Begging for Bad Boys

by Willow Winters

  The last thing he heard was the sound of Ted laughing.

  Chapter 18

  Kat winced as Billy grabbed her upper arms and turned her around to face a cheap card table. He gave her a shove toward it. She tried desperately to look back at Sam, but she stumbled as she reached the table. When he'd come to retrieve her from the dungeon room, she'd known things hadn't gone according to Sam's carefully laid plans. She'd had one of the women help her to hastily bind her wrists again in order to appear as non-threatening as possible until she could assess the situation.

  She knew that she was in danger now, and that she would need to defend herself. When she was done stumbling, she turned around so that she faced the men. She reached for the jackknife in her back pants pocket. It was an awkward stretch, but she pulled the knife loose and pressed the button to reveal its blade.

  She tried not to make a face as she began sawing at the ropes that bound her hands. She accidentally cut herself several times, and she could feel the blood flowing down her hands.

  “Do you see her?” Ted said to Sam. He crouched down to lean over Sam’s body. “I hope you enjoy this, because it’s the last thing you’ll ever witness.”

  “Sam!” she cried, but she was too late. She saw Sam’s eyes close. She frantically sawed off the ropes around her wrists, managing to cut one free.

  Ted laughed maniacally, although his face was pale and he was breathing heavily. He turned to Kat. “Poor little Kitty Kat. You are about to learn a serious lesson about what happens to bad girls who run away.”

  He lunged toward her. She swung her free arm in an arc, plunging the knife into Ted’s throat. He screamed and clutched at his throat, the sounds soon turning to gurgling. She saw blood escaping his fingers as he tried to keep the wound closed and felt strangely satisfied.

  Ted’s face went red, his eyes bulging. He dropped his hands, and blood spurted everywhere. His eyes locked with Kat’s as he fell to the floor.

  The breath was knocked from her lungs as Billy tackled her to the ground. He lay partially atop her, weighing her down. She couldn’t breathe, her fear and his weight crushing all the air from her lungs.

  “Fucking bitch!” he howled, furious over the death of his leader. “I’ll fucking teach you…”

  He raised his fist to do just that, and Kat flinched. The blow never came, though. There was a wh-wh-whop low sound, growing louder by the second. Everyone stopped to listen.

  Kat realized before the men did that the sound meant helicopters were approaching.

  “Oh, fuck!” growled Jimmy. “The fucking bitch called the cops!”

  “Not the cops. The FBI,” Kat corrected them.

  “Shit,” said Billy. “We gotta get out of here.”

  Billy got up off of Kat and she gasped, gulping lungfuls of air. The men were peering out the windows, preparing to head for the hills. She sat up, glancing at Sam’s prone form.

  She couldn’t let them just get away. She needed a gun.

  Moving quickly, she got on her hands and knees. She moved over to Sam’s unconscious figure, patting down his ankles.

  Bingo. She slid his backup weapon from the holster at his ankle. Its weight was a comfort in her hand.

  As Matt opened the front door, she raised the gun and fired, shooting him in the leg. Matt cried out, and the other two jumped like a couple of cats.

  “She’s got a gun!” cried Billy as she swung the barrel around to him.

  Matt slunk out the door. Seeing only one way out, Billy ran for the door too, but Kat fired again, wounding him on the lower leg. She aimed and fired at Jimmy, knowing that the story of human traffickers running around was going to be on the news. She smiled as Jimmy howled in pain.

  There was no running away from this. Anyone that treated the men’s wounds and watched television would put two and two together and call the police. Because of the FBI’s interest in the case, there would be no way for the men to slip though the cracks and escape notice.

  Billy and Jimmy hobbled out of the house as fast as they could, but two seconds later they both slowly backed in, hands up.

  “Down on your knees, hands on your heads!” boomed a familiar voice.

  As the men dropped to the floor, Hakim’s head poked through the door, looking around until his gaze locked with Kat’s.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I think so,” she said, pulling the tatters of her shirt together. “I’m more worried about Sam.”

  Hakim looked at Sam’s form, a grave expression on his face.

