Consume Me

by Ryan Michele

  Buzz didn’t have time to run the name on the ID before we left and I don’t think the guy that knocked her down is trouble, but I’m not taking chances. The way she curled into me that morning when I left had every protective instinct in my body on full alert. It’s why I want this fucking job over with. Fuck.

  “Got it.” Relief washes over me and the adrenaline kicks in. Buzz has been trying to get past the fucker’s security system since we got here. Asshole has it locked up tight. I wonder what we’ll find because no one has that sophisticated of an alarm for nothing. He’s not home and if the last few days are anything to go by, we have four and a half hours before he steps foot in the house.

  We all sit in the cage after our latest find-the-info search. “Thank God,” Dagger mumbles. “All right, Rhys and Tug go in the side. We’ll go in the front. Pick the door. We want this clean.” Dagger turns to Buzz. “Sound good?”

  “Perfect. Everything is disabled, including cameras. Even the three back up security systems he has. Something is in that fucking house.” This does not sound good, but we’re in it so let’s do this shit. We climb out of the cage, the warm sun beating down on us. Luckily most of the people that live around here are gone during the day. The only one we had to worry about was the cat woman down the road, but luckily she left this morning and we haven’t seen her since.

  Getting out my lock pick, I easily open the door. My gut sinks. Why in the hell would a guy who has his house secured like Fort Knox have a simple deadbolt holding the door that anyone who picks locks can get into? My guard is way up now. I draw my gun, holding it out in front of me. The door creaks open and the smell of cinnamon waifs through the air. Stepping through the threshold, we enter the tidy kitchen with white appliances, light wood cabinets, and seemingly nothing out of place.

  I notice the cameras as they are not hidden at all but strategically placed on top of the walls near the ceiling, which I’m sure gave every possible angle from wherever they are controlled. Moving through the kitchen with my gun drawn, pointing it down at the ground but ready for a moment’s notice, we enter the small living room where Buzz and Dagger stand, also with weapons drawn. They nod and Buzz goes down the hallway. After all of his research, he knew exactly where he was going. I check the rest of the house, making sure it’s clear, and join the other three.

  Buzz stands in front of a door with a large padlock on the outside of it, along with more deadbolts lining the side of it, three to be exact. What the fuck? Both Buzz and I get busy picking each of the locks and it is not easy. These are more sophisticated. Sweat pours down my face, falling into my eyes and I wipe it with my shirt. After what seems like hours, we unlock each of them and open the door.

  Dagger flicks on the light and the four of us carefully enter the room but stop dead a few feet inside to take in the scene around us. It is totally not what I expected, not that I really knew or had a clue what to expect. I was just definitely not this. The room is stark white, reminding me of a hospital with navy blue drapes covering the windows. The only furniture in the room is a wooden desk, placed in the center with a chair in the crook of its opening. On the desk are three computer monitors, and a keyboard lay in front of them. Other than that, nothing else is on the desk.

  Buzz wanders further into the room and I follow, noticing a door to the right and nodding to Dagger. Dagger slowly turns the handle of the door, gun pointing inside the dark room, the light filtering in from the computer room providing our only means of illumination. Empty. Totally and completely empty. Strange.

  Sitting on the floor next to the desk is a large box about the size of a small refrigerator, the kind that fit in campers or RVs. Wires are poking out everywhere on it, some blue and some yellow. The wires are attached to a small box underneath the desk and then the wires lead up to the monitors.

  “What the fuck is this?” I ask Buzz.

  “Computer hub and backup.” Buzz’s gloved fingers type on the keyboard and the monitors shine to life, each one with a small box stating Enter Your Password. Buzz brings a small box no bigger than a cigarette case out of his pocket. Lights flash on it as he places it close to the hub. I have no clue what the hell he’s doing, but I’m ready to get this shit done with.

  A small beeping noise catches my attention, stiffening my spine. I scan around the room for it.

  “It’s all right, just my box. It’s hopefully cracking the password. If I can’t get it, we’ll come up with plan B. I’m sure this asshole has something set up where the wrong password will lock it or worse, erase it,” Buzz says, fiddling with his box.

