“We got something big going down, Bubba.”
The sound of his little brother using his old nickname elicited a pang in his chest. He had a sudden flash of a little boy missing his front teeth chasing him around the trailer park. Bubba! Wait for me!
That boy was gone. Zane’s eyes were bloodshot and dilated from God knew what drugs and a patchy beard hugged his cheeks. It was hard to reconcile him to the soft-faced boy Reid had last seen. Get over it, Reid. That boy is gone. Still. Easier said than done. His brother was the only family he had left.
“Yeah?” Reid looked at the men standing around him, a prickling sensation crawling up the back of his neck.
Zane chuckled lightly and scrubbed at the back of his neck under hair that fell long and greasy. He needed a shower. “Why don’t I show you?”
Turning, Zane headed down the dark hall to the back bedrooms. The carpet was flat and matted beneath Reid’s shoes as he followed his brother. He felt the other men behind him, crowding close like anxious dogs. Something was definitely in the air. Feral and testosterone-laced. He recognized it from prison. Right before a fight broke out. Blood was in the water and the sharks were hungry.
Zane opened the door to the master bedroom and stepped inside. Reid followed. He sucked in a breath as his gaze landed on the bed and the woman restrained there. His stomach pitched and a fresh wave of acid surged up inside him.
Her hands were bound together with a cord that extended to the brass headboard. She sat board-straight on the edge of the bed, her knees locked tightly together. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. She had been crying, but now her eyes were bone-dry above the gag. She didn’t blink as her wide brown stare flitted over him, assessing him before flicking to the men at his back. Her nostrils flared as if scenting danger. She would be right about that. They were the wolves and she their next meal. Of that he was certain.
She tossed her head and said something against the muffled rag stuffed in her mouth. Her dark hair was loose and tangled around her shoulders, trailing long over her cream-colored blouse. The shiny fabric was dirt-smudged and stained, but still looked expensive. Probably the most expensive thing in this cabin. A bruise marred the flesh of her cheek above the gag where someone had hit her, and something clenched in his gut.
Even in her condition, Reid had no problem recognizing her.
Fuck.
“Surprise!” Zane waved at her.
They’d done it. They’d abducted the President’s daughter.
Three
She’d stopped crying some time ago, but the urge returned in full force with the arrival of the new guy. He was bigger than the rest of them. He looked more ruthless. Something in his eyes, in the hard set to his mouth . . . there was no softness there. She wouldn’t be able to appeal to any part of him.
He also seemed somehow more alert, more aware, more ready to snap than the rest of them. The rest of her abductors reminded her of children, anxious on their feet, unable to hold still. Their eyes, however, were dull and slow-moving. It was a strange contrast.
The sharpness of New Guy’s hazel gaze could cut glass. She felt it slice through her as he stood there staring down at her with an empty expression on his coldly handsome face. She registered this with a swift sweep of her gaze. There was no denying he was sexy in a rough and ruthless kind of way. Even with a faint shadow of beard hugging his square jaw he was model-hot. Charles had nothing on this guy. Even Holly’s hot boyfriend was somehow less.
Watching New Guy watch her, she lifted her bound wrists to her chest and attempted to twist her hands free. It pulled the cord tighter but she had to try. One of her abductors walked over and placed a hand on the top of her head, petting her like she was some kept animal. “We got fucking royalty here.”
She yanked her head away and knocked at his hand with her bound hands.
He abruptly crouched down in front of her, propping his hands on the thighs of his ratted-out jeans, and she recognized him as the one who had hit her in the van. His eyes were dark, all pupils, as he gazed at her. “I like that you still have some fire in you.”
“C’mon, Rowdy.” Greasy Hair called him away. “Let’s go talk.”
Relief warred with the constant fear inside her as they filed out of the room. All except New Guy. The big one. He lingered, staring at her with that unreadable gaze. Maybe Greasy Hair wasn’t in charge anymore. New Guy seemed so in control, so powerful, it was hard to imagine him taking orders from anyone else.
