Adrenaline Rush

by C. M. Owens

  “Why the hell is she planning on splitting?” he snaps.

  My jaw tics again as I roll my eyes at my own damn self. “Apparently she’s not quite as oblivious to the world as I pegged her to be.” I finish the next gun and start on another. “She made me this morning.”

  I ignore the string of curses he releases after that as I start strapping down with all the weapons.

  “What now?” I ask him after a beat, even though I know damn well what he’s going to say.

  “If she gets gone, she could disappear for good.” The music cuts out like he’s just closed himself off in a room.

  “Drex?” I hear Eve asking hesitantly.

  “Yeah, it’s me. But keep this fucking door locked when I’m not in here.”

  “The lock broke.”

  “When the hell did it break?”

  “Hate to interrupt this domestic moment you’re having about locking a damn door, but what do you want me to do?” I drawl, hiding my fraying thread of thin patience.

  Drex blows out a heavy breath, telling Eve to hold on a minute.

  Finally, he says, “I think it’s time to bring my sister home. It’s the only thing we can do, because Herrin might find her the next time when I can’t.”

  I finish putting together my final gun a little rougher than necessary.

  “Can you handle that on your own?” he asks.

  “The five hunters won’t be an issue,” I tell him vaguely. “Other than the mess. I’ll need help cleaning that up.”

  “I’ll see if Maya can help out with that. On more than one occasion she’s offered me her ‘cleaning’ crew.”

  I pause, hesitating for a second. “Remind me again what it was like before the club got tangled up with the mafia.”

  He mutters something I miss, but I don’t care enough about it to have him repeat it louder.

  “If Maya can get a cleaning crew out here in time to help me out of this mess, remind me to never piss her off.”

  “I’ll go ask her,” I hear Eve saying.

  Apparently she’s been listening in, or Drex put the phone on speaker. Don’t even get me started on that situation.

  “You didn’t answer me about being able to bring her back. Will that be a problem for you? I still don’t know the extent of how close you two were, but I’m sure she wasn’t real happy to see you if she’s planning to split,” Drex goes on.

  I crack my neck to one side and then the other before responding.

  “She doesn’t know what’s going on, and as far as she’s concerned, she thinks Herrin sent me.”

  The fucker laughs.

  “I guess she doesn’t know just how much you hate Pop.”

  “I was a prospect the last time she saw me in the club. I thought I knew more than her, and I didn’t. Doesn’t matter now,” I answer, muttering the last part.

  After a beat of silence, he responds a little quieter. “Guess not. Things have changed.”

  Things took too damn long to change.

  “I can get her back to Halo. But she’ll definitely be pissed by the time we arrive. How do you plan to keep her there?” I ask him.

  “I plan to give her the one thing she’s wanted for the past seven years,” he answers automatically, causing my lips to twitch. “Are you sure you can handle these guys?” he adds, killing my sliver of a good mood.

  “Stop pissing me off, Drex. I said I can—”

  My words cut off when I see headlights shining through the window.

  I’ve been watching the house and listening to the diner’s audio, because I’m a multitasker like that. All the video footage from the diner is still rolling.

  I watched her lock up thirty minutes ago and walk Julia out to her car. I didn’t miss the fact she had her hand in her purse the whole time like her finger was ready on a hidden trigger.

  “What’s going—”

  “She’s home. Either they’ll come for her here, or they’ll follow her out,” I tell him.

  “Maya said she’d have a crew meet him. Just tell him to turn on his GPS so they can locate him,” I hear Eve saying.

  “It’s already on,” I tell her warily. “Wait, that’s all they fucking need in order to find me?”

  I really hate the motherfucking mafia. They make me feel like a little kid playing with a gun on my bicycle. Dicks.

  “What about more firepower?” I hear Drex asking.

  “Doesn’t work like that. That would take longer to assemble, but cleaning crews are all over and always prepared at a moment’s notice, apparently. I decided not to ask for any more details,” Eve explains.

  My head drops back, and I silently count to ten while staring at the ceiling, as I wait on the two of them to stop forgetting I’m on the fucking phone.

  “Just sayin’, the two of you can chitchat later,” I butt in.

  Hearing the sound of her door closing, my head comes down, and I watch as Kara prances through her house like she’s not in any sort of hurry. Her eyes briefly glance to my house, which isn’t something she usually does. She studies it a moment, moving closer.

  I’ve taken painstaking measures to ensure this place looks abandoned, assuming she had no clue I was over here this entire time. Now I think she’s known I was watching her all along.

  She just didn’t know it was me.

  Since Eve and Drex are still talking to each other, I just hang up the phone and stare back at her, certain she can’t see me.

  “What are you up to, Kara?” I ask on a whisper as I appraise her calculated eyes.

  I was too young to fully appreciate just how calculated she was even as a teenager. She’s truly Herrin’s daughter in that aspect.

  Back then she was young and a little too arrogant to properly execute things with smooth finesse. She’s had seven years to learn from her mistakes, shed her lingering naivety, and plan her next move.

  Seven years to rely solely on herself and learn to hate us all a little more.

  Seven years to become someone completely different.

