Rogue (11 page)

Some sixth sense in me flares awake and keeps ratcheting up my heartbeat. My dress, my shoes . . . all of a sudden nothing matters but getting out of here. I duck my head in caution and continue walking straight ahead, not even caring about the puddles anymore, only intent on gripping the hanger, which may be the only thing I can use to . . . to
what
? Wild animals will chase prey if they run the other way, and everything about these men screams
Predators, Melanie!

Fear pulses like a live thing in me. Every step that takes me closer to the one lone man at the edge of the deserted alley gnaws away at my confidence.

I’m about to pass him when he takes a step forward and I meekly whisper, “Excuse me.”

One hand grabs my upper arm, clenching like a manacle. “You’re not excused,” he growls.

I flinch and retreat a step when I see his frightening expression, but he yanks me tighter against him, the scent of sweat and cigarettes mingling in his breath as he repeats, looking down at me with red-rimmed eyes, “I said you’re not excused, bitch.”

Panic like I’ve never known wells in my throat as I swing my dress in an effort to jam the tip of the hanger into some part of his face, but before I can make the hit, another pair of strong hands grabs hold of my arms and jerks my elbows back by force.

“No!” I cry, my dress falling to the ground with a clatter, and suddenly I’m kicking in the air as a third man grabs my thighs and the second keeps his hold hooked on my elbows as they start carrying me toward the car. Icy fear wraps around my heart as I twist my body even harder, gasping and panting in terror when I can’t get free, their fingers digging into the flesh of my wrists and calves now.

There’s a man behind the wheel of the car telling them, “Quiet the bitch down,” as I keep struggling. One seems to try to cover my mouth and I use my free leg to kick his knee. “NO!” I keep saying. “No! NO!” A rag is pressed to my nose and for some reason I hold my breath because I know it’s meant to knock me out; I’m fighting my own urge to breathe. I land a kick in the nuts and hear him yelp, then they both shove me into the back of car. “HEEEEEELP!” I yell when they pull a black hood over my head and pitch black darkness descends.

My breath leaves me from the shock as they shut the doors. I feel one of the men tighten the bag lightly around my throat, securing it. My panting breaths echo in my ears, blackness engulfing me as the reality of my situation begins to sink in and my eyes begin to sting. Hands start cupping my breasts and kneading while another jams a hand to feel me up under my lovely summer dress, and I start fighting with renewed vigor, screaming and
hearing the lonely, muffled sounds of my own screams dying inside the hood covering my face. I can’t hear things they’re saying, whispering, as I start to flail with my arms and legs, gritting my teeth as I try hitting them, hitting anything I can.

“. . . little feisty one . . . let’s have our fun with her before we deliver . . .”

My dress is pulled high and I kick and squirm as they start the car, whimpering when a pair of hands grabs my thighs and forces them open.

“Just drive, we’ll stop on the way there and take turns with her.”

The car seems to jerk forward and, just as immediately, it stops.

“SHIT.”

I hear this word clearly.

“What?”

I also hear the alarm in that question very, very clearly.

“FUCK, MAN.”

The hands stop touching me, and for some reason I fall still, sensing that something is happening.

“Who the fuck is he? One of Slaughter’s men?”

“There’s two.”

Before anyone can answer that, there’s the sound of a tire popping, then another tire wheezing out air. I hear three clean shots, then another to my right, which seems to pop open the door handle. Hinges creak as the door seems to be wrenched off. The only hand that remained on my breast, frozen from the shock, is yanked away and I hear a scared yelp and a crunching sound, like bone breaking.

“Hoooooly shit, it’s really you!”

I hear a crack, a howl, then the sound of a body hitting the ground.

“I’ll take him somewhere nice and cozy so we can have a little chat,” a Texan voice drawls from farther away.

Panicked, I’m feeling around with my hands and just as I find something hard and metallic in the jeans of the dead weight next to me, a pair of hands reaches out for me. As I feel new hands start curling around me, a bolt of adrenaline kicks through me. The hilt of a knife—I seize it and swing, and, miracle of miracles, I manage to plunge it into hard male flesh with a sickening jerk on my end. He growls over the top of my head and as he lets go of me to remove it, I push and stumble out of the car, finding my footing on the ground. The knife clatters to the ground the second I start running, trying to pull off the ties on my hood, hoping I’m running in the opposite direction from the new arrivals.