She held his gaze, hoping that maybe she was right. Maybe he wasn’t like the rest of them. It was a flimsy hope, but she clung to it like a frayed ribbon in her hands. He hadn’t been there when they took her. He didn’t look happy to see her here. Maybe he could help her. Maybe. He was strong, well over six feet, his body hard and muscled beneath his shirt. He held some influence if they had thought to show her to him, after all.
She tried to speak into the rag, leaning forward in supplication. They locked eyes and for a breath she thought she saw something flicker in the depths of his gaze. Some kind of emotion. Then it was gone—if it had ever existed at all.
With a single shake of his head, he clasped the doorknob and shut the door, sealing her once again inside her prison.
Reid’s head was spinning as he made his way down the hallway and into the main room of the house.
The president’s daughter.
They had abducted the fucking president’s daughter.
The litany ran through his head like a bullet train. He could hardly think of anything else, which was bad considering he came here for one thing and one thing only and it had nothing to do with Grace Reeves.
“Shit, man, I can’t believe you busted out.” Zane clapped him on the back again. At this point he would have bruises tomorrow.
The rest of the guys dropped off in various spots in the living room. No one was concerned with the presence of the gagged woman in the back room. He wondered if she had eaten. Or used the restroom. They’d had her since yesterday. Had they seen to any of her needs?
One guy immediately lit up a joint, while another one sat in front of the beat-up coffee table and started shaking cocaine out of a sack. Some things never changed. They were all still a bunch of drug dealing burnouts. That’s what Otis Sullivan wanted them to be—what he had always wanted them to be. Mindless drones subject to him.
Reid glanced around, taking in the sagging mouths and dilated eyes of every guy present, including his own brother. They didn’t have a care in the world or a thought in their heads. Not a single one sober and yet they were the most hunted men in America right now.
And he had just joined their ranks.
“What you gonna do with the girl?” he asked, trying to sound casual, as though it didn’t matter one way or another to him. As though he couldn’t still see her face, her eyes, in his mind.
“I don’t know. We’ll figure something out.” His brother shifted on his feet and shot a cagey look at Rowdy. Instantly, Reid knew he was lying. They had a plan. For whatever reason, his brother wasn’t partial to sharing that information with him. Apparently, some things had changed after all. Zane didn’t fully trust him anymore.
“You got no plan? So you just grabbed her for the hell of it?” He moved to the rusted fridge in the kitchen and pulled it open, peering inside as though the question didn’t weigh on him like a ton of bricks. Any minute this place could be swarming with FBI, and he was pretending the biggest concern on his mind was what he could feed his stomach.
Zane spoke up, an edge of defensiveness in his tone. “We gotta wait for word from Sullivan.”
Of course. Sullivan. He still pulled all the strings.
“Yeah?” He took a breath, trying to play it cool even though what he really wanted to do was shake his brother for letting Sullivan call the shots. “Why’d Sullivan want you to grab her anyway?”
Zane considered him as he sank down on the couch and accepted a joint from the guy next to him. He lifted a bottle of beer and to
ok a long swig, still staring at Reid.
Rowdy bent over the coffee table and snorted a line of coke, tossing his head back with a deep gasp. The guy’s nose was so red it looked ready to fall off.
“Don’t know if Sullivan would want me to talk to you about this,” Zane finally said. “You two didn’t part on good terms.”
That would be because Sullivan was the reason he went to jail. Guess Zane had forgotten that. Or he just didn’t care. Hell, maybe all the drugs and booze had fried his brains.
Reid opened up a tube of tinfoil and sniffed at the burrito inside. “Come on, man,” he coaxed, peeling back the tortilla and taking a peek inside at the questionable contents. “I’m your brother. Just busted out of jail and I came straight here. If I had any hard feelings, would I be here? Hell, no. I would have gone straight to Mexico.”
Sniffing, Rowdy pinched at his nose as if his sinuses troubled him. “Got a point there.”
Zane and Reid stared at each other for a long moment, unspoken words passing between them. Finally his brother shrugged and took another hit off his joint. “We’re not going to kill her. At least not yet. Waiting for Sullivan to tell us what to do with her.”
