do this shit?

  “Luna,” the voice shouted again.

  With my head hanging limply as I gasped for air, I did my best to answer them.

  But with a broken face and my arms cuffed above me, I couldn’t do much apart from nod.

  I heard another voice bellow my name, and then I was swung around to face the door as much as the chain between my wrists would allow me to.

  Why the shit didn’t I think to at least try to do that? Oh, because I was trying to breathe. Priorities!

  Looking up, I saw the beautiful blue eyes of my husband as he reached for me and gently held me against his chest.

  “Baby,” he rasped, close to tears. Not Noah Townsend? I don’t think I’d even heard of him ever crying!

  And then the massive behemoth who had been with him did something that shook me to my core– he grabbed the rail I was hanging from and tugged it, hard.

  The movement of that tug on the steel traveled down my arms and into my jaw. It was like an explosion went off in my face.

  I couldn’t scream, obviously, but I could kick– so I did.

  “What the fuck?” my brother snapped, tugging again.

  I squeaked out a noise and pulled my head back from Noah’s neck to look at him, begging him not to do that again.

  That was when they both saw the state of my face, and their already murderous expressions got worse.

  I’d seen Madix’s ‘super pissed’ eyes before, but this was a new version of those. Perhaps ‘uber pissed?’ ‘Seriously fucking pissed?’

  A quick look at each other was all that happened though. And then they were passed bolt cutters by Sven who had appeared behind them, and I was falling into my husband’s arms with my brother’s going around me too.

  “They’ve got her!” Sven yelled to whoever else was around us.

 
And that’s when I heard my best friend’s voice.

  Ironically, it was that final voice yelling my name that finally made me cry.

  And it hurt, oh it fucking hurt!

  So, I cried harder.

  18 Noah

  Carefully gathering her up, I carried Luna back toward the hall that would lead us up the basement stairs and to the front door.

  Sven, Levi and Madix all had their guns out, ready to cover us if need be.

  “We haven’t found him yet,” Madix grunted, talking about Esteban Soto, the man who’d done this to her.

  Just as we got to the top of the stairs and they were checking the area in front of us before I walked out there with her, there was the sound of an engine outside. Then the cabin shook as something hit it so hard that dust fell down from the ceiling and the entire place shifted.

  Madix and Levi ran outside just as Archer yelled, “What the fuck?”

  Madix and Levi’s reactions were exactly the same.

  “Oh, fuck me!” Levi groaned from outside. He then leaned around the door and shook his head at us indicating that we should stay where we were.

  “That’s…” Madix said, sounding like he was struggling. “I’ve seen a lot in my time, but this…,” he broke off again, and then went silent.

  “Well, he was trying to get away!” A voice said indignantly.

  “Gramps?” I yelled, then winced when I felt Luna’s head flinch.

  Sven had walked carefully to the front door by this point and peered out to the side. His grimace said it all.

  “Why the hell are you here?” I asked my grandparents for the millionth time as I sat back in the comfy chair beside Luna’s bedside.

  To no one’s surprise, it turned out she had a broken jaw which had needed to be wired to fix it, so she’d been taken away for that and was now resting on the bed in the room. They’d also discovered that she had a bad sprain on her previously good foot, so now she had matching bandages on both feet.

  This had given the police enough time to question us all, take our statements and then fill us in on what they knew.

  When I’d run into the cabin, the others had shot four guys who’d come running out. Two I’d seen, two I hadn’t. None of them had been killed, but they were all being treated for gunshot wounds.

  Esteban Soto had been hiding around the back, either waiting to kill us or to escape. As we’d come up through the house, he’d been sneaking back around to the front to shoot us as we came out. My grandparents who had been on their way to join us had seen him and stepped on the gas, crushing him against the side of the cabin.

  Señor Soto was now in surgery as neither of his legs could be saved. He should have counted himself fucking lucky that when he’d seen the speed of the vehicle coming at him, he’d jumped. This meant that he’d been crushed to the side of the building just above his knees. If he hadn’t, he may well have been pissing through a tube and shitting in a bag for the rest of his life. No offense to people who have to, they had my full respect for what they went through, but I personally felt that only the evil deserved that to be their way of life.

  Which brought us back to the people I was currently glaring at. Not saying that I wasn’t relieved as fuck that they’d stopped us from Soto’s bullets, but still. They were meant to be in Texas in case Luna was taken near there.

  “Well, your mother rang us,” Grams started, flipping through the magazine she’d picked up. “We decided that we’d be better here seeing as how Luna was here and your mother had stayed behind in Vegas. We got on the plane, got some directions and there we go.”

  “How did you know where to go?” Levi asked, his arms crossed on his chest.

  “Oh, that lovely girl, Maggie,” Gramps said, walking in the room. “I’ve just been talking to her and her husband outside. Hey Lindee,” he called to my grandmother, using the nickname that only he could use on her. Her name was actually Linda, but she’d always be his Lindee. “We’re gonna jump out of a plane with a parachute. How cool can you get?”

  “Weren’t you around when the first draft of the bible was written?” Levi asked slowly. He was exaggerating, they were only in their late sixties and lived like they were forty, but still.

