Chapter 1 #2
Kota still wasn’t putting the pieces together. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen. “And you were, what? Watching?”
“What does it matter?” the man asked, exasperated. “He was trying to kill you. Now, he’s dead. You’re welcome. Get out of here.”
Kota was shaking his head before Hot Guy finished, head throbbing and stomach still feeling sloshy.
“No, my DNA is probably all over this crime scene, and nobody is gonna believe that, just as I was about to be brutally murdered in my prime, a second fucking killer swooped in at the last minute and shot my attacker in the fucking face. Who would fucking believe that?”
Once more, the man rolled his eyes. “You’re being a little dramatic.”
Kota’s eyes felt like they were bugging out of his head Looney Tunes style.
“Dramatic? Look at me. Look at my face.” He gestured wildly, smearing blood across his cheek.
“I’m too pretty for prison. I’ll be holding someone’s pocket before lunch time.
We can’t all look like Greek gods come to life.
Why did you have to shoot him, dude? Why couldn’t you have just used all those muscles to, like, knock him out?
He was built like my high school janitor. I think you could have subdued him.”
“You couldn’t,” he noted.
“Fuck you, dude. I was fighting for my life. I can’t help that I’m…”
“Tiny?” the guy countered, looking him over, like he was just noticing that Kota was on the smaller side.
He wasn’t pocket-sized, but anyone would look small next to this guy. “Sorry I’m not built like a sasquatch.”
The man’s mouth fell open as he stared at him. “A…sasquatch. Like…Bigfoot? You think I look like Bigfoot?”
“If the giant shoe fits…” Kota said, making a childish face at him.
Another fucking eye roll. This guy was going to sprain an eyeball if he kept this up. “Jesus, you talk a lot. Are you always this chatty?”
“Yeah. Are you always this murdery?” he shot back.
“Yeah,” the man said, “I am. That’s why you need to get out of here so I can clean this up.”
Kota crossed his arms over his chest, setting his jaw. “No.”
“No?” Hot Guy snapped.
“Yeah, no. How do I know you’ll do a good job? How do I know you won’t just frame me for this murder? I’m not leaving until we call the cops. Got it?”
The man huffed like an angry bull, tucking his gun into the back of his pants before offering Kota his hand. “Yeah, got it.”
Kota let out a relieved breath. It felt shaky. “Finally. Jeez.”
He looked down to wipe the grime from the parking lot off his jeans.
Turning his back on a guy with a gun was just one bad decision in a long, illustrious career of bad decisions.
A large hand clamped over his mouth, then an arm came around his waist, lifting him clean off his feet.
The world tilted. He struggled, kicking and thrashing, but he was no match for the much larger man.
Panic detonated in his chest, wild and immediate.
Those muscles were not just for show.
By the time he got back to the killer’s—the other killer’s—rig, Kota was no longer struggling, just hanging there like dead weight, determined to be as heavy as possible. A protest in the only way he had left.
The man didn’t notice. He wrestled Kota into the back of his rig. One of the biggest rigs he’d ever seen. It had a bed, a fridge, even a stove and a TV.
And a…cat. A ginger cat with amber eyes that blinked at him slowly, looking as annoyed as his owner. Judgment radiated from the animal in palpable waves.
Kota barely had time to process that detail before his hands were yanked behind his back and wrapped with something. Duct tape, maybe? The adhesive tugged painfully at his skin as it tightened.
Cute for a murderer or not, this was officially the worst rideshare experience of his life.
Hot Guy shoved him onto the bed. Kota had just enough time to right himself and shoot the guy another nasty look before a strip of tape landed over his mouth, pressed down hard enough to sting.
Kota muffled a curse behind the silver strip, heart hammering so hard he was pretty sure it was trying to escape through his ribs.
“Stay put.”
Dakota did his best to cuss him out from behind the tape, muffled fury vibrating in his chest, but the man just grinned.
For a second, Kota was sure his heart actually stopped. Not skipped. Not fluttered. Fully fucking stopped.
Jesus Christ. Why did this man have to be hot?
Up close, it was worse. So much worse. Perfect white teeth, pointy incisors like a vampire, a mouth made for sins Dakota was absolutely not prepared to contemplate right now.
His eyes were impossibly green—too green, honestly—and Kota briefly wondered if they were contacts before deciding that would somehow be less unsettling than them being real.
The guy huffed out a weird sound.
Kota glowered at him, pulse roaring in his ears, when he realized—horrified—that it was a laugh.
“You’re right. You are way too pretty for prison. And a helluva lot cuter with your mouth taped shut.”
Kota told him to eat shit. It came out as a wet, indignant noise that did nothing to maintain his dignity.
The man’s grin widened just a fraction, like he found Kota’s reaction deeply entertaining. He shook his head, stepping back toward the door of the rig.
“Behave,” he said lightly, like he wasn’t leaving Dakota restrained in the back of a murder-mobile.
Then he hopped down from the cab and disappeared, the door slamming shut with a final, echoing thud.
Kota tipped onto his side, bringing his legs up onto the thin mattress. He hoped he was getting dirt and grime all over his space. It would serve him right. Asshole.
Silence rushed in to fill the space he left behind, making Kota’s ears ring and his thoughts spiral. He wasn’t the type anyone should leave alone with his thoughts.
Kota lay there, taped and shaking, staring up at the ceiling. His heart was still trying to beat its way out of his throat.
A soft weight landed near his hip.
The ginger cat had jumped onto the bed, curling its tail neatly around its paws. It regarded Kota with unblinking amber eyes, expression unreadable but deeply unimpressed.
Kota exhaled through his nose, staring back.
“So,” he mumbled around the tape, voice cracking just a little, “did he kidnap you, too?”
The cat flicked an ear.
Kota’s thoughts caught up to him then, slow and traitorous.
Wait.
Had he said he was cute? He’d also said he was pretty.
Oh.
Oh, no.