Risky and Wild(97)

Kidnapped. Again. On my fucking watch. Makes me want to blow my damn brains out.

I have to find her. Have to.

But where the bloody hell do I start?





“Get her out of the fucking car and leave her inside; I don't care where.”

Clayton Moore appears in front of me, his face grim as he slides me out of the backseat and tosses me over his shoulder like a bag of flour. The world spins, but I see trees—lots and lots of fucking trees. Everything is wet out here, dewy and cool and lush. Ferns dot the muddy landscape, surrounding the base of an old house with stone on the bottom half and faded blue siding on the top half. The roof is covered in moss, but it's far too ugly to look like a fairy-tale cottage.

We're in the forest somewhere, I realize, trying to calculate how long we were driving, how fast. We must be at the edge of Redwood National Park.

And I'm not blindfolded. That's not good. If I'm not blindfolded, that means I can see the faces of the people involved in this bullshit which means they probably don't expect me to live long enough to talk about it.

My breathing starts to race as we whirl around, my head bobbing as Clayton walks towards the blue house. Before we reach the door, I manage to see five vehicles parked on the brown carpet of pine needles that surround the place: three motorcycles, the sedan I rode in, and a truck.

As soon as we hit the front of the house and step inside, I smell it.

Pot. Cannabis. Weed.

It is fucking everywhere and it is fresh.

And that's when I realize we're in a grow house—a house that's being used to cultivate weed. It's epidemic around here, has been for a long time. Humboldt County as a whole—Trinidad, Arcata, Eureka—the housing prices have always been astronomical in comparison to the economic health of the area. The reason being: illegal growers. They come up here, cultivate product, use the profits to buy houses in cash and strap the cities around here with all sorts of problems that they can't afford to handle. Couple times a year, the county sends a helicopter up with a heat scanner to search for houses just like this, buried in the forest and impossible to find on foot. The warmth needed to keep the plants alive lights them up like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

My body tumbles forward with a sudden burst of velocity and then I'm landing on a filthy beige sofa, the fabric pilling and torn, yellow stuffing leaking out the edges. I blink to clear away the vertigo and take note of the foil covered windows and walls, the green plants with their special heat lamps, the man smoking a cigarette not six feet away from me.

He's got a machine gun in one hand.

I've seen pictures of drug cartels on the news, seen their masks and their massive guns and their tanks. But seeing this in person, in my city, it's … I don't want to believe it and it's happening to me.

My gaze moves away from Machine Gun Guy over to Clayton Moore. He's speaking in quiet, rapid Spanish with another man, a short guy with buzzed dark hair and a swarthy look that might be handsome if he didn't look so … criminal.

I'm going to die in here.

The knowledge is a cool pit in the heat of my nauseous belly, bringing that realization slowly crowning over my head. I'm going to die at the hands of a drug cartel and it's not because I'm dating—going to marry—the president of the MC that's standing in their way.

No, I know I'm here today because I'm the mayor's daughter.

Clayton Moore argues with the man for several long minutes, their words too quick for me to pick up on. I've taken Spanish, for many years actually. But I'm not so good that I can translate whispered slang about … murders and kidnappings and guns and death. No, in college I learned useless things like how to ask for a bathroom or tell somebody about my day. If only my professors had taught me the words for let's ransom this bitch or how much can we get for an ounce around this shit hole?

After a few more minutes of arguing, Clayton leaves the way he came, disappearing out the front door and slamming it behind him, leaving me alone with the two Saldaña guys. Or, at least I think they're the Saldaña guys. For all I know they could be a part of Mile Wide. But no. No, the way Clayton argued with that short guy, the one with the buzzed hair, it looked like a power struggle.

I freeze as a door opens down the hallway and three more men appear in the living room—or what used to be the living room—and turn as one to stare at me. They're still talking in Spanish, but at this point I'm too freaked-out to be able to translate anything at all.

Me. Five foot two and trussed up. Five men who didn't hesitate to order their cronies to gun down a bunch of women on the search for organic cocoa powder.

Outside, I hear the roar of bike engines as Clayton and his boys leave me alone at a grow house in the middle of the forest with five machine gun toting gangsters.