by Jayne Blue
I started running. My gut told me they were after her.
I heard her scream, and that ponytail stopped bobbing in the hair. I lost sight of her between the cars.
I kept running. A set of tires squealed. That had to be it.
A car was pulling out of a spot in the general area I’d seen her go down. They fucking took her! I wasn’t going to be able to catch them on foot. I stopped running and trained my eyes on the make of the car, the color, and the license plate.
She was taken. Right under my nose. Someone grabbed a woman I was there to protect, even though she didn’t know why I was there, even though I wasn’t a cop. I was looking at her like she wasn’t one of the vulnerable ones. Why? Because I fucking thought she was beautiful, or rich, or whatever.
And she was the damn target.
I was going to find her. I was going to hunt down those assholes that took her.
And I was going to make them pay.
I needed my club for that. And I needed to get them up to speed fast.
Where the fuck were Bucky and Ridge? Time was the enemy in this situation.
Three
Darby
* * *
The cold woke me up. I was so cold. I curled my legs up into my body and hugged them with my arms. Why was it so cold in my room?
Except it wasn’t my room. This place stunk. I had no blanket. My head hurt. Why?
I tried to claw out of the fog I was in. I blinked and hoped my eyes would adjust to the dim room. I was facing a cinderblock wall. Where the heck was this?
What had happened?
Slowly, I awakened fully. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want what my memories were telling me to be true. I’d been taken. Two men, there were two. I’d been trying to get to my car, and they’d grabbed me.
I rolled over to try to see where I was. I had to face whatever this was. There were two small windows. I saw that right away, that was good! Windows!
They were narrow, clouded over with grime, but they were windows at the top of the wall. The sights started to make sense. I was in a basement, on a mattress on a cement floor. I sat up with my back to the wall. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, things were still cloudy, something had blurred my vision. Maybe it was when they hit me? Shoot, they hit me. I felt a dull ache on the back of my head.
Things got clearer still.
“Help!” I yelled it. It was my gut instinct.
“Shut up!” A woman’s voice pleaded more than commanded me to be quiet. I wished it was lighter, I scanned the room to try to locate the voice. And there she was, in the corner, hunched like me, on a mattress.
“You scream they come down here and tie your wrists like mine?” I could see her tiny frame and dark hair. It was hanging around her face. She stood up, walked over, and I could finally see straight. She showed me her two wrists, bound with a zip tie.
“Oh, uh, I’m sorry.” I had no idea why I was apologizing. Except she was trying to help me, trying to help me avoid having my hands bound.
“Your leg is enough.” She pointed her hands down to my leg, and I realized now, I was bound too. There was a cuff around my leg, and it was chained to a hook in the floor. The sight of it scared me more than anything else. I was already terrified. I choked down the impulse to throw up.
“Don’t worry. They come down with, uh, whatever we need—toilet, water, and food. Except the screaming ain’t going to help.” The woman went back to the corner she came from. As my eyes adjusted, I saw there were two other women in the corner to which the first woman now returned.
“Where are we?” I asked. My voice sounded strange to me.
“Some basement, right? There’s four of us down here now, including you.”
Her words slurred together.
“I’m glad you’re all here. I don’t like being down here alone,” one of the other girls said.
“Are we in Grand City still?” I asked. I wished I knew how long I’d been out.
“Yeah, I guess so? I’m not good with directions.”
“What’s your name?”
“Paulie.”
“Hi, I’m Darby.” I wanted to connect with Paulie; I wanted there to be something human and reasonable about what was going on, but it was all insane. This was insane.
“These two are Deb and Mary.”
Paulie had long stringy hair, it was dark brown, best I could tell. Her hair was as thin as she was. I had a harder time seeing Deb and Mary. But Deb was rounder, with blonde hair that was pulled back. Mary had brown hair too, but with streaks. I tried to memorize everything I saw. It felt like anything, everything, was something important.
“What the fucking hell is going on down here?” A bright light split the darkness of the basement wide open. A man walked down the steps. His footsteps were heavy on the wood stairs. He walked to Paulie, and I had a hard time making it out. But it looked like he pinched her.
She pointed to me. He gave her something, a sip of water? Something else? I strained to see.
The man had a hoodie over his head and a mask. It was a scream style mask, and it was terrifying.
What did the mask mean? I tried to find the good signs, the signs that I wasn’t going to be murdered.
There was no reason for him to wear a mask if he was going to kill me. I hoped that the horrible mask meant that he was going to keep me alive and he didn’t want me to identify him. I was trying to put logic into a situation that had none.
He walked toward me now, leaving Paulie to slump to the floor. Had he drugged her? I bet that answer was yes. The other girls stayed still.
“You’re going to stay quiet and sit there real pretty, just like these three.”
“You have made a terrible mistake. I’m not supposed to be here.”
“I’ve made a terrible mistake.” The man mocked my false confidence. He lisped the s in mistake. Was that to tease me? Or did he have a lisp? What should I do? Fight? Scream?
He kneeled down again to me and put a hand on my knee. I was terrified of him touching me. My mind raced on what would happen to me. How could I stop this?
