Chapter 11
LEIF
"And then she said… Excuse me for a moment." I held up my finger. "There's someone over there I need to catch up with." I gave them an insincere smile and stepped away, towards Woody as he headed toward the bar.
He looked as happy to be here as I was.
"This is bullshit," he said with a grunt. "I'm starting to think you were right. This was a stupid idea."
"I knew I was right all along," I said with a shrug. "I'm going to need a hot shower after being in the same room with these people."
"Yeah, me too." He nodded to the bartender to refill his drink and jerked his head towards me.
"Another water coming up," the bartender said.
"Shut up," Woody snapped at me before I could say anything. "Someone has to be sober."
I raised my hands. "I didn't say a word."
"You were going to."
I couldn't argue that point. I asked the bar attendant for another champagne and stepped away, the glass in my hand.
"I'd feel better if I could see her," he said.
"I know, so would I." I resisted the urge to look toward the restroom door. How long had she been in there? Two minutes? Three minutes? Too long. Another minute and I was going in there after her.
"This was the part I didn't like," Woody said.
"Which part did you like?" I asked.
"None of it." He sipped his water. "I know, Forrest and I came up with it. Doesn’t mean I like it. If I hadn't given my input, it would have been a clusterfuck."
I wasn't sure it wouldn't be a clusterfuck anyway.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. The tone for an incoming text message rang out in perfect unison with everyone else in the room. I pulled it out of my pocket. On the screen was an address a couple of blocks away.
"This is it," I said. I tapped on the screen to make sure the tracking devices were still working. "She just left the restrooms. What the fuck?"
Woody looked over my shoulder. "Same fucking question. Why is she headed in the…" He peered harder at the phone his lips drawn back.
"That's not good," I said.
"Y'think?"
I wanted to go in after her immediately, but everyone had started toward the door. Some pretending they weren't as excited as they were. Others smiling, almost rubbing their hands together. All thrilled to receive the instructions to move on.
Only the people in this room right now would know where the auction was actually held. They thrived on that knowledge. Somehow it made them special, to be a part of something so exclusive. As though it meant they'd arrived.
If blackmail was my thing, I had plenty of targets right here. Lucky for them, I enjoyed slicing throats better than making threats. Why did that make them lucky? Because they loved expensive shoes. What better fate could there be than becoming a pair? The justice was poetic as fuck.
I caught Forrest's eye. He nodded and followed the others out the door, his brow creased in a line of worry. No one seemed surprised Sable wasn't with him.
I hung back while everyone filed out. "You should go with them," I said to Woody. "She's probably fine and the tracker is malfunctioning somehow. I'll get her, and we'll be right behind you."
Woody was conflicted. His eyes swiveling back and forth from the restroom door to the exit that led out of the hotel. Finally he nodded.
"Fine." He pushed away from the bar and stalked out behind everyone else.
I waited half a minute before trotting over to the restroom and pushing the door open.
"Sable?" I called out, although doing so was pointless.
No one was in here, just an open window. The wind that blew inside was frigid.
I hurried over and leaned out. The hotel's loading dock was empty. There was no sign of Sable. No vans pulling away with a squeal of tires. Nothing.
I slapped my hand against the windowsill. "Fuck." Shook my hand because that hurt.
A tap on my phone screen gave me access to the feed from the microphone. Was it still active?
From the speaker of my phone came the sound of a car engine. A muffled groan.
Sable. She was still alive.
I wished I could speak to her, but the microphone only went one way. The tracking devices were still active, thank fuck.
"We're following," I said, even though I knew she couldn't hear me.
I sent a text to Woody and Forrest to let them know what was going on. They both read the message and didn't respond. What was there to say? They could see the tracker's movements from their phones. They also knew she was moving away from us, in the wrong direction.
I trotted out, all the way to the front of the hotel. Pushed out the front doors and looked around for Forrest and Woody. Saw them across the street in Woody's car.
I ran across the road, narrowly missing being hit by a bright pink convertible. Why was anyone driving around with a top down on a day like this?
I wrenched the back door open and threw myself inside, behind Woody.
"This wasn't supposed to go this way," I said
"You might want to fasten your seatbelt." Woody jammed the car into gear and squealed away from the curb.
I grabbed the ‘oh shit’ handle and held on while he screamed down the street.
"They're heading south," Forrest said. "Turn right at the next corner."
Woody turned right. "What the hell happened?" he demanded, stopping to honk at someone who pulled out of a side street in front of us. "They were supposed to accept your magnanimous gift of a woman to sell."
Yeah, those words were as fucked up as they sounded, but that was their plan. The plan that was officially pear-shaped as a motherfucker.