  “Fuck,” Dagger murmurs as he and Rhys walk around the room, seeing there is nothing there.

  “We’re gonna check the rest of the house out,” Rhys says, obviously bored out of his mind but totally alert to what is going on around him.

  “Shit.” Buzz stops us as we follow his gaze to some wire attached to the computer. “Guys, see if there’s another hub in the basement, just like this one.” He points to the machine, still following the cords. “Don’t touch it if you see it.”

  “What the fuck is it?” Rhys asks, perplexed, and I’m with him there.

  “It’s just another hub, but I’m sure most of what we want is saved on it and one wrong touch could set off some trap that this asshole has set up. I’m just being overly cautious,” Buzz replies.

  “How do you know he’d do this shit?” Dagger asks, moving toward the door.

  “Cause it’s what I would do.” Buzz continues typing while speaking.

  A short time later, we learn there is another hub downstairs and Buzz is getting nowhere fast, not to mention the asshole will be coming home in the next couple of hours. Buzz is tiptoeing around that damn machine like it will bite his fucking ass off. I’ve cased the damn house and found nothing, no paper trail anywhere. All I know is I’m ready for some fucking action already.

  “You almost done?” Dagger asks impatiently.

  “I’m not getting anywhere with this shit. We need to pack it up and take it with us.” Buzz’s exasperation comes through loud and clear.

  “And how in the fuck do you propose we do that?” Rhys clips, the tension rolling off of him.

  “I have an idea.” Buzz turns to us, giving us his full attention and we wait. “All right, I thought this might happen. So I put together something, but we gotta hurry.” What the hell? Buzz has a fucking contingency plan? I should have known he would and why it shocks me in this situation, I don’t know. He always had a plan B in the field.

  “All right. In the van, I have magnets that go on the side of it for an appliance company. There are some boxes broken down and packing tape, you’ll need to tape them so it looks like you’re delivering something. Bring them in here, we’ll pack this shit up and carry it gently to the van.” Buzz is so calm as he explains everything, it’s like he does this shit every day.

  “And a bunch of bikers are delivering shit now?” Dagger chuckles, gripping his leather.

  “In the van are two plain, blue jumpsuits from the garage and hats. Put that shit on and we’ll load this up.” Dagger and Rhys seem very shocked that Buzz went this far in the planning, but play it cool.

  “All right, Tug,” Dagger says. “You and I are gonna go get the van and wear the jumpsuits. We’ll park the cage as close to the house as possible and move fucking fast. I want this done in fifteen minutes and we are out of here.”

  I nod and ask, “What about the guy? He comes home and sees his shit gone…” My voice trails off, leaving the guys to fill in the blanks.

  “I say we do the same thing. One of us stays here, knock him out when he gets here, put him in one of the boxes, and haul his ass out of here,” Buzz says.

  “Let’s do this,” Rhys says, a sadistic gleam in his eye.

  This isn’t an easy task, but somehow we manage to accomplish the first part of it and get all the electronics loaded. Dagger and Rhys decide that Rhys would stay here and greet the asshole when he got home. We’ll watch
the house and as soon as the car pulls up, drive the van in and Dagger and I will get out in our navy jumpsuits and stroll into the house, pick up the box, and bring it to the van. At least, this is the plan. Right now, we are waiting in the cage, and each one of us is jumpy as shit, ready to get this over with.

  “There he is,” Buzz says from behind us. He wanted to be next to the computers to protect them. I would have thought he’d want a piece of this asshole right away, but he must be saving it for later. He wants to stay.

  Everything goes as planned until we enter the house. The asshole, as we keep calling him even though his name is Joseph Harrison, is standing in the corner of the living room with a gun pointed at Rhys. We raise our guns on him.

  “What the fuck, Rhys?” Dagger asks, trying to get a read on the situation.

