Damon:A Bad Boy MC Romance Novel(79)

Speaking of things I didn't know, here's a nice list: how long I'd been  there, when the last time I'd had water was, how the man had known about  the money in the duffel bag, or what had happened to my Mustang, or any  of the things in it, like the passport and the ID and the cell phone  with Reign's number.         

     



 

I was slowly starting to not know other things, too. My own name. The  words to my favorite songs, which I'd been singing in my head to pass  the few hours I was awake each day. The man, nameless and essentially  faceless, seemed rather patient. He'd sit in silence, back to me, for  hours at a time, only rising and facing me to give me another injection  of the drug that knocked me out. I guess I sort of came to see him as a  kind of savior as much as anything else: he bestowed onto me the only  solace in the world I could have, which was sleep.

Those few hours I was awake each day were blurry at best, shot through  with a constant anxiety and ever-increasing claustrophobia from the way  he'd confined me. He never changed the rag that he'd shoved into my  throat, and my tongue was raw and scratched from rubbing against the  rough material. My nostrils worked double time to make up for the air my  mouth couldn't suck in. The rag was soaked through at first with my own  spit, but as I grew more and more dehydrated it dried out as well.

I'd lost track of anything that wasn't right in front of my eyes. My  time with Reign seemed like a distant memory. My life with Jeremy, even  more distant.

There was just the darkness of sleep, the pain of waking, the fear, the  silent and solitary man with his back to me, sitting patiently,  endlessly patiently, waiting to kill me or set me free.

And the longer I was there, the more I felt sure the latter would never happen.

This is how I die, I remember thinking. This is how Gabriella dies. At  least it's exciting. At least it's worth a story in the paper.

And when I wasn't thinking about my own mortality, I was putting my  brain to even less use. If I'd never let Reign talk me into staying that  extra day, if I'd decided to stay even longer, if I hadn't pulled off  in Ditcher's Valley, if I hadn't taken the money and run, if I hadn't  gotten the job at the hotel, if I hadn't married Jeremy …





32





Reign stared at the desk, the items arranged in a neat row on the wood  surface. His arms, laying on the table, created a perfect frame.

A photo.

A lock of hair.

And a toe.

Three days, three gifts.

Poised in the center above the collected evidence of Gabriella's  kidnapping was the note, almost humorously cliché with its  cut-from-magazine letters and words.

Come alone.

Amidst the directions for the drop-off and the demands, those were the  words that stood out the most to Reign. Because, of course, he couldn't  go alone. He wouldn't risk his neck like that, he wasn't stupid.

Except, maybe, he was stupid, because he wanted to go alone. The sane,  safe, logical thing to do was bring some of his brothers, have them wait  at a distance for the all-safe and storm the stronghold, kill the  bastard who'd taken her, and ride off triumphantly into the sunset.

But what if that didn't happen? What if, instead of coming away the  victor, he'd come away with Gabriella's blood on his hands because he  couldn't follow simple damn directions?

It had been three days since he'd sent the club out to scour the  countryside for Gabriella, but they'd all returned empty-handed. The  following day, the picture had shown up in an unmarked envelope slipped  under Reign's door.

The picture … Reign winced as his eyes fell on the poorly-lit Polaroid.  Gabriella's beautiful face was bruised and beaten, bleeding from wounds  that clearly needed treatment, her mouth forced open by a gag that  seemed to cut into the sides of her lips.

Her eyes were half-open, but nothing in them said that she was alive in  her mind. She looked dead behind those eyes. Her black hair stuck to the  sides of her face. When Reign first saw the picture, it took everything  he had not to tear it into a million pieces and running screaming onto  the road. It had hurt him as though it was his face that had been  brutalized.

And then the lock of her dark black hair. Plaiting a dark red love-knot  into her long black hair: the lines from the poem had rung in his mind  once more as he'd fingered each strand, tied together with a light blue  ribbon. He'd even held it to his nose and smelled it, hoping to inhale  the slightest scent of her. But all he'd smelled was pain and violence  and fear.

