Soldiers of Pearl 5: Give Love a Chance (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Dixie Lynn Dwyer

  “Wait. What’s going on?” she asked, dazed and confused, and she felt the pain as he pulled on her body, trying to get her from the seat. Her leg was caught against the crushed doorframe and her seat. She cried out in pain.

  “Ah fuck.” She didn’t recognize the voice and then he pulled something out. His cell phone.

  Thank God. “Police. Call sheriff,” she said, feeling dizzier and dizzier by the second. Something warm dripped from her head over her eye and then down her cheek. Her stomach rumbled, and nausea consumed her.

  “Oh God. I don’t feel right,” she said, leaning back. Her head rolled side to side slowly as tears tracked down her cheeks.

  The man yanked on her leg. She screamed as her flesh tore and her sneaker came off, and then she was being dragged across the front seat.

  She grabbed on to the man taking her from the car. She saw the headlights of his large vehicle, and then his face came into view—

  with his bald head, huge muscles, tattoos on his neck, and a look ready to kill on his face.

  Dot! Oh no. Dot.

  She tried moving, instantly finding some energy to try and fight him. She dropped to the ground, hitting her knees and feeling the pain, but her one leg wouldn’t move.

  “Don’t fight me, Cynthia. Raul wants his money or the other deal. He’s going to be pissed about your broken ankle,” he said and then lifted her up and got her to his car.

  She could smell the brake fluid or something from her vehicle, and it was smoking. She prayed someone saw it or had heard the crash from one of the homes on the street farther ahead. She tried fighting him, using her fists, but the movement made her feel even sicker, and then as he went to put her in the car, she vomited.

  “What the fuck?” he yelled.

  Dot was huge. He had to be about six feet three and over two hundred pounds of muscle and fat. His bald head and the tattoos on his neck scared the hell out of her. She couldn’t fight him, and right now all she wanted was to sleep. Her head pounded, and her leg and ankle throbbed. She was going to die.

  “Oh God, please help me. Somebody help me!” she screamed, and he grabbed her mouth to cover it.

  “Shut the fuck up. I don’t want to gag you or hurt you more,” he told her, and when he moved his hand slightly, she bit him. He struck her once, twice across the mouth and then shoved her into the car. He was on her fast, tying her hands and then closing the door.

  She looked between the seats and saw lights go on by the Kerrys’ house. They’d heard her. They had to. She couldn’t let him take her away. No one would ever find her.

  As he drove down the road, she saw Mr. Kerry come out with his shotgun, running down the driveway in pajamas. Mrs. Kerry was on her cell phone.

  They were coming to help. They were getting help.

  She lunged forward and tried to take the wheel. The car swerved and skidded, and he hit the mailbox right past the Kerrys’ house and went over the front lawn, hitting another parked car as he elbowed her in the jaw, sending her flying back. She felt the car zig and zag and then heard him accelerate as her vision blurred and darkness came.

  * * * *

  “Calm down, Betsy. What are you talking about?” Wyatt asked Betsy Kerry when dispatch patched a call through to his cell phone as he was on his way home for the night.

  “It’s Cynthia Loft. She’s in trouble. Someone crashed into her car. She was hurt and couldn’t walk, and a man grabbed her. Tom’s got his shotgun, but the man who took her nearly ran him over with the car. He took out the mailbox and damaged the Petries’ lawn next door. You need to hurry. There was blood in the car. I think he’s going to kill her.”

  “Jesus. Did you get a look at the car the man was driving?” Wyatt asked as he stepped on the gas and turned down one of the side roads to see if he could intercept the vehicle.

  “A black sedan. Looked like one of those rent-a-cars from Croton. Oh God, Wyatt, you have to help that poor girl.”

  “I will, Betsy. I’ll send someone by the house shortly. You two wait there.” He ended the call and called into the office. He put everyone on alert and sent them out to look for the vehicle, and then he called Perkins.

