“What is it?”
I stopped when I was close to him. The pressure in the air between us, almost made me eat my own words.
“Come on,” he urged me. “What’s your idea?”
“We ask them to meet us somewhere. A trade off. You for the wedding party.”
“You want me to give myself up? What guarantee –”
“But we bring the bikers with us. And once the trade is done, they come out and rescue you.”
Aiden lowered his head. He pressed it against the door.
“What?” I asked him. “Don’t you like it?”
“No,” he said. “It’s great. It’s perfect.”
He turned back to me. I could see the pain in his eyes.
“What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
Aiden hesitated. Then a decision was made.
“Nothing,” he said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As we stepped back out into the car park together, Aiden and I holding hands, the Brown Bear Bikers were making their way outside the rec room entrance and moving out to their bikes. Bruno walked ahead of the pack and approached Aiden and I, his face dark and serious.
“I hope you had fun,” he remarked. “Because we’re ready to go to work now.”
Aiden let go of my hand. “We have a plan for you.”
“I’m listening.”
“Instead of meeting them at their home base, we want to organize and exchange with the general for our family that are being held hostage. I’ll make sure the General delivers them personally. When she lets them go and I give myself up to her, then you guys can take her out. What do you say?”
Bruno’s eyes shifted sideways. “Where would this trade off take place?”
Aiden glanced at me a moment. “I was thinking we could do it an old research facility in the city. That’s where they conducted most of their experiments.”
“Security there is impenetrable,” Bruno said. “We would have taken that place by now if we could.”
“I have a contact there in the building,” Aiden said. “I can fix it for you.”
“But where will the time for that be?”
“We’ll have to take the building first. After that we’ll call the General and ask her to meet there.”
Bruno scratched his moustache.
“What do you say?” Aiden asked.
Bruno’s hand fell to his side. He looked back at his men waiting patiently.
“Okay,” Bruno said. “But you ride next to me. The whole way.”
“No problem.”
Bruno then turned to address the rest of the bikers to inform them of our plan.
Aiden grabbed my hand again. “You’re riding with me.”
“Of course I am,” I muttered.
We stood together at the edge of line of bikes while Bruno made his way back over. “Don’t even think about touching my bike.”
Aiden stepped away from the nearest one. “Sorry.”
Bruno signaled to one of his men. “Bring us another bike over here. And a couple of helmets.”
Aiden and I waited patiently as the bike was brought over. Then we took our helmets and put them on.
We climbed on the bike.
Bruno looked back at us. “Are you ready? Cause you’re leading the way.”
“One more thing,” Aiden said. “If I truly am one of you, and we’re going to do this, then I need a piece.”
Bruno blinked. “Ha, ha. Fucking alright.” He turned to his men. “Will someone hand me their spare gun for our new recruit here?”
A gun was handed to Bruno.
Aiden got off our bike and walked a few short paces to Bruno.
“Thanks,” he said.
He started back towards me a moment, and his eyes met mine.
I smiled warmly at him, but Aiden didn’t smile back.
His eyes were as cold as a ghost.
It hit me before it happened.
“No,” I mouthed. “No…”
Aiden turned again and blasted Bruno in the face with the gun he’d been given.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
So fast. Too fast. And no explanation.
As the president’s body fell over the side of his bike, blood spilling out everywhere, Aiden was already on our bike cranking the engine. He bolstered the bike out of its standing position. Faster than I could even blink.
Approaching the entrance, with engines and mouths and guns roaring behind us, my hands slipped. I was falling backward. Being dragged down by the fingers of a thousand hands.
I hit the ground in a painful descent and rolled over, three or four times, agony shooting everywhere. Passed me, the bikes rolled on by, one after the other. I watched from my place on the ground as Aiden’s bike broke through the gates at the front and sailed off down the road. He never turned back for me.
Not the bike he was riding.
Not even his eyes.
I tried to get up, the tears racing down my cheeks.
Blood was flowing into my dress.
I looked back at the biker’s building and saw a group of them were still huddled around their fallen leader. One of them had turned. Spotted me.
He started to advance.
“Fucking hell,” I squealed.
I pulled myself up properly and did my best to scamper away.
The man behind me didn’t. He just kept walking boldly.
The last time I looked back I saw he had drawn his pistol from his pocket.
I tripped over and my head landed into the side of the building. I closed my eyes.
I wanted it to be quick.
Then nothing. Not a sound.
My eyes opened slowly. I looked behind me.
The man was less than two meters from me.
Lying down in a puddle of his own blood.
Everyone else was dead behind him.
“What the fuck?” I whispered.
I straightened up and then jumped to my feet.
Around the corner of the building like lightening a man wearing a suit and black gloves, grabbed hold of me and shoved me up against the wall.
