“Let me go.” She bit her lip before pleading. “You’re a good person! I can see it in you!”
She thought he might do it before he forced the gag into her mouth to keep her from talking. Her tongue drew back, and she choked at the presence of the unknown cloth that smelled like it had come out of the drier minutes before. “You’re right.” He sighed deeply. “I’m not a monster.”
Mila gnashed her teeth and struggled, now getting her strength back. She accomplished nothing and was helpless to stop him as he once more grabbed the blindfold.
The last thing Mila saw before he put the blindfold over her eyes was a tortured look on his handsome face. “That’s why I’m doing this.”
Chapter 6
Mila left her apartment, but she
didn’t leave it willingly.
She fought every step of the way, digging in her heels and struggling until her captor got tired of it and picked her up to carry her with one brawny arm around her midsection, letting her legs run against his back and her upper body press against what she guessed was his chest.
“MMMMM!” she screamed through the gag. Did she have a fantasy of a handsome and powerful man carrying her away? Yes, but not like this, never like this! The sounds of Pugsly barking stopped and, based on the jutting way she was getting carried, they were going down the steps.
“Shut up,” hissed her captor. “You’re going to get killed!”
Mila used the sound to find his head and struck him in the side of the head with her elbow. “MMMMMMMM!”
A car unlocked and what Mila guessed was a door was opened. She kept screaming and thrashing. If he got away with this, she wanted him to regret it. She kicked and kneed his vulnerable back and she was pretty sure that she tore his suit open. Good. The more she did, the better. If the only thing keeping her from faceplanting on the asphalt with her arms behind her back wasn’t him, she’d be happy if he had a heart attack then and there.
Not once did he fight back. Not once did he strike her or threaten her. Despite all the opportunities, despite his clear ability to choke her to keep her from crying out, he never did. He set her on the ground in a disorienting series of motions and shoved her head down to get her in the car. Mila dropped like a rock.
“Get up!”
“MMMMM!”
“Oh, for—”
Strong hands wrapped around her and hoisted her into the seat before the door was closed. Mila screamed with actual rage and terror for all she was worth, expecting any moment to feel his hands on her body, tearing off her shirt or fondling her through her already skimpy booty shorts from work. She’d fight. She didn’t know how, but when it happened, she’d fight and scream and make him work. Even then she bashed against the glass. Where was everyone? Surely someone had to hear her or see her!
Another door opened, maybe the driver’s door, and the sounds of panting filled the car, along with the occasional grunt.
“MMMM!” The gag was too tight to spit out. Those panting noises weren’t human. Mila moved away from it and mashed herself against the door in quivering anticipation of whatever made the noises touching her.
“Relax.” His voice followed by the starting of the car. “I’ll take your gag off in a second.”
Something jumped into her lap and something slender, skeletal, and fuzzy slipping between her legs, coming perilously close to her groin. A wet, slimy object touched her exposed shoulder, running along her skin. Mila headbutted in the general direction of whatever the thing was and got a glancing blow.
“Hey!” The guy’s voice again. “You’re going to hurt him!”
Mila didn’t care in the slightest if she injured some monster slithering all over her, so she headbutted again as the werewolf pulled her blindfold off in time for her to see Sir Pugsly the Third licking her shoulder lovingly. Too late. She made solid contact and launched her pug off her lap, pulling free his paw from where it had slipped between her thighs.
The werewolf snatched him out of the air and placed him in the back seat. Mila glared at the pug, who was useless at helping her. She was quite literally getting kidnapped with him and he was coming along for the ride. He cocked his head curiously. The car pulled away from the sidewalk and the flaTs vanished into the blackness.
The werewolf brushed blood off his jaw. It looked like the back of his suit hung in tatters from when he was carrying Mila.
“Are you okay?” His question took Mila by surprise. What kind of kidnapper asks the victim if they were okay, not to mention brings their pet along?
