Captive

by R. J. Lewis

  It was time to return to the real world.

  Another round of knocks followed, more impatient than the last.

  He slowly slipped his arm out from under her and covered her nude body with the blanket. Then he stood and slowly walked to the door. He slipped into his briefs and pants along the way. By the time he got to the door, he was decent. With a weary exhale, he opened the door.

  Hobbs stood before him, wearing an over the top ski jacket, beanie, gloves, boots, scarf and sunglasses.

  “You look charming,” Nixon said first, cracking a smile because this was just too fucking hilarious to ignore.

  “Shut up,” Hobbs snapped.

  “You look like you’re going to ski the mountain –”

  “I’m not in the mood for giggling, Nixon.” Hobbs’ glare intensified. “Getting here was not easy. I am cold, I am tired, and this cabin is not what was advertised.”

  Nixon stepped out, forcing Hobbs to take a step back. He shut the door behind him, saying, “Let me guess, you scrolled through the dark web for this one.”

  “I bought it, is what I did,” Hobbs retorted.

  “It’s archaic.”

  “I had to make sure you were all hidden.”

  “You won’t admit you didn’t give a fuck with this hovel.”

  “You’re alive, aren’t you? It did its job.” Hobbs rolled his eyes, adding, “And don’t tell me about what I didn’t give a fuck about. Coming from the man that stood my driver up and wound up taking the fucking bus, instead.”

  Nixon chuckled, crossing his arms over his bare chest. “You wanted me to ride in a two hundred-thousand-dollar car to a shithole street. I think you wanted me shot before I even stepped out of the car.”

  Hobbs tightened the scarf around his neck as a gust of wind slammed into him. “I would never want my best man shot. I needed you on this one. You’ve seen the guys I pitted you with. I was not impressed, but time was not on my side. The loot had been dropped off at the location, bound to be transported by the next delivery van. These bikers act fast. I felt sick with stress, had the shakes and everything. Wound up in the toilet for hours before you fucks struck, and what a mess you left behind.” Hobbs’ face twisted in disdain. “Which one of the fucks shot the civilian? Was it Beckett? Why do I have a feeling it was Beckett?”

  “It was Beckett,” Nixon confirmed.

  “Of course it was,” he snarled. “What a fuck-up. The bikers are still a mess, all insulted and shit, tearing through the city, not a clue under their nose. They’ve made contact with Toby. I think that fat fuck may be on to us.”

  “So, it made it into the news?”

  “It did, but it was quickly buried under the shooting that happened two hours later downtown. Bikers lost their shit, pointed their finger elsewhere. It’s been a fucking bloodbath.”

  Nixon resisted smirking. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m not.” Hobbs frowned. “I’m queasy, Nixon. I think we hit the wrong fucks on this job.”

  “They don’t know it’s us. Relax.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “This is the One Percent we’re talking about here. They have enemies everywhere. They’ll think it’s personal, and it wasn’t.”

  “I’m concerned about Toby, is all. He’s going to hear the details, know Roz had something to do with it straight off the fucking bat. That guy is so obsessed with playing games in the middle of robberies. I already heard through the grapevine he pretended to play hero with the girl at the front desk before he turned the gun on her.”

  “At least he didn’t send a junkie in with a gun,” Nixon gritted back.

  “If he’d just fucking done what he was supposed to do, it would have been in and out, no casualties.”

  Nixon nodded, agreeing. “He never thought straight. He was impulsive.”

  Hobbs immediately stilled and shot Nixon a funny look. “Why’d you do that just now?”

  “Do what?”

  “You referred to Roz in the past tense.”

  “Your attention to detail is impressive, Hobbs.”

  “My attention to bullshit is even better.”

  Nixon ran a hand down his face, settling it under his chin as he looked back at Hobbs and shrugged. “There were complications along the way.”

  Hobbs flared his nose. “What sort of complications?”

  “Not everyone in the crew made it out.”

