Chapter 12
Trinity
The scent of expensive leather hits me as I wake, which does nothing to help the headache pounding between my ears. The rumble of pavement under my skull peels my eyes open.
The plush back seat of a luxury SUV greets me. My face is smushed against the leather, my body curled and half-reclined in an unnatural position. The soft, warm orange of evening crawling toward sunset streams through the windshield.
How the hell did I end up in the back of a vehicle?
The fog covering my mind dissipates with agonizing slowness. As if extracting a memory from the depths of my mind by a thin, fraying thread, I drag the last thing I remember into my consciousness.
The Cypress Hotel. I found Kellin, but Brody found me first. We kissed and then hid in a closet. A sharp prick on my neck—
Holy shit. That bastard drugged me.
Still groggy, I lift my thousand-pound head high enough to peer out the window. The empty rocks of the California desert fly past us.
We’re definitely not in Los Angeles anymore, Toto.
In the front seat, Brody sits in pensive silence behind the wheel. He must hear me shift positions because he meets my gaze in the rearview mirror.
Seething, I hold his dark hazel eyes for a few long moments before the road claims his attention again.
This absolute assclown.
I’ve been unconscious for who knows how long, tossed in the back of a BMW like a piece of luggage, while he gallivants us across the desert.
I flick my hands over my body, checking for anything out of place, any indication that he touched me. My tank top is still on, my underwear, my jeans zipped and buttoned—
Brody snorts.
My eyes snap back to the rearview mirror to find the dick smirking at me.
“Relax.” Honeyed amusement drips from his tone. “You’ve made it clear I’m a bastard, but consent matters to me.”
Well, that’s a relief, but the asshat still drugged me.
Rage flushes under my collar as I sit up and grab his headrest. “Where do you get off drugging me?”
He responds with an infuriating one-shoulder shrug. “Precautions. Didn’t want you running off again.”
“Screw you.” I kick the back of his seat and flop against the leather, furious with the lack of apology.
Sandpaper scrapes the back of my throat, and my eyes burn with unshed tears.
I can’t believe I was that close to salvation, to my family and freedom.
If only I had screamed. Kellin would have run to the closet and found us.
What did I do instead? Stood motionless in the dark, with Brody’s hands on my body and his cock pressed against my ass.
Giving myself over to my kidnapper. What is this, Stockholm syndrome?
I bite down on my cheeks, and the pain wrenches the memory away. I refuse to dwell on what happened in that closet.
None of that matters. If I don’t get myself out of this mess soon, nothing does.
With an irritated sigh, I shift in my seat to find a more comfortable position. An urgent sensation in my bladder informs me that I need to pee.
Silence vibrates through the SUV as we race down the interstate toward some unknown destination.
I could ask Brody about where we’re headed, but I doubt he’d tell me.
He could be driving me out to the middle of the desert to kill me or delivering me to Declan.
Or maybe he’s taking us on a sightseeing expedition of various forms of cacti, in which case, I plan to push him onto the pokiest one.
I just know that, wherever we’re going, they’d better have a bathroom.
A few minutes later, I reach my breaking point. “Pull over.”
Brody ignores me.
“Seriously.” I lean toward the front seat, regretting the added pressure on my already full bladder. “I have to pee. We’ve got to stop somewhere.”
More silence.
“Do you want to spend the trip huffing down eau de urine? Please. Pull over.”
Brody’s grip on the wheel tightens, the little checkered BMW symbol winking between his white knuckles. “Fine, but this is your only pit stop.”
After five minutes or so, Brody engages the vehicle’s turn signal. We’re exiting the highway.
When I lift my head to scope out the area, I spy a decrepit gas station with three pumps and a glitchy open sign.
He dips the car alongside the pump at the end. Without a word, he switches off the engine and climbs out of the driver’s seat. I immediately fumble for the back door, yanking the handle uselessly until I realize it’s not moving because he has the child locks engaged.
When I glance up, my throat tightens.
Brody hovers just outside my window. He can’t see me through the dark tint, but I swear he’s still mocking me. Probably relishing in my desperation.
Rage calcifies like a stone inside my stomach. I toss myself into the front seat and lay on the SUV’s horn.
