by K. C. Crowne
“Dammit,” I yelled, slamming my phone against the railing.
“He’s not responding to my texts either,” Ryder said.
“The Mob? Really?” I asked. “He can’t be fucking serious.”
Ryder didn’t answer me. We just stared at one another for a long time, waiting for another message to come through. But nothing else came. After what felt like an eternity, I made my way to the top of the stairs toward my brother.
“What are we going to do?” Ryder asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, scratching my beard. “Should we tell Hazel?”
“He asked us not to,” Ryder said.
“I know, but—"
“Listen,” Ryder said, grabbing me by the shoulders. “I know how you feel about Hazel, but if you want to protect her, we need to listen to Boone. He knows more than we do. If this is really the Mob, the less she knows the better.”
He was right. I hated not being open with her, but I hadn't made any promises. I told her the truth— I wasn’t sure if I could tell her everything. And Ryder had a point. The less she knew, the better. The Mob wasn’t something to mess around with.
In all our years as PI’s, we’d never worked anything as serious as this. A few cheating husbands, a wife swindling money from her husband’s business, but this was a whole other level.
But Boone trusted us, and we’d do anything to save our friend and protect Hazel.
Hazel
“Please tell me you have news,” Christina said as soon as she picked up the phone. She sounded frantic, nearing panic, and I didn’t like that one little bit.
“Not really, but Boone is alive,” I said. “Ryder talked to him fairly recently.”
“Oh good,” Christina said. “That’s such a huge relief. What did he say? Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” I said, pacing the living room as Christina peppered me with questions. “Ryder won’t tell me shit. Said Boone didn’t want him to tell me anything.”
“That’s bullshit,” Christina said. “He’s your brother.”
“Right?” I said, walking down the hall and into the kitchen with the phone pressed to my ear. “But whatever, Boone and Ryder were always super tight. They always had their secret schemes. I’m pretty sure he’s okay and he’s just off getting into trouble again.”
“Wasn’t Ryder the one you had a crush on back in the day?”
My cheeks burned as I opened the fridge, looked through it and seeing the lack of food on the shelves, realized I needed to do some shopping if I planned to stay in town. My stomach growled as I closed it and headed back to the living room. I glanced at the broken door Wyatt had come through, making a mental note to fix it before I headed back to L.A. We lived in the middle of nowhere, a place where people didn’t bother to lock their doors, so it didn’t bother me too much that it was broken. Still, I’d lived in Los Angeles too long for it not to raise a few concerns. I brushed them off and returned to the living room to plop down on the couch.
Christina continued teasing me. “Or was it Wyatt? I can’t remember which brother you liked more.”
Truthfully, I didn’t have an answer for that. Back in the day, I had always been closer to Wyatt; we’d had a lot in common and often worked out together. We were good friends. But Ryder had caught my eye at a young age. I was a typical teen girl who had a crush on the bad boy who just so happened to live next door to me and was my brother’s best friend.
“Oh wait. That’s right, I forgot. You’ve always had a thing for both guys,” Christina said. “Because you have a decision-making disorder. Either that or you’re just greedy.”
“Oh hush. Like you have room to talk. You have a thing for my brother,” I teased back. “And I bet if I had another one, you’d have a thing for him too.”
Christina fell silent and I felt bad for popping off like that. It was meant to be a joke, but considering how Boone just disappeared on her, I didn’t blame her for being a little upset. Being ghosted like that tends to piss people off.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I know the two of you have gotten close over the last few months,” I said softly. “I just never realized how close.”
“That’s fine. You were busy,” she said.
Looking for every opportunity to change the subject away from Wyatt and Ryder, I remembered that she had a meeting the day before and jumped on that.
“So did Hank know anything?”
“Not really,” Christina said. “I mean, he said he hadn’t seen Boone since filming wrapped up, but he was a little dodgy about it. I couldn’t really press him for answers. I only had a minute before he and my boss went into a meeting. But honestly, he seemed to brush me off.”