Forrest glanced over at him. "Now we have a new plan. Follow our woman and get her back."
How was he so calm? I wanted to lose my shit. I was going to lose my shit at whoever took her.
Rule number one: touch my woman and die.
What was rule number two? I didn't know. At the moment, it didn't matter. Right now the only thing that did was finding Sable safe and well and carrying out the punishment for breaking rule number one.
There was one major flaw in all of this.
"What about Savannah? Sable is going to be mad at us if we don't save her too."
Forrest glanced back at me. "Sable is my priority. Once we have her back, we'll find Savannah."
I gave him a look of disbelief. If someone bought Savannah at the auction, chances were we'd never see her again.
"She's not going to forgive us," I said, leaning my head back against the car seat.
"We can't be in two places at once," Woody pointed out. "I can pull over here if you want to run back. You could go to the auction instead."
"Not a chance." Forrest was right. Sable was our priority.
Sorry, Savannah. I hope you can hang on until we get to you too.
Not to mention the fact Woody wasn't slowing down.
"Turn left," Forrest said, pointing up ahead.
"They're going to wonder why you didn't show up at the auction," I said to him.
"Let them wonder," he snapped. "They'll understand well enough when we find her."
"They won't live long enough to understand," Woody growled. "I'm going to snap their fucking necks."
"Take a deep breath," Forrest said. "None of us can go in there half-cocked."
Woody glanced over at him and back to the road in time to avoid running into the car in front of us. He missed the back of it by maybe an inch.
"I'm going to get a rocket launcher installed in the front of this car," he said. "Any motherfucker that gets in my way, I'll blow them up."
"I don't know," I said, "but I think that's all kinds of illegal."
"At least three kinds," Forrest agreed. "I understand the temptation, but cooler heads have to prevail. Anger will only lead to us making mistakes."
We already miscalculated once. We weren't going to do it again.
Also? I was going to lock Sable in her apartment and stay there with her until the end of time. No one could take her again if we never went out. I suspected she'd hate that but it was tempting as fuck.
"They're slowing down," I said, glancing at my screen.
"Everyone is slowing down in this traffic," Woody pointed out.
"Not shit, but they've come to a stop about a block up from here." I nodded straight ahead. "She's moving sideways like they're taking her out of the car."
I peered through the windshield in frustration. The traffic was thicker, like people appeared out of the woodwork to get in our way. If I didn't know better, I'd think they planned it.
I have to admit, that rocket launcher didn't sound like a bad idea right now.
"It might be faster to run." I was almost ready to jump out of the vehicle when it started moving again, only to stop when Woody pulled up to the side of the curb.
"I don't care if this is a loading zone. They can give me a fucking ticket." Phone in his hand, he pushed out of his car and slammed the door behind him before starting to trot.
Forrest and I were right on his heels.
"You know they're going to tow that," I said, jerking my head back toward his car.
Woody snorted. "Don't give a shit," he said.
I grinned. "Funny, me either."
We could all afford to buy him a new car, including him. It was only a piece of metal anyway. Sure, it was a nineteen sixty-seven Mustang, but whatever. It was replaceable. Sable wasn't.
"We need to slow down," Forrest called when we were maybe fifty feet from the tracker. "They'll see us coming if we're running."
"I don't care if they see us coming," Woody said. "Let them be scared." But he slowed along with the rest of us.
Everything we did, every time we dealt with a predator, we did it with stealth. There was nothing stealthy about this. Three men in expensive suits walking down the street? We wouldn't go unnoticed. Especially if they were…
"They're waiting for us," Woody growled.
Standing in front of a tattoo parlor were four men in dark suits. All with dark sunglasses and slicked back hair, like some sort of burly boy band.
Asshole and the Puckers. Prick and the Ball Sacs. Four Non-Brains. Musclehead and the… You get the idea.
I know you're thinking it, we’d be Forrest and the Trees. Haha, right? More like Leif and the Thick Trunks. Or Leif’s Thick Trunk and the…
Okay, I’ll work on that.
I managed to tear my eyes away from the wannabe crooners, to glance down at my phone.
The tracker was right behind them, inside the store.
"I'm starting to get the feeling this was a set-up," I said.
"What fucking gave it away?" Woody glared over at me.
"Dumb and Dumber and Thing One and Thing Two," I said, gesturing toward the men. They could decide for themselves which was which. Although the guy on the end looked a lot like a Dumber to me.
"What do you want?" Forrest called out to them.
"Our boss wants to talk to you," one of them said. He opened the door and gestured us all inside.