Ward
The coppery taste of blood wasn’t as strong as it had been earlier, but my mouth still ached dreadfully.
I could officially add that to the list of reasons why my body was unhappy with me at the moment.
That list included not just my jaw, but my arms and shoulders from being tied to a damn post, my ankle from twisting it after I’d fallen after taking a punch, and, of course, my ass because I had decided lube and not patience was the best way to get laid.
Perhaps if I had known I was going to get attacked and bound, I might not have been so swift to make my ass hurt on top of everything else.
No, that wasn’t true.
Sighing, I leaned back and closed my eyes, trying to calm my thoughts.
Of all the ways I expected the night to go, this was nowhere close to the top one hundred, let alone the top ten.
I had only counted three men in black outfits, each with a rifle and a pistol on their hips.
The one who had grounded Arlo had taken offense to my reaction and decided that, apparently, I wasn’t good enough for the butt of the gun and had decked me with his fist instead.
Now I was tied up snugly with zip ties in a storage room, my back pressed against what had to be a load-bearing pillar in the middle of the godforsaken room.
They had dragged Arlo in with me, but considering I couldn’t see behind me, I had zero idea if he was okay.
My only solace was that I could hear his breathing in the silence between shouts coming from elsewhere in the house.
That didn’t answer the question of what was going on. There had been shouts and orders that I couldn’t make out, but no gunshots. If there had been, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to continue to sit there on the floor and listen to people being gunned down without losing my mind.
“Mmmf,” came from the darkness, and I sat up, eyes wide.
“Arlo?” I whispered into the dark. They had left us here, but they were bound to come back. Somehow, I had the feeling that gun-toting men willing to attack and tie us up probably wouldn’t be that patient about their captives talking.
“Ow,” came from the dark, and I heard the rustle of clothing and a slap against the hard floor. “W-why am I tied to...what is this?”
“I have no idea what you’re tied to,” I said with a sigh of relief. The asshole had hit him pretty hard, but he had woken up with enough brain cells intact to get a good understanding of the situation at least. “I’ve never been in this room before; it’s a storage room for the staff.”
“Shelving,” he said, and I heard him grunt. “Very heavy shelving. I can’t move it.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure my mother told them to order whatever when they were stocking this room, and they went for the shelving that would last the longest,” I said.
“I’m not sure blaming your mother for this is quite the right angle. It’s not as if one plans their supplies around the possibility of being tied to it.”
“Really? We’re going to defend her now?”
“Defend her for not planning for an event no one could predict? Yes. For being a nasty woman with an ugly combination of an inferiority complex and a superiority complex? Yes.”
“It’s nice to see your sense of humor is intact; that’s helpful right now.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“That makes it worse.”
Was this really the conversation we were going to have right now? God, when life got awful, the weirdest parts of ourselves had to go and assert themselves. I’m sure someone could explain why, but that person wasn’t me.
“Do we know what’s going on?” Arlo asked quietly. “My parents?”
“I don’t know,” I had to admit with a wince.
“After you were knocked out, I reacted...poorly. I took a swing at the man who hit you and called him...what was it? Something like a pus-covered son of a whore. I’m not sure if it was the insinuation that he was covered in pus or the remark about his mother, but he took issue with it and showed me he was a far better fighter than I was.
I took a fist to the jaw for my idiocy, and I was dragged in here and tied up.
They tied you up afterward. There was some shouting, but no gunshots. ”
“That at least is something,” he said, sounding like he was holding onto a thin thread of hope, and I couldn’t blame him. When you found yourself in a kidnapping or hostage situation, you took whatever victories you could get. “Is there any point in wondering what’s going on?”
“I believe wondering what is going on is ranked up there with wondering why it’s happening as one of the most understandable thoughts when you’re tied to solid objects,” I pointed out wryly.
“Ugh, I haven’t had a headache like this in ages,” he groaned, and I sighed, seeing no point in pointing out that a lot more than my head hurt.
“At least you aren’t forced to sit on a hard floor with a sore ass,” I pointed out, because that at least didn’t sound pitiful and afraid.
