Captive

by R. J. Lewis

Flynn swallowed, struggling to keep his voice steady when he said, “I’ve been looking for a man who murdered a crew in cold blood after the One Percent were ripped off to the grand tune of twenty million dollars. It was underworld knowledge that a rogue group of guys had broken into one of the bikers’ shops and ransacked gold bars just before they were meant to be transported. Since that robbery, the bikers turned on one another and the city descended into the nastiest bloodshed it has ever seen, ultimately annihilating the bikers once and for all.

  “Now the man that turned on his crew did it for the money. Stole their share and then paid Toby off to keep him silent. I did a few jobs for Toby. There’ve been whispers from his men that the man that killed the crew owned an island. I did some digging, threw a lot of money around, asking if there’s been anyone coming around selling large chunks of gold. When you steal a pot load like that, you sell it off slowly. A year ago, I got word that a man by the name of Hobbs was selling to a mint dealer – one of Toby’s mint dealers. It didn’t take much surveillance to see the type of people Hobbs dealt with. One of them…a man who owned an island.”

  The vehemence in Flynn’s tone startled me. I watched him, my body transfixed to his words as he fell apart before me.

  “I came to see him for myself,” Flynn continued. “I knew right off the bat, when I saw his smarmy fucking smile, he’d done it.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked weakly. “You could be wrong.”

  “Because I’d heard about him before. He’d worked with that crew multiple times. Around the time the robbery struck, he’d left the island on a private plane just before it happened.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “You’d be surprised who talks for the right price.”

  My heart slowed. “You came here and saw me?”

  “I saw you flee a restaurant. Saw him chase you down.”

  “Flynn –”

  “It happened at the exact time I’d sent men to hack into his surveillance system, so I could keep tabs on him, but he’d found out about them almost right away. I’d overlooked how closely he monitored the waters. He killed a whole boat load of my men that night, and then you were hidden for weeks. It was like…he was paranoid they’d been sent after you. Even now, no matter how much money I throw, it’s never enough to get anyone to open up about you. It’s like a death sentence. Like…Nixon will know. He’s kept your identity locked up, and I know it’s because he’s so sick in the fucking head, he feels like he owns you.”

  I ripped my arm from his hand, taking a step back from him. Tears clouded my vision as I looked back on that time in my room last year. A whole month I’d spent loathing him, thinking he’d punished me.

  But he’d in fact been protecting me.

  Oh, my God.

  He’d never once told me because…I shook my head, crying softly into my hands. He didn’t want me to know he thought I was in any danger.

  He didn’t want me scared.

  Fear traumatized me, and he knew it.

  “So, you did all this…” I choked out, breathing hard. “You did all this to get closer to him…”

  “I had word sent out to Hobbs that there was damn good driver outsmarting the cops –”

  “You were never going to do the job.”

  “No.”

  “You were waiting for him to leave so you could…so you could ruin him.”

  He smiled, proudly. “Killing him isn’t enough. I want him to suffer, Vixen. I want him to come back and see his island in ashes, see his money wasted, find his woman… gone. I want him to feel the emptiness he’s made me feel these last two years, and then I’m going to kill him.”

  When he took a step to me, I took another step back, determined to keep the distance between us. “You lost someone from that crew, didn’t you?”

  A look of pain flashed in his face. “I did, Vixen.”

  Tears continued to fall as I remembered Beckett.

  Then Mills.

  Then Tucker.

  Then…

  My heart sank slowly. Sadness enveloped me as I whispered, “You lost Roz.”

  Flynn froze, his face morphing to shock. “How do you know that?” he whispered.

  My smile was sad. “Your mom owned a bakery, and she was killed in front of you. You were tossed into the system and then you ran away. You…looked up to him. He was your whole world. You wanted to be him. He predicted you’d be in the back of a car, hoping to be like big brother, but he didn’t want that. He wanted you to go to school, to turn your life around…”

  Flynn’s eyes flared, unshed tears brimming. “How the fuck do you know all this?”

