Ryder (Phoenix MC #1)

Eighteen

I didn’t know who’d kidnapped me. I mean, I had to assume it was the biker club. There had been a sudden noise behind me while I was on the phone, and then someone put a hood over my head, and I was half carried, half dragged out of there. I fought. I kicked. I struggled. I even tried screaming, and that’s when someone jabbed something sharp into my neck, and I felt woozy. I blacked out, and now I had no idea where I was.

I’d woken up in a room, on a bed, and I was tied to it. I was blindfolded, but I could feel the mattress beneath me. I could feel the ropes tied at my hands and feet, but I couldn’t tell if I was wearing anything. It was warm in the room. I tried wriggling, but I had no range of movement. I was trapped. Alone. Afraid . My breathing was fast, erratic. I couldn’t tell if there was someone in the room with me. I didn’t know if I was about to die, or if something worse was about to happen.

I found myself praying that it was him. Ryder. My biker . Because if I had been taken by anyone else, then I had to accept the fact that I was in the worst danger of my life.

Ryder

T hey came back empty handed. I was waiting outside, because I already fucking knew, didn’t I? Reacher had received a call to say they’d found the place empty. Just a smashed phone on the floor, and the room messed up. Someone else had taken her. Someone had taken my fucking woman .

It didn’t go unnoticed by me, that I was acting like she was actually mine. Like she was my old lady even. She wasn’t. She wasn’t someone I even knew if I liked. I shouldn’t. I should hate her with a passion, because what she’d done was appalling, and humiliating. And now someone might do the same to her, and it was killing me.

“Will you calm the fuck down?” Reacher grabbed the neck of my t-shirt, and dragged me to a halt. Yeah, I’d been pacing again.

“Ice, you getting anything?” He was busy trawling through CCTV footage he’d hacked, and then he cursed.

“Jesus, we missed her by like two fucking minutes.”

We all crowded around the screen to watch two big guys came out of the building I now knew to be hers. They were half carrying a struggling figure, with a cloth bag over her head, then they threw her into a van.

“FUCK!” I yelled, slamming my fist into the wall.

“Calm the FUCK down!” Reacher yelled at me, turning back to Ice.

“You got the number plate?” Ice groaned.

“Of course I fucking did. Can you guys keep the noise down, so I can work?”

“What’s taking so damn long? You’re supposed to be a fucking technical whizz, and you’re taking for-fucking-ever!” I yelled, coming back at Ice.

Someone grabbed the back of my neck in a tight grip, and marched me out of Ice’s room, taking me down to the bar in the communal area. He shoved me into the lounge corner, and nodded at Tommy, who was manning the bar.

Stitch . He shoved me back, when I tried to get up again.

“Stay the fuck there, or I’ll sit on you.”

I fought to do as my VP ordered, but it was eating at me. This urge to be up, and moving, and punching someone, or something. She was out there; she was alone, in danger, and scared. I couldn’t leave her to the mercy of whoever had her.

“Oi. I said, drink that.” Stitch pointed at a vodka that had appeared in front of me. He had a bourbon in his hand. He looked tired. Did we all look like that lately? Had anyone been sleeping at all?

“Someone took her,” I muttered, my mind still whirling around everything that had happened.

He nodded. “Doing what she does, she’s bound to have other enemies, brother.”

He looked so calm, but then he wasn’t freaking out at the possibility of losing the only woman his dick would rise for.

“So that’s it? She’s pissed off others, never mind. Move on? I can’t fucking do that.”

He raised an eyebrow, lowering his glass.

“You act like she’s yours. You thinking of claiming the woman who raped you, brother? That’s every possible kind of messed up.”

It was. It really fucking was. I glanced around us, seeing nobody except Tommy, who was all the way across the huge room.

“What if I did, though?”

Stitch eyed me warily. “You claim who you claim. Doesn’t have to make sense to the rest of us. I will say though, she assaulted you, and maybe what you’re feeling isn’t the kind of connection you think it is. Maybe what’s really happening is, you just really want to see this through, and get your closure. Then you can move on. Maybe to a certain club female, who pretty much only lets two brothers even touch her.”

Chrissy. Yeah. I used to enjoy fucking her, but now? She didn’t even occur to me anymore. I hadn’t thought of her since that one night when I’d messaged her. I hadn’t thought of anyone but Tori.

“Will the club even accept her as my old lady, if that’s what I choose?” I’d never planned to fucking go that route. Why tie myself down to one woman, when I can fuck so many others? I never understood it before. Did I understand it now? Not really. Did I want anyone else touching her? No. Only I could touch her . And I didn’t even care if she accepted that. It was the way it had to be.

“What if we don’t find her?” Stitch asked, in that annoyingly reasonable tone of his.

I drank half of the vodka, and sat back to look at him.

“Are we doing everything in our power to try?”

He sighed, shaking his head. “Of course we fucking are, but I’m asking what happens if we fail.”

I felt all of the strength in my body drain away at the thought.

“I have no fucking idea. I think I need her .”

He was watching me closely, like he could see everything, every emotion, every tremor of fear and confusion. Every fucking desperate urge in my tired body to get up and out there, and just find her.

“We’ll do our best to find her, Ryder. But you need to be prepared for the fact that whoever took her, may not keep her long.”

I knew what he was saying. She could be dead by tomorrow. She might already be dead. And we had no way of tracking her, because they’d left her phone behind, and our attempts to track it had been fucking pitiful already.

“If Ice had just fucking tracked her sooner.”

“ Don’t put this on him . He’s been up almost every fucking night working on this. He’s used every skill he has; he’s called in favours that he’ll be repaying for a long ass time. He’s taken way more shit to keep him awake than I think any of us realise. After all this is sorted, you might want to try saying thanks to him.”

Yeah, probably. “I never used to be this much of an asshole, right? I mean… this is new. It is, right?”

Stitch smirked. “I think you’re a little more edgy than you used to be, but you’re still pretty much the same guy we patched in twelve years ago. You just like to get in your President’s face a lot lately.”

I ran a hand through my hair.

“Yeah… so… the fact that he hasn’t put his fist through my face yet. Is that a good thing? Or do you think he’s keeping count, so he can beat the shit out of me later?”

Stitch laughed, slapping a hand on the arm of the chair.

“I kinda hope for the latter, you know… for entertainment value.”

“ Jackass .”

He shrugged. We were wasting time, stuck in a holding pattern. Waiting for something to give us a fucking clue. I appreciated the fact that Stitch was taking the time to distract me, rather than leaving me to pace and freak out.

We sat and did that for a fucking hour, and then Ice appeared, his hair standing up, like he’d been pulling at it.

“We’ve got something. Hell, we’ve got a whole lot of something.”

We followed him to his room where he laid it all out; who she was, who her family were, and who likely had their hands on her. Fuck .