Chapter 21
SCARLETT
Ijolted awake, my head swimming as I looked around the dark room. It took me a moment to realize where I was, the dream I’d been having still fresh in my mind. Luke. His bed. The scratch of his stubble against my shoulder. His arms banded around me.
No matter how hard I squeezed my eyes shut, the dream faded, drifting away until I had no choice but to face reality.
I was stuck.
The Warriors would kill me in this cement room. Once the pounding music stopped. Once the people cleared out of the clubhouse. Once Tucker decided it was time.
The end was coming.
A lock of hair brushed the skin on my forearm and Cassandra shifted. Sometime after I’d passed out, she’d slid closer and fallen asleep herself. Her head rested on my shoulder and her coppery locks, something that even the darkness couldn’t dull, brushed against my neck.
I’d deal with whatever the Warriors took from me, whatever punishment they delivered before ending my life.
But this girl . . . she was innocent.
So I rested my cheek on her head, hoping to give her the little bit of comfort I could. Before we both met our inevitable end.
My head throbbed but the ache was manageable now. My vision was clear and my mind alert.
The music from earlier boomed above and around us.
If there’d been a party upstairs earlier, it had turned into a rave.
Bodies were no doubt writhing against each other.
Couples would be openly fucking in the party room.
Men would be snorting lines of coke or smoking their drug of choice for tonight.
Women—scantily dressed, drunk or high out of their minds—would be fawning over any male in a Warrior cut.
Why would Tucker wait? The perfect opportunity to murder two women was when everyone else was bombed.
Maybe he wouldn’t kill us tonight. Maybe he was worried about the video backup I had saved. Or maybe he wasn’t concerned about that video in the slightest and had a worse torture in mind than a quick bullet between the eyes.
Maybe Cassandra and I would end up in a trafficking ring. They’d get us addicted to drugs. They’d starve us to skin and bones. And someone would pay to own my body.
I chose death. If those were my options, I chose death.
Find me, Luke.
Save me.
Save her.
As if she’d known my thoughts were on her, Cassandra jerked and sat straight, blinking furiously. When she realized this wasn’t a nightmare, her face paled. Her chin quivered. She’d been strong for me earlier, but now she was on the brink.
Now it was time for me to be strong for her.
“Hey,” I said, my voice low and soothing.
“Hi.” She scooted away and her gaze darted to my shoulder where she’d been sleeping. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
A loud cry permeated the music, making her flinch.
“They’re having a party,” I said. “I lived here for a while. With an ex-boyfriend. Saturdays are always crazy.”
“Not mine,” she whispered, drawing her knees to her chest. “I usually spend them working.”
“What are you studying?”
“History.”
History. That fit. Cassandra was young but there was wisdom in her eyes, and the subject suited her. She belonged in a library, surrounded by dusty books and tattered parchments.
“What do you want to do?”
“Earn my PhD. Write books. Teach. I like school.”
“I always liked school too.” I gave her a sad smile. “I only went to community college, but I would have kept going.” If my father hadn’t insisted I go to work for his company after earning my associate’s.
“If we get out of here, I want to go to school,” I said.
We wouldn’t get out of here, but the hope swelled regardless.
“Maybe study interior design. I want to learn how to shoot a gun. I want to get pregnant on a rainy day. I want a nice home and to spend Sundays chasing my kids around the yard. I want to end each day with a smile.”
Some of those had been Luke’s dreams. Mine too. Because making his dreams come true was my dream.
“If we get out of here, I’m crawling under a rock and never getting out,” Cassandra muttered.
I smiled and shifted so I could face her. “I’m sorry I got you into this, Cassandra.”
“You didn’t put me in that van.”
“Yes, I did.”
She shook her head. “My friends call me Cass.”
“Cass.” That was a pretty nickname. Simple but elegant. It fit her too. “Do you—”
The door burst open. Cassandra and I both gasped, our bodies lurching as we faced the couple stumbling inside.
Their mouths were fused and the man had his hands on her face as he shuffled them both into the room. He wore the Warrior vest over a stained white T-shirt. His hair was a bright blond, even whiter than Presley’s. The strands curled around his ears and neck.
Ghost.
They called him Ghost because of that hair, though his skin had a natural tan. He’d played poker with Jeremiah on occasion and had come into our room upstairs two or three times. Ghost always had a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. He was the guy who loved fucking in public.
Had they come in here because we’d be a captive audience? Literally? Or had he, for once, decided to seek some privacy for his affairs?
The pair crossed the small room and collided with the cinderblock wall.
The woman gasped as her back slammed into the hard surface.
The door behind them was still open. Tucker and his men hadn’t locked us in here.
They hadn’t needed to. With our arms bound and the party in full swing, we wouldn’t have been able to make an escape.
The woman latched on to Ghost’s mouth, moaned and slid her hand into his jeans. She was wearing a miniskirt that dangled an inch above the curve where her thighs met her ass. When she lifted a leg, there was nothing beneath that skirt.
Eww.
Ghost tugged at the strings holding a scrap of leather to her chest. The top fell loose and slapped heavy on the floor.
Cassandra squeaked.
The noise finally drew Ghost’s attention. He blinked and squinted, trying to make sense of us against the wall. I guess he hadn’t come in here for the audience after all.
“I know you,” he slurred.
The woman only spared us a brief glance before curling her lip in our direction, then latching her mouth to Ghost’s neck. Her hand in his jeans, stroking him, never slowed.
“Goldilocks.” He snapped his fingers. “Right?”
I nodded.
“Heard you stole club money.”
