by Lydia Pax
The coffee machine was near the back stairs. She put together a pot, making it strong as hell. Both she and Georgetta liked the strong stuff; it was always annoying taking a shift with a doctor or a nurse who not only liked weak coffee but also insisted on making coffee themselves.
Helen always wanted to slap them a little, maybe dump some morphine in their lunch if they wanted to go around half-awake. Those bastards could always water their coffee down; if Helen wanted to get her fix , she’d have to drink three times as much of their shitty half-coffee just to get it out of the way so she would be able to make a new pot.
That done, she glided down the stairs, sliding out her phone on the way down. There was a text message from Randall.
“Oh, god.”
Missing you all night tonight. Maybe you’ll come see me at the diner after your shift?
Fucking. Asshole. Fucking Ass. And. Hole.
The fuck gave him the right to try and play with her like this? Who in the hell appointed him captain of the ship of her personal misery? She’d thought about changing her number before, but always decided against it. Too much of an inconvenience. But now, just like all those other times, she began considering it again.
She’d had a firm policy of severing with Randall for nearly a year now. Once upon a time, she'd lived in a town in southwest Texas named Marlowe, and she dated him while she lived there. He was a handsome man with a nice chin and a well-paying job as an executive lawyer. He was also controlling, exacting, and punitive—barely falling short of abusive, and she only gave him that much rope because he’d never hit her.
But he had tried to shut out her friends. Probably would have tried the same with her family if she’d had any. She moved in with him only after a month of dating when her apartment complex was torn down for some few dozen code violations. By the time she moved out, she’d had to bring a few doctors and nurses with her from her hospital during the day while Randall was working to keep him at bay just in case he showed up.
She had moved to Stockland, getting her new job at their hospital, completely rearranging her life mostly to get away from Randall. And then he had followed her.
Fuming and in desperate need of the strongest fucking cup of coffee she could find, Helen slammed open the door to the outside, forgetting entirely about the auto-lock.
It hit home when the door clicked shut; she swore and kicked at the door, tugging at it and then kicking again.
“Goddammit!”
She stopped, feeling her temper get the better of her. She was better than that. Better than that asshole’s poison. She let her forehead rest against the door, taking a breath.
I’ve got a whole five hours left on this shift, she thought. I can’t go back in like this or I’ll beat someone over the head with a bedpan.
That thought made her laugh.
Men. It all came down to men. She'd had some rotten choices in them lately. After Randall, she'd rebounded with a heart-thumping stud, the kind that she'd dreamed about since she was a little girl. Big, tough, strong, and a biker, he had been everything to her.
All her life, she had wanted to be with a biker badass. She had wanted to feel that strength. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and make out madly after he’d bruised his way through a bar fight, victorious and bloody. She thought from time to time that maybe in a past life she was the prized bride of some Viking warrior, cheering him on while he raided out townships and plundered their land, bringing it back to their homestead.
A stupid, weird dream. But it was her dream.
And then she'd fucked it all up.
One day she just stopped seeing him. A terse, quick phone call—I can't do this anymore. I'm so sorry—and that was all she gave him.
It wasn't something about herself she enjoyed remembering. All that fear and insecurity, the bad feelings that followed her like shadows. She pushed them away, hoping the memories would bury themselves for good this time.
She turned the corner past the door, ready to make the walk back around to the front of the hospital. It would take most of the rest of her break, but it wasn’t a bad walk. Quiet, usually, especially this time of night. Stockland could be a bad town for a soft-hearted nurse—lots of violence, lots of drugs—but tonight had been relatively low-volume so far.
And anyway, Helen wasn't exactly soft-hearted. She'd been a nurse for close to four years, and while she hadn't seen as much as someone like Georgetta, she still felt herself a pretty hardened soul. Bullet wounds and knife gashes did nothing to her anymore; the sight of blood was as familiar as turning on a car or hooking a dress onto a hanger.
The door she had exited from opened up into the lot where the ambulances were kept. It was a well-lit lot. The concrete was cracked in places, tarred over in others. In the earlier parts of the day, coming out here meant she could watch workers refill the ambulances with their supplies.
A banging, crunching sound filled the air. Not sure why, Helen followed the sound. For some reason, she thought it might have been a dog snuck onto the lot and pouncing on top of one of the ambulances.
Animal control didn’t actually control much in Stockland, and packs of strays roamed the numerous empty plains between shopping centers and neighborhoods. They survived on garbage and small prey, often grouping up with coyotes and wolves. In previous nights, on her breaks, she'd seen dogs out there and wished she could help them somehow. Her apartment complex wouldn't allow pets, though.
Now, why exactly she thought “stray dog” and “go see!” were good cooperative ideas was lost even on Helen.
But it wasn’t a dog. In the rows of ambulances, she saw a tall man with a crowbar in his hands. He had used it to jam the ambulance door open. Blood dripped down from his shirt. He wore a leather vest covered with patches—a motorcycle gang member. From behind, all she could really tell about him was that he was large. Large enough for her to be scared.