  He raised the scarf up again as another chilly blast of air hit his rosy cheeks. He moved a few steps to the left, peering into the window just as Nixon stepped in front of him, blocking his view. Now Hobbs stood up straighter. “What the fuck is going on? That room looks empty to me.”

  “There’s someone in there,” Nixon explained vaguely.

  “Someone.” Hobbs sounded muffled behind the scarf. “Are you telling me only one other from the crew made it out, Nixon?”

  Right on cue – at the worst possible moment – a figure appeared behind the window, peering out. Nixon looked over his shoulder and felt his heart sink to the bottom of his chest. Victoria stood there, in just the blanket, her hair a fucking mess, staring back at him with wide eyes. The second they connected with Hobbs, she retreated quickly, disappearing back into the room.

  Hobbs saw her.

  He saw her and looked like he was about to have a heart attack.

  “Are you fucking kidding me right now?” he growled, pulling down his scarf to reveal his chapped lips.

  “They took her,” Nixon argued, sharply. “I wanted nothing to do with it.”

  “Where are the others, Nixon?”

  “You pitted me with rapists.”

  “Nixon, goddammit.”

  “They wanted entertainment.”

  “Get to the fucking point.”

  “I didn’t let them have her.”

  Hobbs began pacing, trying to get on his tippy toes to look over Nixon’s shoulder and through the window. “Are they ALL dead?” he bellowed out suddenly, glaring at him now. When Nixon didn’t answer, he stopped and looked grave. “What have you done?”

  “What I had to do,” Nixon returned simply, no apology behind his gaze. “I need you on my side, Hobbs. Don’t ask questions. Don’t pry. Just understand that it had to be done. I had no choice.”

  Hobbs was fuming, but he stood quietly, swallowing his curses down. The only reason he wasn’t losing his shit was because Nixon wasn’t the kind of guy to fuck up. From the moment he recruited Nixon on his first job those years ago, he had never let him down. He had always acted professionally.

  But what in the fuck was this?

  Hobbs shook his head, trying to regain his composure but he was really pissed the fuck off. The last thing he needed was to deal with a missing persons poster circulating around town with these fucks spotted. “Where was she snatched?” he demanded now.

  Nixon gave him a funny look. “Feet from where the man was shot.”

  Hobbs made a face. “She was behind the shop, right where it happened?”

  “Are you telling me she didn’t make the news?”

  “No,” he said icily, “she didn’t make the fucking news.”

  “No witnesses.”

  “No witnesses with balls enough to talk,” Hobbs corrected. “And speaking of balls, mine are going to fall the fuck off if I don’t get inside that cabin in the next ten seconds.”

  Nixon turned to open the door but paused to shoot Hobbs a severe look, warning, “Don’t touch her. Don’t talk to her. She stays in the corner, and you don’t even look at her if it bothers her.”

  Hobbs was so shocked by the sudden change in Nixon’s demeanour, he was momentarily speechless. He had never seen Nixon behave this way. Why the fuck was he behaving this way? He forced a nod because honestly his balls needed to be out of the cold, and his ass cheeks were so numb he’d do anything to have a seat.

  When the door opened, Nixon strode straight in Victoria’s direction. She was curled up on the bed, wrapped in a blanket, face hidden
from view. He wrapped an arm around her tiny shoulders and buried his face into her, whispering something Hobbs couldn’t hear.

  Hobbs stepped into the cabin slowly, his eyes sweeping along the cabin room. It smelled like soap and fire and camp food and…sex. It smelled like sex a whole lot, actually.

  He looked down at the floor, at the dried blood stains beneath his high-end hiking shoes that – deep breath – he got on special but that dug into the back of his fucking ankles because he wasn’t a sporty guy and he fucking hated snow and pretty much everything.

  Yeah, Hobbs hated everything.

  He especially hated this fucked up surprise.

  He was close to hating Nixon, too.

  He took a seat on the chair around the cheapest looking wooden table he had ever seen. The photos showed a cosy room with high end furnishings. The table in the ad was “made locally from Douglas Fir and hand carved by a master carpenter with a deep love for rustic furnishings of the highest quality.”

