Chapter Twenty-four
Brynn
Stacie isn’t happy about me staying here tonight, but when I pointed out that I would need time to pack anyway—and I have already paid my half of this month’s rent—she begrudgingly let me in the front door.
I’m disappointed to find it doesn’t feel like home anymore.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
My feline best friend is holed up with some depraved sociopath across town and I’m stuck here with a tower of boxes and a roommate who can’t stand me.
So cozy.
Since I have class tomorrow, I should also really be studying, and I find myself hating the choices that led me here despite firmly believing they were the right ones.
I spend what feels like a million hours packing up my things, and it’s impossible to keep my mind from wandering to the Rho Kappa house fire. I know it’s just stuff and stuff can be replaced, but some things can’t. What if they had mementos of their families in their bedrooms? Something passed down from a loved one.
Killian burned it all up without a second thought.
I would be crushed if that happened to me. Especially because I’ve already experienced losing virtually everything I own once. I spent 18 years collecting things I liked and wanted, things that meant something to me and useless baubles alike, and then, just like now, I had a couple of hours to pack it all up.
I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to think about anything, so I grab my phone to turn on some music.
It feels like an evermore kind of night, so I tap that playlist. The opening guitar chords draw me in, and as soon as she starts singing, I sing along.
But singing just reminds me of Killian’s stupid sweet nickname for me.
Songbird.
I liked being Killian’s songbird. I wanted to be.
And now… now I don’t know what I want. And I don’t know if it even matters.
He seems to know what he wants, and apparently, what he says goes.
Wreck my plans, indeed.
___
I’ve had a lot of lonely nights in my lifetime, but tonight feels like the loneliest. Maybe I’m being dramatic. Maybe it’s only because this is the most recent, and I’ve put all the others out of my mind so I could move forward without all of that weighing me down.
It takes forever even though my body is exhausted, but I finally fall asleep.
But I wake up abruptly, swatting at my arm on instinct.
I think a bug bit me.
I cannot stand bugs, so I reach for my blanket to throw it back so I can jump out of bed and make sure there aren’t any creepy crawlies in bed with me, but the strangest things happens.
My arm just… falls.
I try to pick it up, and my eyes widen in horror when I can’t move it.
I can’t move my arm at all.
I’m confused at first, my brain foggy from being asleep. I’ve slept weird and had a hand or arm fall asleep on me before, but this doesn’t feel like that. There’s not even the faintest sensation of pins and needles, I just… I can’t feel anything.
Then my gaze jumps to movement in the shadows.
I can feel my heart pounding—I can hear it, too—but the scariest thing is that it feels like I can’t breathe.
I count three men emerging from the shadows in my bedroom. One of them grabs my hands and lifts me up to a sitting position, his hollow eyes meeting mine and calmly registering my panic.
Hollow because he’s wearing a mask. All of them are.
“Hurry up,” he tells one of his friends.
I feel the panic rising because I can’t draw a breath, and I try to jerk away instinctively when something is placed over my head, but of course, I’m immobile. The desire to move registers, but my body doesn’t listen to me.
Then a clear dome is fitted over my face, a strap wrapped around my head, and just like that, I can breathe again.
I would collapse with relief, but… well, I have no control over anything my body does.
“She breathing?” asks a guy behind me.
“She’s good,” says the calm one who honestly, could not seem to care less.
“Good. I think he’d be pissed if we killed her,” he says, but manages to sound amused more than anything.
“I knew how much time you had,” the first guy says as he stands. “We only have a few minutes though, so blindfold her and let’s get the hell out of here.”
“I gotcha,” says the guy behind me, wrapping an arm around me to keep me steady, then pulling a blindfold over my eyes.
I can no longer see, but I can feel the guy lift me from behind, supporting my weight easily as he lifts me to a standing position. The third guy, a bigger guy, comes over and picks me up, draping me over his shoulder.
The clear dome moves on my face, nudging the blindfold so the right side lifts enough for me to see.
I can’t see who’s carrying me, but I recognize his scent.
It’s Shane.
His voice sounds a little muffled, but he tells one of the other guys, “Make sure the mask is still on her right.”
One of them crouches down to check the fit and make sure I’m still getting assistance breathing. I try to look at him, but I can’t turn my head and he’s not at the right angle for me to get a good look. I feel leather gloves on my face as he adjusts the dome, then stands. “Yep. All good.”
I feel like a ragdoll as Shane carries me out of my bedroom, then out of my apartment. The tall, cold one must have walked out first, because the one who put the blindfold on me is the last to leave, and I watch him reach back inside to turn the lock before he closes the door, apparently making sure the place is secure so no one else comes in uninvited.
How considerate, I think sourly.