  * * * *

  Perkins, Dugen, Merlin, and Karl were heading down the road toward Cynthia’s neighborhood on their Harleys. He loved the wind in his face and the free feeling he got when he was riding. As they rounded the bend, they saw a car speeding down the road. It was a black sedan, and it made a quick right-hand turn toward the lake cabins. It was desolate up there and the roads dangerous at night considering they were mostly dirt. He couldn’t understand why people sped all the time.

  As they approached the main roadway, they saw the smoke ahead and then a few people out in the street. His eyes locked onto Tom Kerry’s, who was holding a shotgun, his wife by his side waving them down. Then he saw the car. That was Cynthia’s car smoking and in a ditch. Sirens blared from first responder vehicles, and right behind them, deputy cars pulled onto the scene.

  He stopped the bike, and the others did the same, and then they all killed the engines. He hopped off.

  “Oh God, Perkins, it’s Cynthia. He took her. He crashed her car, she was hurt, and he forced her into his car.” Betsy was rambling on, but all he and his team heard was that Cynthia was hurt and someone had taken her.

  “What the hell happened? Where is she?” Dugen asked as he ran to the car and looked inside and then looked at Perkins. “There’s blood and a cracked side window. She must have hit her head.”

  “We came running out because we heard the crash and then saw the man grab her. She couldn’t run. I think her leg was hurt because she couldn’t walk and plus her head, too. She was holding it. The man hit her, and then threw her into the car,” Tom told them.

  “What kind of car?” Deputy Eric Cantrell asked as he listened with the other neighbors and deputies on the scene.

  “A black sedan. It headed that way,” Betsy told them.

  “Oh God. We just passed them. He was speeding up the dirt road that leads to the cabins,” Perkins said.

  “He’s taking her to one of them. We need to move now,” Merlin said.

  Eric Cantrell stopped them.

  “Wyatt said hold on. He just got a call from Dean Boslow. The man who took her may be a criminal from New Jersey.”

  “New Jersey? What the hell?” Merlin asked

  “We can’t wait long, or we’ll lose them out there. It’s dark, and we don’t know where they’re headed,” Perkins said.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Karl asked as he ran his fingers through his hair.

  “Cynthia hasn’t been honest with us,” Dugen said as he looked at the cell phone he held.

  “What do you mean?” Perkins asked, and Dugen came closer with her cell phone. They looked at the text messages and phone calls from some guy Raul in New Jersey. The text message number matched the cell phone number.

  “Now we know why she needed that job at Delia’s and the one she did today for the clinic. Someone has been demanding money from her,” Dugen said, and he looked pissed, just like Perkins felt.

  “Holy shit. She couldn’t make the payments. We made her quit Delia’s, and she’s been with us and could only work at the clinic. Maybe this guy came to rough her up.” Karl started freaking out, throwing up his hands, and pacing in front of them, jumping to conclusions.

  “Rough her up? He made her crash her car and then he forced her into his car,” Eric Cantrell stated.

  “Maybe he’s here to collect, or by the violent way he crashed into her car, he came to kill her,” Merlin said just as Wyatt pulled up on the scene with Dean in his patrol truck.

  * * * *

  Cynthia heard moaning, and then she felt the aches and pains. It took her several attempts to open her eyes, and she realized it was her moaning. Her head throbbed something terrible, and her body felt heavy as though she was stuck to whatever she was lying on.

  She tried to swallow, and she tasted blood and felt the s
oreness in her throat and her lips.

  She gasped and something blunt and hard kicked against her side.

  “Oh!” She cried out and jerked to the left, only to be pulled back.

  “Shut up, you stupid, stupid bitch!”

  She felt the hot tears roll down her cheeks. Everything ached, and she couldn’t move. Why couldn’t she move? She tried to force her eyes to open, but everything was completely blurry and she was unable to open her eyes all the way. She wanted to see, to look at who was there, and she realized her hands were tied and her legs were tied to metal stakes in the floor. A hard, dirty floor. She saw what looked like wooded walls, old furniture, and then her senses kicked in as she blinked and moaned in pain. She smelled the damp, dry wood smell like woods and dirt and smoke like from a fireplace.

