Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
The festival had been fun and people hadn’t been mean to Darcy at all. Oh sure, there’d been a lot of questions because everyone was curious, but nobody had been nasty. To either of them.
Mom had sent them home with more than just biscuits, so they were going to eat like kings for the next few days.
And they’d had the Uber deliver them to the grocery store so they could pick up butter for the biscuits.
That had been Darcy’s idea, and definitely a good one.
Mom’s biscuits were made for butter. It wasn’t a long walk from the grocery store to home, but their bags quickly got to feeling heavy.
“Maybe we should have gone out for butter tomorrow,” Darcy suggested as he put his bags down and shook out his arms before picking them back up.
“Yeah, that might have been the easier choice.”
“I can’t wait to look through the bags, though, and see what all is in here. It’s obviously a lot more than just the biscuits she promised us. I didn’t want to be rude and look through it while we were there,” Darcy admitted.
“It’ll be like unwrapping gifts when we get home.” Given that she’d obviously planned on giving them all this in advance or she wouldn’t have had four big bags to give them, Charma hoped that a few of his favorites that only she made right would be included.
“We’re going to get spoiled for our own cooking,” Darcy suggested.
“Tell me about it. That’s one of the things I missed the most when I moved away. And I don’t mean her doing the cooking itself, I mean the actual food.”
“I hear you.” Darcy tilted his head. “You know, I can’t honestly remember if the woman who gave birth to me was a good cook or not. Everything from earlier is kind of blurred behind the ‘trying to force the gay out of me’ thing they had going.”
He wanted to give Darcy a hug, but he couldn’t, given both his hands were full. So he just bumped their shoulders together and offered a soft, “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.” Darcy shrugged. “It was what it was. I can’t change it so I’ve given up dwelling on it and just try to live my life going forward.
” He got a brilliant smile from Darcy. “And right now, I’d have to say I have a lovely forward to be living in.
Looking forward to? I don’t know, I think I lost the metaphor there. ”
Oh, he did love everything about Darcy. “I’m pretty sure I know what you were trying to say and I agree. Our future looks bright.”
“I guess we’ll have to wear shades,” Darcy added as they turned the corner to their block.
He cackled at that, Darcy joining him. They were still chuckling as they approached the door.
Out of the blue, some big guy in camo knocked Charma to the side, his shoulder hitting the building. “Ow!” He took a breath, about to give the guy a piece of his mind.
That’s when a second guy grabbed Darcy.
“Hey, get off me!” Darcy shouted, his bags dropping as he tried to get loose.
The asshole who’d bumped Charma grabbed Darcy’s legs and the two guys carted him toward a waiting truck.
Dropping his own bags, Charma shouted and launched himself at camo guy’s back, trying to get him off Darcy.
The guy had at least a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle on him, though, and he shrugged Charma off like a bug.
Darcy had stopped shouting, one big hand over his mouth, so Charma started crying out.
“Help! Somebody help! Call the cops! Kidnapping! Kidnapping!”
He leapt onto the asshole’s back, biting at his shoulders and trying to get his hands around the thick neck to squeeze. Nonetheless, the guys got Darcy into the back of the truck, and then the guy Charma was trying to stop grabbed one of his arms and dragged him off, throwing him to the ground.
He could hear Darcy screaming as one of the guys followed him into the back of the car. The guy Charma had been grappling with slammed the truck door closed and got into the front seat before Charma could even get up. Then the vehicle peeled away, pulling into traffic.
Somehow, Charma had the presence of mind to zero in on the license plate.
It had Famous Potatoes at the bottom and 10B 4 were the only digits he could make out before it disappeared in the traffic.
It had been a dark gray truck. Maybe a Ford?
Maybe a Dodge? He couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t good with makes and models of trucks and cars.
He kept repeating potatoes and 10B 4 in his head, over and over as people came over to where he stood, food spilling out from the bags all around him on the ground.
“I’m on the line with the police,” an older woman with an orange floppy hat told him. “Are you okay? Do you need an ambulance, too?”
He shook his head. “I’m fine. My friend has been kidnapped. Gray truck 10B 4 and Famous Potatoes.”
The lady repeated the information into the phone. “They said they would issue an alert for the truck and they’re sending a car here. Do you know the make and model of the truck?”
Charma shook his head. “I think maybe a Ford or a Dodge?”
“It was a four-door Ford F350,” one of the other people who’d gathered said. “An older model, too and a little banged up.”
The lady on the phone repeated the information and a couple of the other onlookers added descriptions of the guys who’d taken Darcy.
Three people stayed with him, two guys and the floppy-hat lady on the phone. One of the guys gathered up his food, packing the bags back up and setting them against the wall of their building.
“I can stay until the police get here and give a statement. I got a good look at the kidnappers.” The guy thrust out a hand. “Drake.”
Charma looked at the hand and then realized he was supposed to shake it. He felt like he was moving in molasses as he took Drake’s hand and shook it. “Charma. They kidnapped Darcy.” Oh, fuck, they’d kidnapped Darcy. Charma began to shake.
“I’m Lucy,” orange-hat lady said from what sounded like far away. “I think he’s going into shock. We should get him sitting and put his head between his knees—that’ll help.”
Charma let them maneuver him down onto the ground next to his bags of food and push his head down between his knees. The rush of blood brought everything back into sharp focus.
Darcy had been kidnapped.