He snorted. “That was your own doing.”
“I don’t regret it.”
“I hope not, because it might—”
“Do not say it was probably our last time enjoying something like that, I swear to God, Arlo. If you do, I will find a way to break out of these zip ties and beat you within an inch of your life.”
“Maybe I should, then you would be free.”
“Ugh, never mind, I promised more than I could deliver. Perhaps I would make a good politician.”
“No,” he said with a sigh. “You’re a natural leader, but you have too honest a heart to be a politician.”
“That is the first time anyone has ever accused me of being honest,” I said with a snort.
“I said your heart is honest, not your mouth,” he said, and I could picture him smiling that secretive little smile in the dark.
“You have been honest about who you are and what you want from the moment I met you. It was almost like a kid, how much you seemed to live in the moment. Not carefree, or unburdened, but simply choosing not to let those cares or burdens keep you from moving forward. The only thing you’re missing is the opportunity to prove your virtues and merits. Not to your mother, but to yourself.”
“Oh God, you’re talking like you’re about to die,” I groaned. “Stop.”
“Ward.”
“Don’t.”
“There are armed men in the house who have taken us hostage, have not spoken to us, and have left us to our own devices. Perhaps we should look at the writing on the wall.”
“The writing is in French, and my French is awful.”
“You speak French?”
“I just said my French is awful. Now my German? Well...that’s also bad. Never did have a head for languages.”
“I know Spanish.”
“Really?”
“Central American. I wouldn’t say fluent, but good enough to convey information if need be.”
“Huh, the things you learned while being held hostage in a storage closet in your parents’ house.”
The conversation was stupid as hell, but it went a long way toward making me feel a little better.
Maybe because it was lighthearted and made the situation less grim, or maybe because I was no longer alone, left to listen to silence and the sound of Arlo’s breathing.
Or hell, maybe it was because it was Arlo I was talking to, and the man had been having weird effects on me from the moment I met him.
There had to be a way to get out of the situation with our skin and lives intact.
I just had to think. There was a security system in the house, but it obviously hadn’t been on, and considering I hadn’t heard any blaring noises, no panic button had been hit.
There were cameras all over the property, but they weren’t going to do us a lot of good without someone to see we were in trouble.
Considering I had yet to hear anyone storming the house to rescue the governor and her family, I assumed they had taken down the security guard at the front of the property.
My phone had been taken, so it was safe to bet that no one had access to their phones, even Arlo, who they had to assume would wake up at some point.
There were guns in the house, but that wasn’t going to do me a lot of good right now.
Good shot or not, I wasn’t exactly prepared to go up against armed men.
As had clearly been shown to me firsthand, I was in no way, shape, or form prepared to fight them the old-fashioned way.
No, the best and only option was to find a way to get free and get help.
..somehow. There were two landlines, but only in the kitchen and on the second floor in my mother’s office.
I had no way of knowing where they had put our phones, so that left getting to one of the security system panels and hitting the silent alarm.
The full alarm might set the men off and make them forget whatever it was they were doing by holding us hostage rather than killing us outright.
“Ward,” Arlo’s soft voice interrupted, and I jerked in surprise.
“Yes?” I asked in a slight daze as I was pulled from my feverish thinking.
“My mother—”
“I know, I know. I can’t promise she’s...okay, but I didn’t hear any—”
“No, my...my birth mother.”
“Uh...what about her?”
“She was...a sweet woman. She had her problems, a lot of them I suspect, but she—”
“Oh God, Arlo, no,” I groaned. “Don’t do the deathbed confessional.”
“But she loved my sister and me and always tried her best. She didn’t do very well, but she tried, and that’s more than can be said for a lot of people.”
I paused. “You have a sister?”
“Had,” he corrected softly. “She was a few years younger than me. Used to drive me crazy because she followed me everywhere and tried to do everything I did. All I wanted was to be left alone, but she always had to be doing things with me. My mom…mom would tell me to be patient with her. She loved her big brother, and she just wanted to be a part of my life. I remember she told me that if I wasn’t careful, I would miss the days when Kayla stopped being so attached to her big brother. ”