  “These two fuckwads need constant supervision,” he said, waving his gun at Jimmy and Billy. “Otherwise I’d check him over. Does he have a pulse?”

  Kat screwed up her face. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay. Do me a favor, place your index and middle fingers on the side of his neck, in the soft hollow area just beside his windpipe.”

  She moved to Sam’s head, carefully feeling for a pulse. After a few seconds, she looked up at Hakim with a joyous smile.

  “He’s alive!” she said, unable to stop smiling though tears began to collect in the corners of her eyes.

  “Not for long,” Jimmy muttered.

  Hakim didn’t even blink. He just stepped forward and pistol-whipped Jimmy with his gun, the cracking sound ringing through the air.

  “That’s enough,” Hakim said coolly.

  Kat shrunk back from the violence, even though she knew Hakim was on her side. It had been a long day full of men hurting each other and her. She’d had enough. Besides, there were girls in the other room.

  She owed it to herself, and to them, to set them free as soon as possible.

  “Can you watch Sam for a second?” she asked Hakim. “There are two other girls tied up in the bedroom. They’re terrified, and they don’t speak much English.”

  “Of course,” Hakim said with a slow nod.

  “Thanks. I’ll be right back.”

  “The choppers will be here in less than a minute,” Hakim said as she got to her feet.

  She raised her hand to let him know she’d heard him as she headed to the bedroom. She opened the door. The two figures on the bed huddled and shook, too afraid to even glance her way.

  She remembered the pistol in her hand, and took a second to stick it in her waistband. Then she approached the bed.

  “Hey,” she said softly. “It’s me.”

  One of the girls raised her head.

  The girl said something quiet, though Kat couldn’t understand a bit of it. From the sound of her tone, it was a question. Kat raised her hands to let the girls know that she meant no harm. The second girl looked at her cautiously.

  The girl said a string of words, and touched Kat’s wrist. Kat bit her lip and wished she knew what the girl was trying to say.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” she said gently.

  The girl pointed to the doorway, and seemed to be asking if they could leave.

  “We’ll go. We can go together,” Kat said, offering the girl a hand.

  The girl started crying, which made Kat start crying. She threw her arms around Kat and said another string of unfamiliar words, but Kat was pretty sure she knew what the girl meant.

  Kat just hugged her back, unable to do more. The sound of the helicopter was undeniable now. Kat was pretty sure that she heard it land in the yard.

  She swiped at her eyes, then got up. The girls stood with her. They slowly made it out to the living room, and waited for the FBI to enter the house.

  Chapter 19

  Sam Montrose awoke disoriented and irritated under fluorescent hospital lighting. The lights above seemed unbearably bright. He didn’t want to be awake.

  Someone was trying to put something on his face, which was waking him up more. He fumbled at his face, trying to shove the arm away, but the intrusion persisted.

  “Just wanna sleep,” he mumbled, trying to turn on his side, away from the hands by his face.

  “Well, you cannot always get wha
t you want,” a familiar voice replied cheerfully.

  Sam opened one eye a fraction and glared at the source of the voice. Amal was staring down at him with tears in her eyes.

  Sam opened his other eye and saw Lauren’s family surrounding his hospital bed. A swift wave of déjà vu washed over him. It made Sam think for a moment that Lauren had just been murdered, and he was waking up in the hospital after being beaten. His heart sank like a rock in water.

  A nurse leaned over him again, fiddling with the oxygen mask. Annoyed, Sam yanked the mask away. An IV line trailed from his arm, electrodes from his muscular chest.

  “I can breathe,” he snapped, taking a few deep breaths to demonstrate.

  Big mistake. Sharp pains dotted his chest as he inhaled. He must have broken some ribs fighting off Ted…

  Oh God, Kat.

  He sat straight up, coughing a little at the pain. Suddenly everything that had happened at Ted’s house came flooding back to him, but he couldn’t remember what had happened to Kat.

  Had she been hurt? Why couldn’t he remember?

  “Is she okay? Kat? Where’s Kat?” he asked, panicked.

  Amal pointed toward a chair in the corner where Kat was curled up, sleeping peacefully.