Reid put the burrito back in the refrigerator. “This is going to bring a lot of heat. Hope he comes up with something good. And quick.”
“Sullivan’s not a fan of the president,” Zane explained slowly, as if still unsure how much to say.
Rowdy snorted. “Understatement. After donating a shit ton of money to his campaign, Reeves screwed him over,” Rowdy offered, chafing his hands hard over his thighs, full of anxious energy and mind-altering chemicals.
“Yeah?” Reid asked. “How so?
“Remember Sullivan’s nephew Jeremy?” At Reid’s nod, he continued, “Well, he got sent to prison on racketeering charges.”
“He talk?” Reid asked, because he knew the kid had been working for Sullivan. Any racketeering had been on Sullivan’s behalf.
“Nah, he weren’t no rat. Sullivan expected a favor from the president, or leniency at least, but Reeves wasn’t having it. No favors from him. They gave the kid twenty years.”
Reid whistled. He’d been in for eleven and that had felt like a lifetime. He remembered Jeremy. Sullivan had sent him away to some fancy college to get a degree in business or accounting. Something he could use to help manage Sullivan’s empire. The kid was smart, but soft. And maybe not that smart if he got caught. Prison couldn’t have been an easy transition for the likes of him.
“Gets worse,” Rowdy chimed.
“He killed himself,” Zane said with a shake of his head.
Reid blinked. Guys had killed themselves at the Rock. Of course. It happened. It was prison. You could almost mark the ones that weren’t going to make it the moment they arrived. They stuck to themselves. They didn’t make allies. A bad thing on the inside. You needed friends. They had a look. A desperate, shell-shocked expression that gradually faded to vacancy. They weren’t even present anymore by the time they ended it.
In his second year at the Rock there had been a guy in the cell next to him who hanged himself. The morning after he’d watched through the bars, glimpsing the waxy gray face as the guy was rolled out on a gurney.
Zane continued. “Sullivan wants payback.”
Now Reid understood. It was personal. He grimaced. Jeremy wasn’t just some lackey. He’d been blood. Sullivan wanted the president to suffer, and he would make him suffer by hurting his daughter.
As if to underscore this, Rowdy suddenly stood, his movements jerky and erratic. “Man, I need to fuck something. She ain’t much to look at, but she’ll do.” He chuckled. “Maybe she’ll thank me. The chubby ones are always grateful for it.”
Reid froze for a fraction of a second, absorbing what was happening . . . what was about to happen. Grace Reeve’s suffering was about to begin in earnest. He stepped into Rowdy’s path, flattening a hand on his chest.
Rowdy glanced down at his hand and then knocked it aside, all friendliness lost. “You gonna get out of my way, man?”
Rowdy had always been a bastard when he was stoned. That much hadn’t changed. “You can’t have her,” Reid said softly. He had seen a lot of people abused. Even before prison, but especially in there, where he’d seen grown men broken and reduced to tears. He thought about that terrified looking girl in the back room and how fragile she appeared.
He knew how Rowdy was with women. Even women that chose to be with him. He wasn’t kind. He used ugly words and his fists flew with little provocation. Reid doubted that had changed while he was away. Grace Reeves wouldn’t hold up well. After him, the others would take turns. An awful lump rose up in his throat. She might not survive it at all—she might not want to.
“Yeah, Reid?” Rowdy demanded. “Why not? I stuck my neck out there to take her. You weren’t around, buddy. I earned it.” He stabbed a finger down the hall. “She’s the only chick here, and I want to fuck something.”
“Not her.”
“Why? You wanna bang her?” he demanded.
The question hung heavy on the air. Reid didn’t shift his gaze even a fraction of an inch from Rowdy’s face. Never break eye contact. Never show weakness. He felt everyone in the house watching him, waiting. Whether a roomful of men raped Grace Reeves was entirely up to him and what he did in the next few moments.
“Yeah,” he finally said, accepting that it was the only thing these guys understood. As primitive as it sounded, it was about claiming. Possession. The rights of the conqueror. “Yeah, I do.”
