Riding Danger

by Candice Owen

  “Yeah, cool. Let’s get to it.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Felicity was terrified. Now, she was in the middle of some giant drug deal as well as being a kidnap victim. What else was going to happen? Blaine hustled her out of the car and into the house. The whole place reeked, like wet and dirty socks. She made a face, as Blaine pushed her into a chair that was so filthy dust flew up from it as soon as her firm little bottom touched the seat.

  There were a few women in the house, but they were not the kind of women that Felicity would hang out with on a regular basis. One of them was half naked. All she had on was a pair of too tight shorts. Her ass cheeks hung out the back of them, and her bare breasts were enormous and obviously purchased.

  Blaine said, “Do not leave this room, do you hear me.”

  Felicity wanted to run and escape, but where could she go? There wasn’t anywhere to go. What was more, she had a feeling if she did try to leave, these two women would do something really bad to her? She sat still in the chair, trying to ignore both of them.

  The second woman was busy smoking a bowl of marijuana and drinking at the bar. She did not have any interest in Felicity at all. The half-naked woman saw her staring at her and said, “What are you looking at? Do you like girls? Do you want to touch me?”

  Aghast, Felicity cried out, “No!”

  The woman’s face turned dark, “Oh, so you think you’re too good to touch me. Is that it?”

  Felicity thought, This woman is twisting everything that I say!

  Instead, she stared at her feet, refusing to answer. From the kitchen she heard people laughing and talking, the sound of flesh hitting flesh in jubilant high-fives.

  Blaine came out of the kitchen, and he had a look on his face that told her that he was concerned. Not afraid, but concerned. She guessed why. The guys in the kitchen had just bought all that dope from him, but they might not be all that willing to let their money just walk out of the door, after all they already had possession of the dope.

  Felicity might not have gotten out much in the real world, but she had seen plenty of movies, enough of them to know that those kind of thing actually did happen. Double crosses took place in the dope world, and there really wasn’t any honor amongst thieves and dealers.

  Truthfully, Blaine was concerned. He had every reason to be and for the very reasons that Felicity had thought of. These guys knew exactly where that dope had come from. He knew that they would have to move it somewhere else — probably up to New York or out to Las Vegas.

  They would do so and they wouldn’t care about it because to them it was all profit. They had paid a ridiculously low price for the stuff, but it was enough to get Blaine where he was going and to help him do what was he wanted to do when he got there.

  He jerked Felicity up out of the chair and pushed her along in front of him. She wasn’t resisting, not this time. Blaine had a sense of his urgency, and she was feeling pretty anxious, as well.

  They got out the door and into the car safely. The entire time Felicity was on the verge of hyperventilating. As soon as they pulled away from the curb, Blaine said, “In three minutes were getting out of this car. Do you understand why?”

  “They aren’t going to let us leave with their money. They want the dope and they want their cash back, too.”

  “You might make a good gangster after all.” He sounded amused, and she shot him a filthy look.

  Her hands were still tied, and they were starting to really go numb. She held them out to him and said, “If I’m going have to run, you might want to untie me. I mean, it’s not like I know where the hell I am, and I don’t want to get shot at by a bunch of crazy drug dealers; so, you can bet I’m not getting too far from you.”

  “I can see that,” Blaine said, as he quickly stripped the scarves from her wrists. Pins and needles flooded into her fingers, and she whimpered, as she rubbed her hands together trying to restore feeling to them. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “I used to think that you were different than the rest of them, but you’re not.”

  Blaine said, “Yes, I am. Maybe I’m not any better, but I’m most certainly different.”

  He parked the car in a slot in a crowded bar and got out. Felicity didn’t need to be told to get out, as well. She did they went around the side of the building. They stood huddled by a door, Blaine ducking his head out every once in a while to see if anybody was coming.

  It seemed as if an eternity passed. The music coming from the bar vibrated through the walls, a man staggered out to the parking lot and urinated against the tire of the car, slapping his hand down on the footing grunting the entire time. More cars passed by on the highway in front of the bar and laughter and the smell of weed floated up from somewhere around the other side of the building.

  “Maybe you’re just being paranoid and they aren’t coming.” Felicity hoped not anyway. She had to go to the bathroom, and she was tired. What was more, she was starving to death. She hadn’t eaten anything all day because she had been too busy trying to impress Blaine. Well, look where that got me.

  “There they are. See them?”

  Felicity stuck her head out, like a turtle sticking his head out from his boxy shell. Sure enough two of the guys that been the apartment pulled up, looked at the car and then headed towards the bar. Blaine grabbed Felicity by the hand and headed toward the bus stop across the street. “Why didn’t we just come here to start with?” Felicity asked as he peered up the street.

