by Kylie Walker
She looked back up at Kyle who was still standing in front of the stove looking at her. Again she felt her face flush, “What?”
He smiled but that time it was a warm, genuine smile. “Nothing…I was just thinking that all of that food did you good.” He let his eyes run down her body, leaving a trail of invisible fire in their wake before he finally sat down across from her at the table. She didn’t say anything in response to his compliment. She just put her head down and ate in silence, forcing the food down past the lump in her throat and the butterflies in her stomach. She was doing her best not to act on the feelings she had for him but if he looked at her with those blue eyes like that again, she might not be responsible for her actions.
They finished their breakfast mostly in silence. He told her that he planned on going down to the creek afterwards with the filter to fill their water bottles and get a gallon or so for them to use to wash up with. After they were done they cleaned up the kitchen together as much as they could without water. His presence filled the room even though she went out of her way to not stand too close to him. She could feel her breaths growing ragged and her body heating up. She was actually relieved when he said, “I’m going to get dressed. Do you want to go down to the creek with me?”
“I think I might work out. Was the shed fairly clear of critters?”
He smiled. “Yeah, I didn’t see any out there. I did kill a scorpion in the bedroom this morning though, so be careful.”
“I will.”
Once she heard the drone of Kyle’s bike begin to diminish she grabbed the last bottle of water off the counter and a small towel and headed for the shed. She breathed in the fresh air on her way out. She hadn’t even realized how much she missed this place or how stagnant her life had become. She resolved at that moment that when this was all over she was going to make some major changes in her life. No more being content to sling bacon and eggs and hamburgers at a greasy spoon and no more accepting that being the ‘old lady’ of some piece of shit that could care less about her unless his dick was hard enough. She wanted a real life. As she pulled open the door of the shed that Kyle must have left unlocked for her she thought about him. She wanted him. But even if he wanted her, which she was sure he didn’t, that wouldn’t be any different than the life she had with Frankie…would it?
“Hello,” the unfamiliar voice sent a chill down her spine and almost immediately her fight or flight response kicked in. She let out a little cry as she turned to run. The man was fast though and he had his arm around her waist before she took two steps. She kicked back at him and hammered his arm and hand with her fists but he held onto her, unfazed by it all. He waited silently for her to tire herself out before he said, “Are you finished?”
“Who the fuck are you? What do you want?”
His response began with the sharp end of a knife being leveled at her throat. “I’m going to put you down but if I end up having to chase you I won’t hesitate to use this knife to carve up that pretty face, understand?” She nodded. Her thoughts were chaotically trying to formulate a plan but it couldn’t grasp at anything other than the sight of the gleaming knife in his hand. She felt him release his hold on her and spin her around.
She got her first good look at him then. He wasn’t very tall, but his shoulders were huge. He was probably four feet across from one shoulder to the other and his legs looked just as thick with muscles bulging even under the grimy jeans he wore. His dark hair hung down to his shoulders and he had a mustache and beard that rested down against his bulging chest. Levi was sure she’d never seen him before…but she knew the patch that he wore on his kutte. The black silhouette of a man in a warlock hat with a big ‘S’ embroidered on it and the one directly underneath that…it was an enforcer patch like the one that Frankie used to wear. He also had an ugly scar that ran along one side of his face which was twisted into a creepy leer as he stared at her heaving chest.
“Who are you?” she asked him again.
He smiled. His two front teeth were outlined in silver. It only added to the ominous looks of the rest of him. “My name’s Martin. They call me Steel. I think I’ll have you call me sir.” He ran his tongue along his dry and cracked bottom lip and sent a disgusted shudder through her body. He was holding the knife in one dirty hand and spinning it with the fingers of the other.
“What do you want?” Levi glanced sideways at the door. She wondered if she got a running start if she’d stand a chance of getting to Kyle before the ape caught her again. She decided that she’d probably be better off waiting for Kyle to come back. Kyle had a gun; she’d felt it under his vest the other night. She was almost ashamed to admit that she’d actually thought about grabbing it and threatening him with it. She never would have used it though, so it would have been futile. But she didn’t doubt that Kyle would have any issues using it on the Ape with a knife.
“You,” he said simply. “I came for you. Are you ready to go for a ride with me?” She knew that she hadn’t heard a bike or a car. He must have parked down the hill and walked up. She wondered if Kyle would see the vehicle and turn around and come back up to check on her.
“Where are we going?”
“Red Bull wants to see you.”
Trying to stall for time she said, “I was at the club a lot for two years straight. Why don’t I remember you?”
He smiled again. She wished he wouldn’t do that. It made him look even creepier. “I was a guest for almost a decade of the State of Nevada. I enjoyed their accommodations right up until the day before yesterday. Red Bull and Max were thrilled to see me. They gave me this job right away. I can’t say I was sorry to hear Frankie was gone. I never cared for that cowardly bastard. Thanks for getting rid of him for me.”
“I didn’t get rid of Frankie. That was on your boss and brothers.”