“Stop it!” I shouted. “Let go of me!”
I felt his hands coming down on me. Strangling my throat.
“I’m not letting go,” he seethed.
My focus adjusted. Things became clearer.
“Ryan…?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ryan grinned at me. He showed me his teeth – white, sparkling and jagged. An ominous purple fog swirled in his eyes.
“Don’t,” I stammered. “Don’t – Don’t –”
He put a finger to his lips to silence me.
I stopped fighting him.
His grip loosened a little. “I have your family. Your friends. I have them all. You want to see them again?”
“Yes,” I said hurriedly. “Are they okay? What have you done with them?”
“When Aiden comes back for you, you are to lead him to this location…” Ryan reached into his pocket and pulled out a red card. He put it in my hand.
But I couldn’t look at it just yet.
“You get him to come to this location, and hand himself over,” Ryan said. “This is your last chance to save them.”
“Hold on a second,” I muttered. “Why are you doing this? I thought you were in love with –”
Ryan let go of my throat.
He then slammed his fist into the wall beside me. “Be there. You have one hour.”
Ryan then stepped away from me and shifted into his great black bird. He flew up into the dark sky and disappeared before my eyes.
I looked down at the card he’d given me.
It was a wedding invitation.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered.
So they were still there. Perhaps they never even left.
I peeled myself away from the wall and walked out towards the broken gates.
I looked down the direction of the road Aiden and the men chasing him had gone, but there was nothing in
sight. Only darkness.
I gripped the invitation tightly, before letting it slip through my fingers and fly out into the wind.
Everything out here was so still. Everything was dead.
I could feel the road underneath my feet, and there were no vibrations.
It was cold and forgotten and smashed in like the clouds around my heart.
“Aiden,” I whispered, as if the word was powerful enough to conjure him in front of my eyes.
And in that moment I knew that even if he wasn’t coming back, that it didn’t matter. How he felt about me after tonight, wasn’t going to change a thing about me.
I knew right here.
Right now.
I was going to love him forever.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER ONE
I was waiting for it. I didn’t realize that was the thing I was waiting for until it happened, but afterwards … I knew there was nothing else coming.
You don’t think that way. Not even when years go by. I wasn’t prepared. It was such a surprise.
I must’ve walked into that police station a hundred times. I knew every picture and poster displayed in the foyer. I’d sat on every chair. I knew most of the officers there by name, and there was hardly anyone I didn’t recognize. I thought it would be a two way street, I’d been coming here so long. It had only been a month since I’d last been here.
But the man at the desk didn’t recognize me.
He didn’t even recall my name.
I felt sick. The last piece of hope being ripped from me.
He asked me what I wanted to talk about, and I just couldn’t find the words for it. Not anymore.
Three years ago, everyone knew who I was. Not just the cops at this station, but random people I’d just see in the street. My face was on the front of every newspaper in the country, along with Aiden’s and group shots of the wedding party. People were mad at us. At our tragedy. They never found him which implied his guilt. The only reason I wasn’t a one hundred percent proof suspect was that I was still around. Pleading for help.
Of course my crazy stories didn’t help the public’s opinion. My lawyer stared at me dead-eyed in our third meeting together at the station, and said: “Shut up about the experiments. No one will believe you.” He was right. That first week after the wedding – that was the hardest. I had senior sergeants and FBI agents drilling into me, trying to get me to confess.
“We know it wasn’t you, Bianca,” they’d say to me. “But we know you’re not telling us the truth and that makes you guilty. Not just in our eyes, but in the eyes of a jury. You have to tell us where Aiden is.”
But of course I didn’t know. At first I thought he was holding off. Waiting until I was in a shopping mall or something, and then he’d come out of nowhere. To tell me to keep strong. That he’d find where our family was and rescue them.
I think it would have been good to have him show up, just so I knew I wasn’t alone. I hadn’t seen him since he shot the bear biker president in the head and took off on his motorcycle. Leaving me in the hands of the other bikers. Leaving me for dead.
After Ryan had shown up and made me promise to get Aiden back to the wedding resort within the hour to rescue the others, my heart knew nothing else. That was what we were going to do. The only thing we could do. Aiden was going to lose the guys on his tail, and double back for me.
That was what should have happened anyway.
Instead I just wound up walking in the middle of nowhere for two hours, until I reached a town and was able to find a policeman to tell my story to.
They went to the resort soon after.
No sign of the wedding party. No sign of Ryan.
No sign of Aiden.
No sign of anyone.
I was far too late.
In the midst of the manhunt for Aiden, and my live interview going to air, I found my way back there, to the wedding resort. It was all closed up. The business owners were changing hands. I walked through the empty reception area on the grass and through the chapel to the lake where Aiden had taken his piss there in the water.
