by Evie Monroe
Cullen shook his head. “No. Like I said. It’s their problem. Leave it.”
We all stared at it. Just then, the thing twitched.
“He’s alive,” I said, pulling the blanket off the form. My hand sank into something sticky. Blood?
A second later, I realized I wasn’t right about everything. Because it wasn’t a he. Not with legs like that. And not with glossy blonde hair tumbling like cotton candy. To say nothing of restraints digging into baby-pale skin. She looked like an angel someone had knocked down to Earth.
All at once, her eyes focused on us and she began to moan, a moan that would have been a scream, if not for the gag shoved deep in her mouth.
She was terrified.
And injured. There was a gash on her forehead, and from it oozed a trickle of near-black blood.
“Shit. Shit. Holy shit,” Hart breathed over and over again. He’d never been the most eloquent of men. In fact, he’d always been more of a tech geek, despite the dozens of tattoos he’d accumulated over the years. He may have looked tough, but he was a nerd, through and through. “What do we do?”
Cullen raked his hands through his blond hair. “All right. Get her out of there.”
I frowned at him as the girl continued to make humming noises, her eyes rolling back in her head. “But then what?”
Cullen looked around, for once, at a loss for ideas. “I don’t . . .”
Taking action, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my penknife. Jet was standing there, staring, dumbfounded. Despite the guns, my kid brother was still a baby in so many ways. I nudged him. “Come on. Give me a hand.”
He reached down and lifted her arms so I could slide my blade under the restraint and set her hands free. Zip ties. They broke apart with one cut of the knife. She recoiled, balling her hands into fists, her body tense.
I reached for the cloth in her mouth and started to wrench it free, but it was too tight. She started to struggle, her eyes wild with fear.
“Listen,” I said to her calmly. “We’re not going to hurt you. But you can’t scream. Got it?”
She stopped struggling for a moment, her eyes never ceasing to be any less terrified. She didn’t nod, but I wasn’t just going to let her stay there, gagged.
Carefully, I slid the blade under the fabric near the back of her head and sliced it free. It came loose in my hands, soaked through with sweat and saliva.
And the girl? She began to scream.
“Fuck!” Cullen shouted, scanning the place as Drake and Zain pulled up, wondering what the fuck we were doing here, gathered around the trunk of the car instead of making the trade with Vladimir. “Shut her up.”
But it turned out, I didn’t have to. A second later, her eyes clouded over, her body crumpled, and she fainted, straight into my arms with a gentle sigh.
“She dead?” Jet asked.
“No, asshole. She fainted. Probably from the sight of you.” I lifted her up to my chest as one of her heels fell off. She weighed a little more than a sack of potatoes. The rest of the club was staring at me, so I said, “I know what to do. Get the car to the port. I’ll take care of her.”
Jetson reached down, got her shoe, and laid it on her chest. I started to walk out of the warehouse when Cullen clamped a hand over my arm. He didn’t say a word, but the look in his eyes was enough of a warning. Don’t do anything stupid.
And I intended not to. Right then, I meant to drop her outside a hospital and run. She wasn’t our problem, and I had more important things to do.
But the problem with me was, I didn’t always think with my head.
I’d like to say I was being a good guy and thinking with my heart, but I couldn’t even say I was doing that.
Chapter Two
Olivia
I knew even before I opened my eyes, that something was horribly wrong.
I had the worst headache of my life. Like something was sawing its way out of my skull, right at the temple. My throat was as dry as the desert floor. The blanket over me felt like burlap against my skin. And...what was that smell? Cigarettes, gasoline, and motor oil?
I tore open an eye and looked around through a haze of what had to be cigarette smoke. I was in a small room. Mattress on the floor. Dresser. A chair. Ugly curtains with squiggles on them. Rust-colored, threadbare shag carpeting.
This didn’t look familiar at all. But how did I get here?
I tried to think back to where I’d been before I opened my eyes.