He shrugged. “I don’t care who did it. I just wish I had gotten a piece of him first. Anyways, we should get going before that pretty boy Skull comes back.” He stepped toward her and she instinctively stepped back. He held up the knife and pointed it at her chest. “Remember what I said,” he told her. He was still smiling. Something about his eyes looked off to her, like he was either high or crazy.
Levi could feel her heart beginning to hammer in her chest and her legs twitched with the need to run. If this man got her away from here, alone in the woods, she was sure that no good would come of it. He might be planning on taking her back to Red Bull eventually, but she had a bad feeling he had other things on his mind to do first.
With a deep breath she said, “Okay, you can put the knife down though. I’m not going anywhere.”
He licked his lips again and looked at her body. He made her feel like she needed a shower. “Oh but you are pretty girl. You’re going down the hill with me. We have to walk most of it. I didn’t want to alert you or your boyfriend with the sound of the bike. It took me a while to get up here. I was disappointed. I planned on getting here when it was still dark and slitting pretty boy’s throat while he slept. He was already up when I got here though. I’m just thankful he had someplace to go…and you didn’t go with him. Turn and face the door honey, but don’t touch it.”
Levi was shaking all over as she did what he told her to do. She felt him take another step closer so his front was touching her back. She felt bile rise up in the back of her throat when he slid his nasty erection against her backside. He had the knife in his hand though, in her line of sight, so she didn’t move or react at all. He slowly slid a hand around her waist, feeling her body as he did and then he leaned into her ear and said, “Walk.”
The next few seconds she was running on pure instinct with her brain barely engaged. All she could think was that if she left here with this man she probably wouldn’t survive. She had a strong will to live and she realized that it had a lot to do with Kyle. She wanted him. That might not be the best thing for either one of them but she had to admit it, especially if she was about to die. As she turned she caught sight of the weight b
ar leant up against the wall of the shed. Without hesitation she grabbed it with one hand and turned as quickly as she could. She felt a crunch as it connected with the side of his face and then she felt the end of the knife, the flat, blunt part, connect with her temple and the world went dark.
Chapter 11
Levi woke up confused and with a throbbing headache. She could feel something slowly trickling down the side of her face. She wasn’t sure if it was sweat, or blood. As usual, it was hotter than hell. Sometimes she fantasized about moving to Alaska, or somewhere that didn’t require her to sweat bullets most of the time. It took her several long seconds as those random thoughts ran through her head, to remember what happened and realize why her mouth felt so dry and funny. When she did she tried to scream but the gag he’d stuffed into her mouth suppressed the sound and only made her chest hurt. Whatever noise she’d made caught his attention. He was suddenly standing over her and she realized that she was lying on her back on the wet ground. Pine needles and tiny little rocks dug into her back and she squirmed around, trying to get more comfortable. That was when she realized that her hands and feet were bound as well. Beyond the horrible vision of the ugly man standing over her she could see trees towering up against the blue sky. They were still in the woods which gave her hope. Maybe Kyle could still find her. She focused on the man’s face, making contact with his dark brown eyes. She muttered a few sounds again, trying to get him to remove the gag so that she could scream. If Kyle was out looking for her, maybe he would hear.
“No one can hear you,” he said, as if reading her mind. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. We just stopped to take a rest. You’re light, but not so much after miles of hiking down the hill.”
She moaned again through the gag. With a sigh he reached down and plucked it out. She realized right off the bat that her throat and mouth were much too dry to work up a scream. Instead, in a raspy voice she said, “Can I have some water?”
He pulled a canteen out of his pocket. She realized as he knelt down and pressed it to her lips that she was putting her mouth where his had been before and once again her stomach rolled. She drank what he allowed her to anyway, forgetting his mouth and concentrating on how good the cool liquid felt on the back of her throat. When he pulled it away and stood up over her she started screaming. The explosion in her head this time came at the end of his boot and for a few seconds her vision was fuzzy but she thought that she wasn’t going to pass out. She may not have if not for the second kick.
**
Kyle unloaded the water bottles from the bike, leaving them on the front porch of the cabin before going inside. He frowned when he looked around and realized that Levi wasn’t there. Surely she wasn’t still working out, he thought. He felt a tickle in his stomach but told himself not to panic. Maybe she’d just gone for a walk. As he walked back out front he searched for any signs of a vehicle and besides his tracks and the ones left there by Strike the day before, he didn’t see anything.
He walked out to the shed and as soon as he saw the doors hanging open his stomach clenched. He slid the gun out of his waistband and cautiously stepped inside. His eyes scanned the room and saw that there was no one there but then they landed on something that made his stomach hurt. There was a little quarter sized puddle of blood in the dirt. His head began to spin and his chest filled with rage. Rage at himself. Fuck! How fucking stupid was it of me to leave her alone? He was sure no one had followed them up. It must have been Strike they followed. Son of a bitch! If anything happened to her he’d never forgive himself. He knew that he couldn’t live with her death on his head the way that he’d had to learn to live with Will’s. No fucking way.