  Just last year she killed a man—now I know it without a doubt. For all I know, she’s killed several.

  Not surprising, really, but definitely a sharp reminder that I’m not dealing with just some pretty girl with a convincing smile, who also happens to be sprinkled with faux small-town charm.

  She’s a chameleon and knows how to blend in, even when everything about her stands out.

  Kara Caine is a lethal survivor expertly pretending to be a delicate fucking flower. She’s the daughter of Herrin and the sister of Drex. She grew up in a home full of criminals, delinquents, and killers.

  And she never acted afraid.

  Not even once.

  At least not in front of me.

  I have to remind myself of this quite a bit when I think about all the ways this could go wrong. Because she’s more likely to cut my dick off these days than suck it.

  Then she’d probably mail it back to me when she’s three thousand miles away.

  She stops staring into the window, but a suspicious smirk forms on her lips as she turns and walks away. She’s quieter today than usual, so I turn up the volume on the cameras I have in her house. Then I turn on the video feed...when there’s suddenly a blanket over her bedroom window.

  She definitely fucking knows I’m over here.

  My eyes land on the video as she seems to search her room for something, flipping over a snow globe, a jewelry box, and various other small but stationary items.

  “Clever girl,” I say to myself as my smile starts to spread. She’s looking for bugs.

  She even pulls her mattress off, searching through it. The knife in the bedside table gets pulled out before she uses it to rip her mattress down the middle, gutting it.

  Cursing, she runs a frustrated hand through her hair, and she starts searching anew. Her eyes pass over the very discreet camera that is hidden in the eye of her angel figurine.

  “If you’re listening, I’d like to tell you to go fuck yoursel
f,” she says as she flips off the covered window.

  “Done it quite often, baby,” I say to her, grinning when she starts pulling free the guns she has taped to the underside of her bed and dressers.

  She tosses them all in a backpack.

  She turns and kicks a boot against the sheetrock wall so hard it dents it. Then she kicks it again and again...and again.

  When the wall is broken in several places, she easily knocks away the remaining bits that are hanging as she pulls out a second, dust-covered bag and tosses it on her back as well.

  “Now what is that?” I ask as I lean forward, studying the footage closely.

  She climbs to the top of her closet, pulling out cash from up there and rolls it into a bundle, before she puts it into her first backpack.

  For a solid hour, she pulls out hidden things. She doesn’t speak or call anyone, almost as though she thinks I’ll be clueless so long as she’s quiet.

  I guess she’s been out of the game just long enough to miss out on the fact discreet video feed is more frequently used than simple audio.

  Her eyes flick to the angel as though she senses me there, and she tilts her head.

  “Don’t do it, Kara,” I say like she can hear me.

  She starts to go toward it, when her phone rings. Distracted, she turns around and picks it up, reads whatever the text says, and starts packing again.

  I immediately pick up my secondary phone, since I cloned her phone a while back. Her texts are usually boring as hell.

  JULIA: Those guys haven’t been seen anywhere in town since this morning. Warren called.

  I watch Kara peer out her living room window like she’s making sure they’re not sitting right outside on her front lawn.

  I watch as she moves through the hallway and her room without ever passing in front of another window. In fact, she ducks beneath one window and crawls as she makes a pit stop by the garage and tosses the bags into the car.

  I can’t wait to tell her I have cameras all over her house so I can watch her feel stupid for the first time ever. In the past, she was always the one pissing me off so much because of how stupid I felt when she unraveled a scheme in front of me.

  Either she’s gotten terrible at this, or she thinks I’m an idiot.

  After an hour or so, she climbs into the guest bed on the other side of the house where I don’t have a viewing window, not using her purple vibrator for once.

  A small grin turns up at the corners of my lips as I grab a bag of zip-ties, eyeing them.

  “This will be the worst road trip ever,” I say to myself as I grab what essentials I need.

  Propping up, I sit down on my chair, since it looks like it’s going to be a long night.

  Her phone rings, and I pick up my earbud, putting it in so I can listen to both sides of the conversation.

  “You weren’t in bed yet, were you?” Julia asks.

  “No,” Kara immediately tells her. “Something wrong?”

  “I forgot to get your paycheck out of the office, and I also forgot the deposit drops for the day. Can you meet me at the diner?”

  “Right now?” Kara groans.

  Clicking the mouse, I flip to the diner’s feed, seeing all is quiet in the parking lot. Warren is actually sitting out there in his usual spot, watching for speeders near the one red light. He’s there most nights.

  “I’m on my way there right now. I can drop your check off if you’re going to be up a while,” Julia goes on.

  “I’ll meet you,” Kara says around a yawn.

  Her things are in the car, so I can hazard a guess that she somehow set this up when she walked Julia out to the car, using one of the locations where I can’t hear her.

  She dresses quickly and puts the phone in her pocket before walking out to her car. She looks through the garage window like she’s waiting to see if I’m going to immediately follow.

  I doubt she’s going to the damn diner.

  And I really doubt she’s going to let me follow her.

  She’s up to something.

  “I’m not the same dumb guy I used to be, babe,” I tell her, even though she can’t hear me.

  Lifting my phone, I dial Drex.