And then the ghastly toe, a pinky toe, cut clean from the foot. He'd  dropped it when he opened the oddly bulky envelope, which had come to  his P.O. box, no return address. And then he'd been sick, not even  making it to the bathroom.

Now, laid out before him, the three little souvenirs taunted him, told  him there would never be another woman like her, that he would never  save her, that she would suffer and suffer and then be lost to him  forever.         

     



 

Unless he did what the letter said.

Reign wasn't much for following orders. He hated anyone telling him what  to do; this was no exception. But if it was the only way to get  Gabriella back …

He lowered his head, eyes shut tight, knowing that each second that went  by was a second that he needed to make a decision. The letter said that  it was to happen at 8:00 pm that night. It was just past 6. It wouldn't  take him long to get to the location described; he knew it all too  well.

Oh, was it irony, or a cruel joke? The place Gabriella's captor demanded  they meet was the very same oasis where they'd last enjoyed each other,  where he'd told Gabriella his darkest secret, where she'd come to the  sudden and surprising decision to leave.

Fuck, Reign thought, his hands shaking on his lap.

Reign was not used to feeling like this: indecisive, fearful. Usually,  he was the one telling everyone what to do. Usually, he was the one  making people quake in their boots. Usually, he knew how to twist the  knife just right to get what he wanted.

Now, he was on the other side of that equation, and he didn't like it one damn bit.

He wished, not for the first time, that Gabriella had kept driving.  They'd both be safer than. She wouldn't be bound and gagged and near  death in a sadistic stranger's clutches, and he wouldn't have this hole  in heart that threatened to swallow up everything else inside him, like a  vortex. He wouldn't be sitting in that chair, the silence of his  apartment broken only by the constant rattling of the air conditioner.

With a start, he jumped from the chair, letting it fall behind him in  his rage. He strode to the air conditioner and, with a single mighty  push, dislodged it from the window. It fell to the ground with a crash  that would have been satisfying if anything could have satisfied him.

She probably doesn't have air conditioning, he thought, his anger taking  control of his thoughts. So why should I get to have it?

The heat seemed to burst into the room from the open window, and soon  Reign was sweating in his jeans, still standing in front of the window  and staring down at the now-demolished air conditioner. His mind had  gone blank. There was nothing left of him, only anger and need and guilt  and desperation.

He'd do anything.

And if that meant dying, alone, in the desert, then so be it.

He'd get her back, he'd get her safe. He'd go alone. He'd bring the  money. He'd do whatever that fuck wanted him to do. It was his only  choice, and her only chance. He stormed into the kitchen and grabbed the  box of Raisin Bran from the top shelf of his pantry. Setting it down  with a thunk on the counter, he fished inside, cursing the jagged edges  of the cereal against his skin, until his fingers grasped the gun hidden  inside.

He kept it there for safe keeping, had another stashed under the bed and  a third in a safe in his closet. But this one was his favorite, his  lucky Smith and Wesson. Fully loaded and ready to go. He held it against  his chest, fingers wrapping around the trigger lightly. He felt better  holding his gun.

He wasn't going to fuck this up. Not like Miranda. He was going to be  the hero for once in his sick little life, and nothing was going to stop  him.

Not even himself.





33





Silas listened to her moaning. It didn't annoy him. He'd shut his brain  off, pretty much, after doing away with the cop. As though remembering  that he was out of milk, a little chime in his brain reminded him that  the body was still buried under a very loose covering of dirt. It would  need better hiding soon. Or not. It was hot as shit, the body was  probably reeking to high heavens. Better to just burn the shack to the  ground when he was finished. Nudge Jeremy's lifeless corpse towards the  flames and let it all go down. Ashes to ashes and all that.

As for the girl, she might as well have been bound and gagged in another  state for all the mind he paid her. Twice a day she'd wake up and moan  for a while and, after an hour or two, he'd give her another sleepy shot  and she'd go back to la-la land. If anything, he was doing her a favor  by keeping her under.