Duke(97)

He lifted Gen to the bed, pulled her Sig off her right hip and put it on a side table. “I knew you’d have it, so I had to take you down fast.”

Gen still had the three-eighty under her arm, but it did no good with her wrists bound behind her back.

“Gonna fuck you before we die, and you’re gonna like it with me as much as you do with Duke.”

Terror spiked through her veins, and she spoke without thinking, “Over my dead body.”

“No, that’s after. First, you’re gonna be very lively, and if you aren’t, I’ll hurt your new friend here.”

“Mike, you’re a good man. You were a cop and I know you enjoyed bringing in the bad guys. I heard your stories, listened to you talk about helping out the victims of crime when you could. I’m not sure what went wrong, and I wish I could go back and change it, but I’m not sure rape and torture are in you. If you’re about to die, is that really what you want your last acts to be?”

“You obviously never knew me at all. I became a cop for the power it gave me, not because I wanted to do good. And you took that power away, so you’ll pay. I know you’re hard headed enough you won’t give me what I want no matter how much I hurt you, so instead, I’ll make you watch me hurt her, see if that gives you the motivation I’m looking for.”

The whole room was quiet as they heard a motorcycle on the main road, but it went by and Mike said, “Crotch rocket.” He picked Gen’s gun up and said, “I hear a Harley and I’ll kill us all before he makes it down the drive.”

Oh, God. He was going to kill her with her own gun. She wasn’t sure why this was worse than using his gun, but it was, and it pissed her off.

“Screw you, Mike. I’ll never be able to enjoy sex with you because you have a skinny penis and you don’t know what the heck to do with it.”

Okay, so the first part wasn’t necessarily true, but the second seemed to be, as he hadn’t been able to get her aroused and excited. She’d never said ‘screw you’ before in her life, and it felt pretty good.

Pebbles laughed and said, “God, Gen, I really like you. We get out of this alive and I hope we can be friends. You know, if my husband forgives you for getting me kidnapped, but I’m pretty sure I can talk him down.”

“Would you two bitches shut the fuck up?”

“Did you know the Chattanooga Police Department had you under surveillance?” Gen asked Pebbles.

“Yeah, I knew. It’s only for certain kinds of communication though, and I thought it’d be safe to let conversations and emails with my Realtor be a matter of public record. Which means, kind of, that it isn’t your fault we’re kidnapped, but mine.”

Mike cut Gen’s ankles loose and sat on her legs all at once. She felt him connecting first one ankle and then the other to the iron footboard, and wondered if he knew the house was only staged for show and there were likely no sheets beneath the bedspread.

“Let’s not assign blame, Pebbles. He’s my ex-boyfriend. What does your husband do?”

“Ummm, assuming we’re gonna get out of here, let’s leave that one alone for now. Okay?”

“He imports drugs,” Mike said, his voice full of hate and fury. “Decides which gangs get the good stuff, which get the crap. Helps with manpower when someone against drugs moves in and locks out territory.”

Which meant it was highly likely Jiminy and Duke weren’t going to be the best of friends, but Gen didn’t share this with Pebbles. They were being held in an almost three million dollar house, and since Gen held the listing, she stood to make a seven percent commission on the sale. Not that Pebbles would want this one after being kidnapped in it.

One minute, Mike was pulling her pants down past her bottom while muttering about her “lovely ass,” and the next he was thrown across the room and Duke was pulling her pants back up as Brain cut the plastic away at her wrists and ankles.

“God,” Brain said as he worked, “tell me you didn’t kill him. There’s a civilian here, we’re gonna have to get the cops involved, Duke. You knew that.”

“Not a civilian,” Pebbles said as she stood and tugged her very snug dress back down over her thighs, Dozer’s arm around her for support. “If I can get my phone from my purse, I need to call my husband,” she looked at Duke as if she expected him to recognize the name when she said, “Jiminy Davidson.”

All three RTMC men muttered, “Fuck me,” at the same time, and both Pebbles and Gen laughed.

Mike had ripped the button from the top of her pants, and destroyed the zipper, so while her pants were pulled up, they weren’t going to stay. She sat on the bed, pulled her legs up to hide the state of her pants, and said, “Let her call her husband, Duke. Let’s get this sorted as quick as we can, okay? Someone else is due to show the house in a little over an hour and I’ll need to be sure it’s put to rights before we leave.”