“No surprise there,” I said, rolling my eyes. I’d met Hank once at the release party for the film my brother worked on with him. He seemed to like my brother well enough but looked down on everyone else as he clung to Daphne Lambert, the main star of the movie and one of the biggest names in Hollywood. Or at least she was one of the biggest names in Hollywood before she turned up dead.
“He’s still not talking much about Daphne either, is he?” I asked.
“You mean his mistress that mysteriously and suddenly killed herself at the height of her career? Yeah, that’s not suspicious at all,” Christina said.
The door in the kitchen swung open and shut, causing me to sit up straight on the couch, a surge of adrenaline coursing through me. Christina continued talking about her conspiracy theories regarding Daphne’s death, but my ears were peeled, listening for any sounds coming from the other room. When I heard nothing else, I relaxed a bit, told myself it was just the wind. Then it happened again.
“Wyatt? Ryder? Is that you?” I called out, standing from my spot on the couch.
I walked down the hallway, phone in my hand still pressed to my ear, ready to give the guys a piece of my mind for coming in without knocking. The hallway was long, but I could hear footsteps in the other room. They were soft, muffled, but it was definitely footsteps. Someone was definitely there. Damn Wyatt, walking in without an invitation. I cursed him under my breath and let Christina go quickly so I could give him a piece of my mind. Disconnecting the call, I held the phone at my side and crept down the hallway.
I approached the dining room first but didn’t even give it a second look. I could hear him moving around in the kitchen still. After Wyatt scared me the first time, I wasn’t about to let him get me again.
“Seriously, guys, I know you used to walk right in like you owned the place, but—”
I rounded the corner in the kitchen expecting to run into Wyatt. Instead, I found two men, neither of them familiar to me, in black masks with their guns drawn. My heart hammering in my breast, I turned to run back down the hallway. Someone stepped out from the dining room— another man in a black mask. This one was larger than the other two combined. He was armed as well but held his weapon at his side casually as if it were an afterthought— as if he knew he didn’t need it.
A small squeak escaped me as I realized I was trapped between the three masked, armed men. I knew my odds weren’t good, but I sure as hell wasn’t going down without a fight. I rushed at the guy who’d stepped out from the dining room, taking my chances with the bigger man. Being a stunt double came in handy sometimes. Having trained in various disciplines, I had some knowledge of self-defense and various fight techniques— most of which you only saw in the movies.
Gritting my teeth and steeling myself, I lowered my shoulders and rushed him, aiming for his core, doing my best to take him off guard before he could pull his gun up and use it on me. I hit him as hard as I could, driving my shoulder straight into his midsection. The man let out a loud “whoof” as I drove the air from his lungs, then doubled over in pain. It wasn’t much of an opening, but it was enough for me to push past him and run for the door.
The sound of gunshots echoed around the house, sounding like cannons going off. They were so loud and so close, I felt the
rumbling down deep in my bones. It was really happening, but it felt surreal. I tried to deny the reality of it, shut it out of my mind and pretend it was just another scene from another movie. I knew it was the only way I was going to get through it. The only way I would to survive. If I gave in to the fear gnawing at my heart, I would freeze. I wouldn’t be able to act. And I needed to act.
I had just reached the door when one of the men grabbed my shoulder from behind. Spinning around quickly, I kicked him in the crotch as hard as I could. He registered the pain instantly and let out a strangled gasp. The man doubled over in agony, but he didn’t let go of me. His grip on my shoulder was like an iron vice and not even a solid kick to the jewels got him to release it.
“Don’t kill her,” the big man yelled from behind him. “We need her alive.”
Knowing they couldn’t kill me, gave me the courage to continued to fight. I twisted my arm free from his grasp and pushed the front door open. Before I could break free of the house, though, I felt two strong arms wrap around me from behind, holding me fast. And no matter how hard I fought back, kicking and screaming, I couldn’t get free of them. The bigger guy I’d kicked in the balls had me in his grip. He was stronger than an ox, and he picked me up, carrying me effortlessly, like I weighed nothing at all. I thrashed and wailed, my punches and kicks to his body seeming to do nothing but tickle him.