But all I came up with was a big, blank void.
Okay, that was weird. Surely I had to have been somewhere before. I got the feeling that I was the type who was so busy she usually couldn’t remember what she had for breakfast, but this was ridiculous.
I flipped through a card-catalog of memories in my head, but they were all like blank sheets of paper. Not only couldn’t I remember where I’d been, I couldn’t remember...anything. I was...
Who the hell was I? What was I doing here? And how did I get here?
Fear gripped me as I tried to sit up in bed, but gravity and screaming pain pushed me down. Letting out a whimper, I reached my hand to my head and found a big, thick bandage just over my temple.
Oh, my God. I’d been hurt. Had I been in an accident?
I blinked, trying to concentrate. Trying to remember where I’d been before now.
I lifted off the burlap-scratchy blanket and looked down over my body. I was wearing a navy-blue romper and I didn’t know where it came from. My legs poked out from the fabric, covered in scrapes and streaked in dirt. My pink-painted toenails were caked in grime. Though it was painful to move, I twisted around to inspect the rest of my body. No wonder I was sore. Every inch of me was bruised. There was an imprint where my wrists and ankles had been rubbed raw in places. The only explanation I could think of was that I’d been tied up.
Tied up? Oh, no, no, no...
I opened my mouth to scream for someone.
But who? I couldn’t think of a single name.
And though I had no clue where I was, I knew this wasn’t my home.
I sat up in bed, and with effort, scooted to the edge of it and managed to stand. I wavered a bit before I made it to the dresser, then grabbed onto it for dear life. There were a few things strewn on top: a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, an array of coins, some chewing gum—peppermint I noticed. Clearly a man’s room. But which man? None of it looked familiar to me at all.
I opened up the first drawer and saw a pile of black boxer briefs, some socks and, in the corner, a leather wallet. I opened it, then pulled out the first item, which was a California driver’s license for one Phoenix Nash.
Phoenix? What kind of name was that? My eyes trailed over to the picture, and my heart seized in my chest. The man staring back at me looked mean, and intense, and raw, with long dark hair pulled back off his face, chocolate brown eyes, and a short beard. His shoulders were so impossibly broad that they couldn’t fit in the confines of the picture. The card said he was 6’2”.
I wouldn’t date a guy like that, right? Obviously not. I preferred the kind of guy who wore suits. Who...groomed himself, at least.
This guy? He looked like a savage, like a wild guy who’d...kidnap me.
Oh, God. I’d been kidnapped.
I slid the wallet back where I’d found it and noticed something else there.
The black steel barrel of a handgun, tossed carelessly among his underwear.
My first thought was to take it but I chickened out. Didn’t even want to touch it. Guns scared me. I bit down hard on my tongue and slammed the drawer shut so fast that I nearly caught my fingers in it.
I was being held hostage by a crazy thug. Maybe he was a serial killer. He looked like he’d done this before.
My eyes trailed to the door. I inched forward and put my hand on the knob, wondering what I’d see when I twisted it. Would that savage, intense brute of a man be out there? Was he the one who’d given me these bruises? I looked in the mirror over his dresser
. I guessed I was 5’1” on a good day, and barely over a hundred pounds soaking wet. I didn’t see myself winning a smack down with him that was for sure.
I was trapped.
No. Though I could remember nothing about my life—and oh God, why couldn’t I remember anything? I would fight him, no matter what happened.
Gun. I should take his gun. Am I crazy? I’d never shot a gun. What if he took it away from me and killed me?
Shit.
I went to the dresser and took a deep breath, ready to open the drawer when I heard a door slam outside. A low voice said, “Yeah. Got it, Jet. I’ll be there.”
Heart beating like a drum in my chest, I backed away into a corner.
Suddenly, the knob twisted. The door opened.
And that man was standing there.