  “Because I needed to make sure that they didn’t see us standing here. The bus ran just as we were pulling up, so it should get here any minute. Look, here it comes now.”

  Fear made her belly turn literally cold. What if the bus didn’t make it there before those guys left the bar? They’ll see us there, and we’ll be sitting ducks! I don’t know if they would just shoot us right there on the street, but they might.

  The bus came to a grinding halt, and Blaine grabbed her hand, practically pulling her up the stairs with him. He stopped long enough to drop bills into the box, and then they took a seat on the opposite side of the bus, away from the street. The bus pulled half away from the curb, and Felicity sagged against Blaine, tears rising up in her eyes.

  Blaine knew that this was getting to be just way too much for her. They needed food, and they needed shelter and needed it fast. He did not know where this bus was going to take them; but, wherever it took them, he was going to have to find a place for them to sleep when they got there.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The bus let them out in a section of town that was run down and seedy. There was a small and deserted motel next to a closed down truck stop and a few little dive bars, most of them closed, as well. There were also stores with soaped-over plate-glass windows and a convenience store.

  It would have to do because there was nowhere else to go. He took Felicity to the motel and checked them in, paying cash in small bills. He had most of the money from the drug sale tucked inside his boots, but he had left a couple hundred dollars in small bills in his pockets. He killed them off, slowly double-counting those to give the clerk the impression that he could barely afford to spare the money.

  Inside the room, he took one look at Felicity’s face and decided that he had to leave her there while he went to get some food. He doubted she would run, since there was nowhere for her to go. He told her, “I’m going across the street to a convenience store and see if there’s anything in there decent enough to feed you. Please don’t run. In case you haven’t noticed, this in the best area of town, and there isn’t much safety for a woman out alone on the streets at night.”

  Felicity just nodded. The room was horrifying, dirty, and tired. Blaine had money in his pocket from that sale, as well as some other money that he had apparently been stashing; so, she could not figure out why he brought them into this roach-infested little hole in the wall. The whole place screamed disrepair. The walls were stained and peeling. The carpet looked like somebody had died on i
t, it was so stained in torn up. The beds were covered in an almost hallucinogenic-patterned set of thin comforters, and the bathroom shower had a fine film of mold growing on it.

  She climbed into a chair near the rickety table and pulled her feet up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. That sight was almost enough to break Blaine’s heart. He couldn’t stand to see her; so, he turned around and left, making sure to lock the door behind him.

  Felicity knew that he had not noticed the phone. He hadn’t noticed it because somebody had moved it off the battle-scarred nightstand, and it was peeking out from underneath one side of the bed. She waited a few minutes, making sure he was actually gone by peeking through the window and watching him go to the convenience store and enter.

  She was pretty sure the phone was going to cost her an arm and a leg, but that was a small price to pay for her freedom. She set it on the nightstand and dialed the operator. She asked if it was possible to make a collect call. The operator said, yes. Then, the operator asked her what the number was that she wanted to reach.

  Felicity had been schooled to memorize her father’s phone number when she was a child, and she had never forgotten it. She gave the operator the number and she put it through, almost immediately her father picked up.

  “Daddy! Daddy, I need your help!”

  “Felicity, where are you?”

  “He went to the store and left me here at this motel. It’s crap! I don’t know where it is, but it’s next to a truck stop or what used to be a truck stop. It’s closed now.”

  “He left you there alone?” Her father sounded very suspicious and Felicity couldn’t blame him. “I think he thinks there’s no phone here. It was hidden almost under the bed. I’m really scared, Daddy. Please come get me.”

  “How did you get to the motel?”

  Why is he asking me all the stupid questions? Oh, he has to figure out where I am! “We took a bus after we left the bar. We had to leave the car at a bar, so the guys that were coming after us because they wanted the money back for the dope they bought from Blaine wouldn’t kill us.”

  “He sold the dope?”

  Felicity’s heart dropped. Her father had not asked her if she was okay. He had not asked her if she was safe or whether she’d been harmed. He had not asked her if she was scared, and he had not said he would come get her. What he had said and what he had asked was if Blaine had sold the dope.

  “Yes, Daddy. He sold some dope he got from somewhere. He said he stole it from a police evidence room and that you told him to, but I told him that was a lie. There was no way you would’ve ever told anyone to do that!”

  She waited for reassurances that never came. She waited for him to tell her the Blaine was a liar and a drug dealer, but he never said that. All he said was, “Would you remember where he took you to sell that dope?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Her heart was breaking. He isn’t trying to find me, he’s trying to find his drugs! Blaine had not been lying. Her father was a drug dealer, her father was a criminal. Why am I so surprised? Memories that she had held at bay ever since childhood came back, and she began to sob.

