by Brook Wilder
Instead she was left dissatisfied, like a sneeze that crept up and up and up and didn’t come to fruition. Or being just at the edge and having a man pull out, the sensation gone but the memory there like a phantom limb. She could feel the butterflies in her stomach. They were waiting to explode, they couldn’t quite manage it yet though. There had been no break in tension, no spark to set off the flame. Everything inside her was still waiting.
“You all go from giggles to silence when we get here, I see how it is,” Ben teased but Hannah did not laugh. She was not yet ready to make nice with the man who nearly tried to sell her to his own gang.
“Talk to Hannah about that, she got all deep in thought,” Scout said, shrugging and reaching for the potatoes.
Hannah tried not to turn red as she felt the faces turn to look at her. She avoided Chance’s gaze at all costs. “I’m just thinking about this test I have coming up.”
It seemed to satisfy everyone but she could still feel a pair of eyes watching her and she knew to whom the eyes belonged. She did not dare look up again after that, focusing in on her plate of food, trying to taste it. But all she could think about was the smell of Chance’s after shave when he stood so close to her. She could count the stubble from where his razor missed, the small specks of whiskers waiting to become a beard if he’d let them. She could see the fleck of off color in his eyes. She remembered exactly how many she counted.
That could not be a good thing. She’d spent her first twenty-four hours with this man as his hostage. He hadn’t been cruel, he hadn’t tried anything on her, but it wasn’t exactly something to write home about.
This is my boyfriend. How’d we meet? He took me as collateral when my brother owed him back a loan he took out for gambling. It wasn’t exactly the story you wanted in the best man toast at your wedding. And there was the matter of her pride. She hated him, after all. She’d made that perfectly clear. She wanted nothing to do with this man. She was above him and his street antics. She was going to be a lawyer, someone who defended his victims. She wasn’t about to give into the possibility that she actually was ready to kiss him, ready to lean in and close that gap if she didn’t. He was beautiful, his body was powerful, but she wasn’t going to go farther than that. His family was fun to be around, she was making friends in surprising places, but she would not make friends with him. Friends or otherwise.
So when dinner was done she busied herself with helping to clean up, despite how many times Kat told her there was no need. The others gathered in the living room to talk and she insisted she needed to be here and not there. She feigned some fear of the situation, the less she knew the better type of thing and Kat seemed to buy it. She wasn’t going to put herself in a situation where her integrity, her feelings, everything she knew about herself was compromised over a man.
***
“All right,” Chance said, sitting down. “Ground rules first: no one outside this house knows about Hannah and I want to keep it that way. You guys are my go-to on this and the only people I really trust here.”
“Don’t let the others hear that,” Ben snorted.
They were sitting in a circle around the coffee table. Moose was to his right, Ben to his left, across from them was Link and Scout.
“Priorities,” Chance continued. “Secrecy. That’s number one. None of this gets out to anyone. Understood?”
There were nods and a general mumble of agreement.
“Second, safety. Hannah needs to be kept safe,” he said.
“Shouldn’t priority number two be our money?” Ben asked, frowning. “Not only have we not been paid back from the little hot shot but now we’re going to be down another couple thousand out of pocket if we manage to buy this bitch back from the Death.”
“None of this matters if she gets hurt,” he said.
“You mean if she’s dead. What does her getting scuffed up matter? It actually might make it easier if she’s damaged goods. Lower cost.”
Chance tried not to let his frustration show. He shoved his fisted hands under the pillows to hide them and hoped his face wasn’t as red as it felt like it was becoming. He wasn’t a fucking teenager he wouldn’t be teased into some kind of revelation about his life. It wasn’t a crush, it wasn’t anything so frivolous as that. Yes, he was willing to admit he may have had a few fantasies about her. He was attracted to her, he maybe even wanted to fuck her, but that was all. There was no deeper meaning and there was no squishy feelings.
“We’re not letting innocent people get hurt,” Chance said. “I made that clear. Gabe Bremer forfeited that for himself when he skipped town but his sister is still innocent.”
“How do we know she isn’t holding out on us?” Ben tried.
“To what end?” Chance asked. “She’s basically our prisoner. Sure it’s a nice home and there’s food and a shower but she doesn’t have freedom and if she steps outside the house she won’t have safety either. You’re going to have to come up with something better than that.”
Ben scowled at him.
“We should find Gabe,” Link said. “The Black Death aren’t budging but Gabe might make for a good bargaining chip against them. And it would at least ensure we got our cash back.”
“I agree,” Scout said. “Bremer needs to pay up and get a good talking to for that crap he pulled.”
“Whatever,” Ben said. “I’m going outside for a smoke.”