He ran his hand up and then down to where I was chained around my ankle. He took a key and unlocked the tiny padlock that had me tethered. I felt the blood rush to the spot and, for the first time, real pain in my leg. I had been tethered at a strange angle. I wondered, if I could find a chance to run, would my legs even hold me right now?
He leaned over me, and I knew what was supposed to come next. He’d freed me for a terrifying reason. I moved back toward the wall. I wanted to sink into it as the mask got closer and his hands gripped tighter on my leg. And I made a choice, right then. It was a choice I couldn’t have predicted I would have made even a few hours ago.
Fear over nothing, that was what had paralyzed me for the last five years. This danger was real, this fear was of something evil, in my face, and the paralysis was gone. I wasn’t going to let this happen to me.
I decided to fight, scream, do anything to make this harder for him. I may be terrified and about to die. But I was going to die fighting.
I kicked at him with my good leg, and he slapped me across the face. I felt hot tears sting my eyes and blood filled my mouth.
“Guess you want it the hard way.” I looked, and he was undoing his belt buckle.
I screamed.
“NO!” But it wasn’t my scream that stopped him.
“We gotta get out of here. Bring her with you!” I heard someone yell at the top of the stairs.
The man in the mask stepped back, he looked over to Paulie. He yanked her to her feet, and she laughed. She was so out of it now. Paulie, Deb, and Mary followed like obedient children. They knew the consequences of rebellion.
Without a word to me, he dragged all the girls up the stairs. And just like that, the girls who’d offered the weird welcome to this dungeon were gone.
I was alone. I was alone. This was good. I had to get out of here. Did I follow up the stairs? Would he hurt me if I did? Who el
se was up there?
The situation was as bad as before, but somehow, I had just dodged a bullet.
And I needed out before whoever had thrown me down here reloaded and came back.
Four
Steel
* * *
“Sawyer, we have zero time to waste.”
“I’ll run the plates and the make. Don’t do anything stupid.”
I didn’t have a plan except that each second that went by mean something evil was happening to that girl. I raced back to my Harley and met Ridge and Bucky.
I told them what I’d seen. “Look, we go in the direction they did. That’s all we can do until we hear from Sawyer. Bucky head to the MC. We need intel.” Bucky nodded and Ridge and
We weren’t the cops, but Sawyer had ways to find shit out. He was closer to legit than any one of us. My skills were different. My set of skills didn’t have diplomacy or official channels. I was a bloodhound and god help the fuckers at the end of this trail if they hurt that woman.
“I’ll follow you, brother,” Ridge said, and I started moving on instinct and my particular set of skills.
My brain was in overdrive, just like my body. What did I know?
She was surprised. I saw that. She didn’t know the men who took her. That much was clear. She had the look of a woman who was on high alert even before they took her. But still, she was startled when they grabbed her. It was clear that they forced her. They had used violence to get her into that car. The car. I had to think. It was a brand-new Toyota sedan. I was damn sure it was stolen. The men who grabbed her didn’t have anything but the look of shit about them. The car was too nice for them. Maybe Sawyer would help in that department. I wished to hell I had been closer. As it was, I wasn’t even sure if I could recognize them.
They were rightly in a hurry, but they couldn’t be in too much of a hurry, or they’d get stopped. Speeding in suburban traffic was a sure way to get caught. That was in my favor.
I tried to think like them. What would I do if I’d just grabbed a woman and didn’t want to be pulled over?
If I were them, I’d turn right out of the mall drive. I would head to the highway. It was easier for your car to fade into the background on the highway versus a neighborhood.
So that’s what I did. I kept my eyes open and headed from the mall to the highway. Ridge stayed right behind me.
We left the suburban mall neighborhood, just like I knew in my gut the two assholes had done.
I knew they had to be headed for the highway. It really was their only play.
The smart bet was northbound 275, so that’s what I did. As we drove, I scanned around the traffic. There was no sign of the silver Toyota sedan.
Where the fuck were they taking that pretty redhead?
I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I’d lost them. There was no question about that. They’d slipped into the highway traffic.
If I didn’t find that girl, she was fucked. I knew it. I felt it. I had to get her. Her beautiful, haunted expression flashed in my mind.
I thought about what Sawyer had told us. The trafficking ring we were looking for targeted vulnerable women, we knew that.
Even though she’d caught my eye in the mall, it wasn’t because I thought she’d be the victim of the traffickers.
She looked rich, not like a junkie or an abused wife.
I needed more information if I was going to have any chance at this. My phone buzzed. I fucking hoped it was Sawyer. I pulled to the side of the highway, Ridge, and Bucky did the same behind me. I had a hard time hearing Sawyer.
“Listen, the plates are fuckin stolen, no help there, but Bess says the cops are working on a trafficking and prostitution sting at the Night Shade Motor Court. It’s off Maplewood and could be something. It’s her only lead.”
“I’m headed there now.” I had a direction that made as much sense as any.
“Did you hear me about the cops?”
“Yeah, if they think that’s the base of operations, that’s where I’m headed.”
“You could potentially blow months of work if you go in guns fucking blazing.”