  I took another step back. “Because I was there, Flynn. I was there two years ago. Nixon killed them in front of me.”

  I understood Flynn now.

  I understood his motives.

  He wasn’t the bad guy here.

  Neither was Nixon. He’d saved me from a bad fate.

  In the real world, among the broken, there were no good guys or bad guys. There were just people with their own agendas, with their own reasons.

  Everyone with their own lives to live, their own stories to tell.

  Breaking the truth to Flynn was almost impossible. He watched me, his shock inescapable. He wanted me to continue; he held a big breath in his lungs, waiting.

  “I was kidnapped right after the robbery,” I explained quietly, forcing out the words that would cause him nothing but utter devastation. “Beckett forced me in the car. We drove to a mountain. There was a cabin at the top. They needed to lay low in it, waiting for the heat to die down, but Beckett wanted to rape me. He and Mills stayed back in the car to do it. But…just before Beckett began to take me, Nixon showed up and murdered them both.”

  I spoke slowly, allowing Flynn the time to digest the words. I needed him to understand the truth, to let it sink in slowly.

  “Flynn,” my voice quivered, “when Nixon took me to the cabin, he protected me. Tucker and Roz…they were going to do the same to me, and then they were going to kill me.”

  “Ross would never do that…” Flynn retorted, shaking his head, denying it straight away.

  Ross. That was his real name. I frowned. “He was.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “No –”

  “You’re lying.”

  I shook my head gravely. “No, Flynn, I’m not. He loved you, but he wasn’t a good guy –”

  “You misunderstood him.”

  “I didn’t.” I gritted my teeth, a flash of anger coursing through me. “If you worked for Toby and you threw money around for hints of the truth, then you missed a giant fucking truth right below your nose.”

  He was fighting tears now – because he knew I wasn’t lying. “What was that?”

  “Toby protected Nixon and Hobbs because Nixon killed Roz, and at the time, Roz had fucked Toby over.”

  “I already know about the bounty and the money, but he set things straight –”

  “He raped his granddaughter, Flynn!” I roared. “She was a kid, and you know what Roz said about it? He said he was drunk, like that justified it.”

  Flynn was stunned. He took a stumbling step away from me, his mind scrambling. “I would have known about that,” he rasped, tears falling now. “I would have.”

  “You said yourself no one dared talk about me, no matter the money you offered,” I returned firmly. “Wouldn’t the same go for Toby and his granddaughter? There are some things you just don’t talk about, Flynn.”

  You never knew who was listening to the whispers.

  In a world like theirs, who could be trusted?

  If it was an automatic death sentence, what did money matter?

  Just then the roar of a plane broke the silence, flying over head of us. I looked up at it as it descended not far above the trees. Flynn wasn’t looking. He was staring past me, lost in a trance.

  I took a step toward him. “Flynn –”

  The sound of gunfire erupt
ed, drowning out my words.

  43.

  Vixen…

  Flynn snapped out of his trance as gunfire descended not far from us.

  My spine straightened in alarm. “Who’s firing?”

  “I have this place surrounded,” Flynn answered in a hushed tone. “Too many men, outnumbering Nixon’s. Whoever is a threat, they’ll be removed shortly.”

  Flynn took me by the arm again and we moved briskly through the bush, toward the gunfire. I tried to resist at first, too frightened to draw close to it, but Flynn pushed on, unwavering.

  Whoever was there wasn’t stopping.

  It went on and on.

  From one side to the next.

  A few minutes later, as more bullets flew, cries sounded out. Flynn halted, straining to hear. Making little sound, we waded through, approaching a break in the trees. I heard the sound of ocean waves crashing, saw the silhouette of a cliff face to one side and the shoreline up ahead. We were on the shore of the island, in an unprotected bay, too far from town.

  “Careful,” Flynn whispered, pulling me to a stop. “We wait until the threat is eliminated.”

  He made me crouch down with him. I didn’t protest. My heart was hammering in my chest, my mind blazing, my senses on high alert.

