Chapter 8
Ellis
He doesn’t want me.
This thought kept bouncing around my head. I wasn’t surprised when he said he didn’t need me. That I already knew. Brody was a self-sufficient man who seemed to have everything in his life figured out and could handle anything that came his way.
I, on the other hand, was an amnesiac mess that may or may not be a criminal and needed other people to make my decisions for me.
No, Brody definitely didn’t need me, but I’d been hoping he at least wanted me.
After the conversation we’d just had, that wasn’t looking like a possibility, either. The man might like me physically, our one night together made that clear, but he didn’t want me around more than necessary.
As I sat in Brody’s parked truck feeling like a fool, I contemplated my options. The windows were down and a pleasant breeze blew across my face, in stark contrast to my very unpleasant thoughts.
Without my memories, I couldn’t leave Brody, but what if they never came back. He wasn’t going to support me forever.
Where would I even go?
I still had no idea who I even was, and so far, there hadn’t been much luck identifying me.
When I was in the hospital the police had taken my blood to try a DNA match, but that had turned up nothing.
No relatives or friends had shown up looking for me, and there was no missing person’s report matching my description.
Maybe I should just live in the woods, taking shelter in a tent and hunting my own food. I could do odd jobs under the table for some cash and live completely off the grid.
At least that way I wouldn’t bother anyone.
I never saw the hand reaching for me until it gripped over my mouth and pressed my head back against the truck’s seat.
I tasted leather as I tried to scream, but nothing more than a muffled noise came out.
Someone was leaning through the window, masked and gloved so barely any of their skin was showing.
“Shut up,” the person hissed at me. A male voice.
“Don’t bother,” another person said behind the one silencing me. “Just bring him.”
With my head pinned, I couldn’t see the second speaker, and their voice was more androgynous so I couldn’t even tell if they were male or female.
My breath came in harsh little bursts through my nose as panic made my vision go blurry around the edges. “Bring him” could only be interpreted one way. I was being abducted and based on the number of voices I heard contemplating how to get me out of the truck, there were multiple people involved.
I probably couldn’t even fight off one. A whole group would be impossible.
Brody could fight off a group. I’d seen him do it before.
The man holding my face pressed my back harder into the seat to keep me in place as he reached for the unlock button on the door. My seatbelt wasn’t on. If they got the door open, they could easily pull me out, and then it would all be over.
Luckily, my arms were still free.
Before the man could reach the unlock button, I knocked his hand away just enough to pull the door handle. With the door still locked, pulling the handle from the inside set off the alarm.
The man holding me jerked back in surprise as the alarm wailed, and I got a good look at all my attackers for the first time. It was worse than I feared. Not only was there a whole group of people surrounding the truck, but they were heavily armed as well.
Even if I tried escaping through a different door, a different kidnapper would just grab me. They had me thoroughly surrounded.
The alarm didn’t distract them for long. Another person reached around the first man and unlocked the door, allowing them to open it and grab me by the front of my shirt.
I braced my hands and feet against the inner wall of the truck, wedging myself inside as best as possible.
“You fucker,” one of the kidnappers gasped as they struggled to pull me from the truck.
For once, I was glad for my size. It made it harder for them to move me against my will.
I kicked out blindly and managed to hit one of them hard enough to knock them away, but another body just took their place. It was a losing battle. I couldn’t fight them off, but maybe I could buy enough time for Brody to notice what was happening.
Once again, I had no choice but to rely on him to save me. I really was completely useless.
It ended when one of the kidnappers got fed up with the struggle and punched me in the stomach.
The sudden pain made me curl up, and they were able to drag me from the truck.
I still tried to fight back, flailing like a drunken madman with no fighting skills, but another punch to the face made my whole world spin and I dropped to the ground.
Everything was a blur after that. I lay on the ground, fading in and out of consciousness. Every thought left my head, except for the surprising observation that asphalt was more comfortable than I expected.
There was so much noise. I wanted to cup my hands over my ears to block out the repetitive banging sounds, but I couldn’t coordinate my arms enough to bring them up by my head.
