by Tijan
Even with the adrenaline still racing and the anger still present, I force myself to sit back in the car, listening to the dull thuds coming from the trunk.
I shouldn’t have done that. What the fuck was I thinking?
I put cuffs around her wrists, her ankles too, and then gagged her to keep any more screams for help from crying out between those beautiful lips of hers.
I backed my car into her garage and dealt with the kicks and her feeble attempt to fight back as I forced her into the tight space.
I can only imagine what she’s thinking with the handcuffs digging into her wrists as she’s trapped, dark and alone and having no idea what’s going to happen.
Thump. The sound reminds me—I shouldn’t have done that shit.
Her garage door opens with an abrupt, jerky motion and then slowly rises, bringing with it a vision of the suburban street, lit by the warm glow of the inevitable evening. A sarcastic huff leaves my lips as I pull away, gently stepping down on the gas and blending in.
Knowing she’s bound and gagged in the trunk, unable to do a damn thing until I decide what to do with her, time slips by as I drive down her street, thinking about how the hell I’m going to fix this shit.
The second I give her freedom again, she’ll go to the cops, which is fine, since they’re in our back pocket.
Every way I look at this, I know she’s going to have to go. A threat is a threat is a threat. I underestimated her, but now that I know what she’s willing to do, there’s no excuse for keeping her alive.
No reason except for that look in her eyes.
The blinker ticks as I round the corner, turning right out of her neighborhood and down the main drag. I’m not taking her to the back of The Red Room. I don’t want a damn soul to know about her pulling out a weapon. She’s merely a nuisance, nothing more.
No one can know. If they find out and I don’t silence her, they will.
“Call Seth.” I give the command and instantly the cabin of the sedan fills with the sound of a phone ringing. Before it finishes the second ring, Seth answers.
“Boss,” he greets me.
“I need you to do something.”
“I’m listening.” I can hear the shuffle of papers in the background and then it goes quiet on the other line.
“Drive out to the address you gave me yesterday. You know which one?” I ask him and keep my words vague. I’m careful not to risk a damn thing, not when calls can be recorded and used against me.
“Of course,” he answers and I can practically see him nodding his head in the way that he does. Short and quick, with his eyes never leaving mine.
“I went over there and I may have made a mess.”
“Just clean it up?” he asks. “Anything in particular to look out for?”
“The hinge on her door broke, and there’s a bullet hole in her ceiling, but everything’s fine otherwise. No one will be there, so lock it on your way out.” A thought hits me as I get closer to my own home and my fingers slide down to my house key, dangling from the ignition. “I’m going to need you to make me a copy of a key too.”
“For the address I gave you yesterday?” he clarifies and I nod while answering, “Yes.”
“Anything else?” he asks and I’m silent for a moment, thinking about the next step and the one after it.
Seth is a fixer. Every fuckup I make, or better yet, any fuckups from my brothers, he cleans up. He’s also my right-hand man when I want to keep things from Carter.
“If anyone asks or comes looking, let them know you were hired to fix it.”
“No problem.”
Thump, thump, THUMP! My gaze lifts to the rearview mirror as I listen to Beth trying to escape. The trunk can’t be opened from the inside; she’ll learn I’m smarter than that. She caught me off guard once, but it won’t happen again.
Bethany
My heart won’t stop racing. It’s pounding hard and fighting back from inside my chest; I can’t imagine I’ll survive this.
It’s throbbing so loud, it takes me a moment to realize the car’s stopped. The hum of the engine has vanished and there isn’t a damn sound other than my own chaotic heartbeat.
I hear a crunch, I think, and my head whips around to the side, so sharply it sends a bolt of pain down my already aching shoulder. Traveling up and down my shoulders is a dull fire that blazes. Between the way I was forced in here, practically thrown in, and lying on my arms with them cuffed behind my back, my shoulders are in absolute agony. The metal bites into my wrists and ankles, and I know I’ll have bruises on my knees from slamming them as hard as I could into the top of the trunk. My entire body is cramping.
Every trunk has a latch somewhere on the inside. It’s to save children from being locked within and trapped. I know because I once played hide-and-seek with my sister and tried to get in the trunk, only to have my mother scream at me. She said it was dangerous, and the neighbor girl we were playing with told my mother what her mother had told her. That there was a latch on the inside. Sure enough, there was. My mother still didn’t let me hide in the trunk though and after she grabbed me by the hand and brought me inside, I didn’t want to play anymore.
Since being dumped in here, I’ve spent all my energy maneuvering through the pain to search for the latch. I can’t fucking find it. So I resorted to bucking my body in a desperate attempt to force the trunk open or to kick out a taillight. Anything. Anything at all to get the hell out of here.
No luck. And now it’s too late.
It’s funny what you think of while you’re waiting for the inevitable. Maybe it’s a coping mechanism, a way to take your mind elsewhere when darkness is looming. Or maybe my memory was simply triggered by the lack of a handle and how I learned such a thing should be here because of hide-and-seek. Maybe that’s why as I close my eyes and listen for something, for anything at all, my mind takes me elsewhere. I hear my sister call my name down the hall of our childhood home.
