Thia
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The sound of a pipe leaking echoed in my ears, dragging me slowly back into reality.
Handcuffs bit into my wrists. My arms strained above my head as I hung from a pipe that ran across the ceiling. When I could no longer hold myself up, my muscles gave out with a pop as my joints painfully dislocated. My chin fell to my chest. Wide tape covered my mouth, wrapped around the back of my head, pulling on my hair every time I turned my head. With one nostril stuffed up I felt dizzy, barley able to get enough oxygen through the other.
My vision blurred as I tried to focus on my surroundings. Grey. Concrete. An open ceiling with pipes and wires. Nothing on the bare walls. A metal cage in the far corner. In the center of the small room was a blue tarp. Next to the tarp was a red toolbox with a yellow electric drill set on top. It was all so clean.
Sterile.
I pulled on the cuffs above my head with a newfound strength I didn’t have seconds earlier. My legs flailed around uselessly in mid air as I struggled against my restraints.
The door opened and Gus entered the room. When I first met him in the park he’d protected Bear and myself. I’d even thought he was cute in a chubby-cheeked best friend kind of way.
That Gus wasn’t who walked into the room, though. This Gus looked up at me as I dangled from the ceiling, like I was a steak and he was a hungry lion who hadn’t eaten in months.
“I really wish it could be me who gets to have all the fun with you today, but you see, little one, I have to continue playing the role of loyal soldier, so unfortunately for me, I had to call in a substitute.” He stepped up to me and I braced for whatever it was he was about to do, my heart hammering in my chest.
The tape being pulled off was painful, but it passed quickly and I was finally able to take deep breaths. Gulping for air as if I’d been drowning. “Why do this at all?” I asked, after finally being able to catch my breath. “Me, Bear, the MC? Why?”
“I don’t ask why. I do what I’m told. Asking why is not my job.”
“Then what is your job? Who hired you?”
Gus covered my mouth with his hand and pressed his forehead to mine. My stomach rolled. “That doesn’t matter. All that matters now is what’s about to happen to you. My advice? Give into the pain. Enjoy it. The human body is a fascinating machine, and although I don’t get to do it myself, I’ll be watching the video later and I’m sure watching that machine come apart is going to be nothing short of spectacular.” He let go of my mouth and set the tape back in place. “Although I’m sure Bear is not going to love it as much as I will. He doesn’t appreciate the beauty in it, like I do.”
He stuck out his fat tongue and licked my face from my jaw to my eye, and my stomach rolled again and this time I tasted the bile rising in my throat.
Gus stepped back and took one last lustful look at me. “Such a shame, little one.” Before he left the room, he adjusted a camera I hadn’t noticed next to the door. A red light came on. “Maybe, I’ll stay. Just for the first part,” he said, opening the door. “We’re ready,” he called out, and a blond man appeared in the room, shutting the door behind him. He was shirtless, cut and muscular, black and grey tattoos covered one of his arms and all of his chest.
“I don’t like cameras,” the blond man said, tapping the wrench he was holding against his palm over and over again as he looked me up and down.
Gus was evil.
But this guy, with his classic good looks, was the fucking devil.
His eyes were black and glowing like a demon in a movie and I realized there was no getting out of this. My fate had been sealed. With every step the devil took toward me, the fear I felt increased higher and higher until I hoped I’d die of a heart attack before this lunatic could carry out whatever sick plan he had for me.
The devil set the wrench down by the toolbox and pulled his shoulder length hair on top of his head and tied it with an elastic. He bent his head from side to side, making a sickening cracking sound. He did the same with his knuckles.
Then, he came for me.
While Gus looked on like he was lusting after my blood, the blond devil looked natural. In his element.
Possessed.
He reached up and unhooked one of the cuffs, catching me before I fell to the concrete floor. My arms still raised above my head as they’d become completely useless and disjointed. “Nooooooo!” I tried to scream behind the tape, tears ran out the side of my eyes. He carried me to the tarp and laid me on top of it, binding my ankles together with the tape.
“You can take the tape off. No one can hear her out here,” Gus said. “Start with the teeth. They’re the most painful.”
“Why are you still here?” the devil asked. I was shaking so hard I could hear my jaw rattling.
“Just wanted to watch the fun start.”
“I don’t do audiences,” the devil said adamantly.
“Come on, man, just one tooth. Then I’ll leave,” Gus whined.
“Do it yourself then,” the devil said. Standing up, he tossed him the wrench. Gus’s face lit up and he practically ran over to me. Crouching down by the toolbox he lifted out a metal contraption.
“Just one, and then I gotta go,” Gus said. Ripping the tape off my mouth, he pried it apart using pressure points on the roof of my mouth to force me to comply.
