I tried to blink, but that didn’t accomplish much; either there wasn’t anything to see, or I was blindfolded.
I focused hard, which hurt. Tried to subtly flex my muscles, tested my toes and fingers and wrists, tried to see if I was simply bound, or drugged into paralysis. I had feeling in my limbs so I knew I wasn’t paralyzed. The bad news was my wrists were tied; the good news was my ankles weren’t bound, and they hadn’t gagged me, either. Stupid move—I can fuck you up with just my feet, let me tell you. I learned Muai Thai in Thailand, from some seriously scary little motherfuckers, the kind of dudes who go out and kick trees just to toughen their shins.
I kept my breathing slow and steady, something I did out of long habit. I listened hard; I heard nothing that gave anything away. The floor was cold and hard underneath my shoulder, my hip, and knee. I was pretty sure it was a cement floor. I was lying on my side, hands bound in front of me—another mistake.
I kept listening, but there wasn’t much else to hear yet. Definitely blindfolded. Now that my faculties were returning, I could feel the blindfold around my head, felt like a folded bunch of cloth. It would be easy enough to remove when I was ready.
Staying still and quiet I kept listening, focusing on breathing slow and steady as if I was still out. The bonds around my wrists were zip-ties, and they were wrenched tight to my skin which, while painful, was actually good news. Zip-ties were plastic, which meant their overall tensile strength wasn’t that great. One hard wrench of my arms, or bash them against my knee like I was trying to break a thick stick, and they’d be gone. It would take me ten seconds max, a number I quote from experience.
I was about to start the process of determining whether to play this out a bit longer or start my escape when I heard a muffled whimper. Female, close by.
“Pssst,” I hissed.
“Gnnnhhh?” Definitely a chick, definitely gagged.
“Keep still. Pretend you’re still knocked out. No matter what you hear, no matter what happens, keep playing possum, got it, babe?”
“Ugh-oo, doh gah ee ay.”
I stifled a chuckle; she sounded pissed, and if I was anything like a decent translator of pissed-off, gagged females, she said something like fuck you, don’t call me babe. Better for her that she had a bit of spark. If she could cuss me out while bound and gagged, it meant she had spark, which meant spirit, which meant whatever was going on, she wasn’t as likely to flake out if shit got weird.
I tried to think back and remember; what was the last thing I remembered?
Some shitty dive bar in…Denver? Maybe. After Nevada, Thresh had gone to find that doctor chick he was so hung up on—which I understood because, seriously, that chica had curves for fucking days, and she’d pushed back at Thresh, which was the fastest way to get to him short of reaching into his shorts. Plus, all that exotic Islander skin, and that thick fucking hair? No wonder Thresh wanted to take her for a tumble. I’d hit it, if he hadn’t had dibs. And no, we weren’t so juvenile as to call dibs out loud, but when you spent enough time hunting tail with your bro, you know when he’s interested, and you don’t go after that chick, even after he’s done.
So…Denver dive bar, alone. I’d been on the prowl, going slow on the drinks, ready for any sign of my two favorite activities: fucking and fighting. I’d gotten a whiff of some kind of sweet floral perfume while exiting the head, and followed the scent to an out-of-place honey with a tight body and a serious attitude problem—in short, my kinda girl.
Hadn’t really made a move, not as such, just sort of scoping her out, getting a feel for her. Hadn’t even started with the charm-and-flirt routine yet, but she wasn’t playing. Shut me down cold, even though she had no wing girls with her, no ring, and no sign of a guy, just sort of drinking alone.
Now, I ain’t one to buy into the gender stereotypes much, okay? I served with some chicks in the Corps, and some of ’em were just as much my bros as BangBang and Gutierrez had been. I may be a shameless manwhore of the worst kind, but I take people as they are. I don’t fuck chicks with rings on their left hand, and no means no…except when I sniff out that no means chase me, and that’s always obvious. But there are a few clichés and stereotypes that tend to hold true. Like, you see a dude sitting by himself in a smoky shithole dive bar, you’re better off leaving him alone, ’cause he don’t want to talk. And the other one that’s almost always true is, if you see a lady, like a real-deal lady, with Louboutins and Chanel clutches and expensive perfume and two-carat diamond earrings, the kind of lady who wears that fancy shit like it ain’t no thing, in a LoDo dive bar, no less…well, partner, that shit there spells trouble.