As he carried me, I lowered my head and bit his hand like I wanted to tear it off his arm with my teeth. The coppery bitterness of his blood filled my mouth, but I refused to let go as he shouted and cursed.
With a roar, he threw me onto the ground in the hallway, and I slid across the linoleum on my backside before hitting my head on the leg of the table. I’d ended up in the kitchen without realizing it, and everything on the table crashed around me. I tried to get my legs under me and tried to stand again, but one of the other guys pressed something to my neck. I felt two sharp points of cold metal pressing into my flesh a moment before the familiar buzz of a stun gun sounded in my ears. It was the last thing I heard before the world went black.
Wyatt
My mind was spinning. Hazel was back. Boone was gone. The Mafia was somehow involved. But for all the fucking revelations popping off, all I could think about was Hazel. She was first and foremost in my mind.
I knew it was wrong, but seeing her again had brought back so many memories it was hard to keep up with them all. Memories of working out with her in the gym and watching the sweat rolling down her body as she lifted nearly as much as the guys did. Memories of seeing her in a bikini at the swimming pool, doing laps, her hair dripping wet and her body glistening as she got out of the water. God, she’d looked amazing back then, and she probably looked even better now.
I was stroking my cock and thinking about her— a common occurrence when something reminded me of the good times we’d shared back in the day. The night of the party, I thought we might finally become more than friends. Before she left, anyway. We’d been alone earlier in the evening, tucked away in a bathroom, talking. She said she’d wanted to talk to me about something and dragged me into the bathroom. I wasn’t even sure what we talked about anymore— if we ever actually got around to talking. But it was the only place we could get some peace and quiet.
I licked my lips as I remembered the way hers felt against mine. So warm and soft, tasting like vanilla lip gloss. Her body hard yet soft in all the right places, I remember her hair was silky in my hands as I held her close, her body pressed to mine, kissing her with everything I had in me.
I recalled as our kissing hadstarted getting even more heated, someone knocked on the door and wouldn’t let up. The other bathroom in the house had some girl puking her guts out and the person at the door apparently really had to go. I didn’t want to stop, though. I wanted to keep going until the inevitable and satisfying climax— for lack of a better word. But it was Hazel who finally pulled away, her face flushed.
“We shouldn’t be doing this, Wyatt,” she said at the time. “This is exactly what I wanted to avoid.”
I had no idea what she’d meant by that, but I let her go to avoid awkwardness. She ran out of the bathroom, leaving me there as some guy waltzed in and proceeded to have a piss despite the fact that I was still in there, leaning against the sink.
I was in shock. Hazel had finally kissed me. I’d finally touched her in a way I’d wanted to for years. And within seconds, it was all gone. It had ended, and that was the last time I ever really saw her. I always blamed myself, thinking maybe I’d gone too far with her in the bathroom that night, that I’d taken things farther than she was comfortable with. Maybe I was supposed to apologize for that, I thought.
But it hadn’t felt wrong at the time. In fact, it had felt very right. After all, she was leading the way. I merely followed. Eagerly and happily, I followed. I went into it knowing I didn’t want to scare her off or pressure her. She had kissed me. She had rubbed herself against my erection, moaning as my fingers became entwined in her hair. I hadn’t let my hands wander too much;
My erection was throbbing in my hands, and I knew I had to take care of it before I could focus on the problem at hand. I needed to clear my head, so to speak.
Closing my eyes, I pictured Hazel on top of me, her clothes gone and her glorious body on display. It was her hand on my cock, not mine, and she was rubbing me between her legs.
“I’ve wanted this for so long,” she moaned, sliding my hard cock against her wetness. “I’ve wanted you for so long.”