Within seconds, he rips the driver’s side door open and tugs me out onto the pavement, steadying me as I stumble over the seats. Fire blazes in his eyes. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” I jerk my chin at the ancient convenience store to our left, the word Restrooms illuminated in flickering neon green.
My kidnapper releases a beleaguered sigh before cuffing his hand around my tricep and pulling me toward the left side of this hole-in-the-wall shop.
“I was planning on letting you out as soon as I finished gassing up.” He ignores the way my eyes widen over his admission and pins me with a suspicious glare. “Any more tricks, though—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Insert generic threat here.”
We arrive at the bathrooms, one gray door for men and one for women built into the side of the gas station.
I expect Brody to let me go alone as we approach, but he doesn’t. Instead, he lifts a muscled leg and kicks the door to the woman’s stall open, revealing a small green-and-white tiled room with an aging, dirty toilet, a twitchy overhead light, and a trash can overflowing with old paper towels.
At this point, I’ll take anything.
Brody shoves me inside and follows me in.
Alarm bells peal through my exhausted mind, and I wrench out of his grasp and spin around. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Property surveillance.” He tries to close the bathroom door, but I smack my palm against the metal as hard as I can.
Is he out of his mind? “Absolutely not. I’m not peeing until this door is locked with you on the other side. A girl deserves privacy.”
“Not a chance. I never make the same mistake twice.” The growl in his voice harbors menace. “After that disappearing act you pulled at the hotel, I’m not leaving you by yourself for any reason. Got it?”
“Your inadequacy is not my problem. If you think I’m going to give you a free show, you’re off your rocker.”
Brody smirks again. I wish I could rip those lips right off his face.
He turns around to face the door. I blink at his back before I realize he means this is the “privacy” he’s allowing me.
He wants to be funny? Fine.
I’ve got the perfect joke for him.
My drive toward psychological warfare didn’t work at the hotel, but I’m nothing if not persistent, and desperate times…
Ignoring my screaming bladder through sheer spite, I press my pelvis against his ass, the same way he did to me in that closet. The muscles in his back and arms twitch and flex as I arch my torso against his tightly coiled body.
A morbid thrill zips through me. Let’s see how he likes getting a taste of his own medicine.
“Please, Brody?” I make my voice kitten-soft and settle my hands on his thick waist. “I’m going to need a bit more privacy than this.”
I hear and feel his thick swallow and the way his shoulders pinch with effort.
Good.
Men are so easy.
“You only get five minutes.” His voice comes out as a dark rasp. “And you’ve already wasted two of them—”
I cut him off by dropping my hand to the front of his pants.
It’s half-intentional, half-gravity when my fingers connect with his shaft.
Good lord.
There’s a lot more of him than I expected.
I fondle him silently, my fingers delicate and light as they trace the outline of his member through his jeans and trail toward his hip. His breathing picks up, the echo of air in his lungs loud against my ear.
I press between his shoulders, exhaling against his jacket. Beneath the sweat and blood, he has an earthy, woodsy scent that smells far too enticing.
Somewhere in my distant mind, a wild girl who never broke free in college wants to rip his clothes off and shove him up against this disgusting bathroom wall.
The rational part of me knows I’ve got more urgent issues to address.
Bracing myself for what comes next, I rip the phone from his pocket and step back. He whips around to face me, his eyes bright and his face ruddy.
Before he can rage at me, I throw his phone like a football, tossing it over his shoulder and into the dark underbrush a few feet away.
He reacts without thinking, spinning around to retrieve the device.
By the time Brody realizes what I’ve done, I’ve closed and locked the bathroom door.
He thumps his fist against the metal, shaking the entire room. “Trinity!”
“Be a good boy and fetch.” I hurry to the toilet, my body tingling from the strain of holding things in.
Whew.
As I finally relax, a thin layer of satisfaction settles over my skin.
The nerve of that bastard… Expecting me to pee under his supervision. He can bite me.
Maybe he will.
Nope. Not thinking about him that way.
With a relieved bladder and washed hands, trepidation weasels into my mind. I’m sure Brody isn’t pleased with me, but I can’t do anything about that.
After gathering all my courage, I emerge from the bathroom. Much to my surprise, Brody’s not hovering just outside the door with steam coming out of his ears.