  “Joey here carries a gun on him. I said hi, he put the gun on me, I put my gun on him and here we are.” Rhys is calm and cool, his gun steadily trained on Joey, who, on the other hand, seems like he’s going to piss and shit his pants at any given second. The hand holding his gun is shaky as shit and his eyes keep bouncing back and forth between all three of us. While I’d like to put a bullet between the asshole’s eyes for fucking us over, we need his information before that can happen. And if we can’t get in the computer, we need him to do so. But he doesn’t need to know that quite yet.

  Tensions are thick inside the room, the air hot and uninviting. I’m ready to get gone. “Just come with us. We have a few questions.” My tone is even but demanding.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you. You’ll kill me,” Joey stammers and he’s not wrong there.

  “How long you been watching us?” Rhys asks, Joey’s face shifting to him, his eye quirks.

  “I’m not telling you anything either and if you try to access my computer, it’ll send you on a wild goose chase through cyberspace and you’ll never find anything.” Joey is almost cocky, he’s so damn sure of himself.

  “Who you working for?” Dagger questions, not listening to the computer mumbo-jumbo. He’s poised like me with his finger on the trigger and ready to shoot.

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you that either.” This guy either has balls of steel or he’s got a plan B; I’m going with the latter.

  “So, what do you suppose we do in this situation?” Dagger’s voice is laced with pissed-offness.

  Joey sneers. “You leave me alone.” I want to laugh, but don’t. I keep my face stoic because if this asshole thinks we will leave him alone and go on our merry way, he’s got another thing coming.

  Rhys on the other hand does laugh, but not a funny one. It’s the kind that has most people quiver in their boots and practically piss their pants. Joey hears it too as his eyes flicker to him and widen. Then Rhys speaks so low and deep that it is practically a growl. “If you’ve been really watching us all this time, you should know by now that isn’t happening.”

  Joey’s knees shake and the gun in his hand trembles. Sweat beads on his forehead, telling me he’s seen enough information about Ravage to know this shit is true. Good and bad. “If you enter the password wrong one time, it will send all the information on a roller-coaster ride through space. If you kill me, I can’t enter it and everything will be lost.” The confidence in his tone is waning.

  “What all do you have?” I ask, thinking that maybe he’ll answer. Long shot.

  “More than you’ll ever know.” I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am a bit. Who would have thought this straight-laced guy would have balls to tap into all this shit? What exactly, we don’t know for sure and that is the problem.

  “Alright, put the gun down and come with us,” Dagger requests.

  “No,” he says, his spine stiffening a bit.

  Rhys’s nostrils flare with anger. It’s never good when he gets really pissed off. Rhys is not the type of guy that anyone fucks with, ever, and if my calculations are correct, Joey will be learning that here in the next few seconds.

  “How about I fucking shoot you right here on the spot and say fuck it. Or maybe I’ll blast off that fucking hand of yours that’s holding the gun,” Rhys taunts, aiming his gun at Joey’s hand. “Or how about I take that fucking gun out of your hand.” Rhys steps forward and my eyes stay trained on Joey’s trigger finger. Joey jumps, obviously scared of Rhys and with good reason.

  “Stay back or I’ll shoot,” Joey shouts unsteadily. Rhys takes another step forward. Damn that fucker’s got balls of steel, fucking love it.

  Dagger speaks, “Look, asshole, all we want to know is who hired you to get information on us, and what information you have. Give us that and we’ll leave.”

  “Liar. You’ll kill me,” Joey clips.

  “You’re dead either way,” Rhys says, laying it out there for him as he inches closer. “And at this point, I’ll take great pleasure to make sure it’s as painful as fucking possible.” Another step. Rhys is only three feet from him.

  Joey reaches behind his back with his empty hand. My eyes hone in on the movement. Something flicks to the floor and bounces with a tap. Then Joey jabs himself in the leg with a syringe. Shit.

  “Good luck with that, fuckers,” Joeys says as he injects whatever is in the syringe into his body before I have time to pull the trigger. His body instantly collapses to the ground as Rhys is there, jerking the syringe out of Joey’s body.

  “Fuck!” Rhys exclaims and puts his fingers on Joey’s pulse point. “His breaths are shallow, but he’s still alive. For how long, I have no fucking clue.”