“You got a live one all right, Z,” the Texan drawls.

I squeak when I realize I’m heading straight for him and swing around when I’m swept up in a pair of strong male arms. My fight starts instantly but this guy won’t have it. He grunts when I kick his nuts, then starts to secure my hands and my legs with some sort of rope material, swiftly, so that I can’t escape. I kick in the air but he’s strong and fast, and what several men couldn’t do to subdue me, this one does in less than a minute.

Binding my ankles and wrists, then binding my knees together and my elbows together, he holds me against a chest that feels muscular and broad as he carries me somewhere. Adrenaline rushes through my body with nowhere to go and I’m seized with tremors when I realize I’m so fucked and I have no way to get free.

I think I cut the man, and his blood is dripping on me. I squirm in my last futile effort to get free but I’m crying too, the sound of my own sniffles echoing inside the hood.

And suddenly I know what this is. It’s that
debt.

It’s so real now, these men are so real. They wanted their money. But supposedly I have a month and a half left. Did they grow impatient? Did they plan to kill me or just use me? Were they delivering me to that one-eyed guy and the skinny one who
offered to give me an “extension” of their dicks when I asked for more time to pay?

“I’m . . . I’m getting the money,” I say, catching a sob in my throat.

I must be going into shock because I can’t seem to fight him, to fight for my life, am trembling uncontrollably. I feel a new soreness in my thighs and calves when I feel a leather glove against the bare skin of my back. I whimper and I am so shocked when I remember Greyson and my Brazilian wax and my spa day, now I smell like pig, and like blood, and other men, and I start choking back sobs that all this could really be happening to me.

“M-my car is . . .”

He keeps walking, and I can’t talk well, am panting for air and sniveling.

“My-my dress . . .”

He stops, then I hear plastic shuffling and I realize he picked it up in lord-knows-what condition from wherever it fell.

“Thank you,” I snivel. Then I realize, he’s not a good guy, he doesn’t want to help me! If he did, he’d have let me go.

An uncontrollable shaking takes over my body, making my teeth chatter. He straps me into the backseat of a car that smells remarkably like the lavender sachet I put in my car after it almost became a boat and the tires screech as we leave.

We end up parking somewhere, and once again, we’re in movement, pauses, movement, stealthy, as though he moves and stops, not to be seen. We climb some stairs, and I hear a crack of a window. We keep walking. Then I hear running water.

He sets me down somewhere soft, which I think is my bed, and unfastens the binding on my wrists, his gloves rubbing against my pulse points. I close my eyes and pretend it’s another glove, from another man, comforting me, but the fact that he’s not really that other man makes my misery all the more intense.

He mechanically starts freeing my legs, then rubs the wounds again around my ankles.

“P-please don’t hurt me . . . !” I cry, kicking then calming down when he eases back. “Is it because of the money . . . ? I’ll get the money, I’m getting the money,” I start rambling. “My car is up for sale, I just haven’t had takers and owe half of it anyway, so I need just a little more . . . !”

He does something unexpected. He reaches for my hand and gives me a squeeze. Not an angry squeeze, a reassuring squeeze. I fall quiet. My heart skids as he keeps his hand on mine for a moment too long, until he seems to be sure I’m breathing right. He lets go. I feel his footsteps and the creak of my window, and suddenly I reach up and scramble to remove the hood.

I’m in my apartment. The shower water is running. He left . . . through the balcony and emergency stairs?

There’s blood on me. There’s blood all over me as I slide into the tub, fully dressed, and take a bath, scrubbing myself clean. Quietly crying. I went to beg those awful men for more time, and they gave me some, but I’m running out of time again. Why on earth did I ever think I could make a stupid bet and not get involved with these kinds of people? I think about asking someone for help, but I’m too proud to. I’m too proud to tell my best friend, my friends, I’m too proud to tell my parents who think I’m perfect and can do no wrong. And Greyson. For some reason thinking about him makes me most sentimental of all. He makes me feel so safe, like he could protect me from the world. Even from men like these.

