Gravel (MC Biker Romance) (8 page)

Ash always had to bait my hook, but I
think he liked feeling useful and manly. He’d grown up without a father, and
almost everything he learned about being a man was a direct result of my father
taking him under his wing. Ash was born to be a part of our family in one way
or another, and somehow our kindred souls found a way to make that happen.

“I got one!” I recalled saying as I
reeled in the line. “It’s really big! I can tell!”

Ash had to stand behind me and help me
pull the fish in, but after several fruitless attempts, we realized my line had
gotten stuck in the reeds and the fish swam away.

“That’s okay,” I said. I really didn’t
care about catching a fish that day. I just wanted to spend time with Ash. That
was when I was the happiest, and that was when everything in my crazy life made
sense.

I dropped the fishing pole and turned
around to grab the container of live bait, only when I turned around Ash was
standing there on his knees with a black, velvet ring box propped open. A
sparkly diamond shimmered under the midday sun and the biggest smile crossed
Ash’s face.

“Marina Elizabeth Barrett,” he said.
“Will you marry me?”

We were only twenty years old, and some
may have thought we were too young to even be thinking about marriage, but we
both just knew.

“Yes!” I shrieked. “Ash, yes! Yes, I’ll
marry you!”

He stood up and slipped the ring on my
finger, and I wasted no time in admiring the simplistic beauty of the diamonds
that dancing reflections all around us. I wrapped my arms around him and then
kissed him. The longest, sweetest kiss we’d ever shared was that day.

“I knew I was going to marry you,” he
said. “I knew since we were eight years old.”

“How’d you know?” I asked, unable to take
my eyes off my ring.

“I just knew,” he said with a half smile.
“I couldn’t live without you then. I couldn’t imagine ever living without you
in the future either. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

My eyes opened and I was thrust back into
reality – into the cold, cinder block cell walls that surrounded us. It
was a far cry from that sunny day by the fishing pond and from the arms of the man
I loved more than anything.

I rolled to my opposite side and
readjusted Tuck, but I couldn’t get comfortable. Something was poking me in my
pocket. My phone! I’d completely forgotten that it was in there.

I popped up and turned it on. One bar
left on the battery.
Signal floating in and out.
I
walked around the room, trying to find an area where the signal would hold.
Below the window, the signal seemed to be the steadiest. I quickly composed a
text message to Ash, my heart racing. It was the first time I’d had so much as
a glimmer of hope since we’d been made captives.

My fingers trembled as I typed in a
message:

KIDNAPPED. WAREHOUSE. COTTONMOUTHS.

I wished I had more information for him,
but that was all I had. I pressed the send button and waited, but a red “x”
next to the message told me it didn’t go through. I attempted to send again.
Nothing. Before I went to try again, footsteps came from down the hall and grew
louder. Someone began to unlock the heavy metal door. I jammed the phone back
into my pocket and rushed over to
lay
down on the bed,
feigning that I was still asleep.

The metal door slowly creaked open and
there stood Mary Jane with a bag of fast food in her hands. Her once perfect,
smooth bob was pulled back into a low ponytail. Not a speak of makeup graced
her face besides some
jet black
eyeliner and gobs of
black mascara. She wore cut up jeans and a faded t-shirt and sneakers. Mary
Jane had vanished and a stranger named MJ had taken her place.

“Here’s some food,” she said. She could
still hardly look at me, but the second we locked eyes, I could see her
searching for a sliver of forgiveness. “Don’t tell anyone. I wasn’t supposed to
give you anything. When you’re done, shove the wrappers under the mattress.
I’ll pick them up later.”

“Why’d you do this to us?” I asked her,
tears welling in my eyes. “I thought you were my friend.”

She shrugged. “Everyone has to atone for
their sins, Marina.”

I was confused.

“Are you being forced to do all this?” I
said. “They’re just using you like some puppet aren’t they?”

She bit her lip before looking over at me
with her big brown eyes. “Tripp Cotton was my kid brother.”

My heart stopped, and I felt sick. I
wanted to throw up.

“Look,” she sighed. “I’ve long forgiven
my brother’s killer, but my family hasn’t. I have to do what I’m told.”

“Are they going to kill us?” I asked. My
eyes pleaded with hers for the truth, but she stayed silent. “You have to tell
me, Mary Jane.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what
the plan is. I just know what I was told to do. I was supposed to get you here.
I did my part. I know nothing else.”

I didn’t quite believe her. “Do you have
children?”

She pursed her lips and shook her head.
“No.”

“Then you don’t understand what this is
like,” I said. “Mary Jane, I know you’re not one of them. You may have the
Cotton name and the club markings, but you’re like them. Do you know what your
brother did to me? Do you know why Ash beat him to a pulp that night in the
country?”

She shook her head.
 
“I know my brother wasn’t the best
person in the world, but he was still my brother.”