It wasn’t the first time he’d done this.
The blond devil stepped back and looked down at us with an annoyed look on his face. He was obviously pissed that Gus was taking his sick work away from him. “I got shit to do so hurry the fuck up,” he snapped.
“I’d love to take my time, little one. But this is going to have to do.” He pushed the wrench into my mouth and clasped onto one of my molars. He didn’t just start to yank on it, he started pulling slowly, building the pain, setting each nerve on fire, prolonging the inevitable as he pulled harder and harder until I felt as if my entire jaw was being ripped from my skull. I screamed so loud my chest hurt. Warm copper flooded my mouth.
Gus sat back, his chest heaving up and down. My bloodied molar between the tongs of his wrench. “That was fucking fantastic.”
“Great. Now get the fuck out or I’m leaving,” the blond devil spat.
“Fine,” Gus said, standing up and setting the wrench down on the tarp. “Just make sure she screams, she was adamant about that.” The devil nodded and knelt down next to me again, picking through the toolbox. I started to choke as the blood dripped down my throat. He pushed my head to the side so the blood could run out of my mouth, the spreader bar painfully tearing into the flesh inside of my mouth.
How could someone so beautiful be so evil? I thought, but then I remembered something Bear had said.
He looks like sunshine. Blond hair and blue eyes. The kind of looks you’d see on one of them TV shows all the teenagers like these days. But that kid’s got the devil in him. Only human lives he values are his wife Abby’s and now his kid’s. Jake’s the only person in the world who scares the shit out of me. You know, besides you.
It was my only chance. It had to be him. One of the tattoos on his chest was the name Bee. Maybe short for Abby? “Jake,” I said. But I was tired, so very tired, and with the spreader in my mouth it sounded like, “Gggggggech.”
He ignored me and shuffled through his toolbox and that’s when I realized it was over.
I was going to die.
I love you Bear.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Thia
When Jake turned back around he was holding a box cutter. He looked from me to the instrument in his hand. He slid his thumb up and down on the handle and watched the blade as it retracted again and again, as if he were in some sort of trance.
“Air Air!” I screamed, trying to shout Bear’s name to Jake, but it was too late. There was no decision to be made. My fate had been sealed. There was no drawing him back from whatever murderous place he’d gone.
A car backfired somewhere outside, or maybe a motorcycle. Whatever it was, it got Jake’s attention. The creases on his forehead relaxed, and his eyes focused. He dropped the box cutter to the floor. With an angry roar he pulled a gun from his jeans and cocked it.
“Noooooooo!” I screamed, trying to roll away from him like there was somewhere I could go. Somewhere I could hide.
There wasn’t.
He fired, the sound of the shot echoing through the room like a shrill scream in a cave, ringing my ears. I waited for the pain. Or the nothingness.
It never came.
“Shut the fuck up,” Jake whispered, and it was only then I realized I was still screaming. He looked over his shoulder toward the door and paused, listening for something. I noticed the camera had been the target of Jake’s shot. “Fuck!” he said, running his hand through his hair.
He lowered himself next to me, his mouth close against my ear and I tried to roll away again. “Do what I say.”
I stilled. Why was he whispering?
“Gus hasn’t left yet,” he continued. “That fucker is waiting in the other room to make sure I’m going to follow through. I am going to hurt you. Scream. It helps. I promise.”
What the fuck?
“Okay?” he asked. I nodded, oddly trusting the man who was now holding the same wrench Gus had just used to pull my tooth out.
It’s not like I had any other options.
“The louder you scream, the more satisfied he will be and the sooner he’ll leave.” Jake pushed the wrench into my mouth and clamped it around another molar. Tears ran down my face in anticipation of the pain.
“Scream as loud as you can, because if you don’t he’ll just stay longer and I’ll have to take more teeth.” He paused. “And do God only knows what the fuck else.”
Screaming wouldn’t be a problem.
He yanked, and I screamed as he ripped another tooth from my mouth, flooding it with more blood. But unlike Gus, it was over almost instantly, almost painlessly. “Keep screaming,” he whispered, long after the tooth had been extracted, so I did, until my lungs burned. Until my vision blurred.
The door opened and Gus stepped back into the room.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Jake asked, picking up the drill and selecting a bit from the toolbox. Blood from my mouth dripped down his hand. I continued to scream although no sound came out.
“I was about to leave, but I wanted to make sure you were doing your job. Wanted to make sure the rumors weren’t true about you going soft.” Gus said, taunting Jake.