“No, I didn’t. That was all Jeremiah.” Why I felt the need to defend myself was a mystery. Maybe because I’d gone so long not defending myself. Now it seemed important. To end my days fighting.
“Ghost,” the woman purred, dragging her bare thigh up and down his jeans. She wanted his full attention.
He grunted something, then gave her exactly what she wanted, sealing his lips over hers and thrusting his hips into her grip.
My stomach rolled. They were definitely going to have sex. It wouldn’t be my first time as a witness, but judging by Cass’s wide eyes and flapping jaw, she was about to get her first sour taste of live porn.
Ironically, not that long ago, I’d been innocent just like her. The first Warrior party had been an education. Except I’d chosen to be there. This lesson was being forced on Cassandra, and I didn’t want it to be her last memory.
“Hey.” I shifted sideways, my movements stiff and slow, but when I was facing her, I nudged her foot with my own. “Don’t look at them.”
She blinked but didn’t tear her eyes away.
“Cass.”
Another blink, but this time she turned. “I don’t want to die here.”
“I know.”
The woman Ghost had pinned to the wall unzipped her skirt, and the sound of the metal teeth unfastening filled the room. Minutes ago, it had been hard to hear anything over the noise of the music, but every gasp and moan and grunt from those two seemed to echo in this square space.
Cassandra’s attention swung back to them just as Ghost unclasped his belt and sprang free. His jeans dropped to midthigh and the phone he’d had in his back pocket clattered to the cement floor.
I cringed as he drove into the woman, her fake scream an ice pick in my ears.
“Don’t look at them,” I whispered, nudging Cass’s foot again.
Cassandra nodded and turned, mirroring my position.
The sounds of flesh smacking flesh, Ghost’s grunts and the woman’s cries were impossible to ignore. But Cass and I held each other’s gaze and did our best to pretend it was just us in this room and the couple fucking in the corner weren’t there.
“What’s the feather for?” Cassandra asked, nodding to my hair.
“Oh.” I’d forgotten it was in my hair. It hung tight to the band that I’d used to secure it. “It’s silly. But I thought it would help me be brave today.”
“Brave for what?”
“To do the right thing.”
It was long overdue.
Going to the police with that video was something I should have done months ago, but I wouldn’t regret my time with Luke. Never. He’d turned the last days of my life into the happiest I’d ever known.
“What’s your happiest memory?” I asked Cass. If in these last minutes or hours all we had were our memories, then we’d relive the best.
She leaned her head against the wall, a tear dripping down her cheek.
“Traveling with my parents. We went on a trip to Redwood National Park. My mom had this idea to visit all of the national parks and that was the one she wanted to see first. We drove their station wagon and made a three-week trip out of it. That was before there was GPS, and my dad taught me how to use a compass and read a map. We walked beneath the trees and I have this picture of my mom hugging one of them. She looked like a toy compared to that tree, they are so big.”
I envied the affection on her face. Cass had good parents, and they’d be devastated by this. I doubted my parents would ever learn how I’d died. “How old were you?”
“Ten. Every summer after that, we took another trip. They love to go camping and explore, but they always save the national park trips for me. I haven’t been able to go lately with school.” A shimmer of regret crossed her face. “Dad says I work too hard.”
Movement at our sides caught our attention. Both of us looked over just in time to see Ghost pull out of the woman, take her by the hips and spin her around. Then he spit in his hand, rubbed it on his shaft and took the woman’s ass cheeks in his hand, splitting them apart.
There was nothing fake or erotic about the scream that tore through the room as he penetrated her back entry. But she let him take her. She met my gaze as her fingernails dug into the cement wall.
Cass turned away, shaking her head as the tears fell in a steady stream down her smooth cheeks.
More questions. We needed more memories.
“What’s your favorite part about school?” I asked.
“The true stories,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “That’s why I chose history. Because true stories are always the most powerful.”
“Ghost, it’s too much,” the woman murmured.
He didn’t stop.
If these walls could weep, we’d drown.
Had Tucker sent Ghost in here? Was this one of his tactics to terrify us? Because it was working.
I swallowed hard, scrambling for another question. Anything to keep the conversation going and block out what was happening in this room. “You said you wanted to write books. What kind of books?”
“Historical fiction. Or nonfiction. Maybe. I don’t know.” She shook her head violently. “I can’t think.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay.” Her chest shook as a sob broke free. “I don’t want to die here.”
But she would die here. We both would. “Me neither.”
Cass’s eyes lifted from her knees and she looked at me. Then a sad smile formed on her pretty face. “At least we won’t be alone.”
“We’ll stay together.”
More music. More grunts from Ghost. The pounding in my head was growing louder.
“It’s your turn,” she said. “What’s your happiest memory?”
“Falling in love with Luke.” I leaned my head against the wall again, picturing his handsome face in my mind.
“I’ve never been in love. What’s it like?”
I opened my mouth to answer, to tell her about the gentle fall and the man who owned my heart, when the wall beside my cheek vibrated.
A loud crack filled the room, replacing the noise from the music.
On instinct, I tried to bring my hands to my ears to muffle the sound, but the tie at my wrists bit into my skin.
Then the entire room shook. The dim lightbulb swung on its cord, then poof, it went out.
Darkness.
“What the fuck?” Ghost muttered. His boots shuffled on the floor, then came the sound of something skidding our way. The phone. He’d kicked the phone.
The light was out. They’d left the door open.
I used every ounce of strength I had left to get to my knees. Then I leaned in, using my nose to feel for Cass’s ear, bending in close.
There was no time to think or plan or contemplate. This was our only chance.
“Get up,” I whispered. “Stay close. And run.”