He tried to talk himself down off the ledge he felt like he was standing on. He told himself a cool head was what he needed to be able to think straight and find her but anger was popping in his head like fireworks on the Fourth of July. He wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t kill whoever took her with his bare hands, especially if they had hurt her. He wanted to run for his bike, dive onto it and take off…but he had no fucking clue where to look. He fished in his pocket for his phone. This was a big ass mountain. What he was going to need was help. The ‘no signal’ on the face of it made him want to throw it down and step on it. He had to get his anger under control. He looked up and saw the rocky summit behind the cabin. Jogging up to it he looked at the phone again. He had one bar now, it might just work. He pressed in Rodney’s number. It went to voicemail. Kyle called him a few names, most strongly a pathetic old fuck before ending that call and calling Asa.
“Hey man…” he interrupted his friend.
“Where are you?”
“Jared and I made it back to town about an hour ago. I was about to lie down…”
“They have her.”
“What? Who has her?”
“I don’t fucking know. I went to get water and came back and she was gone.”
“Maybe she took off…”
“She didn’t fucking take off! There was blood in the shed. Someone took her.”
“Okay man, calm down. Listen to me. Dad made a deal with Red Bull. He’s going to loan him some muscle for this thing they’ve got going on with the Irish. We’ve convinced him that Levi’s not going to talk. He said he called off the search for her.”
“He fucking lied! I’m going to look for her and if they hurt her I will kill every fucking one of them one by one…”
“Okay, okay man, take a breath. I’m going to grab Jared and a few of the other guys and we’ll be on our way.”
“I’m not going to have service most likely. Just look for her when you get up here. Fucking find her Asa! We have to fucking find her! She has to be okay.”
“Okay…we’ll find her…” Kyle ended the call and ran back down the hill. When he got back to the shed he searched the ground around it. It was all dust and sand. The hot breeze that blew constantly had blown away any traces of tracks. He went over and got on his bike and that was when he saw it. Another spot of blood. It was leading away from the shed toward the small path that led into the thick trees. He would never get his bike through there. He took his hunting knife out of the saddlebag, tucked it into his boot and left it where it was parked. He walked over to where the blood was then and taking the gun back out of the back of his jeans he stepped underneath the cool, dark canopy of trees.
**
Steel was dragging Levi by her legs down a sloping, bumpy hill when she woke up. Her head struck things along the way and as soon as she was conscious enough she once again tried to scream. He’d stuffed the gag back into her mouth though, so it was to no avail. She tried to kick him but his hold on her legs was like a vice. The terrain was rocky dirt and cactus plants and as he dragged her through it things were sticking in her back and legs and tearing them raw. Every part of her body hurt or stung and she was slowly beginning to lose hope that Kyle would find her in time.
He held onto her with one big hand and used the knife to lop branches from the trees or cactus spikes out of his way as he walked. He didn’t seem to give any consideration to the ones that he pulled her into behind him and she actually breathed a sigh of relief when they stepped out of the thicket of trees and onto a hard, sharp plateau of rocks. She lifted her head slightly and then she nearly vomited around the gag when she realized where they were. This was the place where Will had died. Martin let go of her feet and she was lying about two feet from the edge of the two-hundred-foot drop where her brother had fallen to his death. But this was up the hill…not down. Shit! Why was he taking her up? Kyle would never find her here. If he was looking for her he’d be looking for them to take her down, right? Without warning he leaned down and ripped the gag from her mouth, scratching her lip with his dirty fingernails as he did.
“Don’t scream! No one will hear you and it gives me a fucking headache.”
She nodded. Her head felt like it might roll right off her shoulders. “Can I have some more water?”
He looked annoyed but he t
ook out the flask. As a matter of fact, she realized that his whole mood seemed to have changed. He’d gone from looking excited and almost happy at the prospect of abducting her to looking slightly anxious and maybe even angry. After her mouth was wet she said, “Why are we up here?”
He glared at her for a few minutes and then said, “Because it’s beautiful, don’t you think? Just look around at this view.”
She raised her head again and did as he told her. His voice was pressured and edgy and this close to the edge of the cliff she thought perhaps she shouldn’t piss him off. She watched out of the corner of her eye as he pulled out his phone and looked down at it. Whatever the face of it said made him grimace. She took a chance and said, “Is everything okay?”
He looked at her sharply. “No. Everything is not fucking okay. I just spent ten years behind bars doing my part to keep this club safe. I volunteered for this job before I even got to lay down my head. Now about an hour ago, I get a text telling me to call this off. I’m on top of a fucking mountain, dragging a woman and they tell me to call the whole fucking thing off.”
“Why?” she croaked. A sliver of hope found its way into her heart, at least for a second.
“They don’t work that way. I don’t get to know why. I’m just supposed to fucking follow orders. So guess what? I’m going to follow their fucking orders…but I’m going to get something out of it first.” His gaze went from angry back to that disgusting leer he’d had on his face earlier and Levi shuddered at what he had in mind. “You and me are going to have some fun. Ten years without having a sweet, wet pussy to stick my dick in was too fucking much. You’re going to fix that for me and then I’ll leave and you can figure out where to go from here.”
