“I’ll make you seatbelts!”
Clover whined when Drake hoisted him up and followed like a panther on the prowl. “Does this van have other purposes than transportation?” He was trying to make a joke of it, but Drake’s intensity got to him already, and keeping up appearances wasn’t as easy anymore.
“I have no idea what you mean,” Drake said, his voice dull with anger, but before Clover could have provided a sassy comeback about Drake owning an ice cream van or a mobile brothel, Drake produced a roll of silver tape and tore off a piece.
“I’ll be quiet!” Clover protested, but it was no use. Drake forced the tape over his mouth.
“You will be now.”
Clover gave a sob-like sound of protest, since his skin was still tender after the last time similar tape had been torn off him, but when Drake pulled on his legs and secured his ankles together with a pair of cuffs, his mind was no longer sure what this was.
Efficient like a worker doing the same thing at a factory all day, every day, Drake then did the same thing to Clover’s wrists, with another pair of cuffs.
He wouldn’t go against Tank’s orders… would he? Clover shook his head at Drake in alarm. He hadn’t signed up for this!
“Stay put.”
Drake opened up a folding seat attached to the wall and sat Clover in it with a hard shove. Before Clover knew it, he was strapped to the van’s wall with a seatbelt, but to make matters worse, Drake pulled on Clover’s hair, forcing him down, and attached the cuffs on his ankles to the ones on his wrists with a carabiner clip. Why the hell would he be carrying such things around in the first place? The same fear that had clawed at Clover’s flesh and kept him immobile during the ordeal now turned into a throbbing pain in his chest.
Drake jumped out of the van, watching Clover with a deep frown. He grabbed the door, as if he were to close it but hesitated, digging his teeth into his bottom lip, his gaze fixed on Clover as if he was working out a serious maths problem. Many yards behind him, on a hill, a woman stopped her pink car and walked into a thatch of bushes, likely answering nature’s call, but Drake was too preoccupied with the task at hand to notice that someone could see him doing this.
“No. That’s not right,” he huffed in the end, sliding back inside and unlocking Clover’s ankles from his wrists.
Clover released a deep sigh of relief through his nose, unable to mutter a thank you. He looked up at Drake and extended his wrists in a silent plea, a deja vu of his meeting with Tank. But instead of uncuffing him, Drake pulled his hands up. Clover’s eyes went wide when he spotted a hook in the ceiling.
What.
The.
Fuck.
He writhed and moaned in protest, but it was no use, Drake attached Clover’s cuffs to a short chain that forced him to sit up straight with his arms up. Clover rattled the chain helplessly, glaring at Drake, who smiled with relief.
“Yes. Much better.”
But instead of leaving Clover as he was, Drake pulled on his bound legs and hooked them to a fabric strap on the other wall before shortening the belt so it pulled on Clover’s ankles, leaving him leaning forward with the edge of the seat digging into the flesh under his butt.
Drake stepped back, and his shoulders relaxed at last. “Yes. That works,” he told himself before pulling on a strand of Clover’s hair and moving it behind his ear.
Clover whined, but when he tried to rattle and pull on the chain above him, the motion forced his legs closer to the wall across from him. Trapped in this contorted position, he changed his tune and looked at Drake with puppy eyes.
Hadn’t Tank mentioned something about bondage before? Was Drake getting off on this?
“You won’t be going anywhere for a while, but try as much as you want.” Drake said with a raspy undertone to his voice.
He was still for a moment but then scooted down and looked straight at Clover, his gaze moving over his body, as if he wanted to see whether his actions have made Clover’s limbs tremble yet. “That’s right. You’ll learn discipline,” he said and reached to Clover’s face. But while Clover expected a painful tug on his mane, Drake removed his glasses, leaving him helpless, as even the van became a blur.
Clover stared into the hazy oval of Drake’s face when it finally hit him what position he was in. A part of him knew that Drake wouldn’t hurt him, and all discomfort would be over once they joined Tank and the others, but for now he was at Drake’s mercy, and the man was set on tormenting him.