I inch across the threshold, glancing left first and—
My shin catches on solid warmth. I go down, banging my knee and scraping my palms.
A rough hand grabs the back of my skull, grasping a fistful of copper hair and pulling roughly.
“Ow, ow, ow!” I wince as someone hauls me up off the ground by my messy tresses and painfully folds one of my arms behind my back.
“Hope you enjoyed your little pit stop.” Brody unleashes a murderous growl. “You’re not going to get another one.” He frog-marches me back toward the BMW.
I grunt, writhing against his grip. “Get off me!”
He responds by squeezing my pinned arm tighter.
I throw my head to the left, eyeing the convenience store. A couple of people—real people—loiter between the snack food aisles.
People who will hear me scream and come to my rescue.
“Let me go, or I’ll make a scene.” I twist to glare, fire burning in my veins.
He scoffs. “Try me.”
I suck in a huge breath and screech. Brody curses and reaches up to slap a meaty hand over my mouth, and I slam my heel onto his toes.
He grunts, and I jerk.
Once his grip on my arm loosens, I spin out of his hold, adrenaline pounding through my veins.
I don’t wait for him to recover.
Instead, I sprint into the small gas station, thundering up to the register.
“Sir, I need help!” I drop my hands to the counter in front of a wiry old man with hair whiter than the moon and dark, beady, vacant eyes. “It’s an emergency. Please. I need a phone.”
If I can call Finn, he’ll send help. I’m sure Kellin could be here in no time.
The attendant yawns in my face and gestures with a lazy hand toward a payphone in the back corner, next to a cobweb-covered mop.
I fly to the back of the store and rip the phone out of the cradle, digging around in my pocket for a quarter.
Only silence reaches my ear. No dial tone.
The phone’s dead.
Cold fear slithers into my stomach.
I glance at the guy at the register. He’s already back to flipping through a tattered Playboy. He won’t help. I imagine, even if I ran back up and told him the truth, he’d just stare.
Even if he was helpful, I don’t want to risk the cops. For all I know, they’re all in Declan Gallagher’s pocket.
I’m on my own.
I set the phone down and try to keep air coming into my lungs at a normal pace.
Think, Trinity. Think. There’s got to be—
“You in some kind of trouble?” A voice filters through my doom spiral. A tall, leather-clad man with a salt-and-pepper coif and a close-shaved face stands to my left with a pack of cigarettes in his hand. “Maybe I can help.”
Any other time, an unknown man swooping in to assist would have aroused my suspicion. But this guy might be my only hope. The fear in my belly loosens, just a bit.
“I need a phone. Can I borrow yours? Just to make one call.” My words trip out of my mouth as I clench my trembling hands in front of my waist.
“I’ve got a phone out in my car.” His chilly half-smile is less evil than Brody’s, which is probably the best I can hope for.
“Thank you so much.” Relief sighs through me as the guy pays for the cigarette pack and nods at me to follow him outside.
Brody’s out there, but this man is pretty big. I also doubt Brody would murder a random citizen, so I’m probably safe.
Right? Yeah, sure. Let’s go with that.
As soon as he’s pushed the door open and we walk out, my guardian angel swings a long, hairy arm around my shoulders. “So, why don’t you tell me more about these troubles of yours?”
Before I can answer, he angles us to the right, opposite the gas pumps where the BMW still sits. A group of bikers gathers near the edge of the parking lot, dressed in leather and studs and painful amounts of piercings. Tattoos. Chains. Spikes. Scowling, leering faces.
One by one, a dozen men pivot to face us, their heavy gazes dragging over my body. Discomfort fuses with panic in my chest, like two converging streams headed for a hellish waterfall.
The fear returns tenfold, ballooning and threatening to creep up my throat in the form of bile.
What have I done?
“Look what I got, boys!” My false savior extends his free arm as we approach. “Dinner!”
The arm around me disappears, replaced by a hard shove against the middle of my spine. I land on my knees and scrabble around to glance up. The bikers converge, circling like vultures.
As they close in, I glimpse Brody through their stocky legs.
Reclining against the BMW, with his arms folded and a stoic, unreadable expression on his face, he watches my demise like the monster he is.