It sounded cheesy, even to me, but I went with it. Hazel continued rubbing herself against my cock, moaning in pleasure. God, what I wouldn’t give to hear her moaning for real.
She slid down my cock, taking me deep inside her. My hand tightened around my erection as I imagined feeling the inside of her for the first time. Her face contorted into a look of bliss and surprise as I filled her, and she began riding me, her breasts bouncing as she fucked me. She rode me hard and fast, grinding herself against me as her moans became more and more desperate.
“Yes, yes,” she screamed.
I moaned along with her, unable to control myself. In my fantasy, I took one of her perfect breasts in my hand, guiding it to my mouth and sucking on her nipple. Her body trembled above me as she said those magic words. “I’m coming! Oh God, Wyatt, I’m coming!”
Imagining her coming on my cock, feeling her pussy clench and tighten around me, was enough to send me over the edge. My entire body convulsed in pleasure as I shot ropes of hot cum on my stomach, wishing it was inside her instead.
I lay in silence, staring at the ceiling, feeling a mixture of relief and sadness. Relief that I finally got some release, but sadness over the fact that I had to resort to my own hand. Sure, I’d been with other women, but none of them would ever compare to Hazel. I wanted her and knowing that it was unlikely to ever happen made the entire fantasy bittersweet.
Grabbing some tissues from beside my bed, I cleaned myself up. I was just about ready to head into the shower when Ryder strode through my door.
“Whoa there,” I said, grabbing my boxers and sliding them up. “Knock first next time.”
“It’s Hazel,” he said, sweat dripping down his forehead. He was out of breath too; clearly he’d been running. “She’s gone.”
Those words sent a chill down my spine. “Gone as in she left to go back to L.A.?”
“No, gone as in I heard loud noises from over there and saw a strange car leave her house, so I went to check on her and she’s nowhere to be found. Her backdoor was open and there’s signs of a struggle.”
My heart stopped and Ryder and I shared a knowing look. Boone had mentioned the Mob and had only made one request of us so far – keep Hazel safe. And we’d failed to do that.
I dressed as quickly as possible, slipping on some old jeans and a t-shirt from the floor, and my brother and I rushed to Hazel’s home. As we entered through the back door, I felt guilty realizing they’d entered the house through the door I
broke.
Ryder was right about signs of a struggle too. The vase that normally sat on the kitchen table was on the floor, broken and with water around it. A coffee mug lay broken on the floor as well. We walked through the glass, and in the hallway, pictures were knocked off the walls.
Neither one of us had much to say. It was obvious she was taken against her will. But where would they go?
“We have to tell Boone. Maybe he has some ideas where we can find her,” Ryder said, thinking the exact same thing I was.
No matter what, we had to go after Hazel.
His phone was out already, and I watched as he typed a message.
You need to talk to us now. They have Hazel, Boone. This is no joke. Who are we dealing with, and where can we find them?
Hazel
I wasn’t sure how long I was out, but the next thing I remembered was waking up in a room, tied to a chair. I opened my eyes, the light making me wince and my head thundering like somebody was inside my skull beating a drum. The room was solid white drywall, no windows. Nothing I recognized. I had no idea where I was. I wasn’t even sure I was still in Colorado. I could have been on Mars for all I knew.
I took in my surroundings, doing my best to avoid looking at the light since it made my skull feel like it was about to explode. There was one way in or out of the room, and that was through a metal door on the wall opposite me. A regular door with regular locks, nothing too fancy. Nothing I couldn’t figure out how to get through once I was free from my restraints. I had no idea who was outside that door, but it didn’t matter. I knew no matter what, I had to fight. I wouldn’t lay down and die or let them have me, not if I could help it.
I was alone in the room, and there was no sign of the men who grabbed me. My muscles screamed at me, my body aching in ways I didn’t even know were possible. Not even my roughest day doing stunts on set made me hurt like I was then. But I knew I couldn’t give up.