  “What’s going on?” he asks me.

  “She’s up to something,” I state warily.

  “What’s going on?” he asks again as Kara leaves the garage door open and jogs back in, grabbing a bottle of water and her purse.

  “I’m not sure yet. But something,” I tell him as I tug my jeans into place.

  My eyes stay fixed on the screen, and I watch as she leans into the fridge like she’s searching for something to eat too.

  In the next instant, my stomach roils, because suddenly five figures clad in black burst into the kitchen from out of nowhere.

  She doesn’t even see them, and I curse as I leap up from the chair when the first one grabs her by her hair and slings her against the wall.

  Racing through my house, I burst out of the back door, sprinting toward hers. My gun is drawn as I slam into the back door. It creaks but doesn’t break.

  Silence is on the other side, and my throat bobs as panic tries to claw its way into every piece of me. With kick after kick, I manage to knock the door down, and stumble into...nothing.

  The fridge door is closed. There’s no sign of a scuffle in the dining room. Gun still drawn, I check room after room, finding nothing but utter silence.

  My hand shaking, I pick up my phone, viewing the footage of the house, screen by screen, to see what I can find. A chill slithers over me when I see her still being attacked in the kitchen.

  The kitchen where no one is...

  She’s being tossed into the counter right now, and one of them swings his fist, knocking her in the cheek. But it looks...fake.

  Because it fucking is fake, you stupid fucking idiot.

  Cursing, I throw open the door to the garage, and find the bay door still lifted and her car gone.

  A humorless laugh slips out of me, as I stop panicking and start growing really fucking pissed.

  I’m even more pissed when a damn smile spreads over my lips, and I wipe it away as the frustration builds. I forgot what it felt like to admire her and hate her for making me feel like a motherfucking idiot.

  She did all this to set up a damn distraction?

  Lifting my phone to my ear, I call Drex, pausing next to her room when I notice a bright pink poster board hanging above her bed.

  My jaw grinds as Drex answers the phone.

  “What’s happening? You need the cleaning crew?” he asks instead of just answering the phone.

  “No cleanup crew necessary,” I bite out. “Your sister has gotten a little better at her games.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means she set me up. Set me up real damn good and reeled me in. She left us both a note,” I tell him. “And Herrin got a note as well.”

  My eyes stay focused on the bright pink sign that has a daisy drawn on it, and in the center of the daisy is the word cocksucker. Right beside it, is a note that simply states, Fuck you, Rusty Asher, you club whore. And behind that is, Daddy’s little girl will kill him before he kills her, because she’s not a little girl anymore.

  “What’re the notes?” Drex asks as I throw the angel camera across the room, breaking it open.

  How the hell did she do this?

  “I’ll send you a fucking picture,” I tell him as my eyes land on a computer in her room.

  I move to see the screen, watching as the staged fight takes a nasty turn and the guys fake-shoot her through the chest.

  The blood is over-the-top red, and the spray is ridiculous.

  “Why a picture?” Drex asks.

  My lips curve in a small grin as I dart my gaze back over to the poster board, eyeing the cocksucker daisy the longest.

  I snap a picture and send it to him from my other phone, and listen as he snorts, signaling he’s seen it.

  “Rusty? I thought your re
al name was Rush. Why is—”

  “I meant for you to pay more attention to the cocksucker daisy drawing. How does Kara Caine know about a tattoo you got since she left?” I point out.

  He grows quiet for a second.

  “If she knows about that, then she probably knows about our split with Pop,” he finally says.

  “I don’t think so. She seemed to think I was with Herrin—” A rumble of laughter from him interrupts me, but I keep on talking. “And she left a note for Herrin, assuming I’d be reporting to him. I’m going to find her.”

  “How? Do you have any idea which direction she went?” Drex asks.

  “She’d go the one direction she’d think I’d never look for her. South.”

  “That’s a great guess, but how are you going to find her?”

  I pick up the other phone. “Because I doubt she knows we have new friends who can track GPS and all that good stuff. And you’re going to owe Maya yet another favor. The rest will be easy, because one thing I can do better than Kara is drive fast.”

  I can practically feel his smile.

  “Do me a favor,” Drex tells me.

  “Tell me what you want, and I’ll decide if I want to do it or not.”

  “Don’t let my sister kill you before you tell her we were wrong. About everything.”

  Gripping the phone a little tighter, I tuck her laptop under my arm and carry it with me as I walk out, hanging up on Drex in the process.

  One thing I know Kara Caine won’t do is kill me.

  Otherwise, she’d have done it before she left.

  Another thing I know is that I won’t be admitting I was wrong about anything until she admits she was wrong first.

  I doubt that will happen after I kidnap her, tie her up, and try not to wring her damn neck.

  Chapter 4

  KARA

  “Again, don’t worry about the paycheck,” I tell Julia as I step out of my car, leisurely walking toward the all-night diner just an hour outside of town.

  I stop at the blue car in the lot, unlock it with the spare fob I have, and toss my things into the back.

  “Well, alright. I’m done at the diner, so I’m going home. Be careful on your trip,” she tells me as I lock up the car and head into a different diner than the one she’s leaving.