He looked at Mila to see if she would nod or shake her head. Mila did neither. She twisted to the door so he could see her hands behind her back, then flipped him off.
He scowled and focused on the road, muttering something under his breath. “Let’s not forget you’re the one who made it physical.”
Mila spoke through the gag to little success. When she failed, she motioned with her eyes to it.
“Take it off?” The werewolf snorted. “Moment I do, you’ll start screaming again.”
Mila shook her head.
They stopped at a stop sign on the way out of town, in the general direction of the Cheeky Sprite. He took the time to study her intently. “I’ll make you a deal.” He accelerated. “I’ll take the gag off.”
Mila waited for the inevitable but. She had no idea what was happening. She’d been kidnapped by an armed intruder and he was acting like the good guy. And for some reason, she was starting to believe him. Why? How? Something about the way he spoke, about the way he interacted. He had certainly spared her on several occasions, from not retaliating while she ruined his suit to when he’d rescued Sir Pugsly from falling. She still quivered in her bonds, but mostly from anger and less from fear than before.
He kept speaking. “But only if you listen.”
Mila eagerly nodded. She turned her head away from him so he’d be able to untie her gag, which he did. The moment the rag fell out of her mouth, she pushed against the door and started yelling as loudly as she could.
“Help! Someone help me! Call 911!” She kept her body as far away as she could from the werewolf, anticipating him to pull her away at any second.
“Alex Taylor!”
Mila heard him the say the name, but she didn’t stop calling for help. “I’m being kidnapped!”
“Samantha Debouse!”
“He-e-e-elp!”
He slammed on the brakes and took them to the side of the road in a place she didn’t recognize, with nothing but trees and nature to be seen. Mila didn’t have time to wonder why because her more immediate concern was that her captor snatched a switchblade off the dash and flipped it open.
She paled and wriggled away from him. “Wait, don’t—”
With Sir Pugsly barking in the back seat, the werewolf grabbed Mila’s shoulder and turned her away from him. She didn’t dare move but instead waited for him to plunge the blade into her back. “Please, I’ll be quiet! I’ll be quiet, I promise! No no noooo!”
The blade came up behind her, between her hands and near her spine. With one clean swipe, he slit her bonds and pulled the knife away. He did the same to her ankles a moment later, utterly freeing her. Mila immediately reached for the door and started trying to figure out where the unlock button was when he pressed the button on his door. She didn’t give a crap why he was letting her go. What mattered is that he might change his mind, so she better leave now.
Mila grabbed Sir Pugsly and kicked open the door. She jumped out of the car into the cold darkness and was in the motion of running when she heard him speak.
“You wanna end up like them, go back to your apartment. I won’t stop you.”
Mila froze with her bare feet on the chilly concrete. What? Taking control of her hesitance, he kept talking.
“Alex Taylor. Samantha Debouse. Ryan Franklin. All of them had evidence on Fang. All are dead.”
Mila took a step towards the city in the distance, then swore and looked back in the car. “What are you saying?�
� she demanded.
He stared at her with a funny, sad smile. “I can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”
Mila spit on the ground. “Fuck you! You kidnapped me at gunpoint! You didn’t save me! And you know we have cameras there, so you won’t get away with this!”
He grabbed at something in his pocket and produced an iPhone. He unlocked it and did something before tilting the screen her way. “Look.”
Mila looked at the lights of the city in the distance, then swore and leaned in to see his phone. She recognized what was on the screen: the door outside her apartment, the film she’d be showing to the authorities as soon as she got back. The grainy footage showed four men with ski masks came to the door, all of them holding automatic weapons. Mila jumped when one shot the doorknob and kicked the door down before charging into her apartment.
“What…” she shuddered as another one came along, noticed the camera, and put a bullet in it. The feed went dead. Mila kept staring at the static before her captor pulled his phone back. “What is this?”
“Some of Fang’s goons. They were later than expected.” He took a deep inhale and let it out. “Still wonder why talking about it for an hour to convince you wasn’t an option?”