Ben could raise holy hell if he wanted. He could get drunk and throw trashcans, make a scene, deface public property. He could put cigarette burns in the leather seat of Chance’s motorcycle. He could throw every hissy fit imaginable. But he could not do anything more than that. He had no real power to overthrow Chance’s orders and he was fairly certain that was going to come back and bite him in the ass one day when Ben finally snapped. But Ben was obedient, a soldier, not a leader. He would do as he was told with a loud obnoxious wail and several protests but he’d do it nonetheless. Chance wasn’t worried about him.
What he was worried about was Hannah. Over the next few days he stayed out of his mother’s house as much as possible. He took rides, he scouted around for Gabe, he went to get groceries, he ran every errand he could think of. It was probably starting to become obvious when he took several trips in one day to get various snack foods from the gas station.
“Either you’re restless or you’re on your period,” Scout said when he got back from one such excursion. “Have anything to do with our resident lawyer?”
“I just don’t like sitting around,” he lied, poorly.
Scout smirked and shrugged and walked off. He could only imagine the things she was whispering to Ben, telling him that her brother was lovesick that his head wasn’t on straight, that some girl was making him nuts. The last thing he needed was Ben to have more fuel to get huffy over. Ben was a loose cannon, Scout knew this, but she didn’t realize to what extent he would let all that pent up rage go. Besides, she was going to side with her man, no two ways about that. Chance wasn’t going to blame her, it was expected. She had to be on his side.
But it was building up to something dangerous. And, what was worse, it seemed like Hannah was avoiding him too. It made things incredibly difficult to deal with because it meant she felt something too, she was scared like he was. That meant it was real, it wasn’t just inside his head. There was palpable tension, palpable feelings, unavoidable attraction and she was responding to it as well. It drove him nuts at night and he had to exert all his willpower to stop himself from lowering his hand to his crotch and letting all the tension go in a few minutes of glorious, comforting rubbing. He’d managed it thus far, however, and wasn’t about to break his streak. Three days without incident. Four days without incident. How much longer could he go for? He wasn’t sure. But he was going to find out.
Chapter 8
It was a week after the meeting in his mother’s living room that Chance got word someone finally had intel on Gabe. Or, rather, they found the slobbering mess that was him in a ba
ck alley downtown. They’d lost sight of him. But now there was a clear bread trail to follow. Evidently he’d been high, incredibly high, to the point where they almost didn’t recognize him. The only way anyone knew it was him was the t-shirt he was wearing, apparently it had Hannah’s school crest on it. The following night, Chance himself went to that part of town to find out what he could for himself. He didn’t tell Hannah. He couldn’t until he was sure.
He took Moose with him that night, following the lead some anonymous source had dropped them. Gabe had been spotted in an alleyway by the Triple G strip club. Chance fully intended on beating every cent out of him that he had left if he found out the imbecile was blowing all the cash he owed them on cheap strippers and lap dances.
They pulled into the gas station across the street and made their way into the convenience store, pretending to look at bags of chips and sodas, all the while keeping one eye trained on the strip club. It opened its doors at eight pm, they had five minutes. There was already a lineup forming outside where men were smoking, laughing, and throwing back drinks from flasks in an effort to prepare to gawk at women and imagine being inside of them instead of their wives. Chance never liked strip clubs. Ben went to them often and took the Knights will him. Chance never went. He didn’t need to pay a girl to moan his name and take her clothes off in front of him.
He kept an eye on the line, not seeing anyone who looked like Gabe Bremer. The clock hit 8pm, the line disappeared inside the building, still no sign of the kid. A few more minutes passed with random stragglers finding their way inside the building, none of them the one they were looking for.
“Buying something gentlemen?” asked the clerk behind the cash register.
He was staring at them with an unkind eye, letting his gaze go up and down over their forms. He thought they were stealing and Chance tried not to roll his eyes too hard at the thought. He shrugged to the man before grabbing a bottle of soda and Moose grabbed a bag of chips. They walked to the front made their movement to pull out payment and bag their goods take as long as possible, keeping eyes on the strip club across the street.
“You know you can go over there, boys,” the cashier. “You don’t have to just sit here and stare at the building, won’t see anything that way.”
Chance gave the cashier a tight-lipped smile before grabbing his tings and going outside.
“We need a better plan than this,” Moose said as they walked over to sit on their bikes.
“I don’t want to risk spooking this kid,” Chance said. “He’s proven able to disappear pretty easy, I’m not letting him slip by again, especially if this little asshole has been blowing the money he owes us on strippers.”
“I say we take an up close look,” Moose said. “I’ll go, check it out. It’s less suspicious if we separate.”
“And be easier to pick off,” Chance said.
“What kind of bodyguard would I be to you if I can’t even protect myself, huh?”