The worst of it all was that Drake’s mean attitude was kinda hot. Clover would gladly have sex with him and get the sexual tension over with. But he couldn’t make a move, so he just shifted in the seat time and time again as Drake stayed silent, watching from above as if witnessing Clover’s discomfort brought him pleasure.
He closed the van without a word, which left Clover in the shadows, where no one could see him in this humiliating position.
His back and muscles were feeling the strain of it the moment Drake started the engine again. The pull of the moving vehicle put pressure on all the places where Clover was bound, and he let out a long sound of protest, meeting Drake’s gaze in the rear-view mirror—or so he thought, because he couldn’t be certain without his glasses on.
“Think about your actions.”
Drake could pretend this was about anything other than his own selfish pleasure all he wanted. It wasn’t as if Clover could express his opinion or mock him for it. And what he thought was that he could be up for experimentation. It had been very hot when Tank had fucked him in cuffs, but that had been honest, at least. Tank wanted it, so he did it.
Clover bet Drake was driving with a sneaky hard-on.
If only Clover wasn’t gagged, he’d tell Drake where to stick it.
Without Clover talking, the van became so silent it was bordering on weird. Didn’t this guy listen to the radio or audiobooks like any normal person? Time stretched, filled with the struggle of Clover constantly shifting his weight to relieve the pressure on his joints, because achieving a comfortable position was impossible in this setup. And something told him that was why Drake made him sit in such a convoluted way.
And what for? He could have just asked nicely.
A hiss escaped Drake’s lips a split second before the van came to an abrupt stop, propelling Clover up with the force of its speed. The cuffs and belt yanked at him hard and sent him back to the chair, frantic and breathing fast through his nose.
He moaned ‘What’s going on?’ into the gag, even though his sounds were unintelligible.
“Fuck. Stay put,” Drake barked at him as if Clover could go anywhere without Drake’s help.
His heart sped up when a gun clicked somewhere in the front seat, but he wasn’t sure if the shouting outside wasn’t even worse. Clover strained his eyes to look through the windshield and went still at the sight of two black vehicles blocking the road.
“Keep your head down,” Drake said and raised his arms before opening his door. He moved in a languid yet controlled manner, and just before he stepped outside, his hand made the tiniest movement at his hip.
The gunshot was so loud Clover choked on his panicked scream, struggling against the strap that held him upright and vulnerable to bullets flying at window-level. Tears spilled down his cheeks.
He didn’t want to die.
No matter how shitty his life was sometimes, he didn’t want it to end. Not now, not when he’d decided to change things, move away from Jerry, and start anew.
His breathing got frantic when the back door of the van opened, because he knew Drake was at the front and couldn’t have moved that fast.
A tall woman entered the van, pointing a gun straight at Clover’s face, as if she considered him a threat. Her features were a blur framed by brown hair. A phantom from hell, here to pull him into the abyss.
“I have the boy,” she shouted in a loud, commanding voice that put a stop to the brief screaming outside. But when the cool metal pressed against Clover’s f
orehead, tears blurred everything into a damp mess. He didn’t want to see any of it. Maybe it was all a hallucination. This couldn’t be happening to him again.
He’d been too confident. Stupid. He should have never called Jerry, yet his own petty need to rub his safety into the fucker’s face would now be his downfall.
Even when his hands and ankles got unfastened from the hooks and a man who’d come out of nowhere lifted Clover, all he could do was writhe like an eel. Was Drake dead? That too would have been Clover’s fault, and just thinking about it made his heart ache. Tank would have never forgiven Clover for causing his friend’s death, if he’d even bother going after Clover’s abductors in the first place.
The sun outside stabbed Clover’s eyes, and he shut them, unable to control the shudders going through his body. He didn’t want to see Drake’s corpse. But as he dared to look up, the only body lying on the asphalt was that of a burly man in a red shirt. Drake was alive, his tall, black-clad form standing in front of the woman, who had a gun pressed to the back of his neck.