The image of the man who had shot out the camera burned in Mila’s head. Sure, he couldn’t see her, but they’d obviously come to kill her. “I don’t know what to think,” she whispered in a small voice. Sir Pugsly licked her throat. She wasn’t afraid. She felt…numb. Nothingness.
“You have two choices.” The sound of him talking snapped her out of her stupor. “You can go back, and they will kill you.”
Mila swallowed. “Option two?”
“Come with me.”
Choices, choices, choices. A chilled breeze wafted through, pushing Mila’s hair into her face as she watched the driver from outside the open door. Sir Pugsly wriggled in her arms impatiently, but she held him tight with her exhausted eyes locked firmly on the werewolf, searching deep within him for something. He met her gaze, and Mila saw it in him—a goodness, a truth that could not be denied.
Mila brushed her hair away and narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?” She finally breathed. “Why would you want to help me?”
He leaned back into the leather seat heavily. “Name’s Maurice.” The name flowed off his tongue smoothly, romantically almost. “I represent the Deadwoods.”
Mila wanted to get back into the car. She lifted a foot to step inside, then set it back down. Just because he looked like a good person didn’t mean he wasn’t doing something bad. “Where would you be taking me? Why would they want me?”
Mila knew the Deadwoods in the same way most people knew about local gangs—just enough to be afraid, intrigued, and cautious. The Deadwoods represented an ancient clan of werewolves, one of the oldest clans in the city. Very close to nothing was known about them, only that they were deadly efficient and didn’t leave behind a trail. “Maurice” belonged to them. That’s how it worked. Once a member of a clan, you weren’t allowed to leave.
Maurice checked the mirror. “I’ll explain on the way. Get in or stay out. The choice is yours, but I’m tired of fighting you.”
Mila swallowed down a mouthful of you kidnapped me so quit playing the victim card and instead stepped inside the running vehicle. It was a hard swallow. She stayed tightly contained as far away from him as possible, not even letting Sir Pugsly slip away from her grasp as he put the car into drive and moved back onto the highway.
Maurice turned the radio on for background music. “You don’t have to be scared of me.”
Mila turned it back off. “Yeah, I do.”
“I explained why I did what I did.” He twisted the wheel smoothly to navigate a turn. Was there a hint of frustration in his voice? “Time was of the essence.”
Mila didn’t relax. “Fine. So why would you want to help me, huh? Why would the Deadwoods want to save me from Fang’s Dark Wolves?”
“I’ll let the Khan explain.”
Mila snatched the switchblade and kept it closed on her lap. “And why don’t you explain?”
If Maurice noticed her grab the weapon, he didn’t say anything about it. “Because it is not my place.”
The Cheeky Sprite came into view and vanished behind the treeline moments later. “You just said you’d tell me!”
Maurice eased off the accelerator. “You need to trust me. I can’t answer everything yet.”
Mila forcibly ignored thoughts of banging his head against the steering wheel. “Can you at least tell me where we’re going?”
“No.”
“Well, this was one enlightening conversation!” she hissed angrily at him. “Great. So, I’m stuck between people after me and people who won’t give me a fucking clear answer. What would I benefit from this? I could call my father today and he’d come protect me.”
Maurice held out his phone to her, unlocked. “Go ahead.”
Mila hesitantly took the phone and checked around the case sceptically. Maurice noticed.
“It’s not a trap. Call him if you want. He can’t help you here.”
“He’s my father. Of course he can he—”
“The Dark Wolves are a new breed,” Maurice stated. “Your father’s time was a very long time ago.”
Mila kept holding the phone as her expression darkened. Abandoning or not, he was still her father and she stuck up for him more than she should. “Are you saying my dad couldn’t handle this?”
“I’m saying if the law could handle this shit, we wouldn’t have Fang killing Khans left and right.”
Mila let her hand rest on the console. He knew who her dad was, somehow. “How do you—”
Before she got the sentence out, he answered it. “It’s my job to know. I know everything about you. Well, everything important.”