But I’m too proud to let the only guy I’ve had a connection with know about this. He probably doesn’t like me that much anyway.
No
. It’s never like that for me. I cry quietly in the tub, feeling so dirty I never, ever want to get out.

ELEVEN

KILL

Greyson

“F
UUUUCK!”

These bastards want to play around? Touch what’s mine? Then they better all. Be fucking ready.
To die.
Whoever sent these four to retrieve her, whoever made the call, they’re dead. And as for the asshole C.C. brought back with us to the warehouse? I’m going to motherfucking kill him, tear him apart, limb by limb.

Hissing in pain, I stick my bleeding upper arm into running water, my eyes burning from the rage, the impotence, the pain of knowing what they were about to do to Melanie tonight.

I couldn’t even fucking talk to her. I couldn’t even tell her it was going to be all right. Because of the list, because of Zero, because he can’t be known out of the Underground; so I had to hold her in my arms and hear her sobs. I had never, ever held a crying woman before. Hear her beg me to please not hurt her, only adding fire to my already roiling gut. They were going to . . .

Goddammit, I can’t even think.

I stare at the mirror in the dingy warehouse restroom, nostrils flaring, my face pale from blood loss, my eyes brilliant with that cold gleam of death. I look deranged. I feel deranged. I pull the
mirrored cabinet open and search for bandages, things clattering to the ground when I find nothing.

I press a towel tighter to the wound and try to knot it, all while unable to tame the urge to kill rushing in my blood.

I haven’t had a drop of real humanity in me since my mother left. But despite my upbringing, I wanted to tear that dirty hood off Melanie’s head, wipe her tears, look into her eyes, and command her to stop crying because it does something to destabilize me. And command her to stop shaking because it makes me shake in rage. And promise her that it’s going to be all right and the next time she’s touched, it will be by a man who wants to please her more than himself. Most ridiculous of all is that somewhere in my twisted mind, that man is me.

C.C. stalks into the bathroom of the small warehouse where he brought the sole survivor of our encounter.

“Where the fuck is he?” I yell.

“Hell, you’ve looked better. We need to stitch you up, man.”

I follow him outside to where the group of girls who usually trail after C.C. is gathered around. “Get a needle,” I tell the one I see first, then I kick a chair out from a plastic table and lean over to talk to C.C., just me and him. “Tell me he at least fucking spilled something?”

C.C.’s eyebrows furrow low. “He doesn’t seem to know who hired him.”

“What about the others?”

“I stashed the bodies. Just the lucky survivor will be getting a visit from you.”

“I wouldn’t call him lucky.” I scan our surroundings, wondering who could be after her, and why.

My father, Eric, any of the guys. Is there a hit on her? Is this my father dabbling in his own affairs after he gave me his word? Was this a warning from one of my own “loyal” brothers-in-arms?

My arm is so numb, I can’t feel it, but my skin is sticky and warm with blood and I’m so frustrated I want to kick something.

By all that’s holy in the world, if my father’s behind this, I will kill him.

I’m battling with my emotions as the brunette comes back with the needle to stitch me, and she brings a bottle of alcohol.

“Well, well, now, looks like I’ll have my hands on you after all,” she purrs. “What have we got there?”

I extend my arm as she opens the bottle of alcohol.

“It’s a nick from my girl,” I growl. “She doesn’t like it when I don’t call.” I don’t want to remember how she was sobbing and I wanted to rip off that hood . . . and do what? Reveal myself to her? Can’t do that.

The girl pours the alcohol over the wound and I bite back my reaction, gritting out, “Make it nice and tight. Small.” I tear a piece of my T-shirt and bite down on it and don’t make a sound, watching as she sews me up.

“She did good. For a princess,” C.C. tells me.

I’m in pain, and I’m still fucking fuming. I clench my teeth around the cloth.

A redhead comes and sits on my lap as her friend bandages me. “Oh, Z, we were so worried.” She licks her lips. “What do you need?”

“Mindy,” I say, spitting out the cloth. “That’s your name, right?”

She nods eagerly.

“Mindy, I’ve been teaching my girlfriend how to shoot her new gun. I don’t think she’d appreciate you sitting here.”