  “What was that shit?” Dagger steps closer.

  “No idea.” I move next to him, taking in everything.

  “We gotta get him in the box and out of here. Get the syringe and his fucking gun and let’s move,” Rhys orders and we get busy.

  It’s not easy carrying dead weight in a box and loading it into the van, but we do it. As soon as we are in the cage, we retell everything that happened inside the house to Buzz and he doesn’t seem happy, but it’s nothing he can’t handle it either.

  I open the box while Buzz drives, getting us the hell out of there. I check for Joey’s pulse and it’s still there, faint but there. We drop off Dagger and Rhys to their bikes and hightail it to Ravage.

  I sit on the couch in my living room with my legs tucked up underneath my body, and lay my head on the cushion, embracing the softness. I cover my body with my throw blanket, the one with the skulls, and flick on the television. I don’t really want to watch it, but it’s my day off and I want to relax. I tried a bath, that didn’t help. I tried reading and that did nothing. It can’t be X that’s my problem. These last few nights have been cake. Princess upped security and if a guy wanted to get that close to fling himself on me again, he’d meet one of the four bouncers around the stage. I don’t feel anything different when I go to X, but I do keep my eyes open more.

  When the guy tackled me off the stage, I was terrified because in that split second something in me thought it was Santos or Frankie. Then I started fighting because I sure as shit am never going back to them. I’ve been so strong over the years not letting it weigh on my mind. But in that brief moment, I made a mistake. I let Tug see a different side of myself, the one that is vulnerable, and that should not have happened. Even as he held me that night, I didn’t care. I let every single wall come down and just was there, with him. I gave everything to him to absorb for me and he did.

  I’d be totally lying to myself if I said I didn’t miss him, because the sad thing is I do, and that scares the ever-loving shit out of me. I don’t want to miss him. I wanted him to be gone, far from me, but since he left a huge part of me aches. How am I supposed to stop my heart from feeling even when my mind is telling me to stay away?

  I blink back those thoughts and my mom is there instead.

  She was such a good woman, strong confident and self-assured. She worked her ass off to provide for us, sometimes taking on two and three jobs at a time. We didn’t have much, but we had each other. Then she got sick. Bre
ast Cancer, but that wasn’t what made her really sick. It was the brain and spinal tumors that came with the cancer that ended up taking my mother’s life.

  When she first found it, she didn’t tell me. She was trying to protect me like she always had while I was growing up. Sure, we had to move from place to place, but there was always somewhere and that was what mattered. Until finally, I noticed the weakness in Mom and called her out on it, and she told me. I was crushed but more so because she didn’t have the money for treatments.

  That is where Santos Markus came into play. A snake filled with venom. Rich and powerful, he took a liking to my mother after coming into the diner where she worked. She fell for him hook, line and sinker, and we had an instant family. Santos has a son, Frank, and the four of us became one. Santos didn’t care that Mom was sick and helped pay all of her medical bills to treat her illness. I believed that he truly did love her, at the time. He told her so repeatedly and was affectionate toward her constantly. He’d kiss her before leaving the house every single time and would hold the doors open for her when we went out as a family.

  Frank and I never got along. I was fifteen and he was seventeen, not close in age but not far either. The way his eyes crept over my body weirded me out. I tried hard to stay away from him and I achieved it for quite some time.

  Everything was going pretty good in our lives. I was going to high school regularly, had my own room, had good food every night, and my mom was happy and getting better. Then the doctors said that tumors had developed in places they couldn’t remove without fear of hurting her worse or paralyzing her, for that matter, so they treated her. She was weak, but happy and that was all I cared about. I never had to want for anything. Santos provided well for us and I was grateful for that.

  Then one night when I was sixteen, everything changed. My life turned to shit and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it because if I breathed a word to anyone about what was happening in my room, my mother would die. That threat is what got me to comply and Santos knew it. I love her more than anything in this world and would do anything for her, even suffer and damn that is what I did repeatedly over the years.