by Nella Tyler
"You can’t call the police," he said.
"And, why the hell not?" she demanded. "You're keeping me here against my will!"
"It's your apartment," he shrugged. "You want to go somewhere else?"
That gave her pause. "Can I?"
He glanced at his partner. "It depends where you want to go."
Fighting back tears of frustration, she threw up her hands. "I just want to go outside, maybe for a walk, just to get out of here. I don't know what the hell is going on, and you guys are making me nervous."
They said nothing.
"I swear to you, if I can’t get out of this apartment, I'm going to freak. And, you don’t want to see me freak.” She didn't think she would, but she was losing her sense of control, and she didn't know what she would do. She knew if she started screaming, someone in the apartment building would hear her, wouldn’t they? Call the police?
Not only was she worried about her own safety, but she was worried about her parents. They wouldn't let her call them, either. So why did they even allow her to keep her phone? To call Brecken, who wasn't answering his calls? She watched as the guard tossed her phone back down on the couch. She eyed it and then him. He was staring at her, his gaze inscrutable. What the hell?
"You want to go outside? Okay, we can go outside, but only toward the back of the apartment building. Not on the street."
"Fine!" she snapped.
She followed one of the "bodyguards” as he returned to the front door. The other one followed. She was in the middle between them. They made their way out of the apartment. To her surprise, they didn't walk to the elevator, but rather toward the stairs, which was fine with her because she didn't want to take the elevator anyway, the gravelly old claptrap.
Her heart pounded. Should she try to make a run for it? Could she get away? She doubted it. They looked muscular, strong, and more than capable. She, on the other hand, wasn't. Oh, she was fit enough, but not enough to outrun these two.
The sound of their footsteps echoed dully in the stairwell as they made their way down three floors to ground level. Exiting into the carport underneath the building, the guard in front of her lead the way up a cement ramp toward what she knew to be the north side of the building, away from the main entrance and parking spaces out front.
It was just about dusk. She was amazed that so much time had passed. Yes, the minutes had dragged by, but had she really spent nearly the entire day locked in her apartment with these two goons?
She looked toward the rear of the building and her eyes widened in surprise. Brecken was nowhere to be seen, but she did see Alyson walking up the sidewalk toward them. She glanced at the two men, dismissed them, and glared at Heather.
Heather was in a foul enough mood to return her glare. What a bitch.
The guards stopped; Heather standing between them. She stared at Alyson, who gave her a discerning and highly critical body check. Annoyed beyond belief, she straightened her back and again returned the favor. Alyson merely smirked.
"Where's Brecken?" Alyson suddenly demanded.
Heather stared at her in surprise, nearly choked out a laugh. "How the hell should I know where Brecken is?" She was downright angry now and didn't care what kind of a tone she was using. In fact, she didn't care what Alyson had to say. Brecken had assured her that the other woman couldn't fire her. That she was a vindictive bitch was an understatement. Still, she didn't have any control over Heather's employment. Besides, she was seriously contemplating quitting anyway. She didn't need this crap.
Alyson placed her hand on her lower abdomen. "Where's Brecken?” she repeated. “You may think you’re his new girlfriend, but you’re not. You’re nothing but a plaything. He loves me. Always has and always will. But he’ll learn that if he isn't going to agree to take care of his baby, then I'm not going to guarantee his safety."
What? "What did you say?" Heather asked, feeling a cold sensation rush through her. Baby? Alyson was pregnant? Her first thought was pity for any child raised in Alyson's shadow. Her second was pain. Brecken was going to be a father? Back at the Bed and Breakfast, when he had opened up to her, told her about his dealings, he had left out that very important fact?
Alyson laughed. "Let me guess. While you and Brecken were up at that quaint little bed and breakfast fucking each other on the floor of his room, he neglected to tell you that he was going to be a father?"
Heather found it difficult to keep up with every word she said. How did she know that she and Brecken had been at the bed and breakfast? In fact, how did she know that they had had sex? Was she the one behind her being followed? She felt horrified. "Are you behind this? You're behind the guy that's been following me?"