“Oh, BS!” She held Sir Pugsly away to keep him from licking her nose. “And when’d you get the time to do that?”
“In the call I got when going to pick you up.”
Mila set her pug on her lap and crossed her arms. “Prove it.”
Maurice made a great show of rolling his eyes. “Age 21. Major: Occupational Therapy. Parents split up after your dad hit the bottle too hard, driving you into a bar job where your fear of abandonment issues kept you from letting anyone in. You don’t like looking stupid, so rather than go back inside after you locked your keys in your truck, you waited outside and witnessed a pivotal crime.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Sound about right?”
Mila opened and closed her mouth before staring at the floor. “I…I don’t know what to say.” A million thoughts raced through her mind. Abandonment issues? Did she have abandonment issues? “How did you know about my truck? How did you know about any of that?”
“We had an eyewitness who came to us and told us what he’d seen. A customer. Was driving in just in time to see it and we picked together the rest.”
“So why isn’t he in here?’
“He’s one of the guys who didn’t want our protection.”
Mila wanted to believe that didn’t mean that he was dead. One look at Maurice’s expression told her that was exactly what had happened. “How…” She swallowed. “How do you know that the Dark Wolves know I saw anything?”
“Same way we did.”
Mila looked back at the glimmering lights falling further and further into the distance. That was her life. Her apartment. Her friends. Her school. Her food, and her bed. Everything that belonged to her was back there, with the exception of Sir Pugsly and the clothes she had on. It was sounding more and more like that life was over. “There’s gotta be a light at the end of the tunnel, right?”
Maurice nodded, but the way he nodded made Mila groan. This wasn’t going to be easy. “You’ll be able to go back to living your everyday boring life the moment we get Fang put away.”
Mila skimmed over the part about her “boring” life and homed in on the second part. “Wait, hold on. You mean…you need me to testif
y?”
“We need your proof.”
Even the idea of getting involved in inter-clan fighting made Mila sick. People died all the time. It was part of the way things went with them, especially recently. He must have picked up on her expression, because he laid a hand on her knee reassuringly. She was so surprised by it that she didn’t shove it off. Neither said anything and after a while, he took it away as they zipped through lines of trees.
Chapter 7
Mila stayed on high alert for most of the drive, tense and ready to strike if Maurice made a move. He stayed the perfect gentleman the rest of the trip, and it looked like he was just as weary as she was: his eyes, so bright earlier, seemed dim now. His motions were more sluggish, and he kept blinking to stay awake. She kept her hand over the un-opened switchblade.
Mila watched him for what must have been an hour, long after the main part of Manhattan vanished, and they moved further into the countryside areas around it. She couldn’t get anything on him. What he said all added up, and it wasn’t worth the risk of ignoring him if he was being honest. She got the impression that he would have let her go, and that added some comfort.
His suit hung in tatters across his back. What started as a casual glance from Mila turned into a captivated gaze at the rippling, smooth musculature that had been exposed below. Every time he moved, every time he turned the wheel, one of his broad back muscles clenched and relaxed. It was nothing short of mesmerizing to watch.
Sir Pugsly drifted off to sleep soon after the event, leaving the two adults alone. Nobody had turned the radio back on and the only sound was the whistle of the car driving through the night and the soft breathing of Sir Pugsly at Mila’s feet.
Mila stroked Pugsly’s head thoughtfully, noticing the blood stain on Maurice’s jaw that ran from his mouth to his well-kept beard. Her gaze drifted higher, to a blackening bruise above his temple from the rolling pin, then to the remains of his suit. He’d come to help her, and although she didn’t agree with how he did it, if what he was saying was true, he’d saved her life. The video showed indisputable evidence: Dark Wolves had come after her mere minutes after she was taken. He hadn’t had a choice. He needed her to leave immediately or they would both have been caught and murdered.
The Deadwolves' Prisoner Page 5
