by Jayne Blue
“Maplewood, 1213 Maplewood.”
“You better hope she’s in one piece.” Maplewood wasn’t far. It made some sense. The place they’d taken her was around the corner from the shitty motel.
I slowed down as I turned onto the street. The address was a block up. I rolled closer and cut the engine.
“Cary! Get the fuck up!” The asshole who’d led me here shouted some sort of warning. We were still a few doors away, but he was loud.
“You’re as dumb as you look eh?” I threw him off my bike. I put the bike on the ground and while he tried to scramble away, I didn’t think further about any plan. He wasn’t helping me anymore. And if he screamed again, I’d have zero chance of surprising anyone inside. So, it was time to shut him up. I punched him with my left this time and he shut up; either he was unconscious or at least smart enough to stay down and quiet.
I crouched down to his bloody face.
“You better be out, if I hear you again, I’ll kill you.” I hissed into his ear and then stood up to look at 1213 Maplewood. It was a dump, on a street of dumps. The windows were boarded up, the siding was half peeled off, and weeds had grown to the bottom of the window panes.
The image of the pretty redhead with the haunted look in her eyes flashed in my mind. I didn’t plan, or strategize, or even think twice about what was in there or if they were armed. I walked like I was fucking bulletproof, which wasn’t smart, I suppose. But no one ever accused me of being college material.
I kicked in the front door. And shit got crazier from there.
Five
Darby
* * *
I was alone. But I wasn’t tethered anymore. There was crashing, yelling, and some sort of destruction happening in the house above me.
There was a war in my head too. Should I run up the stairs and burst into the main house or should I stay hidden and do what I’d been told by the man in the mask? Was it the police up there? Had someone come to rescue us?
It didn’t sound like the police. It sounded like chaos upstairs. If there was confusion, maybe I’d be okay? No one would notice that I was down here? Or maybe a door upstairs would be open? The questions held me in place. I’d avoided being raped by that man in the mask. That was clear. But I didn’t know what my next move should be.
I wanted to hide, cry, scream, but one wrong thing could be the thing that got me killed. I stood up and walked to the stairs. I was going to try to leave. I had to try.
At the very least, I’d see the place I was in, figure out where I was. Something.
I put my unsteady foot on the first basement stair. Then, at the top of the stairs, light flooded in. The door burst open.
I was frozen to the spot.
“Take my hand. I’m here to help you.”
The light behind him created a dark silhouette. His voice was deep, commanding, and I was just as scared as when the man in the mask showed up. Here to help me? Who was this? Had I gone from one beast to another? Was it Batman, for Pete’s sake?
He walked down a few steps and reached his hand out to me. I had no idea why, but this man was familiar. I couldn’t see his face in the darkness, but his frame nudged something in my memory, my recent memory. I had seen him before.
“We have to go, now, ugh.” The man fell forward, toward me. Someone had shoved him down the stairs. He caught himself on the last step, an inch from my face. And I did recognize him! It was the biker who I’d stared at across the food court. He was rugged, handsome, dangerous, and here now in this nightmare. What did he have to do with my kidnapping? Was this all some awful dream?
He pushed me back. I felt that on my shoulders. This was no dream. The man swiftly turned around, faster than a man of his size ought to be able to move. And then the next moment was like a movie. In the list of strange things that were happening to me, this one stood out. Another man, the one who’d shoved him, ran down the stairs after the biker, who was now blocking my view behind his broad shoulders.
The second man lunged, and the biker swung.
I heard bone on bone as a fist connected with the second man’s face. The biker reached back, put a hand on my hip, and slid me to the side to allow for the second man to tumble past both of us to the basement floor. I didn’t have time to look at the fallen man behind me. Was it the guy who grabbed me? Someone else? Everything was moving so fast in a million directions.
“We have to go. I’m the only one here for you, and there’s more of these assholes than I thought.” I tried to walk and my ankle, the one that had been tethered, gave out. I stumbled. In an instant, the biker had me in his arms and took the steps two at a time. He swung me through the doorway into the house. There were popping noises, yelling, utter confusion.
“I’ve got her!” I heard the biker yell to someone.
“Yep!” I heard another man respond.
“Just hold on,” the biker said, and I had zero choices. I didn’t want to be dropped on this floor or left in this place.
He was running now, me holding on to his neck, my head buried in his shoulder. After a few tumultuous seconds we were at a motorcycle. He plopped me down and got on in front of me.
“Keep holding on, we’re going to be moving fast.” I did as I was told. I looked back. There were two men on the front lawn of the house we’d just exited. I heard another motorcycle engine rev up behind us. And then the bike we were on came to life. We jerked forward, and I nearly fell off. I tightened my grip around the biker’s waist.
He was solid, and there was something good about him. I should be as afraid of him as I was the men in the house, but I wasn’t. He was there for me, like he said.
We rode away from the house, a house I hoped I’d never see again. But I knew it would haunt my nightmares. Was this whole thing a nightmare? The cold wind whipped my hair across my face. This was real. And more terrifying than any nightmare I’d ever had.