Moose gave him a cheeky smile before shoving his hands into his pockets and walking across the street. He stepped around the entrance and into the alleyway around the back, lighting a cigarette and blowing out smoke. Chance watched as he casually turned his head about, looking around for signs of anything while taking a long drag of the cigarette in his mouth.
His search was fruitful. His eyes caught something and he turned back to Chance, waving frantically for him to come over. Chance ran over from their parking spot with the bikes and met him at the mouth of the alley, turning to look down.
What he saw was not the Hannahe man he met the day he pulled Hannah from Ben’s clutches and put her on the back of his bike. This man was smaller, skinnier, any muscle he’d tried to put on before was gone completely, skin and bones and what resilient fat was clinging to his frame. He was pale all over and his hair was a mess on top of his head, thin and looking frayed. The man was stumbling, completely unsure of his own two feet like he was standing on quicksand and the rest of the world was built on solid rock.
“Holy fuck,” Chance whispered.
“Yeah,” Moose said. “That’s something we’re going to have to deal with.”
“What the hell happened?” he demanded.
“No clue, we’re going to find out though.”
Gabe Bremer had gone from irresponsible college kid living off his sister’s good graces to a complete junkie mess since last they saw him. It alarmed Chance. Something about this was very, very wrong. The kid had been gambler and an idiot but he hadn’t been a druggie. Of all the places Chance was worried the kid would blow the money he owed, he hadn’t expected it to be on drugs.
“What do you think he’s on?” Chance asked as they crossed back over to the other side of the street.
“That looked like H, boss,” Moose said.
“Jesus fuck.”
Heroin was an unbreakable addiction. It could be fought, it could be surprised, but the body would always crave it once it had been introduced to the system. If Gabe was on this stuff, Chance was willing to bet he did not get on it willingly or by accident. Someone had handed it to him as a means of control. But it would take more recon work to figure out exactly who, what, and why.
“That’s twice now he’s been spotted at the strip club,” Moose said. “Guarantee he’ll be back tomorrow.”
“We go back, we need to sort this before we give Hannah any information on it,” Chance said.
Moose nodded in agreement and they didn’t say anymore as they both got into their bikes, flipped off the store cashier when he yelled at them from inside the convenience store, and sped off into the night. They needed to regroup and try to get the bottom of the mystery tomorrow.
***
Chance once again took only Moose with him back to the strip club the following night. Waiting to find the buzzed out Gabe. It was clear he did not go into the club for entertainment. He was not in the lineup outside nor was he in the building when they did a quick scan of the interior as far as the host would let them without paying a cover. He was in the alleyway though. He seemed to be a little more coherent than before, standing with help of the wall but managing to stand at all. They stayed out of sight, watching him smoke cigarette after cigarette.
“I got some intel on the situation,” Moose said to chance in hushed tones.
“Lay it on me,” Chance said.
“He fell in with a rough crowd,” he said. “He works for some pimps, takes girls and delivers them. He’s doing it to pay off debt he’s got to The Black Death.”
“He’s got debt with everyone, doesn’t he?”
“Well here’s the part you’re not going to like,” Moose said carefully. “Turns out he sold your girl off to the Death and they knew all about the whole situation. He told them we’d pay through the nose to get her back. Basically they were doing him the favor. Hence the debt. Now they’ve got him hooked on H to keep him a docile little pet for their operation.”
“Fuck.”
He’d lost track of how many times he said fuck over the course of the past few days. Everything was pissing him off and nothing seemed to be the news he wanted to hear. So Gabe had not only sold her, he’d covered his bases. They had no way of getting her back without a fight at this point. And he was grabbing more girls and selling them off as well. There would be no convincing him to back off of the situation now that he was on heroin. There was no rationalizing there, only addiction.
“Alright,” Chance said, backing up. “This is beyond what we can do on our own. I know I said secrecy was number one but if the Death knows about the whole situation then there’s no reason to not bring in everyone we can. Call up the gang. I want a meeting. Now.”
“You got it captain.”
Chapter 9
Chance had a plan that he knew Hannah wouldn’t like. But it was the best one they had and she was going to have to trust him. She didn’t know about the drugs, about the slave her brother had become. Chance was going to keep it that way if he could but something like
that could only be under wraps for so long and if he needed to bring it out to convince her that she needed to listen to him then he wasn’t above breaking her heart with a little discomfort to get her to play along.
“I want you guys safe,” Chance said to his mother and Scout.
They were sitting with cups of morning coffee in front of them. Link had already gone off to get things ready at the clubhouse, lay the groundwork for Chance’s crazy plan that was probably going to get him punched square in the nuts by Hannah but he’d cross that bridge when he got there. She was still asleep, and they decided to let her sleep. For the time being.