What? I’ve hooked up with some ladies in my time, and I like nice shit, so I know one-percenter name brands when I see them, okay?
She’d gotten up and gone outside to smoke. Pall Mall Lights, lit with a snazzy looking fancy-ass electric flameless lighter. I’d gone out after her, out of curiosity more than anything, really.
You know how they say you are what you eat? And you know how they say curiosity killed the cat? Well, I eat a lot of pussy, so…
So now, here I am, bound, blindfolded, and fighting a headache and a wicked chemical haze.
I was curious, went out after the fancy chick, lit my one-hitter and took a quick toke of some fine-ass herb I’d picked up—a habit I only indulge in when I’m off-duty. I opened my mouth to talk to her, and then her eyes had gone wide, surprised, but she’d been looking behind me, not at me.
Then, bam, blackness.
So I was gonna guess that the lonely fancy chick was the one bound and gagged behind me.
Next question?
Who the fuck would take me prisoner like this? And why?
Then the events in Nevada floated through my head and I remembered Harris’s warning about Cain reappearing and being bent on revenge…and I was thinking I had an inkling as to what was going on.
I was still working through the situation in my head when I heard voices in the distance followed by footsteps shuffling down stairs.
“Play possum, okay?” I hissed, quiet as I could. “Trust me.”
“Nnnnng?” She sounded less sparky, and more fearful.
“You’ve got my word, Fancy. I’ll get you out of this. But you gotta listen. Breathe like you’re still asleep. Relax your muscles. Don’t react to anything.”
“An-hee?”
“Fancy, that’s you. Now shut up and play possum.”
I followed my own orders as the voices got closer, the footsteps just on the other side of a wall or door. I heard a lock twist, then hinges protested, and feet—two pair, three? Three, I’d wager—scuffed across the floor. Definitely a cement floor. European voices, thick Eastern Bloc accents. Definitely Cain’s group.
“Still out,” a voice said, in accented English.
A pair of feet shuffled toward me. “Should be. We hit this big one with enough to take out a pair of elephants.” This from a second voice.
“And the girl?” The first guy again.
“Cain said no witnesses, no chances.” Third voice, sounding like he had a bit of authority.
“Think we could have some fun, first?” First voice again.
They were baiting me, I realized. They’d be talking in Czech or Ukrainian or whatever if this discussion was meant for their ears only. This was for us, to see if we were awake.
“After she wakes up,” said voice number three, the one that sounded in charge. “No hurry. Cain won’t be here for a few days yet. We have time for fun later.”
The feet shuffled even closer to me. My heart hammered, but I kept my breathing steady and slow, my muscles loose. There was a moment of silence, and then a shock of agony and a loud thud as a big boot slammed full force into my gut. No warning, no way to tense against it, couldn’t breathe, shit—
I forced myself not to react, struggling through the lack of oxygen, the wind knocked so far out of me stars burst behind my eyes and panic tried to clutch my instincts. I stayed still, a
s if the tranquilizer was still working in my bloodstream.
When I didn’t react, they must have assumed, logically, that I was still under. You don’t live on the streets as long as I did and not learn to take a kick to the gut, or ten.
I heard their feet retreat, the voices speaking in their own language again, the door closed, the lock turned. The boots ascended, and then I heard the floorboards overhead creak, followed by a loud squeal like rusty screen door hinges slamming shut.
Finally, I let myself gulp oxygen, gagging on it as it flooded through me. “Fucker’s…gonna…pay…for that,” I gasped.
“Oooh oh-kay?”
“Just fine, Fancy, just fine. Gotta catch my breath, and then I’ll do some commando shit or something.” My head was still thick, aching, my mouth was dry, and now my stomach throbbed.
Thinking was hard.