  “Daddy, are you going to come and get me?”

  “Yes. I want you to do something for me though, Felicity.”

  She knew that tone of voice very well. It was the tone of voice he used when he was about to give her an order, one she dared not disobey. She was supposed to listen to her father — that was the rules of their house. “Yes, Daddy? What do you need me to do?”

  She hoped he would say that he wanted her to give him the name of the truck stop next door and that he wanted the name of the convenience store. That he was going to hang up and have a trace run on a call or anything, but he did not say any of that.

  “I need you kill him.”

  Felicity’s eyes widened. “Daddy, I can’t do that! How can I do that?”

  “It’s not that difficult. Blaine has a gun. He keeps it in an ankle holster. It’s below his boot, but he has it. Get to it, and you kill him. When that’s finished, you call me back.”

  He wants me to kill Blaine! She knew that if she didn’t, he would not come for her. Felicity knew right then that Marie and Blaine had not been lying. This was how her father got people to do things for him. He made you love him, he made you a part of the family, he made you feel protected and needed, and then he demanded that you proved how much you loved him in return. That was what Marie had said, and she had not been lying.

  “Daddy, I can’t kill him.”

  “Yes, you can Felicity.”

  “Daddy, please come get me.”

  “I’m going to come for you, Felicity.”

  He hung up and she stood there with the phone still in her hands and tears running down her face. He’d lied to her. He was not coming. He couldn’t care less. If she pulled the trigger on Blaine, he still would leave her there, leave her there to take the blame.

  The door rattled as Blaine unlocked it, and she turned around to face him. Her face was flooded with tears. “My father wants me to kill you.”

  “Well, there’s a surprise. How did you call him?”

  “I used the phone.”

  It was a landline, and Blaine doubted very seriously if she had thought to block the call. He asked, “Did you charge it to the room?”

  “No, I called him collect.”

  That made him a little less uncomfortable. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think that a collect call would show up on somebody’s caller ID. Either way it was too late to do anything about it now. He began to unpack the cold sandwiches that he had bought, as well as the sodas.

  “I’m sorry there is anything better to eat over there. I did get you some candy, I don’t really know if you like it, but most girls like chocolate.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Felicity sat on a bed in a cheap hotel room several hundred miles from home. She was tired, hungry, and everything she’d ever known about life had just been shown to be a huge lie. My father, how could I not have known? How could I not have seen what he was?

  Felicity looked at him, her eyes still wet with tears. “Did he kill George?”

  “Yes, or rather he had someone kill him.”

  “I bet you think I’m just a stupid little girl.”

  “No, I think you’re a woman who was lied to.”

  “Will she be okay?”

  “Do you mean Marie?”

  “Yes, will she be okay? I mean — can my dad catch her and kill her?”

  Blaine thought she had, but he had his doubts. Marie was a smart woman, and she knew the score. A woman like that had a contingency plan. She knew what she had been dealing with, and she had known that there were only two ways out of it: die or run. He knew she had no other family or close ties outside of the bikers; so, as long as she laid low and got as far away as possible, she had a good chance of making it. Had he bought her enough time to do so? He was hoping he had, but it was impossible to tell.

  “I’m going to let you go. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not a bad guy, I swear.”

  “Then, how did you wind up in prison and then working for my dad?” Felicity’s words were laced with bitterness.

  “I got into a bar fight. I was working as a bouncer and the guy that I was fighting fell and hit his head on the concrete out on the curb. I went to jail for killing him, but it was never intentional.

  “I can’t say it wasn’t my fault. I was always in trouble even before that. I have a lot of little stupid petty things on my record: stealing a car when I was fourteen, hanging out with the wrong crowd, smoking a little weed. Just stupid kid shit, but when you add it all up with working as a bouncer at a strip club and getting in a fight with a guy who was the son of one of the richest guys in town, it comes up to a long stretch in prison.”

  Felicity’s heart ached for him. She had known Blaine was not like the other guys that worked for her dad. There was something about him, something kinder and less spoiled. The other guys were al
l hard, but Blaine was not hard. He was a fighter and a good one. He would do whatever it took to protect somebody he cared about — he had risked his own life to take care of Marie, instead of hauling ass for safety.

  He sat beside her and took her hand. His touch sent little chills running up and down her spine, and she instinctively moved closer to him. “You’re not going to believe this, and you probably don’t care, but I think I fell in love with you the first time I saw you.”

  Felicity stared at him. “The first time you saw me?”

  “You probably don’t even remember. I had just got off the bus, and I was walking down Highway 40. I had stopped on the side of the road and you came racing by in that bright red Mustang of yours and well — that was all I could see anyway.”