Darcy managed to bite the hand over his mouth as he was being shoved into the back of a truck and he shouted as soon as he could grab a breath of air, struggling as hard as he could, but the guys were big and he was truly outmatched.
That didn’t keep him from continuing to struggle, though.
Not even the door slamming closed kept him from trying to get away.
He pushed himself over to the other side of the truck and opened the door.
Someone grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him back in.
“Get off of me! Help! Help!” he cried out, struggling to get away from the guy. He winged his elbow back and up, hearing a soft crack and the hands holding him let go for a moment.
“Fuck!”
He slammed his elbow back again, then aimed a punch at the guy behind the wheel. He could feel the truck swerve and so he punched out again.
“God damn it—get him under control!” growled the driver.
“Trying—the little fucker broke my nose!”
Darcy just kept punching out and screaming. He only saw the fist from the guy in the passenger seat just before it hit him in the face and then the world went black.
As soon as the police had taken his statement, Charma called his mom.
“Charma! To hear from you after seeing you—what a treat.”
Charma didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Darcy’s been kidnapped.”
“What?” He could almost hear her sitting up straighter. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we were almost home and someone—two huge guys in camo—grabbed him, shoved him into the back of a truck and took off.”
“Goddess! I’ll mobilize the family—tell me everything.”
Charma knew his family had a network of relatives and friends—other shifters—who would be ready at the drop of a hat when the call came.
They took care of their own. And his mother had clearly decided that Darcy was one of their own.
He would be all gooey happy about that later. Right now, they needed to find Darcy.
“The police were here, took my statement and the statement of the three witnesses who stayed. They’ve put out a bolo.”
His mom snorted. “You should have called me first.”
“A nice lady called the cops while I was trying to help Darcy get away from the bastards. They were big, though, Mom. Like huge. I felt like I was my chameleon, I made so little difference.”
“You did your best, now tell me what I need to know!”
“Right. Dark gray Ford 350, an older model with dents and scratches. And damaged from the right bumper from what the guy who saw the front of the truck said. They had Idaho plates, starting with 10B 4. That’s all we’ve got on the truck.
Like I said, the guys were big, beefy, and they had camo on.
Drake—the guy who saw them and stayed to give a statement—said they both had dark hair in military cuts, both white, and he couldn’t swear to it, but he thought the one guy maybe had a scar on his cheek. I’m sorry, but that’s all I’ve got.”
“Don’t you apologize, you were too busy trying to help Darcy to notice more details. The truck make and model and license plate are a very good start. I’ve already sent that over the emergency chat so eyes are already on the lookout.”
Charma leaned against the wall of the building, feeling tears prickle at the back of his eyes. He blinked hard. He was not going to cry out here on the street. Bad enough he’d not been able to do anything to help Darcy.
“Why would they take him, Mom?”
“I have no idea, son. He’s your boyfriend. Does someone think you boys have money?”
Charma snorted. “Not if they’ve been paying any attention. Hell, probably not even if they haven’t. It’s not like we live in a ritzy part of town. I mean this isn’t a hell hole, but it’s not where anyone gets kidnapped for ransom, either.”
“Well then who does he know in Idaho?”
“I have no id—Oh.” A horrible thought crossed his mind.
“What is it, son?”
“Well, he never said where he was from, but I know it isn’t here and he ran away when he was still a teenager because his folks tried to send him to one of those conversion camps when he came out to them.”
“Would they know where he lives?”
“Not because he told them they don’t. He said he tried once or twice to reconnect and it never went well. But maybe they were just biding their time…” Like maybe waiting for Darcy to prove he was gay by moving in with his boyfriend. Could this all be his fault?
“That isn’t a no, though. Not that knowing why matters to finding him.”
“Except that if it was them that took him, they are definitely going to try to get the gay out of him and I don’t know what exactly that means, but they sent goons to get him so I’m thinking it can’t be anything good.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be.”
Charma sank down to sit next to his bags of food. Food that his mom had made and given them with love. Food that Darcy hadn’t had a chance to sample and maybe never would. He shook his head. He couldn’t think like that.
“No doom-scenario-ing,” his mother told him, like she’d known exactly where his mind was going. “I’m sending Nik to come get you, bring you home until we find him.”
“No.” Charma shook his head. “No, I have to be here in case they drop him back off here for some reason.” Like they had nothing to do with Darcy’s folks and had actually grabbed the wrong guy and decided to drop Darcy back home instead of shooting him because he’d seen their faces.
Okay, that was grim. Mom was right, he had to stop the doom thinking.
It was not an easy ask under the circumstances, though.
“You’ve already said there’s no money for a ransom.”
“No, but what if that’s what this was about and they don’t know.
I just. I need to stay here.” He needed to stay where he felt the closest to Darcy and that was not at the compound.
It was here, at home. And he would explore how he felt about the compound no longer being home later. When he had Darcy back.
“Then I’m sending Nik to stay with you.”
“Mom…”
“No arguments—they could come back for you!”
“There’s only one bed.”
“Nik can sleep on the couch. That way they have to go through him to get to you. And he knows a hundred different ways to kill someone with his bare hands, so I know you’ll be safe.”
Charma knew there was no point in arguing with her. She would be sending Nik to come stay. In fact, he was probably already on his way.
The police officer who’d taken his statement came toward him and Charma pushed himself back up onto his feet.
“I have to go, Mom. I’ll call you if I find anything out.”
“Same. Stay safe, son. I love you.”
“Love you, too,” he said softly, wishing he could remember when the last time was that he’d said that to Darcy.