I gave myself a thirty count, and then I brought my hands up, used my thumbs to rip the blindfold off. Yep: basement, bare concrete floor, metal posts holding up the low ceiling, open rafters and ductwork, an old box fan in one corner, along with a stationary bike. There was an old weight bench with a barbell bar, no weights on it, a free-standing heavy bag, a shelving unit with aging canned goods: the basement of a mid-century suburban house. I rolled to my back, then to my other side.
And there was Fancy, in all her glory. She was on her side too, perpendicular to me, the top of her head near my stomach. Five-six, five-seven, sleek, svelte, tight round ass in a knee-length dove-gray skirt, black wedge heels, and a white blouse cupping a sensational pair of high, plump, firm tits, not super huge, but enough to fill even my paws; just like I remembered her from last night.
Only now her fine blond hair, which I remembered being done in a casually elegant up-do, was now tangled, messy, hanging in her eyes and sticking to her neck and cheeks. And, holy mother of fucks, the woman’s skin…damn. Pale as pearls and ivory, flawless, enticing. Except her cheeks, which were flushed bright pink. She was glaring at me, and her eyes were…fuck, her eyes were like nothing I’d ever seen before. Cerulean blue shot through with streaks of green and hints of hazel. Wide eyes, full of fierce personality. Beautiful, hypnotizing eyes.
“Hey, ahh-hoh. Geh a mooh on.”
Clear enough, I supposed.
I rolled forward to my knees, stood up, worked the kinks out of my stiff joints, then laced my fingers together, flexed my wrists away from each other to put tension on the zip-tie, swung my arms up and then back down hard as I could while swinging my knee up. My wrists hit my knee with crushing force, and the zip-tie snapped, freeing my hands. Ten seconds or less, motherfucker.
I knelt beside the girl who flinched away from me, automatically, it seemed. I frowned down at her. “Hey now, Fancy, don’t be hatin’. I’m on your side, okay? I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m gonna get that gag off, and then you cuss me out all you want, as long as you do it quiet, all right?”
She held still, but kept wary eyes fixed on me as I knelt closer to her, leaned forward, reached around behind her head to untie the knot. Yeah, I could’ve knelt behind her to do it, and where’s the fun in that? She smelled like jasmine; I got a good whiff as I worked at the knot, and good fucking goddamn, that scent, on that woman? Made me dizzy. I swear I could get hard just sniffing her.
I acted like I was having trouble with the knot, pausing, leaning a little closer to peer over her shoulder. It was an act, since it was a fairly simple knot loosely tied, and I could have gotten it free with my eyes closed, but it got me another subtle nose-full of her intoxicating scent, which was its own reward, and well worth the glare full of daggers I got from Fancy when I pulled back to work on the knot a bit more.
Once it was free, I tossed the handkerchief aside…
And Fancy promptly set to complaining. “My god, that thing tasted like old sweat. I think I’m going to vomit.”
“Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, sugar, and it’ll pass. The nausea is more from whatever they used to knock us out.”
She shot me that patented death and daggers glare. “My name is Temple. Not sugar, or babe, or fancy.” She was breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth, I noticed. “Temple Kennedy.”
Damn—that was a name I knew. Hell, everybody knew that name. She was one of those famous for being famous celebrity honeys. Daddy was a retired rockstar and her mom was an A-list actress with multiple Oscar noms and at least one Golden Globe that I knew of. Beyond wealthy, spoiled, lived her whole life in the spotlight. Did a turn on reality TV a few years back, three or four seasons where cameras followed her around as she trotted the globe and sunned herself on yachts in the Mediterranean, yelled at servers and insulted her mom. She’d turned all that into a lucrative career doing…I wasn’t sure what. She had an app, which did who knew what, clothing lines, makeup, a tell-all book or two, and any number of other bits and pieces with her name and likeness on it.
So what the ever-loving fuck was a high-class honey like Temple Kennedy doing in a dive in LoDo?
That was the million-dollar question.
Or, actually, shit—a billion-dollar question.
I leaned down and put my face inches from hers, reached out an index finger, brushed her sunshine-and-honey hair out of her face. “So, Temple Kennedy. Think these dick-knobs know who they’ve got in their basement?”