  “She’s okay. Hakim’s okay. Everyone is okay, thank God,” Amal said with a meaningful smile, patting his hand.

  Relief surged through Sam like a powerful tide. He jumped out of the hospital bed, sending the machines by his bedside into a frenzy of beeping. For a second he was tangled up in his IV lines, but he detached them impatiently, and bounded over to the chair where Kat was sleeping.

  He pulled her into his arms. She woke up with a start, then began to cry on his shoulder.

  “God, Kat, I didn’t know... I thought for a second that I’d lost you.”

  She pulled him closer to her, tenderly brushing back his hair from his brow. She shuddered a bit as she touched him, like she wasn’t sure he was real and safe.

  “You didn’t lose me. I’m right here, Sam. But when you passed out, I guess from the tranquilizer...” she shuddered and began crying harder. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to die, and I couldn’t bear it if you died and I couldn’t tell you…”

  “Tell me what?”

  “That I love you,” she sniffled. “Oh God, now I’m ugly crying.”

  Sam smiled. “I knew that already.”

  “That I can ugly cry?”

  “That you love me. I’ve known it for a while now.”

  “You did?”

  He laughed, then wiped the tears from her cheeks. Looking into her deep green eyes, he kissed her. He felt the familiar electricity tingling through him when they touched.

  Kat deepened the kiss. They were lost to the world as their bodies reconnected. Sam felt his soul snap into place like a magnet.

  “I love you too, you know. I never want to be apart again,” he whispered.

  “Never,” she whispered back.

  “I know it’s all sudden, but…”

  “Sudden is not a bad thing!” Amal chimed in.

  Sam and Kat’s heads whipped around. They had both managed to forget that they weren’t alone.

  “They look like startled lovebirds,” Hakim rumbled.

  Everyone laughed together at that.

  A nurse swept into the room. She took in the scene before her: a group of women looking on tearfully, Sam trailing electrodes and an IV line, machines going crazy, Kat in his arms. She sighed and cleared her throat loudly.

  “Ahem, excuse me, lovers,” she said, gently tugging at Sam’s arm. “I need the patient to get back into bed.”

  Sam grinned at Kat, whose emerald eyes were shining with love, then looked up at the nurse.

  “Fine by me, as long as she can come along.”

  Chapter 20

  A year later, Kat Green, soon to be Kat Montrose, sat before an elegantly-laid table at her wedding rehearsal dinner, eyeing her empty champagne flute. Sam was sitting next to her. He looked dashing in a dark blue suit, crisp white shirt, and Gucci loafers.

  With love, care, and good food, Kat’s figure had filled out, and the bruises on her body from Ted’s abuse had faded long ago. Her emerald silk dress hugged her curves perfectly and matched her green eyes. Sam had given her the dress a month ago.

  “I saw it in the shop window at Saks,” he’d told her, “and I knew it was perfect for you. It’s the exact color of your eyes.”

  Kats smiled as she absently fingered the silk fabric, thinking of how eager Sam had been to see her try the dress on... and then how eager he’d been for her to take it off. Their chemistry hadn’t diminished at all in the year they’d been together. Each time together felt special and new. Kat blushed a little, thinking of Sam.

  Along with the dress, she was wearing an emerald and diamond necklace Sam had given her as a birthday present, and diamond earrings. Then there was the engagement ring on her left hand…

  Sam had given it to her that day in the hospital a year ago. As he’d slipped it on her hand, he’d told her it had belonged to his great-grandmother, who’d been known in the family for her proud independence and heart.

  “She would have approved of you, I’m sure,” Sam had added, as he kissed Kat’s hand softly, “That is, if you agree to marry me.”

  Kat had managed to mumble a yes through her tears. Amal and Hakim and even Lauren’s family had hooted and cheered when Sam got down on his knee to propose. When he’d slipped the ring on her finger, he’d kissed her passionately. She had whispered to him that she couldn’t remember a time when she’d been so happy.