  This table, before him now, looked like it was snatched from a junkie’s shack in the armpits of downtown.

  The beds were another sad affair. He eyed the wood; it was…he squinted his eyes…it was like cheap plywood and chipboard shit. Jesus Christ. He got ripped off. Oh, God, he got ripped off good. His cheeks burned. Oh, the shame. He felt like his pride got dick punched.

  He would never admit this fuck up out loud.

  He returned his attention to Nixon. He plopped down into the chair next to him, directly in front of his view of the girl. Hobbs caught the message loud and clear, but he wasn’t about to drop the topic of her just because Nixon was behaving like a fucking weird ass motherfucker.

  “Let me get this straight,” Hobbs started because he needed to understand this shit-fuckery in its entirety and doing it out loud helped. “You guys robbed the gold at the pickup point, then you fled to the cargo van and shot an innocent man who was trying to play hero. Along the way, the girl was collected. From what I read, there was a shooting along McCleod road, no casualties, and the cars the bikers were in were abandoned. Your cargo van was spotted thirty minutes after the robbery up in flames. You fucks disappeared, and from that point until now, you’ve wound up murdering your whole crew because, let me get this shit straight, you disagreed with their form of entertainment.”

  “Yeah,” Nixon said simply.

  “Yeah?” Hobbs repeated with disdain.

  “Did you spot the minivan on your drive up?”

  “I spotted it under an avalanche of fucking snow.”

  “Beckett’s body is in that van. About ten feet from the van is Mills’ body.”

  “What about Tucker and Roz?”

  “They’re not far from the cabin,” Nixon spoke slowly, looking Hobbs in the eyes. “I dragged them in the bush in case of predators. You may not find them.”

  “I may not find them?”

  “There was a lot of howling that night.”

  Hobbs glared. “Fucking great.”

  “I can lead the clean-up crew to them.”

  “You say that like you’re ordering an extra side for your fucking meal at a restaurant,” Hobbs snapped. “It isn’t that simple, Nixon. Covering up bodies isn’t that fucking easy. I don’t just tell the clean-up crew, ‘hey guys, along with cleaning up the van and torching this cabin, I need you to also get rid of four fucking bodies from existence.’”

  “I’ll do it myself, then,” Nixon retorted. “This is the fucking BC wilderness. People disappear in it every day.”

  “The only person you need to focus on disappearing is” – Hobbs pointed at the girl from over Nixon’s shoulder – “her.”

  Nixon’s eyes narrowed. “You just said she didn’t make it in the news.”

  “Even if no one saw her being taken, she’ll be filed under a missing person now.”

  “Let me take care of that.”

  “She’s seen everything –”

  “And she won’t say a word.”

  “Fucking hell, Nixon, you don’t know that –”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Nixon hissed, leaning over the table so he was inches from Hobbs’ face. He looked so feral, Hobbs had to lean back, disturbed by the expression he saw.

  It was the first time ever Hobbs felt unsafe around him.

  This was fucking Nixon we were talking about here.

  The most composed man, and the hardest motherfucker Hobbs had ever seen.

  Hobbs glanced over Nixon’s shoulder and at the girl who was buried under the covers. He wasn’t sure how much she could hear – maybe all of it, maybe none. When he looked back at Nixon, he felt his stomach clench at the dangerous look Nixon was giving him. Just for staring at the girl, Hobbs was crossing the line.

  This was more serious than he thought.

  Hobbs let out a long sigh and straightened himself up on the chair. “Okay,” he said in a whisper, nodding to himself. “I see what’s happened. The man made of iron and ice has fallen in love.” He tapped the table in thought now as Nixon studied him without saying a word. His silence was answer enough. It was true. “Okay,” Hobbs repeated again, coming to terms with this fucking crazy development. “I’m not a touchy-feely guy, Nixon, but even I understand the power of love.”

  “You’ll leave her alone,” Nixon said, rigidly.