  She was in a panicked state when her eyes landed on the huge man looming over her. He stared at her as though he wanted to kill her.

  “Fuck, I still can’t leave here. They’ll see us on the road, and I don’t have another vehicle to get out of here,” he said into the cell phone.

  “I can’t hear you. You’re breaking up.”

  He put the phone in his pocket.

  “Raul is sending help, but I don’t know when. Fuck, he’s going to kill me if I don’t get you to him. This fucking town. I should have known it was screwy with all the men sharing one woman. Fuck!”

  She tried moving her head. She’d never felt so much pain, and it just kept getting worse, stronger, the more conscious she became. Her leg and ankle throbbed, and her toes were numb.

  “Help me,” she said and then felt the kick to her ribs again. “No! Please stop,” she begged and cried, and even that caused more pain. Her heart ached as she thought about Perkins, Dugen, Merlin, and Karl. She was never going to see them again. It was all coming back to her. The car accident, Dot showing up and taking her. Oh God. Raul had sent for her. He wanted his money, and he wanted her.

  She tried to move and felt the bindings, and then he stepped forward and pulled on something, making her arms tighten higher above her head. She realized that her blouse was ripped open, and as she moved her head to the side, she saw the blood all over him. It was her blood. She was bleeding from injuries she couldn’t even see because her eyes were so swollen. He’d hit her so many times. She remembered landing on the ground and pain in her ankle. It was broken. He had been yelling into his cell phone. Something about getting her, cops chasing him, a cabin in the woods. Oh God, they’re looking for me.

  “Help!” she cried out.

  He was on her in a flash covering her mouth with his fat, clammy hand.

  “Shut the fuck up. They can’t hear you. No one can. We’re so far in the fucking woods I could cut you up piece by piece and you could scream as loud as possible and no one will hear you. Now shut the fuck up. You caused me so much trouble. I was supposed to get you out last night. Now I’ve been stuck here for hours hearing choppers.”

  Hours? Oh God, I’m going to die. I’m so weak, and everything hurts. “Oh God,” she cried, and this time she didn’t feel the tears leave her eyes.

  “Fuck.” He yelled again and stood up.

  She could barely make Dot out because her vision was so poor and her eyes so swollen. Hours could turn into days with him here in some place in the freaking woods. They weren’t going to find her. She was going to die. She’d made her decision to tell her men about the debt too late. She should have told them over the phone on her way back from the retreat. Dean had been right. He’d told her she needed to tell her men, and she’d waited. Now she would never see them again. She would never love them again. She had been so scared from her past, so untrusting and pessimistic that she could ever be happy, that she hadn’t given true love a chance. Now she would die and never know what happiness and being cared for and loved felt like. Never.

  * * * *

  Wyatt looked around him. There were four groups of twenty men in total, all armed and ready to do whatever it took to get to Cynthia. His heart was heavy. The circumstances behind her abduction were coming clear. Dean had been a huge help and then, of course, her cousins as they investigated her finances and found out that Michael had taken a loan out against the mortgage to fund a drug habit and that he owed a drug dealer from New Jersey ten thousand dollars for product he tried to sell for him to make a profit and pay off the debt. The asshole Raul Stevensen had explained the whole story to Mark Santos and a team of men from the government when they located Raul. The guy had been under surveillance quite some time, and the feds were about to make a bust on Raul and his cartel. Mark was able to get help from federal agents to get Raul to talk and explain his intentions with Cynthia.

  Wyatt ran his hands through his hair as they waited for the cue to move in.

  Poor Cynthia was being forced to pay her brothers debt, and since she hadn’t made another payment in time, Raul had sent his main man to get her and bring her to New Jersey to pay off the debt in other ways. The sick fuck. Wyatt thought Dugen was going to lose it when he punched a wall, putting a hole in the sheetrock, and then growled so loudly before his team helped calm him down. Wyatt couldn’t blame him. He felt the same way. This was disgusting, and men like Raul and this guy Dot needed to be punished for their crimes and put in jail.

