by Nicole James
I fast walk down the shadowy hall to the carpeted stairs and take two steps up when I’m grabbed from behind, and a drug-soaked cloth slams over my mouth and nose. I struggle, but the man is strong. The bottle slips from my grasp and falls to the carpet with a heavy thud.
My lungs burn with the chemical I’m forced to inhale. I feel tingly and see little pin spots before my eyes. I twist and ram my elbows back, but I’m weak, and everything slows down like I’m trying to walk through a pool with heavy clothing on, then everything goes black.
***
Daytona—
I climb out of the shower and wrap a towel around my hips, half wishing Cherry had joined me. I move into the bedroom and slip on some jeans and a blue dress shirt, rolling the cuffs up my forearms. I look down at the ink on my arms as I roll the fabric. I’ve got a spot on my left that will be perfect to put Cherry’s name… just under Adam’s.
I sit on the bed and yank on my boots, then grab my phone and wallet and head downstairs. On my way through the living room, I nab the remote off the table and flick on some soft music. I enter the kitchen and stop short. She’s not in here. I scan the counters. Two wine glasses sit on the granite, just under the cabinet they’re kept in, along with a bottle opener, but there’s no bottle of wine.
“Cherry?” I call out, doubling back into the living area. I glance toward the wall of windows that overlook the deck, but she’s not out there. “Babe?”
I head for the stairs. She’s got to be down getting the wine. I skip down the steps. “Scarlett, you down here?”
My eyes fall on a bottle laying on the carpeted last step, and all the hair on the back of my neck stands up. Something’s not right. I pick it up. Champagne. The meaning isn’t lost on me, but the feeling skating up my spine has me striding toward the cellar, wishing I had my gun on me. It was a stupid mistake to leave it upstairs with my cut. I hit the room, but it’s empty. Fuck!
“Cherry!” I scream the word, my mind flooding with all my worst fears. I backtrack to the stairs and take them two at a time, charging toward the front door. It’s ajar, and I dash outside. She’s nowhere to be seen. I scream her name over and over, but I know my worst fears have materialized. That son-of-a-bitch has her.
I pull my phone and wait for Trick to pick up. A cold sinking feeling in my stomach congeals into a giant ball of terror and morphs into fury.
“Yo. Whatcha need Prez?”
“He’s got her. Jesus Christ, he’s got her, VP.”
“Cherry?”
“Yes. Get up here now. Mobilize everyone, and call Reckless. He’s probably still close.”
“Done.”
“I’m gonna kill the son-of-a-bitch. I’m gonna fucking kill him.”
I disconnect and dash inside to get my guns, cursing myself for the time I’m wasting. I grab my vest, my shoulder harness, a nine-millimeter, and a sawed-off shotgun from the closet. I yank open the top drawer of my tallboy dresser and load up on cartridges. Once I’m loaded, I grab a flashlight off the top shelf of the closet and fly down the stairs and out to my bike.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Charlotte—
I come to and blink at my surroundings. I’m in the back of a small camper, like the kind mounted on a pickup truck. A small overhead lamp burns, giving me some light. I’m on my side on a worn upholstered cushion on a bench seat. Next to me is a small dining table with a metal pedestal bolted to the floor. My hands are cuffed in front of me, and I’m chained to the metal pole. I push to a sitting position. I see a bed in the loft area over the pickup’s cab. Curtains cover louvered windows on each side of the camper. I try to reach up and push them aside to see out, but the chain restricts my movements, and I can’t reach that high. I try to lean and knock them aside with my head, but again, I can’t quite reach.
We’re not moving, and it’s dark out, but I have no idea where we are or how far we’ve traveled. My head is pounding from the effects of the drug. I hear the front driver’s door slam and wonder if we just now stopped. Perhaps that’s what roused me. I hear steps on the gravelly ground. I don’t hear any sounds of civilization. No other cars. No wheels on pavement. Nothing but the wind and the lone howl of a coyote in the distance.
I hear a key being inserted in a lock, then the door swings open, and I get my first look at my stalker.
He stands in the doorway, illuminated by the light, the desert landscape washed in twilight blue behind him. He makes no move to climb up into the camper but stands with his palms on the frame. He’s in his mid-thirties, with dark eyes that appear soulless. He looks at me with a smirk, his gaze sweeping over the Harley tank top I wear, down over my cutoff shorts, over my long legs to the sandals on my feet. He shakes his head, his lip curling.
“You don’t even look like yourself anymore.” His voice is dripping with disgust.
I frown, my heart accelerating, scrambling to understand. I scoot back on the seat as far as the chain allows. Its clink and jingle fills the camper.
“Ain’t nowhere to go, Ms. Justice.”
Oh God. “What do you want?”
“You didn’t belong there.” He jerks his head over his shoulder. “Some filthy biker? He can’t appreciate you like I can. No, you shouldn’t have gone there.”
“Do you know who you’re dealing with? Daytona is the President of the Evil Dead Las Vegas chapter. I’m his woman. What do you think he’s going to do to you?”
“A filthy biker whore—that what you want to be? I could give you everything. I told you in my letters. I really appreciate your talent and beauty the way no other man could. I told you that. But you didn’t listen.”