Rowdy’s eyebrows arched high. “Then get in line. I go first.” He moved to go around him.
Reid flattened his hand on Rowdy’s chest, wondering how he ever considered this guy a friend.
Reid had been a different person all those years ago. Lost and broken himself. “I’m not taking turns,” he ground out, his voice lethally soft, the same tone he used in prison, when he’d staked his claim on something and wanted everyone to know there would be no backing down. It was a warning. “She’s mine.”
A tight silence descended.
Rowdy inhaled, shaking his shoulders out and lifting his chest on a swell of breath. Reid recognized the move. He’d done that when they were kids, right before he was about to throw down. Reid always knew shit was about to get real when Rowdy took that breath.
He tensed, squaring himself, grounding his heels into the cracking linoleum, ready to stop him from heading down that hall.
He told himself he was doing this because he didn’t want to add to his trouble. Because he didn’t want to be an accessory to the rape of the president’s daughter. But what was the point in lying to himself? He was already in for a life sentence. He knew, inevitably, he would end up behind bars again. He hadn’t escaped Devil’s Rock to stay out of prison.
He escaped to take care of some long overdue shit. No, it wasn’t fear of reprisal that had him standing in Rowdy’s way and stopping him from going in that bedroom. It was the simple wrongness of it.
He’d seen the girl. He’d read the terror in her eyes . . . felt it. He couldn’t let any of them go back there and break her. He wasn’t that indifferent. He wasn’t that sadistic. And it bothered the shit out of him that his brother was. Zane didn’t use to be like these guys. He had failed, Reid thought. He’d let his kid brother become this.
He glanced over at Zane, still sitting on the couch, nursing his joint like it was any other day. Like girls got raped around him all the time.
“You really want to go to the mat over this?” Rowdy challenged. “You just got back. Pretty early to already be pissing me off, ain’t it?”
Reid faced him again and cocked his head. “Pissing you off has never been a big concern of mine.”
He and Rowdy had been in the same grade. They’d scrapped as much as they got along. Growing up with parents that didn’t give a shit about either one of them, there hadn’t been much for them to do except raise hell. Especially after his grandfather died. Fight
and get into trouble. That had been his life. Unfortunately, that existence was what led him to Sullivan.
Rowdy snorted. “Some things don’t change, then.”
He jerked his chin up. “So we gonna do this or what?”
Rowdy smiled. “C’mon, man, not like we never shared a girl before.”
He suppressed a wince at the reminder and shook his head. “Not sharing.”
Rowdy’s smile slipped. “Now you’re just being a selfish bastard.”
Suddenly Zane was there, sliding between them. “Guys, go easy. It’s all good. We’re friends here. Remember? Family.” Some of Rowdy’s tension lessened. He didn’t look quite so eager to pounce.
Zane looked back and forth between them before settling his gaze on Rowdy. “C’mon, bro. The guy’s been in prison for years. He’s got a right to be a little selfish. Let him have her.”
Rowdy didn’t react at first. His granite jaw remained locked. Reid was starting to think there was no avoiding it. They were going to throw down. Then Rowdy grinned.
“What the hell? It’s been what . . . ten years or so? Shit, man, what have you been doing with yourself all that time?” He grimaced. “Never mind. I can imagine how you been getting off.” He mock shuddered and then laughed with a shake of his head.
It took everything in him not to slam his fist into Rowdy’s face. What Rowdy was thinking, what he was implying, had not happened, but it was no joke to him. He’d seen it happen to plenty of other guys at the Rock. When he closed his eyes he could still hear the grunts and cries echoing through the night. It wasn’t the kind of thing one ever forgot.
He shouldered past the two of them, ignoring Rowdy’s shout, “Have fun! We’re gonna grill some steaks. We’ll bring you one.”
He held up his hand in a backward wave as he headed down the hall, eager to leave their company. Being around them made him almost long for prison. There was a rhythm there. A norm. He knew who his friends were. Who he could and couldn’t trust.
It wasn’t until he stepped inside the bedroom that he realized being in here alone with her presented its own form of hell.