  “He did it,” Gramps gestured to me with his chin, copying Levi’s pose with his arms across his chest. Admittedly, my grandad looked like the fit forty-year-old he acted like.

  Everyone turned in my direction, but it was my mother who narrowed her eyes and glared at me.

  “Okay,” Grams hummed, breaking the death glare from Mom. “When are we going? What do I wear?”

  At that moment, Luna groaned and woke back up again. Thanks to what her father had told us, the police had arrested the other two people who had been expecting their turn with her. All of them, her father included, were going away for a long time– well after they’d healed from their injuries. Her father’s crotch being repeatedly hit by a baseball bat meant that he may well be pissing through a tube for life.

  Ask me if I cared!

  There was one silent person in the room, his gaze solely focused on his sister. To say that Madix was pissed about everything that had happened was an understatement.

  “So, Madix,” my mother spoke up, walking over to his side. He was almost the same height as her even sitting down. “Are you going to move near your sister? We have a spare house that doesn’t get used a lot.”

  After a couple minutes, he turned his glare on me, an evil smile tugging at his mouth.

  “You know what, I think I’ll take y’all up on that!”

  Oh, fuck!

  Luna

  I had a week left with my jaw wired shut. I’d lost nineteen pounds, hadn’t cleaned my teeth properly in weeks and I was horny– really horny. They’d given me this mouthwash to help me clean my teeth, but nothing beat getting your toothbrush in there and scrubbing them like a dish!

  I could also tell you how to puree almost any meal or food item, and I’d also tell you not to ever do it because it was freaking disgusting.

  I’d been begging Noah for sex for weeks, telling him through wired teeth that it wouldn’t hurt me. They’d taken the elastic thing out of my mouth a week ago and left the wire in place for the last two weeks. I’d figured he’d be okay after they’d removed it because it meant that I was almost healed and doing well. But no, he stuck to his stubborn asshole guns.

  For God’s sake, it’s not like my mouth was going to be involved, even though I was pissed about that fact too. I hadn’t been able to kiss my husband properly the whole time – not that I’m sure I’d have wanted to, given I couldn’t brush my teeth properly and there were parts of your mouth that you had to be able to brush.

  But I missed not being able to kiss him, hugely!

  He was stubborn though and refused to give in. I’d even tried jumping on him when he was asleep, but all he did was peck me on the forehead and turn us over so he could spoon me.

  Which led me to now– doing the laundry, horny as hell. I was the definition of desperate.

  It was on the properly shuddery part of the load in the machine that a thought struck me. Checking that no one else was around in our house, I closed the door of the laundry room and then maneuvered my way on top of the machine.

  I couldn’t help it, I’d never felt so out of control in my life– which, considering how it had gone was saying a lot!

  Thankfully, I’d put on jersey shorts after my shower which with my weight loss were so loose around my hips, I had to pull the little string really tight to keep them up. So, all I had to do to act out my plan was stick my hand down the front, make a few adjustments, and then I hit the motherland.

  “Shit,” was what I tried to say, but it came out, “shhddd,” thanks to the wiring and the machine shuddering away.

  It didn’t match my husband at all, but it would do for now. Then the machine started to really vibrate under me, and I let out a muffled squeal as I came. I was that charged, it had only taken five minutes of laundr
y to get me to come. It was as wrong as it was impressive.

  I’d just pulled my hand back out and was catching my breath when the door to the room slammed open and Levi walked in with a frown on his face.

  “Hey, did you just get off?”

  I looked around the room for cameras, freaking the hell out. If he had seen, I was gonna freaking die of humiliation. Die!

  There was only a tiny window in the utility room, and even though it was a big room, he was still standing in the doorway, so I’d have to squeeze past him to get out and run to the highway.

  Right now, I needed vanishing powers. How the hell did I get those?

  “You look flushed, I told you not to go back to work so soon,” he continued, walking up to me and reached out to put his hand on my forehead.

  That’s when I realized what he meant– work!

  I’d started back yesterday after a lot of arguing. They’d agreed to allow me to do three hours a day and then I was to go home and rest. I felt like a baby and it pissed me off, but I’d agreed to it. Then again, I knew I wasn’t going to ‘rest,’ I was going to clean the house and spend time with Vlad who was even more protective of me now when it came to strangers.

  With a sigh of relief, I gave him a smile and a shrug as I plopped down off the machine.

  Desperate times, desperate measures.

  I only had a week until this wire came off, and the appointment couldn’t come too soon!

  19 Luna

  Exactly six days, twenty hours and nine minutes later…

  I was free! The wires were finally off, I’d seen the dentist and I had not only oral freedom but a clean mouth. I had another appointment with a dental hygienist in four weeks for a deep clean, but now I could brush my teeth without getting it caught on a damn wire.

  And it was awesome.

  “Why don’t you look happier?” Levi asked as we walked toward his car.

  Shrugging, I continued sulking as I got in and belted up, forgetting that the sun had been shining right on the leather interior, meaning the back of my legs fused themselves to the chair. It got a squeal out of me, but not the level of scream that Levi let out as he did it too. The weather was now Hades hot, a different level of hot altogether.