I rack my brain. Letters? Told me that? What the hell is he rambling about?
“You sent me filthy porn.”
“No, that was the other guy. I’d never do that to you.”
“What other guy?”
“Never mind about him. He’s not here now.”
“What’s your name?”
“You know my name. It’s Jerry.”
“Jerry. Yes, your letters.” I play along, hoping to befriend him and possibly get him to take the chain off so I’ll have a chance of escaping.
“I wrote you a letter every night for six months.”
A tingle goes up my spine. Oh shit. “What name did you address them to?”
“Charlotte Justice, like I always do.”
Oh my God. This man isn’t stalking my sister. He’s stalking me. This is the man who was sending me all those creepy letters. They stopped when I went on my European tour, and I thought he’d gone away. I should have known better. Didn’t Daryl always tell me they never go away?
“You switching places with your sister—you shouldn’t have done that. That’s what caused all this trouble. If you hadn’t done that, you’d have never met that fucking biker.”
“You’re right, Jerry. I shouldn’t have done it. You…” I choke on the lie. “You saved me.”
He straightens a little taller. “You should have listened to me from the start. I told you I could protect you. I told you how vulnerable you were.”
So maybe he doesn’t mean to hurt me, but I have a feeling he could snap if I anger him. The bloody sign he left on Badlands and that rope he left coiled on the bed are proof of that.
He steps up into the camper, and it rocks. I don’t know what he has planned, so I try to keep him talking, and I fight the urge to shrink back.
“Yes, Jerry. I should have listened. You were right. How did you know about the switch?”
“I followed your limousine. Then when I saw that other girl that looked just like you. I did some research and found out you have a twin. You hid it well. No one in the industry knows about her. But if I found out, others will, too.”
“How did you find Badlands?”
“When I found your twin’s name, I found a newspaper article about Buck’s death and the bar he left to her. Then I knew where to find you.” He taps his index finger to his temple. “I’m a smart man, C
harlotte.”
I nod. “Of course you are.”
“Don’t underestimate me.”
I shake my head. “I won’t.”
“Good. Then you and I are going to get along fine.”
“How did you find me at Daytona’s?”
“I’ve been watching you. I saw him take you to his clubhouse. Today I followed him to his house. Waited for the other one to leave, then I entered. Fucking idiot didn’t even lock his front door. I find that a lot.”
“What do you mean, a lot?”
“With the others.”
“Others?”
“The other girls. But don’t worry. Tommy got rid of them. They’re not around anymore, so you don’t have to be jealous, honey.” He moves to the bench seat and strokes a hand down my hair, scooting in close. “It’s just you and me.”
Tommy? Oh God, there’s two of them? I try to stop from recoiling. I don’t want to anger him. I want to appease him until I can get him to free me. But the thought that he and his friend have done this before and probably killed those other women has my body trembling. “Can you let me loose now?”
His chin rises, and his eyes narrow. “Don’t do what the others did, Charlotte. You don’t want to make Tommy angry.”
I shake my head. “No, I don’t. But you don’t have to keep these on me anymore. I know who you are. You saved me.”
He cocks his head like he’s unsure if I’m playing him. “I have some work to do first. I don’t want them to spot us in the morning.” He scoots out of the seat, opens a cabinet, and pulls out a desert camouflage netting.
“Who is Tommy?”
“Someone you don’t want around.” He exits, and I hear him flinging the netting over the camper.
“Oh, God.”
***
Daytona—
The sun rose about an hour ago, and Trick and I have been out searching all night. We pull into the gas station across from the bar to refuel.
I tear my helmet off and throw it on the ground in frustration while Trick pulls the nozzle from the pump and fills his tank. I spear a hand through my hair and study the horizon. “I can’t lose her, Trick. I can’t lose her.”
“You won’t. We’ll find her. We’ve got guys out searching in every direction, asking everyone they find if they’ve seen anyone strange or out of place.” His phone goes off, and he jerks it out of his pocket. “Yeah?”
I strain to hear, tempted to grab the phone from his hand. He meets my eyes and shakes his head, then snaps into the receiver, “Keep looking.”
I stare over at Cherry’s bar, trying to think what to do. “I took her to my place to keep her safe. I fucking failed to do that.”
“We’ll find her.”
I focus in on the bar and frown, a thought occurring. “You got any of those cameras pointed toward the street?”
“Yeah. Got one aimed in each direction.”
“Have you checked ‘em?”
“Not today, but there haven’t been any more dead animals or packets of porn or any gifts since you moved her in with you.”
“He took her in a vehicle. He had to have.” I shake my finger at the bar. “One he’s probably driven past this bar more than once, checking the place.”
Trick nods. “Fuck, you’re right.”
“Let’s go.” I jog across the street toward the bar, Trick right behind me. The place has been closed since yesterday, but he’s got the keys and lets us in. I follow him to the office in the back, feeling Cherry’s presence all around me. We sit, and he pulls out a laptop and accesses the security tapes.
“It’ll only take a minute.”
“Start with the day you installed them.” I thrum my fingers on the desk, and my knee bounces a mile a minute as I wait.