After an unknown amount of time, with the late morning sun beating down on my back, more hands hauled me to my feet and an arm around my throat kept me standing.
Something cold and hard pressed painfully against my temple.
What was happening?
I thought I heard Brody’s voice, but it might have been my hopeful imagination.
Some of my senses came back to me when I was suddenly slammed down into a chair. As I looked around in confusion, several straps were secured across my body, keeping my arms and legs pinned in place.
“Where is Aaron?”
“Wha yu mean?” My slurred words were barely understandable, not even to me. My vision swam when I pried my eyes open, and a masked face loomed over me.
“Aaron Beckham,” the same voice demanded, and it took me longer than it should have to realize that the masked person was trying to talk to me. “Where is he?”
“I don’t… know.” My neck had the strength of a pipe cleaner as I tried to hold up my head, and my chin kept dropping back down to my chest.
A hand grabbed my jaw, forcing my head up so I had to look at the masked person.
“Don’t play with me. Where is Aaron Beckham?”
Aaron Beckham?
I knew that name. I couldn’t match a face to the name, but the sound of it reached down into my chest and a sob bubbled up my throat. Tears dripped unbidden from my eyes and carved hot paths down my cheeks. I didn’t even know why I was crying, but I couldn’t make myself stop.
Another masked person shoved the first one aside and grabbed the front of my shirt, shaking me so that my back repeatedly slammed against the chair I was bound to.
“Stop blubbering and tell us where he is. That thief is going to pay, and if you don’t cooperate, then you’ll be joining him.”
I barely heard what they were saying. That familiar but unknown name was still bouncing around inside my head, echoing in my ears and blocking out all other sounds. I didn’t even realize we were in a vehicle until everything suddenly swerved to the side.
“What the—” The person holding me had to brace against the side of the van to keep from toppling over. “What the hell are you doing up there?”
All three of the people in the back of the van with me looked toward the front where another masked individual sat behind the wheel.
“That ginger bastard is chasing us.”
“What?” Three faces peered out of the van’s small windows, all jostling for a better view. It was such a ridiculous sight that I couldn’t help laughing.
Laughing and still crying at the same time. I must have looked like a lunatic.
One of the masked people jumped into the front of the van to lean out the window and started shooting a gun behind us. The whole van swerved again, even more drastically than before. People stumbled and shouted as they were thrown around.
Ironically, the straps meant to imprison me actually kept me secure in my seat.
The sound of a second gun joined the fray, then the whole van shook violently. We swerved so hard that everyone still standing was knocked off their feet and even the driver struggled to hang onto the wheel.
Someone shouted “Oh, shit!”
The whole van spun.
I had just enough time to register the pain as my head knocked against something, then everything went black.
“What do you mean I can’t file a Missing Persons report?” I demanded from the officer sitting at the front desk. “My brother is missing. I need you to help find him. Why aren’t you doing anything?”
The officer sighed, not even looking up from her paperwork as she answered me.
“Mister Beckham. This is your third time here trying to file a report, and we’ve told you the same thing every time. For a Missing Persons report to be filed, the person has to be missing.”
My fist hit the desk hard enough to knock over a cup of pens. “My brother is missing. He’s been missing for months, and you’re not doing anything to find him.”
Very carefully, and with great precision, the officer picked up the cup and replaced each spilled pen one at a time, arranging them in a very specific order.
“Aaron Beckham is not missing. We’ve contacted him, and he’s assured us that he’s fine and doesn’t need anyone to look for him.”
“Contacted him how?” I asked as I watched her arrange all the black pens in a ring around the edge of the cup. “He disappeared without his phone. He’s not answering emails. I don’t even have an address I can send a letter to.”
After the black pens were precisely placed, the officer started forming a second row of blue pens inside the ring of black ones. “If your brother hasn’t left you a way to contact him, that is his choice. Nevertheless, we have checked on him, and he’s fine.”
I ground my teeth together so hard my jaw hurt, and gripped the edge of the table until my fingers turned white. I must have looked like a madman as I stared the officer down, and a few people who were also waiting to approach the front desk scurried away from me.