Chapter 2
2251 Words
CHAPTER 2
Take her? I’m not about to end up in another prison. I’d rather be eaten by a bear. But their size alone makes me leery about running. I’m skittish and quick, but I’m no match for four brawny outlaws.
I back away slowly, but the moment I move, a horrific squalling sounds from my right, a jarringly loud shriek—an alarm? Oh s**t, the police will be here any minute. Haling Cove is a sleepy town, but officer response times are exemplary. And if I get caught here, connected with the outlaws mere miles from where they will soon find Jeff dead… Circumstantial or not, I’m screwed.
Shit. I can’t run now, I realize. I can’t make it out of here without the cops noticing me, and I can’t steal a car directly in front of the police. I won’t make it to another state. Leave it to a bunch of men to c**k things up.
Think, Isabelle, think.
But there’s no time to plan. One of the outlaws grabs the sack from the ground, slings it onto his back, and heads for the bikes. A second follows suit as the first jumps onto his hog. The one nearest me stands still, watching—maybe waiting for instructions.
I turn, prepared to run, but the one on the bike—the big one, bigger than a bear—is still pointing at me. “She comes!” he growls in a voice like thunder, the word slightly muffled by the helmet. “No witnesses.”
No witnesses? What the hell does that mean? Are they going to kill me? Good luck, assholes. But what choice do I have? It’s between going with them and staying here, waiting to be picked up by the cops.
I can play this smart. Every setback is an opportunity if you’re intelligent enough to see the way through. That might as well have been my father’s catch phrase, though he only made it to sixty, so maybe I could use a better one.
I raise my hands.
The outlaw closes the gap between us and slings me over his shoulder like I weigh nothing. I open my mouth to tell him that he doesn’t have to force me, that I’ll go willingly, but my brain short-circuits at the feel of a hand on my thigh, gentle despite the circumstances. Jeff didn’t touch me once in two months, so just the fingers of another person sends confused but prickly electricity through my nerve endings.
“Wait—” I begin, but either the man doesn’t hear me above the shrieking alarm, or he doesn’t care. He’s running, my head bouncing against his back, my feet connecting with his stomach, but I might as well be kicking a brick wall.
Why couldn’t I have just been eaten by wildlife?
At least I’m no longer worried about being discovered by law enforcement—these men have just as much reason as I do to escape this town, and every motivation to keep me hidden. Besides, if they wanted to kill me, they’d have shot me dead already and left me in the alley with dead body number one.
The outlaw doesn’t pause to climb onto his motorcycle. He slows his pace, and then I’m flying, swinging off his shoulder and onto a bike between the legs of an already settled rider.
“I’m sorry about this, ma’am.” The man behind me tugs something over my eyes—a blindfold, or maybe a knit hat. I can’t see. My legs are locked around a bike, my hands are in my lap, my eyes are useless behind the fabric. And then all other thoughts are drowned out by the roar of the hog. Wind beats against my face and my bare arms as we rumble into the night.
My heart is thundering in my ears, and for the first time in hours, I’m not feeling the nerves or the humidity or even my own rolling stomach; I’m barely feeling the rage in my guts, the terror that’s been plaguing me since I left Jeff at his mansion-turned-prison.
I’m not sure I’m terrified… I think I am. But I’m also exhilarated. Call it thrill-seeking, call it a death wish, call it endorphins or the side effects of coming off months of near-constant unbridled fury, but I cannot deny the electricity in my veins. I’m not exactly free, but I’m freer than I was a few hours ago. Here, I can breathe.
At least, for the moment. Until they decide I’m a risk. And I most certainly am. I can only hope they don’t know my ex-boyfriend, but I should be safe—Blade runs with a biker club much further north.
“I didn’t see anyone’s face,” I say.
“What?”
“I don’t know what you look like,” I yell into the wind. “I won’t tell anyone what I saw. I just want to get out of town.”
“Can’t take that chance.” His arms are strong—a cage. His chest is a rock behind my back, crushing my shoulders.
He’s right; I don’t blame them for taking me. I’ve never been so careless as to leave a witness to any of my crimes—Jeff’s my first. And the fact that I’d killed him, well…
It appears they’re kinder than I am.
But “can’t take that chance”? My spine tightens into a rod of steel. All I’ve been through, and this man has the power? Over me? No way. All he has is the goddamn audacity.
The rage returns for a single, blistering heartbeat. “f**k you,” I snap. “I’m not a threat to you.”
He stiffens at my comment, but then I feel the jiggling of his rib cage against my back. Is he laughing?
I reach for the blindfold, ready to tug it up, to see where we are, but he grabs my fingers and plants them firmly in my lap once more.
“Hands down,” he growls, his voice so low it makes my marrow tremble. “I’d tell you to watch that smart mouth, but I doubt it’d do any good since you’re talking s**t in the middle of a kidnapping.”
That smart mouth. The words set something deep in my guts pulsing, but it’s not unpleasant—a primal ache in my lower belly. I shift in the seat, the vibration of the bike between my legs suddenly stronger, almost erotic, a shuddering pleasure that I should not be feeling. What is wrong with me?