I held onto him, as tightly as I could. It was either that or fall off onto the pavement. We zipped along, the second bike gaining on us and now flanking the one we rode. But no one else appeared to be following us. Neither of the men who’d grabbed me or the man in the mask from the basement was trailing us.
I had no concept of time. I struggled to decipher how long I’d been unconscious in the basement, or how far we traveled on this motorcycle. I only knew that, at least now, I wasn’t chained, I wasn’t bound to a wall in some rat hole. The air was clean. It rushed into my lungs and let me know I was still alive.
But I felt sick, disoriented, scared, and I needed to find my footing, I needed things to stop. I needed this bike to stop. Too much had happened to me. And for some reason, the solid presence of this man was reassuring. I was grateful. I felt somehow warmed by him. He’d gotten me out of there. He’d maybe saved my life. But still, I felt the world whizzing passed me. I couldn’t hold onto it any longer. I couldn’t hold onto him. I felt weak.
I was weak.
“Hey, Red, I told you to hold on!” We slowed and stopped. Thank God. The biker, this stranger, got off the bike. He had a hard face but kind eyes. I remembered that from before, in the food court.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t hold on anymore. I feel dizzy, I feel. Uh, who are you?” I was trying like heck to piece together something, to climb out of the confusion that had drowned me since I’d woken up in that basement.
“My name’s Steel.” His voice was deep, gravel mixed in it, but it was soft, there wasn’t the meanness I’d heard coming out of the man with the mask from before.
Another bike pulled up next to us. The rider of the second bike wore similar clothes; leather, covered in patches that read Great Wolves, Grand City. They were both so huge, strong looking, and wrapped in leather. I couldn’t be any safer. That was, if they were here for me, and not to transport me to some other nightmare. I thought of running. Could I? I needed someone to answer something for me.
“How did you find me?”
“I saw them take you, and I followed you. Sort of
.”
“When was that, how long was I gone?” I had been knocked out. Was it days? Hours.
“It’s been a few hours, six maybe.” That made me feel better. Hours, not days. I wrapped my head around it. I didn’t trust a living soul on this planet right now. It felt like I was at the mercy of a cruel and frightening world.
If I didn’t get somewhere safe or at the very least familiar, whatever flimsy strings held me together would blow apart. I blurted out an order, I barked out a plea to this rough stranger who’d yanked me from the abyss.
“I need to go home.” That was the only true thing. I needed home. I wanted to curl up in my bed, lock my door, go back to the place I called safe. Now.
“I think you need the cops. You need to tell them everything that happened to you,” Steel said. He was gentle with that opinion but firm. I pulled control of my life back as hard as I could.
“No.” I wanted to explain that I couldn’t go anywhere else new or be in the open for one more second. He didn’t know going to the mall was more than I usually could handle with my agoraphobia. I was overwhelmed. My heart felt like it was going to explode.
“You were kidnapped in broad daylight.”
“Please, home. I’ll call the police from there.” I was trying not to sound as hysterical as I felt. I was getting through to him. I saw Steel’s eyes soften with a new concern.
“Okay, okay home. Where’s that?”
I gave him my address.
“Can you hold on? It’s at least a twenty-minute ride.”
“Yes, I can.” I settled back down and the biker, Steel, got back on his bike.
“Tell Sawyer, bring him up to speed. She says we’ll call the cops when we get to her place.”
Steel wanted me to talk to the police, that was good. That made him good. It had to.
I had nothing left to fight with. I focused everything in my body on holding onto Steel as we rode. I could accomplish this one thing if I could will my arms to stay tight around Steel, it would be something.
It calmed me, he calmed me. I didn’t analyze this situation, I just let it be true.
And he listened to me when I told him I had to go home. We were going home. I could hide away there. I could pretend I was safe.
I needed to rebuild the walls that had violently crashed down around me, in what? Only the last six hours?
Finally, the landscape started to look familiar. We were close to home. When we pulled into the long driveway of my uncle’s place, try as I might, I still couldn’t get my heart to beat at a normal rate.
“Nice place,” Steel said, and he cut the engine of his bike.
“It’s my uncle’s. He took me in after my parents died.”
“Wow, sorry,” Steel replied and offered me a hand to get off the bike.
I walked to the front door, and it opened without me touching it.
There, looking concerned but in control, was my Uncle Reid. His long thin form made it very clear Steel was welcome to cross his threshold.
“Darby!” He pulled me into a hug. He rarely did that. It felt forced, awkward. But then nothing about this day had been normal.
“I’m okay.”
“I was worried sick when I came home from the airport to find an empty house.” My uncle traveled for business, a lot. I was quite used to an empty house.
“I made a mistake. I should never have left.”
“We need to get the cops out here,” Steel interjected, with force, and my uncle pulled me to the side, partially behind him.
“And you are?”
“I’m Steel. Your niece here was snatched by sex traffickers, I’m pretty sure,” Steel said, and I shuddered. I knew or thought I knew why I’d been grabbed, but hearing it out loud made the nightmare real, concrete.
“And how do you know all this? How do we know you’re not some part of this whole scheme?”
“Scheme? What the fuck? I witnessed it. I didn’t cause it.”
My uncle directed a look of complete hostility toward the one person who hadn’t tried to hurt me in the last six hours.