  With just the moon and stars to offer light, the seaplane was still circling overhead, its landing approaching. It was a dangerous time to fly. What if it crashed into us? What if there was no way out? What if I got shot in the crossfire just getting to it?

  Too many worries hit me at once. I had a hard time trying to quiet my thoughts.

  I couldn’t see fire, nor the plumes of smoke rising from the town, but I could smell the smoke. I couldn’t swallow the hard lump in my throat away.

  I prayed for the rain to come.

  To put it all out.

  I prayed for the island to remain intact, for the homes to still be standing, for no lives costed by one man’s need for revenge.

  “I’m not going,” I whispered, peering at him now. “I’m staying, Flynn.”

  Flynn’s eyes didn’t hold the same animosity as before. He looked withered and broken. His words were small, uncertain. “You still need your freedom, Vixen.”

  “You’re scrambling for a cause now,” I returned frantically. “You’re itching to justify this.”

  Tears fell from his eyes, an endless stream. “He still killed my brother.”

  “You know he had to.”

  He sucked in breaths, the tears fell around him, falling off the tip of his nose. I suddenly realized why they called him kid. He looked like a little boy. He was so vulnerable, like a hurt child reacting out of anger. My heart lurched. I took him by the hand and squeezed. He stared at me with pleading eyes, like he was asking me to remove the pain.

  “It’s alright,” I whispered to him. “It’s okay to be hurt, Flynn.”

  “I can’t process,” he responded in a guttural voice. “I feel like I’m being torn apart.”

  “There’s still time to fix this.”

  Before he could respond, gunfire – so close my ears ached – broke through the air once more. Another cry sounded out, and this time a girl’s shriek erupted in response. “ROWAN!”

  Oh, my God.

  I gasped. “That’s Doll. They’re here.”

  Reacting out of reflex, I ripped my arm from him and sprinted forward. Flynn came from behind me, tackling me back down. I landed hard on my front, the breath ripped from my lungs. “You will get shot!” he hissed. “I don’t want you hurt.”

  “Tell them to stop,” I cried.

  “Too late for that, Vixen. I’ll be dead.”

  Running could be heard. The firefight was happening so close, we were going to be caught in the middle of it at this rate.

  “Doll!” I yelled, just as Flynn covered my mouth with the palm of his hand.

  “Stop,” he told me. “Please, Vixen.”

  “Vixen?!” Doll shouted from a distance. “Nixon, she’s here!”

  Nixon.

  My heart surged.

  He was here.

  The plane engine boomed overhead, finally coming down to touch the water. I saw its blinking lights as the landing gear skimmed over the water, coming to a smooth and lengthy stop.

  Flynn watched it with me, his breaths coming faster. “We gotta get to that plane. There’s a dinghy on the shore –”

  “I’m down!” shouted Rowan from nearby. “Retreat, Doll! Get outta here –”

  “I’m not going anywhere!” she roared back.

  “Get back –”

  Gunfire silenced him.

  Everything went quiet again. I panted, tears streaming from my eyes as I realized he might have gotten killed. Oh, my God. Flynn stayed over me, forcing me down, breathing quickly over me. Even forced beneath him, I understood what he was doing. He was covering me from head to toe, shielding me from gunfire. Protecting me.

  Footsteps crunched nearby. I turned my head, eyeing the bush. I caught faint movements. Saw a shadow move from tree to tree. Flynn’s head spun in the other direction, catching other sounds from nearby.

  “I have a gun pointed at her spine, Nixon,” he suddenly said firmly, hiding the vulnerability he’d let slip with me.

  I hadn’t realized he’d had the gun on me. I didn’t feel it at all. But he forced me up now, keeping my back plastered to his front.

  I blinked around us, trying to find Nixon, but all I could see were trees and branches swaying with the wind.

  A twig breaking from nearby sounded. Flynn turned us in the direction of it, until a crunching sound came in a completely different direction, and Flynn spun back to that.

  I held my death, dizzied by the panic I felt.

  “Don’t be frightened, baby,” Nixon called to me from nearby. “You’re okay.”