She froze. The way the lot was arranged, she had come across him almost suddenly, leaving only ten feet of clearance between him and her. The second she decided she would run—that’s when he snatched her.
Nobody moves that quick, she thought, stunned at how he had turned and closed the distance in such a short time. One second he hadn't even been looking at her—and the next, his hands were on her.
She looked up into his eyes. Time felt like it stood still. They were dark, swirling pools of emotion—not quite rage, not quite lust, not quite concern, not quite anything except for unique. For some time—maybe five seconds, though it felt like five hours—her body responded only to those eyes. A sensual, furious heat filled her, and her breath caught.
It was Beretta.
That man? That dream of a biker who had swept her off her feet, who'd been everything she'd wanted, who'd made her nights hotter than the sun and had made every last breath feel like she was breathing into him, who had spun her mind into a web of ecstasy so dense that she never thought she'd leave?
He stood in front of her now, bloody, holding her, looking down at Helen with confusion and recognition both.
Then, the stark, horrific reality caught up with her senses. This man had a hold of her, and he wasn't letting go. He was armed. He was huge. And no matter how handsome he was, he was covered in blood—and probably not from some benign accident either.
“Helen?” He smirked. “I forgot you were a nurse.”
Hearing his voice did all kinds of things to her body, none of them particularly complimentary given the danger he presented. Her heart raced faster, stomach fluttering like a bird's wings.
“What are you doing here?”
He glanced at the ambulance, broken open from his crowbar.
“Come on,” he said. “You can do better than that.”
“What is this?” she asked. “Did you follow me here? I moved away from Marlowe.”
“I can see that,” he said. “I moved too. Unrelated. I had no idea you were here.”
She didn't believe him. Why would she believe him? Wh
y the fuck was he here?
He pushed her up into the ambulance and sat her down.
“Stay.”
His voice was like molten glass, hot and smooth. Not knowing why—a callback to one of their intense nights, maybe, when he'd blindfolded her and slid her hands into cloth restraints, teasing and pleasing her for hours, she obeyed. Immediately she hated herself for her easy submissiveness to him—but his tone had brooked no argument.
If she ran...would he tackle her? Would he use the crowbar? How far would he go? He was bloody already, injured. A stupid, pitiable impulse took her—to treat the wound, see him healed.
She'd always felt there was something she could heal in him. Her curse, to think that over and over, with man after man.
There was nothing to heal with Beretta. Not truly. He was nothing but danger. You didn't heal danger—you ran from it.
Just like she had.
The sides of the ambulance were loaded down with storage bays, each one filled to the brim. Tearing through them, he opened up one of the emergency bags the paramedics used when they went on-site. Then he began to fill the bag up with everything he could find—hypodermics, IV bags, medicines, gloves, tubing.
“If you told me what you were looking to fix,” said Helen, “I could help you pick more carefully. It’s not all going to fit in that bag.”
She was serious; she’d tell him what he needed. Too much gone from an ambulance meant a drop in funding for other parts of the hospital, and they couldn’t afford that. Helen didn't need a pay cut, that was for sure.
On top of that, there was still that impulse to help. She knew this man, and though he wasn't being particularly friendly, her desire to make him feel good was surprisingly strong.
Beretta had been with her, had been inside her (and god, hadn't that been beautiful?), and so she wanted to do right by him even if it was clearly the wrong thing to do.
He was just as breathtaking as she remembered from six months before. Thick lines of ink ran down from his neck across his bare arms. Arms as thick as tree trunks, rippling with huge, hard muscle. But he didn't respond; he just opened another bag and stuffed that one too.
When that one was full, he seemed satisfied.
“I have to go back in,” she said. “They’ll be missing me inside. I’m just on break.”
He nodded, not seeming to listen. He took out a length of tube from the storage bay.
“Hands.”
“You can’t be serious, Beretta.”
“Give me your fucking hands or I’ll break them off.”
She gulped, sticking out her hands. The thought occurred to her, very slowly, that he was a criminal doing a criminal's business. She had seen him doing what he did and that made her a liability. In just a few seconds, he had tied her hands tight and her fingertips started going numb.
He grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her over his shoulder. Easy as that. Like she was a sack of potatoes.
“Say a word and I’ll make you regret it.”
This had escalated quickly. The chemicals of that animalistic, physical attraction between them were making it hard to process, hard to think clearly. Now that her hands were tied and she was immobilized on his shoulder, everything that she should have done rushed at her.
Why hadn’t she been fighting this whole time? Why hadn’t she been trying to palm some scalpel, sneak away a shot of morphine to jab deep into his neck?
But no. Like an idiot, she’d just watched him like a panther prowling in a zoo, assuming he’d take what he needed and let her go.
Maybe call you later. Maybe apologize. Maybe ask if you still wanted another ride on his “motorcycle” for the road. Maybe see if you wanted to talk things over and explain yourself. You stupid, stupid woman. What did you think was going to happen?
Now she squirmed, now she fought.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “Help! Someone help! You put me down!”
He sighed, dropping her down and taking her by the neck. “I’m a man of my word, Helen. You’ll see.”