“I like that you made the job so easy for us. It’s not like he can run now.” She laughed and poked the muzzle at Drake.
Clover hoped that the people who’d driven behind them earlier would now spot the fight and alarm someone, but his hopes were nipped in the bud when he recognized the extravagant color of the pink vehicle parked behind the van. They’d been tracked all along, and his request to stop at the gas station was what served him on a platter to Jerry’s people.
Clover whined into his gag, already shivering at the prospect of becoming merchandise again. His only hope, Drake, was holding his hands up. There was nothing he could do without his firearm, not when someone else held him at gunpoint.
“I’m sorry, Clover. Wish it could have ended differently,” Drake said, but just as he was finishing his sentence, he kicked his foot back. The woman screamed out and shot into the air when Drake pushed her hands up with a hard shove. A knife was stuck in her throat before she was even done yelling.
The woman’s voice was still dying with a gurgle when the huge guy holding Clover dropped him to the asphalt. Clover swallowed a cry when the hard surface punched his elbow and hip, but fear clutched at him when he saw the giant above reach to his holster. A blade hit his eye before he could have gripped his gun.
Blood exploded down the man’s face, and drizzled down his neck, blurry like watercolor paint on the wrong type of paper.
Drake descended on the screaming mercenary as if he moved faster than the human eye could comprehend, and slit his throat in a single move, silencing him forever.
Clover gasped for air, crawling away from the growing pool of blood with tears streaming down his cheeks. He hadn’t lived a wholesome life, but this level of violence was something else altogether. The bright world around him became distorted further when seen through the moisture, adding to the sense of disorientation.
Drake stood up, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
“Shit,” he said and wiped the knife on the dead guy’s clothes before sheathing it again. As he got up, Clover saw something sharp reflect light behind Drake’s heel, but it retreated inside the boot once he tapped the sole with the other foot.
Who was this guy?
“I knew you’d be trouble,” Drake said, his voice like a snake about to strike, even as he ripped the tape off Clover’s mouth. This time, perhaps because of the shock, it didn’t even hurt so much.
Clover gasped for air, still shaken and crying. “None of this is my fault!”
“Whose then? They were after you,” Drake said, but didn’t stall with removing the cuffs from Clover’s hands and legs.
“I--”
“I’m done with your bullshit. If you want to be useful, help me get these bodies off the road and shut your fucking mouth for once. If you don’t, I’ll gag you again!” Drake said, heaving as he watched Clover.
Play time was over.
Clover nodded as he slowly got up on shaky legs.
Chapter 7 – Clover
Clover was numb by the time he and Drake finished moving the bodies and remained that way on the drive to meet the others. Drake talked to Tank on the phone about the ‘situation’ for which they had special code names, because there had been no other ‘spillage on the road’ other than blood.
The unexpected attack meant a change of plans, and they’d be going to some kind of safe house instead of the restaurant with homely food. The atmosphere in the van was beyond dense, as if they were at a funeral for the people Drake had killed, and Clover didn’t dare speak a word, which likely was Drake’s preferred state of affairs anyway.
After crossing state borders into Colorado, Drake seemed to have loosened up somewhat and even bought Clover an apple pie at the drive-through they used for their lunch. Clover had little appetite after the extreme stress of the near-abduction, but the sugary pastry with a thick filling somehow went down his throat, unlike the burger and fries.
The light was already changing into its late afternoon colors when Drake left the highway behind and drove toward the massive mountains on the horizon, following satellite directions to whatever deserted spot they’d be hiding in next.
So this was Clover’s life now. Hunted forever for something he had no power over.
He remained silent as they made another turn, this time onto a dirt road. At this pace, Clover would never find peace, but right now, Drake, Tank, Pyro, and Boar were the closest thing to safety he knew.
