Chapter One #2
So while maybe my footsteps were a bit slower, a bit more careful, my belly wasn't exactly in knots as I made my way down the metal shelving units that went well over my head, the top shelves loaded down with things that I could pull down without a ladder—and without crushing myself like the large dog food bags might—hay and pine chips for the small animals.
It wasn't until I rounded the corner of the second-to-last row that I finally realized I was that girl.
The one in the horror movie who went down into her basement in her underwear with no weapon to investigate a loud noise.
That was who I was.
A girl I had scoffed at too many times to count.
Utterly clueless.
Completely killable.
The wide double doors leading to the back street were thrown—and locked—open like they would be for the weekly deliveries of food or animals.
The streetlights cast the scene in black shadows and artificial yellow glow.
It took a long second to make out the shapes, to understand the scene right before my eyes, a scene taking place right outside the double doors.
Three shapes danced around my vision before making definite forms. Three circles. Three slants. Heads and shoulders leading down to the rectangles and globes of fit—or rounded—midsections.
My heart skittered in my chest as one of the dark figures bent down, the flash of his watch face glass catching the light, drawing my gaze to his hand as it closed around something I had missed sprawled on the ground, completely in shadow.
But big. Heavy. Lifting slowly off the ground as it was pulled upward.
"I don't have it," a voice hissed out, low, worried or pained or possibly both. But even so—familiar.
My spastic heart stuttered to a dead stop in my chest, edging its way up to lodge at the back of my throat.
Harry.
That was Harry's voice.
Harry was the shapeless shadow being pulled off the floor.
And I wasn't so naive as to consider he had possibly tripped and fallen, that the shadow men were there because they were simply Good Samaritans happening by, coming to his aid.
This was Navesink Bank. You couldn't swing a stick without hitting someone involved in some form of criminal activity.
Shadowy figures in a store that was supposed to be closed and locked towering over the prone figure of the owner could only mean one thing.
And that one thing meant I needed to get the hell out of there.
But my feet refused to move.
I couldn't claim to be a hero. I had no self-defense skills to speak of—save for having a great trigger finger on the mace I keep in my purse.
You know... the purse I left on the passenger floor of my car because I was only going to be five minutes.
It wasn't like I was entertaining some grand idea to create a diversion and somehow overtake three large men.
But I couldn't seem to move either. Couldn't seem to bring myself to abandon him.
A crack.
Fist meeting soft flesh and hard bone.
A grunt.
Pain ricocheting through Harry's skull.
My stomach twisted, swirled, made me wonder if it was possible to throw up when your heart had taken up temporary residence in your throat.
"Well, you need to fucking get it then, don't you?" one of the shadows demanded, voice rough, but not heated. Professionally calm.
Which was somehow worse, right?
If Harry had just ticked off the wrong guys, got into a fight with them, then it was probably going to blow over. Maybe Harry would have sported some bruises and a busted ego. But he would get through it.
But if these were professionals—professionals in a town like the one we were in where the police force looked the other way from the criminal underbelly so long as their accounts had their stacks of bribes cushioning them, then who knew what this could mean.
More than bruises and hurt pride, that was for sure.
"I have no way to!" Harry insisted, voice hitching in what I could only imagine was fear.
"That sounds like a whole lot of your problem. You have until Thursday," another of the shadows said, the one closest to the door, most in the light. Tall, dark-haired, sharp-cheeked.
"I need more..."
Harry's voice broke off to the sound of another crack, louder.
I was suddenly acutely aware of my eyes adjusting to the dark as I saw the back of his head slam into the unyielding cement floor, the sound of it making my own teeth feel like they were cracking together.
"This is not a fucking, negotiation," the man still holding the front of Harry's shirt informed him.
Another sound, a slamming, catching me off-guard, coming from behind the men, had my body jolting, my muscles reacting involuntarily, tensing then relaxing.
Even the ones in my hands.
My fingers opened, and I felt my phone falling.
Air catching in my chest, my hand desperately grabbed for it in the dark. But not quickly enough.
The clatter as it hit its side before settling on its back sent every head jerking in my direction.
"Savvs..." Harry's voice called. A gasp. A warning.