Huge—that was the first thing I could think. His body filled the door frame, and he had to dip his head to stop from hitting the top. His hair was back off his face and his beard was trimmed, but it was those eyes, bordered by two heavy, deeply arched eyebrows that fell on me and struck me right to the core.
Scary beyond belief. But there was also something...magnetic, too. I couldn’t explain the gentle pull I felt.
Fighting against it, I pushed back against the wall and held up my hands. “Don’t touch me.”
One of those heavy brows lifted in question. Raising his hands in surrender, he stepped into the room and walked to the chair. He was wearing jeans and dirty boots. His white t-shirt stretched across his thick, defined chest, and his arms were corded in muscle and may have been thicker than my thighs. I could make out a sleeve of tattoos stretching up one of his arms, all the way up to his neck.
“Wouldn’t think of it,” he said, his voice the low rasp I’d expected.
He said it as if touching me was the last thing on his mind, as if it disgusted him.
“What do you want with me, then?”
“First, you can start by telling me who you are.”
I’d already decided I wouldn’t answer any of his questions. Not that I knew the answers, anyway. I frowned at him.
“You need to let me go.”
He sat down, legs spread out and open the way guys always sat, and dropped his hands, laced together, between his knees. He motioned with his chin to the open door. “There’s the way out.”
Okay. Now I really was confused. “You mean, I’m free to go?”
He shrugged and slumped more into the chair, spreading his legs out. “Free country.”
“Didn’t you...kidnap me?”
He shook his head slowly. “Nope. But someone did want to hurt you, which is why I found you in the trunk of a car, bound and gagged. So if you want to figure this out, you can start by telling me who you are.”
I stared at him, running his words through my head. Trunk of a car? It all sounded so unbelievable. “You’re kidding. Right?”
“Nope.”
My eyes widened. Someone had bound and gagged me and thrown me into a trunk? Me? For real? I closed my eyes and massaged my temples, trying to remember. Trying to remember anything from my past at all. Nothing came to me.
His narrow eyes narrowed even more. He rubbed at the scruff on his jaw. “Want to start with something easy? Your name, maybe?”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what? Tell me your name?”
I shook my head real slow. I closed my eyes, and reached into the deepest part of me, trying to pull it out. My name. He was staring at me in a brooding, disconcerting way, as well, which made it impossible to think. Not because he was scaring me anymore. No, it was because he was kind of...absurdly hot, in a savage kind of way. “Would you stop looking at me like that?”
He sat back and crossed those thick arms over his chest. “Like how, princess?”
Princess? What the hell. Was I a princess? I pushed back an annoying lock of blonde hair off my face and strands of it got caught in a massive, heavy ring that had a huge jewel on it. Hell. Was I rich? I buried it behind my back. “Don’t call me that.”
He shrugged and looked to the window, which was covered in dirty blinds. I didn’t think it was possible to see anything out of it, but I liked that he was making an effort to do what I told him. So maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all.
I closed my eyes and covered my face in my hands, trying to recall some detail, a tiny little thread of my life that, once pulled, would unravel the whole mystery.
Nothing came.
I cursed under my breath and fisted my hands in frustration. “How did you find me, anyway?”
He shrugged. “You were making noise. And then I popped the trunk, and you were there.”
“Popped the . . .” I gnawed on my lip. “So it was your car?”
He shook his head.
“Whose car was it?”
He pressed his lips together. “If you have to know, princess, I lifted the car.”
“Lifted?” I closed my eyes, trying to think of another meaning of that word. “You mean, stole?”
He nodded.
Okay. This was where I made my exit. Not only was he a serial killer, he stole things. I needed to get out of here as soon as possible. I started toward the door, just as I was overcome by a huge wave of dizziness that knocked me off my feet. I sank to the mattress like my knees were jelly.
I put my head in my hands and took a few deep breaths.
“You okay? You were hit on the head,” he finally said. “Who put you in the trunk?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
“You don’t remember being kidnapped?”