  “I’ll leave her alone,” Hobbs confirmed. “But we don’t know that she’s safe with you. We don’t know what the bikers saw during your gun fire. We don’t know if there were witnesses. We don’t know if she’s ever going to talk about what’s happened here. You need to be sure that she says not a fucking word. If anyone ever finds out she’s seen all that she has, she will not live long. And with Toby on our backs, I don’t know that you’ll personally make it out unscathed.”

  “We can create a cover,” Nixon said quickly. “I never worked with these guys all at once. They usually did their own jobs together.”

  “I fucked up,” Hobbs returned, apologetically. “They were fiends with the women. I should have known you would not have mixed well with them. I didn’t think they’d do something so fucking stupid.”

  “Which is why, if the bikers are sniffing around, they know I wasn’t part of this. I’ll tell my own crew to cover for me.”

  Hobbs gave him a dry look. “You think someone like Doll will keep quiet?”

  “She answers to you. She will do anything for Hobbs, her saviour.”

  Hobbs’ lips flickered because he knew that was true. “And you trust Tyrone and Rowan and Tiger?”

  Nixon nodded. “They’re practically family.”

  “And what am I in this family?”

  Nixon didn’t skip a beat. “You’re my brother, Hobbs.”

  Hobbs went all emotional now. His eyes went red and raw. “You fucks are all I have left.”

  “I know.”

  “I never liked working with the others. They were dirty fuckers, but I was pressed for time.”

  “I understand.”

  “I would never have condoned rape.”

  Nixon nodded, saying swiftly, “I know, Hobbs. I know.”

  He looked back at the girl in the corner, catching her face now as she turned to look at him with interest. Hobbs smiled softly at her before fixing his stare back at Nixon. “She’s pretty.”

  Nixon smirked. “She is.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know you should let her go.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “If there’s no danger for her, if the bikers aren’t on our backs, you should really reconsider that.”

  Nixon didn’t answer that. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, comfortable now. “I need to speak to Toby.”

  “What the fuck for?”

  “I murdered Roz.”

  “You want the bounty? He’ll know about what you’ve done. He’ll make that connection fast.”

  “No,” Nixon disagreed. “He loves his granddaughter, Hobbs. If I tell him he’s dead, I’ll buy
into his good graces. I’ll give him my share of the loot. We’ll give him Roz’s share as well.”

  Hobbs’ face fell. “That’s a lot of money you’re letting go.”

  “I know.”

  “Then all this has been for nothing.”

  “That’s not true.”

  The girl.

  He got to have the girl in the end.

  Hobbs wanted to warn him that the girl was too dangerous to have. She was a loose cannon. He didn’t trust she’d ever accept captivity. Who would?

  He knew, deep in his bones, it wasn’t going to end well.

  But Nixon was so blind with need for her, he didn’t see it with clarity the way an outsider would. You can’t remove a person from their life and expect them to never want to return to it. You can’t make that decision for them.

  Hobbs immediately sensed her fidgetiness. She was protecting herself, her own survival. She might not ever love Nixon in the same capacity he did and would over time.

  This was utterly disastrous.

  Hobbs felt crushed at the thought of Nixon broken and emptier than he already was from the passing of his sister.

  Leona had been the last string tethering Nixon to the world, and in the last couple years, Nixon’s string had frayed and then snapped at Leona’s coldness. She’d left him with nothing, with no one, with zero affection to keep his heart from freezing.

  She condemned his lifestyle, even though he’d become part of it to give her the best quality of life.

  He’d do the same for the girl.

  Hobbs knew he would give her everything, and it would never be enough.

  He would sell his soul to make her happy. He would drain his sanity one bit at a time, yearning for what might never be his.

  Ultimately, the captor would become the captive.

  *

  “I arranged a ride for you at ten in the morning,” Hobbs said as he stepped out of the cabin, slipping into his waterproof, all-purpose gloves – the best 49.99 he ever did spend because fuck this weather and its bullshit. “You’ll make your way down the mountain, and where the van is, that’s your pick-up point. The van will be gone by tomorrow, though, so don’t use it as a marker.”