Light flashed out of nowhere, a beam seemingly meant to blind anyone caught in its path, casting perfectly on my frozen figure.
"Fuck," growled one of the men. "Get her," he added.
It was precisely then that my feet remembered they weren't glued to the floor.
I wished I were a hero. I wished I had what it took to take down three bad guys. I wished I had the lady balls to save my boss—even if he was the perpetual thorn in my backside. I didn't want him hurt. Or worse.
But I wasn't a hero.
I was a girl in the wrong place at the wrong time with just enough sense to know that I could not—under any circumstances—let one of those men get me.
Sometimes I cursed this place, this dead-end job I loved and loathed in equal turns at times, but there was something to be said for the home-field advantage.
Maybe they had the flashlight.
But I had the two-week power outage after the last hurricane. I had endless trips in when the wind tore power lines down, powering up the generator.
In the dark.
I could navigate this place in my sleep.
My body twisted and jolted forward before any of the men could even break away from their crowd.
Before I even heard their rubber-soled shoes on the ground, I was down two aisles, tearing up them as fast as my admittedly somewhat short legs could carry me.
Fear was something I—as a whole—avoided. I wasn't an adrenaline junkie. I didn't seek out things that would scare me on purpose.
As such, I had little experience with its effects.
The way my skin prickled, the way chills racked my system. Even as it heated. Overheated.
The way my chest tightened, my muscles got tenser.
But also, the way my focus heightened, making me able to turn corners faster than I normally could, change course without any actual thought, trying to trip them up, trying to send them flying into a random shelf jutted out just a few inches further out than all the others, trying to make them trip over the oddly placed garbage can in the middle of the floor.
But as I broke into the front from the storage room, I could hear them behind me.
Ten, fifteen feet at most.
Sheer desperation had my legs—so unused to unnecessary things such as running—sprinted forward, letting me break through the center aisle, charge at the door, throwing it open with enough force that I wasn't even sure if the glass shattered as I broke into the street, the rain pelting down on me.
I wanted to scream.
Screaming was what you did, right?
Fire.
Never rape or abduction or big scary shadow men.
But this was not the nicest part of town. This was a stone's throw from gang territory. Screaming, I imagined, was a weekly occurrence, only acknowledged by a parting of a window curtain.
Not by actual help.
Not by interference.
No one wanted to piss off the wrong people.
I remembered being told in a lecture once that if you thought you were being followed, that you should drive—or run—to the police station.
But the police station was half the town away.
Even if my body was used to things like cardio, I didn't think I could outrun men with much longer legs than mine for that long.
There was only one person I knew at this end of town.
One person who could, at the very least, hide me.
Decision made due to a lack of any other viable options, I threw myself suddenly down a side street, going up a block, then over, then back up again, whipping my dripping hair out of my face, the men behind me panting almost as hard as I was.
Adrenaline sending electrical currents through my body, I played chicken with a car as I burst out the opening of the street, charging out in front, feeling the front light graze my hip as I flew past it.
There was no time to take satisfaction in the curses behind me, knowing the car was a small obstacle, knowing I had only gained a couple dozen yards at best.
But I was almost there.
Lungs in a vice, I went behind the building, knowing the front would be closed. It was late. After hours.
Even if I could get to the bell and ring it, the chances of being grabbed before the door could be answered were too high.
I found the door nestled down an alley, just a gray steel thing that looked like it led into what seemed like an old, abandoned building.
But I knew where it led.
To his small apartment.
My arms rose, both fists pounding desperately, faster even than my heartbeat was thundering in my ears.
"King!" I screamed from somewhere deep inside, a sound I had never heard before.
Terrified.
Desperate.
"King!" I screamed, louder, not caring that I was giving myself away. It was all over if he didn't open the door anyway.
There was nothing more beautiful in the world than the sound of the lock turning on the other side.
Except, maybe, the sight of the man who yanked it open.
I shouldn't have been able to appreciate him. Not in a moment like this. But, quite frankly, there was no way you couldn't admire one of the Rivers Brothers when they were standing before you. I didn't care if I was being stabbed to death, my internal organs being pulled out and played with.