His hand clasped over her face, cutting off her air, and everything went dark.
Chapter 3
Helen Kowalsky.
Her name was on her name tag on her scrubs, but of course he'd known her anyway.
Over the last six months, he'd done a whole lot of his best to forget her, as a matter of fact. She had never been part of the plan—and man, had she ever made that clear to him.
He searched her body as she was unconscious, wishing like hell he'd met her again under different circumstances. Every fingertip on her luscious curves, her sweet skin, was like a steroid injection straight to his crotch, making every part of him strain with ache and need.
She was beautiful. She had always been beautiful. Her breasts, so full and firm; her hips so sexy and wide. It was all coming back to him now in a rush.
Helen left him. She had vetoed his right to touch her like this—to know her in the ways only he knew her. But that didn't mean he didn't want it still. Because having his hands on her so sudden, so soon after seeing her again, all he could think of was undressing her and having his way with her then and there.
Of course, he wouldn't ever. He didn't need to. He needed only to say the words and he'd have her a melting pile of putty in his hands. But that didn't stop him from wanting to take her, to force her.
Goddamn, she was beautiful.
That wasn't a road that he could go down anymore, though. There was too much to lose, too much hurt to give out, and he couldn't do that to anyone anymore.
Besides, now she was his hostage. The rules were different.
On her, there was little else. Just a phone—which he tossed on the highway— a wallet with some ID and a few credit cards, and a pair of keys that he stuffed in his pocket. Maybe he could use them as collateral for her later; maybe they’d come in handy if he needed to pull something from her home or her car.
Helen was gorgeous, with medium-ish dirty blond hair, a strong nose, heavy bust, and the kind of muscle tone that made it clear she could handle herself in a rough spot. Being a nurse in a town full of drug addicts, no doubt she'd built up some of that muscle on purpose.
Of course she was gorgeous. Gorgeous women who Beretta couldn’t have had a way of traipsing through his life and leaving it a mess. Like tornadoes through the trailer park of his emotions.
So he felt nothing for her outside of that initial attraction.
He told himself this over and over—I feel nothing for her. Nothing at all. I just need to work off my hard-on on my own time, that's all.
If he felt nothing for her, then she couldn’t do a thing to him. He didn’t feel a growing hardness in his loins simply from being in her presence, didn’t feel his heartbeat racing by tracing the lines of her chin with his eyes, didn’t feel how soft and right she had felt in his arms.
Didn't wonder even once why she had left him in the first place.
They were back at the warehouse where the Wrecking Crew had moved in about a month ago. It was a large place, mostly empty, near the edge of town. The only other thing near it was a mechanic's shop where they sometimes rented tools out to work on their bikes. They paid rent for the warehouse in cash and the owner, smartly, didn’t ask any questions.
There was an office in the front. They made their living quarters right behind it, with the largest part of the warehouse emptied out. The members of the Wrecking Crew had figured they would need the space for future members, for shipments of drugs and weapons. So far, there had been none—just their ragtag crew of five.
Beretta walked into the warehouse with Locke hanging off one shoulder, Helen draped over the other.
Ace was sitting underneath a lamp with a magazine in his lap, frowning as ever. If there was one thing Ace had down to a science, it was frowns. He stood up and approached, the frown deepening.
There were frowns for everything when it came to Ace, the President of the Stockland chapter of the Wrecking Crew. There was a frown for bad
news, for real shit news, for good news, for a pretty woman, for a challenge to a fight, for a brand new bottle of whiskey.
Beretta hadn’t learned all too much about the ex-marine in his time with him for the past few months, but he had learned that much—Ace loved to frown. He loved it so much he didn’t even know he did it.
“Where the fuck have you been?” asked Ace. “Who the fuck is this?”
“Nurse,” said Beretta. “We need someone to look after Locke.”
“So you fucking kidnap a nurse? The fuck happened to Locke?”
“We were doing the rounds, picking up intelligence, like you said.”
Beretta paused, putting Locke onto a mattress on the ground and then Helen on another.
They had a series of cots and mattresses lined up against one wall where they slept. They had set up two spare ‘rooms’ with curtains where brothers could get their nuts off, either by themselves or with a girl. Beretta figured the curtain might be better for Locke—it was likely to get messy and bloody—but also figured those particular beds would be too unclean for medical work.
He sat Locke down on a mattress and stood up, groaning slightly. The wounds on his hip had been spreading wider since he broke that ambulance open. He didn’t want to think about it. Locke came first; he was fading fast.
He put his hands on his hips, looking at the two. One slowly bleeding out, the other unconscious. As soon as she woke, he'd put her to work.
“I seem to remember telling you to keep a low profile at the time.”
Beretta shrugged. “We came across Rattler. I saw an opening and we took it.”
“Did you get him, at least?” There was sudden hope in Ace's voice. Still frowning, though.
“No. Took out three of his. Dead. But not him. Trashed his bike, though.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Ace. He walked from to the wall and reared back, and for a moment, Beretta thought he would break his fist on it. But he just slapped it and then walked back. “Goddamn. You just started a war, you know that?”