“You want to finish this? Finish it. Fuck it. I don’t need this bullshit,” Jake snapped. He stood, and on his way out the door, he tossed something to Gus who held up my bloody tooth with a look of approval. A phone rang and Gus answered. “Yes. He’s got it all handled,” he said into the phone. Jake stopped and turned back around. “I’m on my way, now,” Gus said, hanging up. “She’s all yours,” Gus said. He was about to close the door when he spied the camera in pieces on the floor.
He looked to the camera and then Jake, narrowing his eyes. The look lingered and anyone else would have crumbled under the scrutiny, but not Jake. He just shrugged. “Told you I don’t fucking like cameras.”
“So much for watching the fucking replay,” Gus muttered, closing the door and again leaving me alone in the room with Jake.
Jake walked over to the only window in the room, which had been painted over with black paint. He crouched down and looked out from the corner of the window where a chunk of glass was missing. “Scream,” he ordered, and so I did. When he was satisfied that Gus had left, he waved me off to stop.
When he came back over to me and leaned down with the drill still in his hand, I flinched and again tried to roll away, but he held me by my chin, ripping the spreader bar from my mouth. The fresh holes in the back of my jaw throbbed. My jaw ached. I spit blood onto the tarp when he sat me up.
Jake separated the chains of my cuffs with a pair of bolt cutters. “I don’t have the keys,” he explained.
“I can’t move my shoulders,” I said. “I think they’re dislocated. I don’t know how long I was hanging there.”
“This is going to hurt,” Jake said, crouching down behind me. Without warning he pushed my arms down and back. This time I didn’t need any prompting to scream. “Roll your shoulders,” he ordered.
I did as he said and instantly the pain started to subside. “How—” I started, but Jake shook his head.
“No time for questions. Here,” he said, handing me a bottle of vodka. “Swish this around in your mouth.”
The vodka burned as it entered the new gaping holes in the back of my mouth. I don’t know if he intended for me to spit it out or swallow it but I swallowed. “More,” he said, pushing the bottle back into my hand. I took another long pull and swished it around. It burned less the second time around.
Jake pulled out his phone and pressed a few buttons before shoving it back in his pocket. “We have to go. Now. Can you walk?”
“I’m not sure.”
“No time to figure it out,” Jake said, lifting me into his arms. “Stay quiet. I mean it. Not a sound.” He carried me effortlessly out the door and down a flight of steps. When he kicked open a back door, I’d never been so happy to be met with the wet heat of the stagnant night air. A black van was waiting.
A minivan.
The automatic door slid open as we approached. Jake set me across the middle row of seats. He pulled out his phone and pressed a number. “Fuck. Bear’s not answering.” He leaned into the van. “I’m going to the MC. Take her to King’s and don’t stop anywhere, you got it?”
“Who are you talking…?” I asked.
“He was talking to me,” a feminine voice said. A girl turned around in the driver’s seat. Long, straight, red hair framed her perfectly round, pale face. Both of her arms were heavily tattooed with colorful yet feminine colors, one arm rested over a hugely rounded pregnant belly. “I’m Abby.”
I groaned as I sat up. My head spun. I looked to Jake. “But I’m going with you, Jake. And we have to go now. Bear went to the MC. It’s a trap,” I said as my adrenaline started to take over, muting the pain in my arms. There were more pressing matters than pain.
“No,” Jake said simply, and started to walk away.
“Wait!” I said, but it didn’t matter what I said because he wasn’t coming back.
“Jake?” Abby called out, and immediately Jake circled back and ducked his head inside the van. “My water sort of just broke.”
After those words I ceased to exist.
Jake jogged over to the driver’s side and much to my surprise he lifted Abby out of the van and carried her over to his bike, setting her down on the seat and getting on behind her. “Take the van,” Abby called out to me with a calm smile. Jake muffled her words by setting his helmet on her head, and she rolled her eyes and laughed. He started the engine and tossed me a gun. With one hand on the handlebars and one hand on Abby’s belly, they took off.
There wasn’t a second to waste. God only knew what the hell Gus was up to or why, all I knew was that I had to get to Bear before Chop or Gus did.
Our story, it wasn’t over yet.
It couldn’t be.
I’d come so far.
Bear had come so far.
We’d both been through so much.
Too much.
We deserved our chance at life. At love. At figuring out what any of this meant.
It was far from a romance.
But it was still a love story.
And it was ours.
I was going to stop at nothing until we had our happy ending.
I used the cell phone sitting in the center console to call Bear, but just like when Jake tried earlier there was no answer. I ended the call and made one more as I drove to the MC at breakneck speed. There wasn’t anyone or anything in this world that was going to keep us apart, including the chained gate at the entrance of the MC, which is why I slammed my foot down on the gas pedal…and drove right through it.
I wasn’t about to let Bear die.