“Is that what this is?” I say. “A k********g?”
“Unless you want to be on this bike.”
What am I supposed to say to that? That I do want to be here because I just killed a guy? That I have a significant criminal history of my own to contend with, passed down through the generations, so I don’t really feel at home unless I’m living dangerously?
I snort, derisive. “Of course I don’t want to be here.”
He stills, the bike grumbling, the tires grating against the road. Wind beats at my face. “You’re… lying. Aren’t you?”
Yes. “Why would you think that?”
“I’m a criminal. It’s my job to know when people are lying to me. But for you to be fine with this… What happened to you, hon?”
Hon? The wind bites at my nose and slices at my already road-rashed knees and straight through my tattered yoga pants—the flimsy material is not made for high winds. Spring or not, it’s freezing on the bike with the wind blasting and the sun hidden.
I push back against his chest for warmth, and he tightens his biceps around me in a decidedly kind way. “I’m sorry about the blindfold.” The bulk of his arms blocks some of the wind around my shoulders. I wriggle closer, and this time my ass shifts against his groin.
“Then take the blindfold off me.”
“It’s better if you don’t see where we’re going—not all of us would be okay with you being able to track us down. But trust me, I don’t like this anymore than you do.” He shifts away from me. “Watch that, would you?”
“Watch what?”
“The… grinding.”
The… oh. Am I turning him on? After two months in that basement, just the freedom to touch another person feels enticing, but if I’m being honest, I think I want to piss him off a little. I’m not a woman who likes to be told what to do.
I wiggle harder against him. “And what if I don’t? Will you get hard? Take me right here on this bike?”
He clears his throat. “It’s a biological reaction—sympathetic nervous system arousal due to the emotionally charged nature of our current predicament. I can’t help it. Don’t presume to know what I think, or what I might do. I’d never hurt a woman.”
Whoa. That was a lot of twenty-dollar words from a biker outlaw. Was he… a healthcare professional? I’m trained as a vet—the only thing I’ve ever done that wasn’t underhanded.
I settle back against the outlaw. I’m not sure how I feel about this “biological reaction” hypothesis. But I’m certainly feeling it, too, a dull throbbing in my belly that might be s****l, but I can’t tease it apart from the thrill of freedom.
We veer off to the right suddenly, the rumbling growl of their bikes getting a bit quieter, which means we’ve made it beyond the tunnels of buildings—somewhere out in the open. I close my eyes, not that it matters beneath the knit hat, and focus on the brittle cold against my chest. My T-shirt is too thin for the open road.
“Are you a doctor?” I ask, practically screaming above the roar of wind and road.
He chuckles again, and I feel more than hear the rumbling growl of it against my back. “Small talk, huh?”
I’ve never been much for watching my mouth, but this isn’t a pressured excuse to make conversation. I feel that now, more than ever, what I say matters. If they like me, maybe I can hang out with them for a few months until Jeff’s death settles—until the medical examiner confirms it’s a heart attack. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing—this can be an opportunity.
Besides, it’s not like I have anywhere else to go.
“I’m not a doctor,” he says. “I’m a Renegade.”
I frown. A… Renegade? I’ve heard of other biker clubs, have been more than intimately involved with one of them. But the Renegades are elusive—invisible. I assumed they were urban legends, bogeymen used to cover up the very real crime issue in the area—a scapegoat so that the real perpetrators could get away clean. Interesting.
“You guys have been quiet.”
“Not if you believe the rumors.” He shifts back, maybe trying to stay clear of my hips. “But we certainly try.”
The bike leans beneath me, a hard right, and for a moment, I worry I might topple off the side and onto the cement beneath—I’ll die if I fall off at these speeds. But the man at my back rights me, his arms shielding me from the road.
I let him—I let him help me, though it’s the antithesis of the way I live the rest of my life. I can do this. If I can get away from a psychopathic millionaire with a penchant for locks, I can get away from a few bikers if I actually need to. I still have Jeff’s bank account numbers locked in my brain from the night we met—reciting them as I drifted off each night calmed me, as did the idea that I might be able to use them when I got out… provided I figure out his passwords. And if I can’t, I have a storage unit with a life’s worth of stolen merchandise. I can stay with the outlaws until I get bored, until they trust me enough to leave me be, then I can sneak off and live it up alone.
They’re killers, Isabelle. Why doesn’t that scare you?
But I think I know the answer: because my ex boyfriend was a killer by trade. And I’m a killer now, too, even if Jeff mightily deserved it.
The wind abruptly stops. The bikes are louder now, too, echoing in a way that tells me we’re indoors. The air reeks of gasoline. My eyes water.
The jolt of the braking hog throws me forward, but I stay in place because the man at my back is now clutching me with both hands, one on either side of my rib cage. Possessive, but not in the way Jeff was, all gnashing teeth and presumption and ownership. This is… protective—definitely protective. A strange thought for the situation—What kind of man protects someone by forcing them to their secret biker lair?—but I feel it nonetheless.
- Writer