Alyson gave her an impatient look. "I don't know what the hell you're talking about, you little bitch. But I'll tell you one thing. You can't have Brecken. He’s mine!"
Heather felt sick to her stomach. Alyson was pregnant and Brecken was the father? She blinked rapidly, trying to hold back tears. So much for Brecken being open and honest with her. She had succumbed to such an instant attraction to Brecken when she knew next to nothing about him. Was everything he had told her a lie? A way to get her to have sex with him? But why? Brecken could have sex with anybody he wanted. He certainly didn't need it from her.
Suddenly, Alyson reached for her. One of the guards stepped in front of her, keeping Alyson away.
"Miss Burk,” he said, holding out a hand. It touched Alyson’s shoulder. She stared up at him in amazement.
"How dare you touch me?" she snapped at him.
Heather watched in stunned dismay as Alyson made to move around the guard. Were they going to have a catfight in the middle of the sidewalk on the side of her apartment building? She took a step back, unconsciously balling her hands into fists, just in case. She bumped into the solid form of the guard behind her.
Suddenly, Alyson took a step back and smirked. She turned to look over her shoulder.
"Josh! Colin!"
In seconds, a black car pulled into the alleyway along the side of her apartment building. It screeched to a stop near them. She stared in frozen fear as three men dressed in black suits and holding guns emerged. Her bodyguards suddenly pushed Heather behind them and stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking her view of the men emerging from the black sedan.
Suddenly, there was chaos. Ear shattering gunfire. Shouts. Heather screamed, covered her head with her hands and ducked, crouching low against the side of the building behind her guards. Over the gunfire, she heard Alyson laughing. She heard a cry of pain from one of the bodyguards, and the next instant, he was down on the ground in front of her, bleeding from a bullet wound in his head. She stared in shock, and then screamed again. The other guard went down after taking a bullet in the shoulder. Eyes wide with terror, she stared at the three men standing in front of the sedan. Where the hell was Alyson? Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw sudden movement.
Alyson stood just off to the side, pointing a small, silver gun at her. She knew she couldn’t run, couldn't escape. She would be shot down just like her bodyguards had been. She watched in wordless horror as one of the three men who had emerged from the sedan quickly moved toward the fallen bodyguards, grabbing their weapons away from their hands. She knew that one of them was dead, but still saw the pulse throbbing in the other one's throat, even though he was unconscious.
The man pointed his gun down at the guard who was still alive.
“No!” she screamed. The man ignored her and fired two quick shots both to the head. Heather screamed again. Warm blood and something sticky spattered onto her face. Adrenaline surged through her. She felt vomit rising in her throat. Then, under Alyson's eye, the other two men reached forward, stepping over the fallen guards to grab at Heather. They yanked her to her feet, but she felt wobbly, like her legs were made of spaghetti.
She tried to fight them off, all the while realizing that her fists were nothing more than a nuisance to them. They didn't shoot her. It was then sh
e realized that they weren't going to kill her – at least, not yet. Her ears rang. The blood pounded through her veins so hard she wondered why her heart didn't burst. And over it all, she heard Alyson's sudden burst of laughter.
She turned to look at Alyson, amazed that she was capable of such violence. She saw Alyson swinging her arm, still holding the gun in her hand. She wasn't quick enough to halt the blow. The butt of the gun smashed down onto the side of her head.
Heather sagged into the arms of one of her attackers. Blackness threatened to overtake her. She tried to fight, tried to hold them off, but with her head exploding with pain, her vision blurred, and her limbs weak and uncoordinated, she felt herself being lifted and then shoved into the back seat of the sedan, where finally, blessedly, darkness enveloped her and she sank into unconsciousness.
*
Heather opened her eyes, but she could see nothing. Darkness enveloped her. Her head pounded. She felt sick to her stomach and was afraid that she was going to throw up. She was lying on her side, her hands tied behind her back and her feet bound. Her first instinct was to cry, but she blinked back tears and tried to figure out where the hell she was. She wasn't in the sedan. It was quiet. She didn't sense anyone around her.