I’m in the closet upstairs, and it’s so hot. I buried myself under all the blankets my mother stored on the floor in there and carefully laid them on top of me, hoping that when Jenny opened the door, searching for me, she wouldn’t see me.
She was always better than me at everything—every game, every sport, every class. But today, when she opened that door, and I waited with bated breath, she closed it and continued silently searching the house.
With the smugness to keep me company, I stayed there under those blankets and I must have fallen asleep. It was Jenny’s voice that woke me and when I came to, I felt so hot. I was absolutely drenched in sweat and the blankets felt so much heavier than they did before.
“Jenny,” I cried out for her, feeling an overwhelming fear that didn’t seem to make sense, but I knew I needed to get out from under the blankets. I couldn’t shove them forward though, the door was closed and I couldn’t lift them up because a shelf was above me. “Jenny!” I cried out again. Louder this time, as I tried to wiggle my way free under the weight of the pile. I didn’t have to free myself alone though; Jenny opened the door and helped me out, telling me I was okay all the while and when I did crawl out into the hallway, I knew I was okay, but it didn’t feel like I was.
I never hid there again. I don’t think I ever played hide-and-seek again at all.
There’s another loud crunch, and another. My eyes pop open and suddenly I am very much in the present, leaving the memory behind. I’m listening to the sound of shoes walking along small pieces of gravel maybe. The beating in my chest intensifies and I can’t breathe as I hear the steps get closer. I even squeeze my eyes shut, wishing I could make myself disappear, or go somewhere else. Like I used to do when I was a child. As if this could all just be a dream or I had somehow gained impossible abilities.
I would try to scream, but the balled-up shirt in my mouth is already threatening to choke me as every small movement sends it farther into my mouth. Any farther, and I think I’ll throw up.
When the trunk swings open
so loud that my instincts force me to look up, the light’s bright, almost blinding.
I wish I could beg; I wish I could yell. I wish I could fight back when I see him towering over me and taking his time to consider me.
“That looks like it hurt,” he says as if he finds it funny. The words come out with condescension as he reaches down to let his fingertips glide over my already bruised knees. Even the small movement makes me buckle, forcing my weight back onto my shoulders and it starts a series of aches cascading throughout my body all over again.
The agony begs me to cry, but in place of tears, I find myself screaming the words, “Fuck you,” over the gag in my mouth. The soft cotton nearly touches the back of my throat, and for a moment I think, if I were to vomit right now, I’d choke on it.
I won’t die like this. Not like this.
My gaze doesn’t leave his as he angles his head, reaching up to grip the hood of the trunk with both of his hands. The sun’s gone down and wherever we are, there are trees. Lots of trees.
Staring up at him, searching for a clue as to where we are, it’s hopeless. Yellow light slips through the crisp dead leaves above us, giving way to a deep blue sky that’ll soon turn to black night, and there isn’t a damn thing else to see.
Nothing but his handsome face, and the way his broad shoulders pull that jacket a little too tight.
Let him think you’ve given up. Don’t die like this. Use him. Use him to find out what happened to your sister.
The voice in my head comes out as a hiss. And with the reminder of Jenny, tears prick at my eyes. Through the glossy haze, I see the man’s expression change. Jase’s hardness, his cockiness, it all dims to something else.
My breathing slows, and the adrenaline wanes.
My fight isn’t over, but I’ll give in for now.
“We’re going to have a conversation, Bethany.” Jase’s words sound ominous and they come with a cold gust of wind from the late fall air. Both send a chill down my spine and leave goosebumps in their wake.
“Nod if you understand.” His hardened voice rises as he gives me the command. Loathing him and everything he stands for, I keep perfectly still, feeling the rage take over anything else. His eyes blaze with anger as he grips the hair at the nape of my neck, pulling my head back with a slight sting of pain and forcing me to look at him. “You need to play nice, Bethany.” If I could punch him in the throat right now, I would. That’s how nice I’m willing to play.
He lowers his head into the darkness of the trunk, sending shadows across his face that darken his stubbled jaw and force his piercing gaze to appear that much more dominating.
A heat flows in my blood as my breathing stutters and he brings his lips down to my neck. They gently caress my skin and with the simple touch, a spark ignites down my body. A spark I hate even more than I hate Jase himself.
His next words come with a warm breath and another tug at the base of my skull as he whispers, “You’re going to listen to me, Bethany. You’re going to do what I tell you… everything I tell you.” The way he says the word everything dulls the heat, replacing it with fear, and for the first time, I truly feel it down to my bones. Standing up a little straighter, but still keeping his grip on me, he asks with a low tone devoid of any emotion, “We’re going to have a conversation, isn’t that right?” He loosens his grip on the back of my neck as he waits for my response.
I wish his gorgeous face was still close to mine, so I could slam my head into his nose.
With a tremor of fear running through me and that image of him rattling in my head, I nod.
As a small smile drifts along his lips and he nods his head in return, I welcome the cold gust that travels into the trunk.
He may think he can use me, but I swear to everyone, living and dead, I’ll be the one using him.
Bethany
Hope is a long way of saying goodbye.