I’ve gleaned that I’m being abducted by Blue Bloods, but I don’t know why. I’m alarmed that they went to the trouble of using a paralytic, because I would think they’d know I’d just come willingly with a little mild threatening.
But I don’t know two of these men. Shane is the only one I recognized. The tall, cold one isn’t Hex, and the one who blindfolded me… I don’t know who the hell that is.
I don’t know what time it is, but it must be late. Thankfully, we don’t pass anyone in the halls on the way downstairs. A chill passes over me when we get outside. I’m wearing thin night clothes, and it’s cold as hell. Jerks could have at least grabbed my coat.
I’m not outside for long. A white Escalade is parked on the curb, and the tall guy opens the door like Hugh did for me earlier tonight. I’m jostled unpleasantly as Shane tightens his grip on me and hauls me into the car, careful not to bump my head as he does. I get a brief glimpse of white leather interior seats, then Shane shifts my weight and cradles me like a child, carefully putting me down across it.
Unfortunately, he also notices my blindfold has moved.
“No peeking,” he tells me, then he adjusts the blindfold so it’s covering both eyes again.
Robbed of my ability to watch, I listen as the guys load into the car and close the door. The cabin lights dim, and seconds later, the car starts moving.
“How you doing over there, Brynn?” asks the guy who blindfolded me.
I’ve been better.
“She can’t answer you, asshole,” mutters Shane, who I realize by the nearness of his rumbling voice is not sitting on a seat across from me. He’s sitting on the floor right in front of me.
It’s instinct to try to push against the seat, to get myself upright, but I’m frustrated all over again when my arms lie uselessly against the buttery leather seat.
“That will wear off in a minute or two,” the guy says, as if reading my mind. “We’ll let you come out of it if you can be a good girl, but then we’ll have to administer a second dose when we’re taking you out of the car.”
Since I can’t speak, I try to shake my head.
Please no.
But of course, nothing happens.
As many times as I’ve been rendered helpless in my life, I have never been as helpless as this.
The guy was right, though. The drug does wear off.
I’m reluctant to let them know it at first, so I stay where I am, making only the smallest movements of my fingers and toes to test it out. I briefly consider smacking Shane in the back of the head for doing this to me to announce my renewed ability to move, but that certainly won’t earn me any brownie points, so I ignore the impulse.
I don’t know if I should remove the mask or not since they said they’re going to do that to me again, but honestly, I will do just about anything to convince them not to. That felt terrifying, like suffocation for several seconds, then the helplessness of it afterward…
That was absolutely terrible.
And exactly what Kyle experienced, except he had the added terror of knowing the house was on fire and he was absolutely going to die.
I’m guessing no relief came for him, either. Killian wanted to make him experience the moment, but not enough to hook him up to a breathing machine to prolong it.
A shudder passes over me as I slowly push myself up.
“There she is,” says the guy in the seat across from me.
“Can I remove the blindfold?” I ask.
“No. But I appreciate you asking.”
“I told you she’d fucking cooperate,” Shane mutters, then I think he turns his head in my direction because his voice sounds like it’s directed at me. “You all right?”
I nod, getting myself in the seat the right way and tugging at the hem of my nightgown, wishing I would have put on a set with shorts.
“Don’t worry,” says the guy seated across from me. “We won’t hurt you. Not like that.”
“He won’t look, either,” Shane assures me. “He’s got his own girl to torment.”
Up until now, the man sitting across from me has sounded rather good-natured for a scary intruder who helped steal me out of my bed in the middle of the night, but Shane’s comment seems to displease him. “Someone needs to tell her that,” he mutters.
“Is Hex here?” I ask, not caring about my captor’s relationship drama.
“No,” Shane answers. “But we’re going to see him.”
I fucking knew it.
“What is his problem with me? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Hex doesn’t like anyone,” the guy across from me says. “Don’t take it personally.”
“None of this is your fault,” Shane tells me.
“If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Killian’s. He should have known better,” the other guy murmurs.
My heart sinks.
Do they know that I know more than I should?
Killian’s words from before echo in my head.
If you tell one person, you’re putting them at risk. You tell three people, you’re putting yourself at risk.
I guess since he just told me, I’m the one getting drugged and dragged out of my bed in the middle of the night.
“Does Killian know about this?” I ask uncertainly.
“No.”
The guy I don’t know doesn’t elaborate, and while initially I felt less at risk once I realized who had taken me, I’m wondering if I should.
I didn’t feel like I was at risk walking down the basement stairs at the Rho Kappa house either, but I was.
I didn’t feel like I was at risk tangled up in Killian’s arms last night, but it turns out I was kissing and snuggling a remorseless killer.
And he didn’t act alone.
I know Hex was with him, but there were two other guys, too, and I don’t know who they were.
Maybe I think I’m a little safer with the devils I know, but…
Maybe I’m not.