One plucked eyebrow lowered, the other arched upward. “I would assume so.”
She had a little smudge of dirt on her forehead from the floor. I rubbed my thumb over it, gently, wiping it away. She was breathing hard by the time I finished, tension written in every line of her body and face. She did not like my proximity. Funny, most honeys are tripping over themselves to get closer to me. But then, Temple Kennedy was way above even my pay grade.
“See, I don’t think they do.”
She struggled to sit up, but her hands and feet were both bound, her hands behind her back leaving her helpless. Bound hand and foot, and gagged? She must have put up a fight.
“Why wouldn’t they? I assumed they’re kidnappers looking for a ransom.”
I laughed quietly, and then lifted her to a sitting position, keeping a grip on her until she was steady. “Oh, sweetpea, not everything is about you. Unfortunately, the situation is a lot worse than that.”
“Why is it so hard to use my name?” She wavered and I caught her, keeping her upright. “How could it be worse than me being kidnapped? And can you please do something about these restraints? They’re beginning to chafe.”
I crept from corner to corner, rummaging through the detritus, but found nothing useful for severing bonds. Then, I ducked under the stairs, remembering the basement of a foster house I’d stayed in for a bit, how the drunk old bastard had kept an ancient toolbox under the stairs in the basement. Sure enough, I hit the jackpot. In a corner was a rusting Craftsman toolbox filled with screwdrivers, ratchets, a hammer, loose nails, and a pair of wire cutters. I returned to Temple with the wire cutters and knelt behind her.
“Hold still, Fancy, I’m gonna pop these ties.” I clipped between her wrists, and she immediately drew her hands around front and massaged them. “As for how it could be worse? They didn’t snatch me because I was with you, they snatched you because you were with me.”
“I wasn’t with you. I was outside smoking.”
“And I went out after you. They saw you next to me and, as you heard, they had orders not to take chances or leave witnesses.” I moved to her feet, clipped her ankles free. “I’m not sure what they want, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest it ain’t a tickle fight, princess. They got no problem burying you if you cause trouble, trust me on that.
“And if they were to somehow find out who you are, say, if someone was to bust out with a ‘do you even know who I am?’ Baby-cakes…that would not be beneficial. Then they’d not just have a witness, but a hostage, and money to be made, and the guy in charge of this whole mess, he ain’t a nice guy. He’d be the sort to send severed fin
gers to your dad until he got his money. So I’d suggest you keep your mouth shut and follow my lead.”
She paled at that, and considering her pearly complexion, that meant she went really pale. “They wouldn’t.”
I shrugged. “That’s a best guess, since Cain isn’t really my particular enemy, more my boss’s enemy. But since I’m connected to him, they snatched me, and got you in a twofer. And, yeah, honey, they would absolutely hack off your pretty little manicured fingers.”
She was rolling her ankles, trying to get the feeling back, so I took her foot in my hand, slipped off her wedge sandal, and massaged her foot. A low, sultry groan of pleasure left her lips before she could stop herself, but then she yanked her foot back and shot me that glare again.
I let her go, and squatted next to her, watching her try to massage feeling back into her extremities and admiring her tight, toned body. “I happen to think you’ve got beautiful hands, and it’d be a shame to see them come to any harm, so you can relax. I won’t let anything happen to your fingers, or any other part of your fine-ass body.”
“Oh really. There were three of them, in case you didn’t notice.” She said this as if I should be afraid.
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“You were blindfolded, how could you tell?”
I shrugged, smirking. “Counted their voices, their different gaits.”
“And you can take on all three of them, can you?” Skeptical, sarcastic.
I stood up to my full height, which got her attention. I’m six-six and two-eighty, and there’s not an ounce of fat on me. And believe me, she fuckin’ noticed. There was no mistaking the way her eyes raked up and down my body several times, and then she blinked, shook her head, and looked away, those pretty pale cheeks blushing scarlet.
“Yeah, Fancy. I’m thinkin’, they only brought three guys, and that was their second mistake.”
Thresh: Alpha One Security: Book 2 Page 24