  “Why is it taking them so fucking long?” Karl asked in a whisper as they knelt down on the ground behind the thick brush of trees, waiting to move in on the log cabin that was the farthest north in the camp.

  Dot had backtracked and then changed destinations, leaving the getaway vehicle behind one of several dozen log cabins, throwing them off his tail. But this town was filled with military men, including Dugen and Karl, who hunted, hiked, and camped these woods and knew the area. They had figured out where Dot was headed, and then they had surrounded him, slowly pushed him into a corner, and forced him toward the last set of cabins that were privately owned. The helicopter flying above them had located their position, finding the beat-up pickup truck Dot had stolen and had brought Cynthia in. Then he called Raul for help.

  “Be patient. He has to be panicking right now and know that we’re getting closer. He thinks Raul is sending help, so he can’t go anywhere, until they get there,” Perkins said, never taking his eyes off the log cabin.

  “I don’t know why we can’t go in as those guys. This is never going to work. He may expect guys he knows,” Merlin said to them.

  “He would recognize you immediately. Remember, from what Mark learned from Raul interrogating him and his men, they had been watching Cynthia for days and knew who she was with. Why do you think he had Dot make a move the other night when she was all alone? This will work. Stack and Breaker are good at what they do.” Wyatt said to them.

  “I hope Stack and Breaker can pull this off,” Dugen whispered.

  “They’re good men. Smart, resourceful, and this is what they do. Plus they’ve been out of town for months. There’s no way Dot will recognize them, and they know what to say. I promise, we can move in when we get the all-clear,” Wyatt added and then they got the signal that Stack and Beaker were coming up in a beat-up pickup truck.

  He felt a little uneasy himself because he knew what these men—Stack, Breaker, and their team, which included Bandit and Logan— were capable of. They were fairly new in town and looking to settle down. But they had mysterious pasts, and there were others things about them that concerned Wyatt. He watched them now as they pulled up along the dirt road and then went straight up to the cabin.

  “Oh please let her be alive and let this work,” Perkins said, and Wyatt felt his own heart racing and fear fill his body.

  He thought of Anna and all they had gone through. Cynthia had to live. These four men, soldiers, deserved their chance of happiness after all they’d gone through and all they’d given back to the community.

  * * * *

  Dot glanced at Cynthia on the floor, lying unconscious again. There was blood everywhere, and she looked white, almost dead. Raul was going to
be pissed off if the bitch died, but he had been so pissed that she’d caused all this shit, he couldn’t stop the rage he had and beat her. What did it matter if she lived or died? He just wanted to get the fuck out of this cabin, this town, hell, this fucking state.

  He heard the truck coming up the dirt road, and he hurried to the window. Pulling the dirty, frayed curtain back slightly, he wondered if it was help. Raul said he was sending help when Dot was being tracked by the local police. But as the pickup truck stopped and two huge-ass men got out, he wondered who the hell they were and if they had been sent by Raul.

  He got his answer as the one guy, the driver, flashed his lights on the truck and then gave the hand signal. The one Raul always gave when he sent backup or help from the inside.

  He went to the door and opened it slightly.

  Both men approached, and then one of them stayed back, pulled out a gun, and stood watch. He had to be about six feet four with dark black hair and very tanned skin, and he was dressed all in dark clothing. He looked capable, but then Dot’s eyes landed on the other one. He had the eyes of a killer, a man not to fuck with, and Dot felt intimidated, and that wasn’t something that ever happened.

  “It’s all clear down the way. Cops are on the other side to the south, so I suggest we take the package and loop around to the right,” he said.

  “I’ve never seen you two before. You new?” Dot asked, still standing in the doorway.

  “You’re not supposed to have seen us before. That’s our specialty. She inside?” he asked, pushing his way in, and Dot had no choice but to move aside.

  But he quickly closed the door and held on to his gun. He didn’t trust anyone right now. This was a fucked-up situation.

  He watched the big guy, six foot three, filled with muscles, and an aura of darkness around him. He glanced at Cynthia and then back at him.

  “What happened to her?” he asked with no expression.