It was so dark! She tried to struggle into an upright position and finally managed, ignoring her dizziness, every cell in her body tense with alarm. A van? Was she the back of a delivery van or something? As her mind slowly began to focus and her vision cleared, she bit back the pain throbbing on the side of her head as she tried to look through the windows. It was either pitch black outside or the windows had been covered with a blanket or something. She felt sticky wetness at the base of her neck, and knew that bitch Alyson had struck her hard enough to split her skin open and cause her to bleed.
What the hell was going on? Was this about Brecken? Was Alyson really that crazy? Was she really going to kidnap her, possibly even kill her because she was jealous? Heather couldn't believe it. Never in her life would she have thought she would find herself in such a situation. The last thing she remembered was Alyson telling her she was pregnant. With Brecken's child. Her heart sank. She felt like a fool. A naïve, gullible fool.
She had allowed money and the perks that Brecken had promised to sway her to take the job at his firm, even when she had felt a niggling of uncertainty. She should've listened to her gut, trusted her instincts. Dug a little deeper. Now, here she was, injured and tied up in the back of a van God only knew where. Had she been left here to die? To starve to death? To die of thirst? Was this how she was going to die?
She tried to work herself free of her bindings, but the plastic cuffs only tightened and dug deeper into her skin. Disjointed thoughts raced through her mind. She wanted to see her parents again. Brecken could fix this; she knew it. In the next instant, she muttered into the darkness.
"Screw Brecken!" So much for being completely honest with her. So much for telling her everything that she needed to know.
She gazed around, looking for anything that she might use to escape. With her hands tied behind her back, she didn't think she would be able to do much of anything. She managed to scramble onto her side and then wiggled her way toward the back of the van. She began to kick at the doors with her feet. Maybe, if she were lucky, someone would hear her.
With every kick of her feet against the metal doors, her head pounded anew. She began to cry out, to scream, hoping that someone could hear her. She didn't know how long she kept kicking at the door and screaming, but soon, she felt drained of energy. Her kicks began to lack strength. Her voice grew hoarse. She began to cry, her fear rising until panic threatened to overtake her. She tried to tell herself to calm down, but found herself breathing so heavily she was afraid she was going to hyperventilate and pass out.
"Calm down," she muttered to herself. "Calm down. Take a breath. Calm down." She kept repeating those words until she felt her heart rate slow, just a little bit. She had to think. She had to focus. She wasn't going to get anywhere if she panicked. She needed to stay calm. She tried to listen for any sound outside of the van where she was being held.
There, what was that? It sounded like equipment. The sound had come from a distance. Moments later, she heard the sound of a ship’s echoing horn. That didn't help her any. When the wind was right and the night was quiet, she often heard the ships in the harbor. Then, as she calmed her breathing still more and forced herself to take a deep breath to force oxygen into her lungs, she smelled it: the brackish scent of the bay. She was near the harbor.
But where? In the warehouse district? If she could manage to get out of the van, she might be able to find help. She knew that ships were offloaded all night long. She twisted around, trying to look through the windshield. There, off in the distance, she saw a light from a lamp. It was fully dark. She had no idea what time it was. The air felt damp and chilly. Her fear, the surge of adrenaline, and the dampness in the air made her shiver.
She had to calm down, to think of a way to get out of here. Maybe she could manage to scramble into the front seats. Honk the horn. Someone would surely hear and come to investigate. She had just begun to start crawling her way toward the front of the van when she heard the sound of voices. She froze as the back door of the van suddenly opened.
Two dark shapes scrambled into the back of the van, reaching for her. She twisted onto her back and began to kick with her feet, screaming.
"Don't touch me! Get away from me!"
Her feet made contact with somebody’s shin. She heard the grunt of pain. She felt a brief surge of satisfaction. Maybe if she aimed a little higher, she could catch one of them in the balls. And then she heard the chuckle. That bitch. Alyson.