  Now, at the rehearsal dinner, Kat looked at Sam and thought it was incredible that today, she was somehow even happier. She squeezed Sam’s hand. He looked at her with loving eyes and kissed her cheek gently. Hakim was sitting at the table next to Amal and his girlfriend, a doctor he’d met in the hospital while visiting Sam. Hakim caught Kat’s eye and grinned. She grinned back.

  Everyone important to them was here tonight: Hakim and his family; the Army Rangers who’d helped them take out Ted; the doctors and nurses from the hospital; Lauren’s family, who’d come to love Kat as much as they loved Sam; and Sam’s upper-crust family who’d finally learned, after their son’s second hospitalization, to be as warm and loving as Kat had hoped for them to be.

  Even Kat’s father was there, although Sam didn’t approve of that one bit. Her father had shown up at the hospital one day out of the blue, saying he’d seen a news clip about the incident and glimpsed Kat’s face in the background.

  “I was so drugged up that day,” he told Kat, who had pulled him away from Sam’s thunderous glare to talk in the hospital cafeteria. “When I sobered up, I tried to find you, but that man just vanished. He’d told me he was taking you to some place where they trained girls to be models. If I’d been clean, I’da known that was bullshit... I didn’t mean for all that to happen to you, Kit Kat. God, I’m so sorry!”

  Her father had broken down crying right there in the cafeteria hospital.

  Seeing his face crumple, Kat didn’t doubt his sincerity. He’d cleaned up his act after losing her, he’d explained. He was sober now, holding down a job. Upon finding out that Kat was engaged, he had glowed, saying that she made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

  He wasn’t going to walk Kat down the aisle, though - that was Kat’s condition, and he understood.

  “I don’t deserve a damn thing after the wrong I did to you,” he’d said to Kat, “but I’m grateful just to be here.”

  Kat looked at her father now, chatting with Sam’s mother. It was unbelievable that he’d come back, and that he’d been able to stay clean. She thanked her lucky stars for that.

  In the soft lighting of crystal chandeliers, supplemented by hundreds of glowing candles, the rehearsal dinner took on a magical air. Guests laughed and talked quietly, enchanted by the atmosphere. Waiters appeared constantly to pour more excellent wine, paired perfectly with the exceptional food. In the corner, a
string quartet played beautiful music. The evening was perfect in every way.

  Kat’s reflections were interrupted by Sam, who had stood up and was motioning for silence. The crowd slowly fell quiet.

  “Good evening, everyone. I want to first thank all of you for coming. Your presence here tonight means the world to Kat and I. Everyone here knows, I think, the story of how Kat and I met, but what some of you don’t know is that I was almost married before - to a wonderful woman, who I loved deeply. Her family is here tonight.” Sam raised his glass to Lauren’s family, who raised theirs in return.

  “When my first fiancée died, I thought I would never be happy again. Then, one snowy day, when everyone intelligent was indoors,” the crowd laughed at this, “I stumbled across a woman who needed to be rescued. Little did I know, she would end up rescuing me right back!”

  “You really did rescue me,” he said to Kat. Then he turned to the crowd and continued, “So I’d like everyone to raise their glasses to this beautiful woman, who I have the incredible honor of marrying tomorrow: to Kat!”

  “To Kat!” the crowd cheered.

  “And,” Sam continued, “I have one more surprise in store. Kat, you are one of the strongest women I’ve ever known. I want other women to have that strength when they need it. To that end, the Montrose family has created the Katherine Green Montrose Foundation, which will fund local women’s shelters, provide legal aid, and help fight human trafficking.”

  The crowd burst into applause at this announcement. Kat put her hands to her mouth, disbelieving. A foundation in her name? It was just too much, like so many things Sam had given her.

  Sam sat down, and Kat smiled at him through tears. Guests resumed eating, talking, drinking. Sam leaned over and whispered into her ear, “I couldn’t be happier than I am now.”

  Kat ran her finger over the rim of her empty champagne glass and smiled.

  “I can think of one thing that would make you happier,” she said, staring into Sam’s sky blue eyes.

  He grinned mischievously. “I don’t think we can sneak away right now, too many people would notice, but maybe a little later…”