“I just saw them grab a woman in broad daylight. She’s dead or drugged or raped if I don’t find her in the next few hours.”
“You don’t know that,” Sawyer said. And I knew he didn’t believe what he’d just said.
“I do. And so do you. So does Bess. You sent us out here on this, and we let her get snared ON MY WATCH, and that’s not going to stand. I’m headed to Night Shade. That’s the end of it. If you can get more out of Bess, let me know.”
“Do NOT get in the cops’ way! You know that’s bad for us all around.”
“They need to not get in my way.”
I ended the call.
“Well?” Ridge said as cars whizzed by us.
“I’ve got a location to check. Sawyer isn’t happy with me. You head back to The Wolf Den. I’m about to tear some shit up if I have to and Sawyer is pissed about it. You don’t have to be a part of it.”
“Bullshit I’m going back. I’ve got your back,” Ridge said and revved the engine of his Harley.
“Bucky, head to The Den, you’re too new. Sawyer will kill you if you fuck something up.” Ridge and I went farther back; we’d earned a certain amount of decision-making power. Or at least I hoped we did.
We merged back into traffic, and I headed to the location of the shitbag motel.
I had no fucking idea what I’d find there or what I’d do. I just knew I had to get to that woman. I knew she needed me. And she needed me now. I didn’t think about the cops and their red tape or their slow ass investigation. That didn’t mean a damn thing if the woman I’d seen was suffering. She was my motivation right now, and I just hoped there’d be something—a clue, a path, or a sign—that this was where those two scumbags had taken her.
We rode to the north side of Grand City. The town was on the way up. But though new houses and businesses and hipster bars were coming in, this was one of the only places where the old blight, crime, drugs, held on. Hard.
I wasn’t surprised this was where our lone lead had ended up. It was where I’d been going instinctively anyway when I’d chosen my direction on the highway.
Ridge and I eased into the crap neighborhood that backed up to the Night Shade. I didn’t want to tip off any cops that were also watching this place. Not because I was worried about their shit, but because they could stop me.
I was an ex-con on a Harley in the shittiest part of town. It wouldn’t matter that I had the Great Wolves Cut on if I crossed a cop with something to prove. They could put a roadblock between me and helping this woman. I needed speed and the freedom to kick some ass if I found her. Police procedure was not in the mix if I was going to succeed.
I scanned the Night Shade. It was a two-story joint with the hallways outdoors. That was one thing in my favor. I could watch all the doors. Right now, the place looked empty. There were only a few cars. None of them were ones I recognized from the mall.
“Maybe we hang a little longer, wait for more from Sawyer,” Ridge said as I looked from room window to room window. The blinds were drawn on every room.
“I don’t think that lady has time for us to hang back,” I said to him. And then I caught a break.
A greasy looking dude walked out of a unit on the second floor. He was sketchy as hell: dirty hair, dirty face, and absolutely one of the motherfuckers that had grabbed that woman in the mall. It had happened fast, and I wasn’t sure if my i.d. would hold up in a police lineup, but it would be just fine in this situation. It was him. I knew it. If you fucking crossed me, I remembered your face.
I didn’t think. I ran toward the stairs of the motel and took them two at time. This asshole was my link. Maybe she was here.
I moved fast enough that he didn’t know what hit him. I grabbed him at the back of the neck and shoved him to the ground.
“Where the fuck is she?” I said.
“Ugh. You split my godda
mn lip you ape.”
“You heard me.”
“What? Who are you?”
“Steel, we need to move,” Ridge said. He was scanning the other rooms. The blinds that had been drawn were rustling.
“Come on.” I lifted up the asshole and dragged him to his feet.
Ridge was close behind as I pushed. The douchebag stumbled down the stairs.
“You’re going to tell me where you took her.”
“I’m not doing dick for you.” I turned his face forward me and clocked him, hard, against the jaw. He fell to the cracked pavement of the motel parking lot.
“You’re going to give me an address, right now, or I’m going to shove your fucking nose into your brain. If that sound like it might hurt, you’d be fucking right.”
“Steel, you need to hurry.” I looked up and saw what Ridge saw. There were four men headed our way. They were across the parking lot, but closing in. I didn’t know if they were cops from the sting operation or friends of this guy, but I wasn’t going to wait around to find out.
“Come on.” I dragged him to my bike.
“Go, I’ll keep them busy,” Ridge said, and I knew I was leaving him in a shitty position. But I also knew Ridge could handle himself no matter what.
“Thanks, brother.”
I hauled the now bleeding and less belligerent kidnapping asshole to my bike.
“You’re going to hold on for dear life.” I put him in the front, crosswise, like a sack of potatoes, and I got on behind him.
“Where to?” I revved my bike up and pulled out of the parking lot.
“Fuck you, man,” he sputtered at me.
“You have five seconds to tell me what direction we’re going, or I will throw you off, head first, onto the street.” We were going slow, but I’d be glad to pick up speed and make good on the threat.
“Fine, you’re fucking crazy. They’re going to have your ass for this.”
“Yeah, bring it. Where did you take that girl you grabbed in the mall? Last time I’m going to ask.” I revved the engine to drive home the point.