I told that to Jenny a few weeks ago. No, it was longer than that. It doesn’t matter when, because by then, I’d lost my faith in her. Disappearing for days on end and talking about a man who had what she needed … my sister was never going to get help. I begged her to come back home, and she just shook her head no, and told me to hold on to hope.
I wanted her to stay with me. To get better.
I could have helped her, but you can’t help those who don’t want to be helped.
I can still feel her fingers, her nails just barely scratching the skin down my wrist as I ripped my hand away.
The memory haunts me as I think in this moment – this terrifying moment of waiting for his next move - I think, I need to have hope that it’s not over. I need to have hope that I can get the fuck away from this man. That I can make him pay if he had any part in her death. Jase Cross will fucking pay.
The last thought strengthens my resolve.
“You’ll be quiet,” he tells me as if he’s certain of it, a hint of a threat underlying each syllable, and I nod.
I nod like a fucking rag doll and try not to show how much it hurts when he rips the duct tape off my face in one quick tug. The stinging pain makes me reflexively reach for my mouth, but I can’t; that act only exacerbates the cuts in my wrists, still cuffed behind my back. I try not to heave when he pulls the wet cloth from my mouth, finally giving me the chance to speak, to scream, to fucking breathe.
My body trembles; it’s not from a cold breeze or the temperature though, and not from the fear I know is somewhere inside of me. Instead it’s from the anger.
His eyes stay fixed on mine as he reaches down and lifts me into his chest before heaving me over his shoulder.
My teeth grit as he slams the trunk shut, turning to the side and giving me a view of a forest. All I see is a gravel drive and trees. So many trees. My heart gallops, both with that tinge of fear and with hope. I could run.
Fuck that.
I’m not running. I’m not giving up this chance to find out more about the family name I’ve heard so much about lately.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I see my sister, and I hear her too. The Cross brothers, she whispers. She mentioned them so many times on the phone. He knew her. Or one of his brothers did.
As time stands still while I wait for the verdict I’m about to receive and what this man has in store for me, I remember the week my sister first went missing. I started with Miranda to try to figure out where my sister had gone. It made the most sense because Jenny told me she’d crash at a friend’s place whenever we got into a fight. Miranda and she were close. But Miranda didn’t have any idea what happened to her, only that she went out for drinks at The Red Room before she disappeared, a place I’d heard Jenny mention before. A place I knew I was headed to next.
All I had were two names and a single location. One name, Marcus, proved elusive—no one had any information on him at all. Not a single person inside The Red Room had any idea who he was. They wanted a last name, and I didn’t have one. He was a dead end.
I’d spent hours at that bar, waiting for something. Waiting for anything. Any sign of her, or for anyone who knew them. Everyone knew of Jase, but no one knew him. They couldn’t tell me anything about him. Nothing more than the dirt I dug up online.
They said he was one of the Cross brothers. The owner of The Red Room.
They said you don’t cross a Cross; they laughed when they said it, like it was funny. Nothing was funny to me then.
And when two men appeared from the back of the club, heading toward a side entrance, the woman next to me pinched my arm and pointed as the side door was opened for them.
“Those are the Cross brothers,” she said and then bit down on her bottom lip as she sucked it into her mouth. She was skinny like a model, with the straightest black hair I’d ever seen. Her icy blue eyes never left the two of them and I stared at her for far too long, missing my chance to catch the Cross brothers. The thick throng of people kept me from making it to them, and by the time I got outside, they were nowhere in sight.
I stalked th
at place for four days straight, waiting for Jenny to show up. An aching hollowness in my heart reminds me how it felt, sitting there alone at the bar, praying she’d walk up to me or someone would message me that they found her.
It was late on that last night, and hopelessness was counting on me to give up so it could take over, but I never would.
It was 1:00 a.m.; I remember it distinctly because I had an early shift the next morning, and I kept thinking I wouldn’t make it through my twelve-hour shift if I stayed out any later.
All the time I’d spent in the bar hadn’t given me any new information. Countless hours had been wasted, but I didn’t know what else to do or where else to go.
It was that night I got a better view of Jase. Only his silhouette, but it grabbed my attention and held me in place. The strength in his gaze, accompanied with a charming smile. He was handsome and beautiful even. I remember thinking he was the kind of man who could lure you in so easily and you wouldn’t know what hit you … until he was gone. He had that pull to him, a draw that made you want to go to him just to see if he’d look your way.
He came and he went and I sat on that stool, knowing my sister wasn’t coming.
That was then. This is now.
A grunt of pain slips from me as he hoists me up higher on his shoulder, one hand wrapped around my waist to keep my body from falling backward, and the other hand swinging easily at his side.
Every step hurts, and the agony tears through me with my hands still restrained behind my back. Biting down on my bottom lip, I don’t scream, and I don’t try to fight him. Not like this.
I’ll be good until I’m uncuffed. Then this fucker will get what he has coming to him.
His hand splays on my ass, immediately heating my core as I hear the jingle of keys. Craning my neck, I get the first view of where he’s taken me.
A house in the forest. A big fucking house, to boot. It’s three stories with white stone leading all the way up. My body reacts on its own; the need to run takes over, as if I could still run, cuffed like I am.