"Stop fighting, Heather," she snapped. "You're tied up and you've got nowhere to go, nowhere to be. What's the big deal?"
Heather continued to fight against her captors as once again they reached for her. She lashed out with her feet again; making outraged grunting noises in her throat as she struggled against them. Suddenly, she was on her feet, lifted between two men. Alyson stood at the back of the van, peering inside.
"You think you can take Brecken away from me?" Alyson demanded. "You don't know who you're up against, you little bitch."
Heather, though terrified, felt a surge of anger and disgust well up inside her. "You're the psycho bitch," she muttered.
The two men stepped down from the van and then dragged Heather after them. In the next instant, she felt a sharp, stinging slap against her cheek. She snapped her head back, blinking back tears of fury and pain. She was so mad she was shaking and couldn't help the warm tears that flooded her eyes.
"You don't know the half of it, honey," Alyson said. She reached forward and grabbed a handful of Heather's hair.
Despite her effort not to, Heather gasped in pain at the yank. She rued the day that she had ever listen to her friends and filled out the application to work for Shaw & Burks. If she had known things would turn out this way, she would've run away laughing. Instead, she now found herself in a dire situation. There was no telling what lengths someone like Alyson, who was obviously unbalanced, would go. That thought frightened her more than anything else. Alyson was unstable. Erratic. And, there was no doubt that she would do whatever she had to do to get Brecken back.
In the next moment, she was blindfolded and gagged. She struggled against her captors, listened to Alyson's taunts, her mind screaming denials, her heart pounding with terror. How was she going to get away? Were they going to kill her? Could Alyson really be so unbalanced the she would go to such extremes?
Her ears rang. She felt the edges of consciousness slipping away. No! She couldn't faint. She couldn't allow herself to be taken. She had to fight. Even though her struggles were proving fruitless, she wasn't going to make this easy on her captors or on Alyson. She screamed, the gag preventing words from coming out, but in her scream, she implied her rage.
She wished she could do something, anything. With their hands tied behind her
back, she could do nothing. She was vulnerable and defenseless. She wanted to scratch Alyson’s eyes out, but she couldn't even do that.
She was roughly manhandled until she bumped into something hard and metallic. She was slammed forward, her upper body pressed up against hard metal, her cheek pressed against something cold beneath it. Then, she heard a latch. It was a trunk. She felt herself being lifted off the ground and screamed in her throat. She was ignored. Shoved into the trunk. She had just managed to lift her feet above her, to strike out at anything when she felt another hard slap against her cheek.
"Shut her up," Alyson snapped. "I'm through with this."
Her legs struck out at nothing. Air. And then, she heard the car trunk slam shut. It smelled like oil and gasoline. She laid on something hard. The tire jack? No, not that big. A tire iron. She shuffled her position until she lay on her back and began to kick upward with her knees. Not enough. She wouldn't break the lock this way. She remembered reading a story about someone who'd been kidnapped and stuffed in a trunk, and how they had kicked out the tail light of the vehicle. Maybe if she could do that, a police car would happen by, pull them over for a broken taillight.
She didn't hold out much hope. It was the middle of the night. She had no idea where they were, other than somewhere in the vicinity of the harbor. If they were in the warehouse district, chances of her being found were slim to none. These warehouses and companies who owned them typically hired their own security. What if these guys were part of that security? She had no idea, but because she had nothing else to try, she began to kick at the rear end of the car. She had no idea whether she was making contact with the lights are not.
Suddenly, the car slammed to a halt. She rolled forward and hit her head against the metal wheel well. Someone got out, slammed the car door. Seconds later, someone slammed something down hard on the trunk hood.
"Knock it off!" a male voice snarled. "Knock it off or I’ll bash you over the head, you understand?"
Heather held her breath in terror. She lay still. Moments later, she heard the card door open. The car dipped as the driver got back in and then the car started and continued on its way. Oh God, oh God, how was she going to get out of this? What did they want with her? Alyson couldn't possibly have kidnapped her, involved other people like this, just to get back at her for Brecken, could she? Would she?