He pulls it up, and we skim through it, then watch the next day on fast-forward slowing at every vehicle.
Trick shakes his head. “Nothing unusual.”
“Pull up last night, starting just before we came back from Vegas.” He skips to the timestamp and rolls through it. We watch until finally the four of us roll past on our bikes, heading back as the sun sinks below the horizon.
“You want to skip to later?”
“No, keep rolling.” I stare at the tape, and about forty-five seconds after we roll past, an older model Ford pickup with a camper top rolls by, headed in the same direction. It’s brown with a thick white stripe across the side panel. The camper portion is old as hell and dingy white with louvered windows. “Stop the feed. That’s him.”
Trick frowns. “You think?”
I point at the screen. “That camper rolled past twice before on the previous days. This time, he’s probably half a mile behind us. I’d bet my left nut he’s following us. Fuck, I probably led him right to my front door.”
“I didn’t spot him tailing us to the clubhouse. Did you?”
“No, but I wasn’t looking for a tail. The four of us raised enough dust making the turn onto the dirt road, he could have kept tabs on us from a mile back. Then I split off to go to the house, and he followed me, not you.” I pull out my cell phone and snap a picture of the screen. “Can you zoom in on the guy’s face and a license plate?”
“I’ll try.”
I text the photo to the group chat I’ve got going with my brothers.
Me: This is the guy. Find this vehicle. Ask everyone you come across if they’ve seen it.
We check the rest of the night's tape but never see him go back past.
“Goddamn it.” I look at Trick and shake my head. “He’s still around somewhere close. I feel it. You get that info, send it out immediately and see if Lobo can track the license number.”
“On it.”
I stalk back outside and across the street to where our bikes are parked at the gas station. I glance up and down the highway, trying to think where he’d take her. I’m exhausted, and it’s hard to concentrate. Still, I force myself to try to focus. We’ve already searched her cottage. Think, Daytona.
There’s not another gas station for miles. I’m betting if this guy’s been around, staking out the bar, he’s been in this very gas station. I stride to it and fling the door open. I always pay at the pump and think I’ve been inside this place maybe once or twice in all the years since I started up the chapter here.
The redhead behind the counter looks up from a magazine as I enter.
“Hey, sweetie. You’re out early.” Her voice is husky from years of smoking.
“Never went to bed.”
She chuckles. “Ain’t that the way.”
I head for the coffee station and make two cups. I carry them to the counter, and while she rings me up, I pull my phone out. “Can I get you to look at something, darlin’? Need to know if you’ve seen this camper around.”
I drink half a cup as she takes my phone, pulls her glasses from the top of her head, puts them on, and studies it. “Yeah, I’ve seen him. He came in yesterday and loaded up on ice and water and a bunch of strange stuff.”
“Strange stuff? What do you mean?” My grip tightens on the cup.
“Being that we’re the only store for miles and there are things people run out of, we stock a little of everything in aisle three. I’m not one to be judge-y, but he was alone and looked like he’d been livin’ out of that camper for weeks.”
“What’d he buy?” I press.
“Girly things, like nail files, pink razors, nail polish, makeup remover, lipstick, and a couple of the latest fashion magazines.”
If those were for Cherry, at least it indicates he’s planning on keeping her alive. Thank God. I scan the ceiling and spot two cameras aimed at me. I point at them. “Those work?”
“Yeah. I think so. Al would be the one to ask.”
“He the owner?”
“Yup.”
I nod my head toward the door. “You know Scarlett, the girl who owns Badlands?”
“Sure, why?”
“She was kidnapped.”
“What? When?”<
br />
“Last night. I need to see those tapes. I think this guy in the camper took her.”
“Just a minute.” She hustles around the counter, moves to the door, flips the Open sign to Closed and throws the deadbolt. “Name’s Mona. Come on.”
I abandon the coffees on the counter and follow her into a tiny back office. She sits in front of a computer and starts typing. She’s soon got a video up on the screen; it’s divided into four camera feeds. One is aimed at the door, one the beer aisle, and two are angled at the counter. “He came in just after three pm. I know because I was watching my favorite soap opera.”
We watch the images. I can see a flash of light outside the door, like the reflection of the sun on a windshield, then a man walks in.
“That’s him.”
“Freeze it.”
She pauses the tape. He’s dressed in jeans and a tee shirt with a plaid shirt over the top. I compare him to the measurements marked off next to the door. “Looks like he’s six-two.”
“Yeah. He was a tall one.”
It’s not a good shot of his face, though. He’s got a ball cap pulled low. “Okay, roll the rest of it.”
I watch him grabbing the items and piling them on the counter. Then he points at the cases of water stacked by the door.
“This is where he told me to ring up two cases of water and four bags of ice.”
“Stop it again.” He’s turned at an angle, and I can see his profile, but he’s got mirrored shades on. I take a picture of the screen with my phone. “Okay.”
We watch the rest of it as he pays and exits. I wish I could turn back the clock and kill him in that moment. I’ve got to get this photo to the boys. I pick up a pen and scribble my number down. “You see him again, call me.”
“You bet.”
“Thanks, Mona.” I head out as she calls after me.
“I hope you find her.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Charlotte—