“Uncle Reid, he saved me. Truly.”
“It seems rather convenient that he was at the mall to see it and now he’s here.”
“Fuck you,” Steel said to Uncle Reid, and I stepped in between them.
“Steel. Let me walk you out.”
“You’ll do nothing of the—”
I stopped him. “Uncle Reid, he really did help me.”
Uncle Reid looked from me to Steel. “And you’re okay? This is nuts. All of it.”
“I don’t really remember much, but yes, I’m okay, and Steel helped get me back home.”
Uncle Reid calmed down a little and stepped back.
“The cops are already onto the jackholes who took her.” Steel had calmed down a notch too. He was trying to make my Uncle Reid feel better. Even though Uncle Reid had just accused him of causing this mess.
“I’ll walk you out.” I stepped forward and indicated for Steel to follow me back out to his bike.
My Uncle Reid stayed in the foyer but let me be alone for a moment.
“Your uncle has it wrong,” Steel said with that deep, raw sounding voice. He was tough, but I could see, at that moment, something more.
“I know. I don’t know how I know. But I do. You saved me. I was so stupid to get caught like that. Thank God you saw it happen.” I realized I trusted Steel even as the words came out of my mouth.
Steel stopped and looked at me. I felt connected to him. The initial jolt I’d experienced in the mall when I’d caught his eyes returned.
“You aren’t stupid. You’re a fighter.”
I was a scared, neurotic, victim of the universe, I wasn’t a fighter. Even Uncle Reid knew I could only breathe right when I was in the sheltered walls of his house.
But this man, who looked as hard as his name, just called me a fighter. What did he see that I didn’t?
“Thank you for—I don’t even know what to say.” I didn’t want him to leave. All of a sudden, I wanted to hop on that bike again. What had happened to me?
“Call me, anytime, if you need me to talk to the cops. Whatever.” He gave me his number, and I memorized it. Steel turned to leave and—I don’t know how I got the courage, maybe it was because I didn’t think—something in me wanted to be near him. I just reached out and grabbed his strong arm.
He stopped and put his rough hand over mine. My breath hitched in my chest. I felt an almost chemical reaction to his gaze.
“Goodbye.” That was all I could manage to say.
“Darby. It’s a beautiful name. I haven’t heard it before.”
“Darby Bishop.” I couldn’t help but smile at him. After all that had happened, I didn’t think a smile was even in me. But there it was when I looked at this guy who’d proved that all strangers weren’t evil.
“Darby! Get in here!”
Uncle Reid called for me to come in.
And the fear I was used to returned, as strong at as it had ever been, the farther Steel and his bike got away from me.
Six
Steel
* * *
Darby. Her name was Darby.
I hated leaving her there. It was her home, it was where she wanted me to take her, but it felt every kind of wrong.
I wanted to scoop her up and keep her with me. My trailer wasn’t a mansion—hell, it was barely a house—but it was clean, safe, and I’d be able to keep her with me. That thought kept invading my fucking brain. That was the hell of it. I wanted this woman with me.
She was clearly damaged, scared. Hell, what she’d gone through would fuck with anyone’s head. But there was something more. She was starting to assert herself, even a little, and then I saw the house. Then I met her uncle.
The house was a fucking evil mansion and that uncle? He gave me every kind of bad vibe. But maybe it was because I’d developed an instant attachment to Darby.
Darby Bishop.
I road back to The
Wolf Den, our club’s bar and hangout, and tried not to keep thinking about Darby’s haunted blue eyes, her long hair, her neck, and how she felt on the back of my bike. It was a freak show she’d stumbled into, and the last thing she needed was to add biker gang to the list of shit she was dealing with.
Darby was a lot stronger than she gave herself credit for. I could see that. She had a toughness hidden in her, in the face of a horror story it had emerged. But she was also innocent. I was not, and that alone was a good reason to shake off the feelings I was having for her.
I didn’t have time or interest in women, other than to fucking blow off steam or as a party favor. Darby Bishop wasn’t that kind of woman. And that was the only kind of woman I knew how to please.
My own life was about to turn into a shit show, it didn’t take a psychic to know that.
I walked into the club and Ryder, one of my brothers in the M.C. greeted me.
“Warning, Sawyer’s pissed as shit.”
“What? Because I saved a girl? Yeah, that makes sense.”
“No, more like because she got grabbed at all, and something about a police sting.” Ryder was usually there for comic relief in the club. He always had a funny quip or takedown. But he looked as serious as a heart attack.
“Shit, great.” I’d done everything I could to save Darby, but part of me was in total agreement with Sawyer. It shouldn’t have happened. And if I was faster or had figured out she was being watched instead of watching her myself, I could have intercepted it before she was snatched.
I walked to the back room and found Sawyer, my Prez, at the head of the Great Wolves table. It was where we voted, did club business, and in my case, right now, caught shit.
“Sit.” I did as Sawyer asked.
“She’s back home, safe and sound.” Ridge, sitting across from me now nodded to back up my assertion.
“Yeah, that’s something at least.”
“Well, it’s everything,” I said, probably too hotly.
“You fucked up a police sting after letting that girl get nabbed.”
