8 - Peyton
PEYTON
“Yes, that’s right. We have her.”
The voice belonged to the leader; the one who strode so confidently back into the house. I knew he was also the one who’d tackled me. I’d outrun my backgammon buddy, and the guy whose balls I destroyed wouldn’t be running any races, anytime soon.
“No, she’s not cooperating. She refuses to go back.”
The voice buzzing at the other end of the phone was Donovan’s. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I recognized the tone, the inflection. The gruff way he ordered everyone around, except me.
“She’s wearing it, yes. So we have that too.”
Wearing it?
Alarmingly, I remembered I was still naked. Or at least, I ought to be. Somehow, I was miraculously clothed again. Jeans. Hoodie. Even my socks. I was on the couch, hands locked together, with some scratchy pillow jammed under my head. My wounds stung. They also seemed to be everywhere at once.
I still kept my eyes closed, though. Listening…
“But that’s not what we discussed, sir.”
Donovan’s voice grew louder, but also darker in tone. He was barking a series of orders I couldn’t hear, because the guy with the phone — who at one point, he called ‘Colson’ — was pacing in and out of the room.
I rolled my ear off the pillow, straining to listen.
“Why don’t we just take it, and let her go?” the asshole who tackled me asked. “It isn’t like she—”
My ex-fiancé was screaming now. He cut his underling off, shouting like a lunatic. Or maybe someone who’d just been stood up at the altar; humbled before the world, in the most devastating way possible.
The phone clicked loudly, as Donovan slammed the connection shut. But not before I heard three very distinct words.
WANT HER GONE.
The phrase sent a chill rocketing through me. Still, this was Donovan Prescott we were talking about. I couldn’t say I was all that surprised.
“That didn’t go very well, now did it?”
Three heads whirled at the sound of my voice.
I blinked a few times, groggily, as the familiar faces of my captors swam into view.
The man with the phone, the one Donovan had called Colson, looked much less confident than before.
Seated beside him was my personal towel boy; from the dock.
The Ziploc bag of ice he was holding between his legs made me smile in grim satisfaction.
“Which one of you morons dressed me?”
They stared back at me as if the question was absurd.
“Why?”
“Because my panties are on backwards. I can feel it.”
The guy with the ice pack shifted, uncomfortably. “Those weren’t panties,” he growled. “They were more like… string.”
I smiled at him, and blew him a kiss.
“And what about you, Cleo?” I sneered, turning to my backgammon buddy. “Did you get to cop a feel, too?”
He looked utterly miserable. Emotionally wounded.
“It’s Theo.”
I laughed. “Whatever. Besides, you sure as hell don’t look like a Theo.”
“I—I don’t?”
“No, not at all,” I pressed. “A Theo is cool. A Theo is badass. But you?” I laughed even harder. “You’re just some computer nerd, who hunted down a helpless woman.”
Colson stepped over to me, and despite my bravado his presence was intimidating.
It wasn’t just the muscles that sprouted from every inch of his six-and-a-half foot frame, or that begrudgingly handsome perma-scowl.
No, it was his aura, his very presence. It was the way he glared down at me with those cold, penetrating eyes.
“You’re far from helpless,” he said, icily. “Just ask Ripley.”
He jerked a thumb toward his friend with the scrotum problem.
“Ripley can fuck off,” I snapped. I shifted my eyes his way. “I hope that thing swells up to the size of a volleyball, by the way.”
The tattooed monster who’d lorded over me at the dock stared back impassively. He lifted one big hand, which was also tattooed, and flipped me off.
I shifted into a sitting position, and used both hands to rub at my throbbing head. At least they’d zip-tied my wrists in front, and not behind my back. That part was good. I could feel things tugging at my skin though, beneath my clothing. They were all over my arms and legs.
That mystery was solved a moment later. I looked to my left, where a small mountain of alcohol swabs and Band-aid wrappers were scattered everywhere.
“Who patched me up?”
“I did,” volunteered Theo. “You’re all scratched up. Running into the woods… well, that was just…”
“Stupid?”
“Yeah. That.”
“Didn’t you hear? I’m doing stupid things today. Besides, you didn’t give me much of a choice, back there,” I sighed. “Either I run through the woods like some low-budget horror movie, or you drag me back to Nantucket to marry a monster.”
I shrugged, still trying to seem as helpless as humanly possible. All the while, my eyes shifted around the room, searching for my next avenue of escape.
None of the men said anything, however.
“Marry a monster it is then,” I sighed, resignedly. “Fine. When do we leave?”
Again, the men said nothing. In the uncomfortable silence, a grim realization dawned slowly over me.
“We’re not going back, are we?” I asked, trepidatiously. “Not anymore.”
Colson and Theo just looked at each other. Unable to stare at him any longer, Theo’s gaze dropped to the floor.
“Ah, fuck.”