“Your brother was a monster,” I seethed.
“I hope you can rest easy at night knowing that your family thinks it’s okay to
murder a fucking baby. I hope it makes all you Cottons feel much better about
yourselves.”

“MJ!” a man’s voice boomed from down the
hall. “Get your ass back here!”

She flashed me one last, apologetic look
before turning and locking the door behind her. She was just as powerless as I
was. She was a pawn in the game just like me.

I woke Tuck and grabbed the food out of
the bag. I broke the biscuits into tiny pieces and put a straw in the orange
juice. “Here, baby. Eat this.”

Tuck ate every last crumb. The poor kid
was starving. The clock on my phone said it was almost eleven. The fast food
meal would have to serve as both his breakfast and his lunch.

I pressed my ear up against the cool,
metal door to try to hear if anyone was on the other side. I heard nothing. I
pulled my phone out of my pocket once again and paced around the room, this
time standing on top of the sink and the bed and anything that would get me
higher up to the ceiling and closer to the window.

When I finally got two bars’ worth of
signal, I tried calling Ash. To my surprise, the phone rang. My clenched onto
my neck and waited for him to answer.

“Marina?” he answered. “Oh, my God. Are
you okay? Where are you?”

“Ash,” I sobbed. I tried to stifle the
cries, but it was too hard. “They took us. We’re in some warehouse. I think
they’re going to kill us. Please help. Please come get us!”

“Marina, listen to me,” he said. “Is
there a window where you are?”

“Yes,” I replied. I breathed in deep and
tried to calm myself down. I had to keep my voice down. If they heard me
talking, I knew they’d bust in there and then all hell would break loose.

“I need you to look around and tell me
what you see,” he said. “Street signs, businesses, landmarks.”

I stood up on top of the bed and peeked
outside the barred window. “There’s a deli across the street.
Calavetti
Deli.
And a gas station.
Kwik
Stop – spelled K-W-I-K.
And
an intersection.
It looks like Main Street and…West Ferguson Avenue?”

Ash was quiet, and I assumed he was
writing them down. “Okay, very good, Marina.”

“Ash,” I said, trying to keep my voice
low. “I only have 7% battery left.”

“Okay,” he said. “I want you to shut your
phone off and turn it back on in about six hours. This is very important.”

“I love you,” I whispered. “If anything
happens, please just know that.”

“Marina,” Ash sighed. “Nothing’s going to
happen. Your dad and I are on this. Nothing’s going to happen to you and Tuck.
I’ll see you soon. We’ll be together soon, alright?”

He sounded confident, but I was sure he
was only trying to make me feel better. Right now the ball was in the Cottonmouths’
court.
Their game.
Their rules.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing
?!
”
LeRoy
barged in seconds after
I hung up with Ash. His meaty hands gripped my wrist, nearly crushing it, and
forced the phone to fall from my hands and drop onto the floor.

LeRoy
picked it up from the hard, concrete
floor and placed it to his ear. A menacing smile formed on his thin lips as his
eyes nearly pierced through me.

“Why, hello, Ash,” he said, drawing out
each syllable slowly. “How are doing on this fine, beautiful day.”

LeRoy
paused, and I knew Ash was saying
something on the other end.

“Oh, don’t you worry,”
LeRoy
smirked. “We’re taking real good care of your little
family. If you’re a good boy and do as you’re told, you might get to see them
one last time before you meet your maker.”

As if
LeRoy
had
just sucker punched me, it was starting to make sense. They didn’t want to kill
me or Tuck. They wanted to kill Ash. They wanted to make him pay for what he’d
done to Tripp, and Tuck and I were nothing more than bait to lure him in.

“Be a good boy, now,”
LeRoy
said to Ash. “Do as your alpha tells you.”

LeRoy
hung up the phone and threw it on the
ground, stomping it into a million pieces with his weathered, leather boots and
laughing all the while.

“You’re disgusting,” I snickered to him.
“You better not lay a hand on my husband.”

LeRoy
laughed as if I were some meek little
mouse trying to scare away a lion. “Oh, it’s not your husband we want.”

I pinched my face in confusion. “What do
you want then?”

“We want your daddy’s head on a platter,”
LeRoy
licked his lips like a maniacal psychopath.

“Why my father?” I asked, still confused.

“For covering up Tripp’s murder,” he
said, as if was obvious. “Had he never done that, Tripp’s killer, who we all
know is your precious Ash Decker, would be behind bars right now waiting for
his turn in the electric chair.”

“My father didn’t hurt Tripp,” I said.
“He was trying to protect his family. Isn’t that what family does?”

“Exactly,”
LeRoy
seethed. “Tripp was my cousin. We were family. You fuck with my family, I fuck
with yours.”

Nothing I could ever say or do would
change
LeRoy’s
mind or the intentions of the Cottonmouths.
Their perfectly orchestrated plan was finally coming together, and that’s all
they cared about.