I was there now, in the absolute freezing darkness, waiting for someone, anyone to come out.
For our adventure to begin again, and my hopes rekindled in the fire.
That was all I wanted.
And of course, instead, there was nothing. Just the empty sound of a windless night.
Three years later and I’m in the police station, with the officer staring at me with a blank face, I thought of that wedding resort again, and how it had felt to be there.
Not on the night of the wedding.
But on the night I went back there in the darkness on my own.
In that moment then, and this moment now, I had forgotten he existed. As though he was just a dream I had once. A fleeting figment of my imagination.
I was waiting for it.
That final feeling of peace.
Perhaps none of them had existed at all.
CHAPTER TWO
But of course they had.
And in my long lost, faraway dreams I would see them – all of them – exactly as they were. I’d be sitting down with my father at a coffee-house or wherever, catching up with him. He, like all of them, never seemed to be in any danger. They’d act as though I was overreacting. That I shouldn’t have been so worried. That they were right here all along. All I had to do was reach out and touch them and they’d be there.
And then I’d wake up and … if it were only that simple. I could call phone numbers. Or write emails. Or send online messages.
I could go round to their former homes and workplaces and they were never there – never waiting for me to show up and find them. They really were gone. This had happened to them. At this point, no one would probably even care about it either. They’d just tell me to move on. Get on with my life. It was out of my control.
I sat up in bed. Another night, another dream. I hadn’t even slept that long either. I went to bed at ten and it was just gone ten past eleven.
Aiden.
I had seen him in my dreams tonight.
I’ll cut through the ins and outs of the dreamtime atmosphere and just say that he was in his bear form and he was chasing me. Trying to run me down.
I pulled back the covers and walked from my room to the kitchen for a glass of water. I was still in a bit of shock. I was still … frightened of him. I didn’t know why exactly. He had no reason to hurt me in real life. So why had I dreamt it that way?
What was my subconscious trying to tell me?
I swallowed my water and set the glass into the sink. Then I walked back to my bedroom.
The blinds were open and I could see outside. The moon was covered by the clouds so there wasn’t much light streaming in. But I could make out the branches of a tree by the window. And I could see there was a creature sitting by it. Staring into the glass.
Staring into me.
I went to the window to get a better look at it.
As I drew nearer, its eyes seemed to get brighter. They were white, with a green tinge to them. I still couldn’t see how big the creature was, only that it was black, and appeared to be a bird of some kind –
CRASH!
Without warning the giant bird sprung from its perch and went headfirst into the window, shattering it.
The force was enough to send me flying back to the ground, broken glass and feathers raining down on me the rest of the bird. I screamed at it, though there was no way to characterize the emotion behind my scream. I didn’t know if I was shocked or frightened or angry – all I could feel was the adrenalin pumping through me. As I fought against my attacker I soon realized my hands were clinging to wings or feathers anymore – I was fighting against the arms of a person.
“Stop it,” an all too familiar voice commanded. “Stop that noise at once.”
And then I did stop, as I now realized who was on top of me.
It was our old friend and enemy, Ryan Decker.
“Bastard!” I cried and swung my half curled fist into his cheek. He grabbed the hand immediately afterward and forced it to the ground, pinned with the rest of me.
“Are you going to shut up now?” he asked.
I spat up into his face, whilst continuing to thrash my legs about underneath him. As his arms were preoccupied, he had no way of removing the spit.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he said hoarsely. “But I will if you don’t stop fighting me.”
“Fuck you!” I squealed. “HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!”
Taken aback by my sudden cries, Ryan let go of my arms and climbed off me.
I quickly crawled back to my feet and made for the bedroom doorway.
“I had a message from Lara, that’s all.”
I stopped for a moment and glanced back at him. He wasn’t chasing after me.
Ryan sat down on the bed and removed a cigarette case from his coat.
“So she’s still alive then?” I demanded. “Where is she?”
Ryan shook his head and proceeded to light the cigarette. “Somewhere nearby.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I hissed at him.
He took a drag from the smoke and let its fumes ooze from his nostrils. “We had a deal once, didn’t we? You were going to get Aiden to come back to the resort. And then this would all be over.”
“It was a pretty dumb plan,” I said. “I haven’t seen Aiden since I spoke with you then. He never came back for me.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “Maybe you guys already got to him.”
“We didn’t,” Ryan said. “If we had, I wouldn’t be here.”
“So why are you here?”
“Why don’t you come and sit next to me? I’ll tell you all about it.”
“I’m fine here thanks.”
Ryan smiled and shook his head. “She cries in her sleep, you know. She still cries your name. She thinks you’re coming to save her.”
Stepbrother Bear: The Complete Set Page 10