  My heart jumped in my chest. “Nixon…”

  “Shh, baby.”

  Flynn let out a harsh breath. “I won’t hurt her if you retreat.”

  “You won’t hurt her either way.”

  Suddenly a large figure emerged from the trees in front of us. I knew it was him straight away. I’d memorized the lines of him, could feel him in the air. His arms were raised, his hands gripping tight a gun aimed at us. As he stepped out, treading carefully toward us, the moonlight hit him. His face came into view, and what I saw made my knees weak. His face was bloodied and bruised. The way he walked was all wrong, too. Gritting his teeth, his eyes met mine, and he let out a long breath, like he was relieved to see me.

  “Baby,” he whispered to me. “You’re so strong, my angel. It’s okay.”

  His words made my chest swell. I looked at him, thinking of the past as I merged it with the present.

  Nixon, my saviour, my captor.

  Even now, doing what he could to save me.

  Flynn forced us to take a step back. “Don’t push me, Nixon,” he warned. “I’m not bluffing.”

  Nixon’s eyes lazily moved to Flynn. “What did I say about playing the hero, Flynn? It’s all well and good until you get your hands dirty, and you…you don’t know how to do that.”

  “You really want to test me?”

  “Let my girl go.” Nixon demanded in a soft voice that was unlike him. “Deal with me personally. Shoot me if you have to. Just…let her go.”

  “I was already going to let her go,” Flynn retorted. “I was going to put her on that plane and set her free.”

  “She’s not going on that plane,” Nixon simply said. “But I’ll give you this opportunity to leave.”

  Flynn let out an empty laugh. “Yeah, and I believe that.”

  “I give you my word.”

  “The island’s surrounded by my men, Nixon, I don’t need your word.”

  “Your men are dead,” Nixon said, gravely. “Taken out one by one. You think I haven’t been through a gunfight? You think Doll is just a pretty face? You think Rowan, Tyrone and Tiger haven’t been through situations like these? I told you before already…we never
needed a driver, and this? This was preschool shit, wasn’t it, guys?”

  “Yes,” a voice sounded out. Tiger.

  “Absolutely,” Tyrone chimed from another direction.

  “That’s right, gentlemen.” Doll.

  “You accomplished what you came here for,” Nixon explained to Flynn. “You’ve won.”

  “You don’t know what I came here for,” Flynn angrily retorted. “You don’t really know anything about me.”

  “I do,” Nixon argued, softly. “The truth was in plain sight. You took advantage of every opportunity you had. You planted that man in the basement, killed him, played the hero, and watched as I panicked, sending my men out, looking for a threat that wasn’t there. With no one in the surveillance room, your men planted explosives all over the island. You were never coming for the job. You were going to steal Vixen from under me the second the island began to blow apart. I knew, Flynn.”

  “What gave it away?”

  “What you said to me in the restaurant…You said being here was better than being desperate enough to rob car parts in the parking lot of a 7/11. Your brother said something very similar to me once. A nightmare you both shared, perhaps.”

  Flynn didn’t respond. Still pressed against him, I felt his trembles. I felt his head jerk from left to right as the other figures emerged from the shadows. We were surrounded by the crew.

  “Enough bloodshed,” Nixon continued, gun still raised. “Enough, Flynn. I can’t bear it anymore, not on my island. This was my sacred place, and it’s tarnished now. You did it. You took her from me, you breathed fear back into my baby. I’ve never felt so frightened for her. You’ve broken me, Flynn. I won’t make it past tonight. What more do you want?”

  Flynn still didn’t respond, but he let me go. He stepped back, dropping his arms to his side. I turned to him, noticing he didn’t have a gun on him at all.

  “I didn’t know Vixen was there,” he suddenly said. “I didn’t know what my brother intended to do, Nixon…”

  “Leave,” Nixon demanded, his voice weak. He seemed all wrong. “I’m giving you a chance to go.”

  “Why?” Flynn asked warily.

  “Because I understand what it’s like to hate the world.”