Maybe it was the look of shock on my face that gave him the answer.
“Do you remember anything?”
I slowly shook my head. The news that I’d been in the trunk of a car, kidnapped wiped away all my defenses. He leaned forward, like he was talking to a child, or a broken adult woman. Which would be me.
“Do you remember anything?”
“No.” I answered, trying to remember something, anything about what had happened.
“Like who you are? Your name?”
I couldn’t even breathe at that point.
He whistled out his shock.
“So you have amnesia. Wow.”
He sat back in his chair, engaging in some kind of thought process before he leaned toward me again.
“Listen,” he said. “Your name is Olivia Baxter.”
Olivia Baxter. It sounded like a stranger, like a name I’d never heard of before. That was me?
I scowled at him. “If you knew, why were you asking me? And how did you know that? Did we...do I know you?”
Fear dawned on my face. He caught it and let out a short, amused laugh. He shook his head and went to the dresser. From behind it, he pulled out a small red wristlet. Careful not to get too close, he tossed it over to me. “Your ID’s in there. I was just checking to see what kind of games you were playing.”
I ripped open the zipper on it, annoyed. Jerk could’ve told me that first thing, instead of playing twenty questions. Inside, I found a roll of Life Savers, a folded twenty, and a driver’s license. Sure enough, it said Olivia Amelie Baxter, 212 Cypress Drive Apt A, Aveline Bay, California. The smiling picture of the girl in the ponytail stared back at me, a virtual stranger.
That was me? Yeah, the girl in the mirror.
I dug through the rest of the bag. Nothing else.
I stood up. My muscles begged for mercy as I limped to the door. “Thank you, Mister…?”
“Call me Nix,” he said, standing.
“What kind of name it that?” I muttered.
He didn’t answer, but I could feel his eyes hard on me. Imposing. Commanding. Without a single touch. “Where are you going?”
Where the hell did he think I was going? “You told me I could leave.”
“You can.” He started to follow behind me, and I could tell there was something he wanted to say. When I got into the doorway, he added, “But if I were you, I’d
think twice about it.”
I whirled. “Why?”
“Same reason I didn’t take you to the hospital. Because the men who did this to you are still out there.”
A chill crept up my spine. “Who? What men?” My voice wavered on the last words when I looked down and noticed the ring. I understood at once. If it was random, they would’ve taken my money. My jewelry. “But I don’t have any enemies.”
He came up close to me, so close that all my breath left me. This near, he was so tall, so big that he could have easily crushed me. He smelled nice, like soap. Something stirred low in my abdomen as he reached over and touched the bandage on my forehead.
“Princess,” he said in a throaty voice that vibrated inside me. “I think that you do.”
Chapter Three
Phoenix
I sat back in my chair at the front of Cullen’s living room, looking at the other members of the club.
Living room wasn’t quite right. Cullen lived in a house about five-hundred times the size of my apartment overlooking the bay. He was as rich as fuck, thanks to his millionaire rockstar father who passed away, and had absolutely no need to engage in our side business of lifting rich cars and selling them to the Russians.
The reason he did it? He had fun doing it. He was a bored rich boy with a dangerous streak a mile wide.
We all had a little bit of that dangerous streak, which is why we were brothers.
The six of us always sat up at the head table, presiding over church: Cullen, President, Drake, Treasurer, Hart, Secretary, Jet, Sargent at Arms, and Zain, Road Captain. With the exception of Zain, every Friday night for the past couple of years, we’d congregated here for regular meetings.
When church came to an end, I asked them how the trade had gone.
“Without a hitch.” He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a roll of hundred dollar bills, which he handed to me. My cut.
I pocketed the money.
“I’d call that girl a hitch,” Jet pointed out. “A big one.”
“She didn’t fuck with the trade, though. So all’s good,” Cullen said, taking a swig of his beer and looked at me. Was it just me or was there suspicion in his eyes? “Did you dump the girl?”