“Thank you,” he whispered as they traversed the endless landscape, while darkness grew around them and turned the sparse bushes peppering the rusty sand into crouching enemies about to strike. Clover couldn’t wait to be around a larger group of people, no matter how efficient of a fighter Drake was.
“I didn’t do it for you! We’d all agreed on keeping you safe, so once we arrive, you’ll talk to Tank about what happened,” Drake barked, following the narrowing trail between two bare slopes.
In the end, he reached a valley surrounded from all sides by cliffs where, among trees that had no right to be in a place so dry, stood a warehouse with green walls.
Beat-up and with rust on its exterior, it didn’t look inviting. More like a place where a serial murderer could store his blood-stained furniture than a safe haven for anyone, but Clover would take whatever he could get. As soon as the lights from the van illuminated one of the walls, a door in its side opened and Tank walked out, moving with purpose. He and Pyro opened the large gate leading into the building, and Drake drove straight inside, parking alongside the pickup and the Subaru.
Clover didn’t dare move, still as a mouse when Drake left the vehicle and approached the others, briefly talking to them while the last sunlight died outside.
It was Tank who came over. He opened the passenger door and asked him outside with a gesture. “We need to have a chat, boy.”
He wasn’t happy. And having experienced mostly Tank’s good disposition before, Clover didn’t know what to expect. He didn’t stall though, and slid out of the seat, his shoulders hunched, not even because he wanted to look meek, but because the threat to his life was so real he could feel it freezing the inside of his bones. He was alone with a group of men who could make him disappear with the same ease they killed everyone else, and he had no straws to grab on.
“Told you he’d be a problem,” Drake grumbled, following them inside.
The massive empty space was illuminated by only a couple of weak lamps gathered in one area. The warehouse wasn’t used for its original purpose, because there was nothing here beyond the three vehicles at one end, and a collection of furniture at the other. A table with a few chairs, an old sofa, and an armchair next to it created a strange piece of a home in the middle of a desert, but Clover didn’t get to ask questions about it.
“You need to start talking, boy, and fast. Are you a witness to something? How did they even find you?” Tank grabbed Clover’s hair and nudged him toward the living room-like space in
the corner of the warehouse. For once, there was nothing exciting or fun about being manhandled by Tank.
Boar spread his arms. “Hurting him won’t help, and he’s already bruised.”
Drake shook his head. “It’s nothing. He got hurt when one of the abductors dropped him. He’s fine.”
Clover gasped, searching for sympathy. “No, I’m not involved in anything!” That wasn’t exactly true, since he’d been a part of Jerry’s petty crime group for quite some time, but that was not something to be pursued for. “It’s just my looks. Someone’s desperate to get me.”
“You’re hardly the only albino in this country,” Tank said, and pushed him at the leather armchair. The seat had been well-used in the past, and it dipped under Clover, swallowing him in a way that would make getting up difficult.
Boar offered Clover an open can of coke and watched him, playing with his auburn beard. “Just tell us the truth.
So even Boar refused to believe in Clover’s innocence. He was on the verge of tears again, scared for his future like a little kid who’d lost his guardians. “But it’s true. Maybe they’re pissed-off about Riggs, and they want revenge, I don’t know!”
Pyro crossed his arms on his chest, his nostrils flaring as his gaze licked its way up Clover’s legs. “I’m not dumping him until I’ve had a piece.”
Tank’s head snapped up at him. “Stop thinking with your dick, this is serious!”
Boar sighed deeply, remaining the only ‘good cop’ in the room. “Would it be so bad if we kept him, though?”
It took Clover a few seconds to process what he’d just heard. “I’m not a pet. I’m not a ‘thing’ to keep!”
Tank grabbed his jaw, his rough fingertips digging into the flesh. “Listen, smartass, right now, you’re a massive fucking problem. Do you have a phone we don’t know about? A sim card? I need to know how they found you.”
Four Mercenaries - The Complete Collection Page 7