64. Chapter 64
“Mary! Mary! You gotta wake up,” I hear someone saying urgently as they shake my shoulder.
“Wha? What is it?” I ask as I sleepily lift my head off my pillow, blinking as I squint to try and see him. Then I hear a stampede of boots running down the hallway and bolt right up in bed. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a fire,” he says urgently as he hands me my glasses.
Shoving them on my face, I quickly scoot to the edge of bed and grab the hoodie jacket off the back of Patch’s chair, quickly throwing it on before stuffing my phone in the pocket and zipping it up. Thank God I went to bed in my leggings and socks due to lack of pajama options, otherwise I’d probably have been in shorts or very thin pajama pants.
I slip on my flats and Patch scoops me up in his arms and starts running down the hall. “No time for the chair. The guys are working on containing the fire but I don’t know how fast they’ll have it handled.”
“The kids?”
“Prospects got them out along with Elvira. It was along that back outer wall and Elvira raised the alarm when she woke up from the smoke.”
Panic grips me. Oh, my God! The pull-out murphy bed was along that wall. The bed Elvira was sleeping in. “But no one was hurt, right?”
“I don’t think so, but I’ll look them all over once we’re out of here.”
Since the fire’s at the back of the clubhouse, we head out the front and wrap around the side.
“Oh, my God!” I cry when I see the orange flames licking up the side of the clubhouse. It hasn’t reached the roof yet, but it won’t be long unless they can get it under control soon. In the distance, I hear sirens and I pray the firefighters get here quickly, because I don’t know how long those little fire extinguishers will last.
Just as I think that, both Dragon and Ryder toss two down on the ground. Ethan, Timber, Sasha, and Cowboy all race up from the direction of the condos, each carrying a few fire extinguishers.
“Raided the condos until the fire department can get here,” Timber says as they start handing them out.
Patch sets me down, and I wobble slightly before finding my balance. Then, with a kiss, he strides forward and takes one of the fire extinguishers. Cowboy takes Sasha’s from her, kisses her and points over to the kids and me. She huffs at him, but does as he asks.
She comes over to me and lets me use her shoulder to steady myself further.
“Are you okay?” she asks and I nod.
“You?”
“Yeah.” She peers around me toward the kids and kind of nods to herself when she sees Elvira and Drae over by the kids.
After a few moments, her phone rings and she digs it out of her pocket before answering it. She covers her other ear, but with the guys shouting at each other, she must still not be able to hear very well because she turns a little away from them and talks louder.
A couple seconds later, my entire body freezes and ice slides down my spine when I feel something round and metal poking into my back.
“Don’t fucking move or say anything.”
I close my eyes and then open them again, willing Patch, Sasha, or someone to turn around, because I’d know that voice anywhere.
Stephan.
“Look over to your right, but don’t say a fucking word.”
I do, and my eyes widen when I can barely make out the glint of a metal barrel pointing at the back of Cassie’s head thanks to the flames. However, it’s too dark to see who it is holding the gun. Not to mention they’re wearing a hoodie with the hood pulled down low over their head.
“You either come with me, or I take the brat and sell her. She’ll make me a mint since she’s so young and at the perfect age to be molded into what we need her to be.”
He wouldn’t!
But as soon as I think that, I know he would.
He’d sell any of them just to save his own neck. Me included. Fuck, I forgot about him listing us on that fucking website. I need to talk to Smoke about that. Well, after I get out of this somehow.
“Don’t hurt her,” I hiss and then wince when the barrel of the gun digs into me further.
“Not so loud, you stupid bitch. Now slowly step backwards.”
“I can’t or did you forget that you broke my leg!” I hiss again, although, I do it as quietly as I can so I don’t aggravate him more.
He curses and then mumbles something.
The next thing I know, he’s got my arm wrapped around his shoulder and lets me lean on him as I hobble. At first I try to be a little noisy, but then he digs his gun into my side, and even though it’s his non-dominant hand, I don’t want to test him. Not yet anyway. I go for placating him instead.
“I’m sorry, I’m trying to be quiet, but this is not exactly easy.”
“Well, try harder. This would have been a lot easier if you’d have lost some fucking weight like I’ve told you to countless times already,” he growls into my ear as we continue to back away from the property. I have to bite my tongue when he makes comments about my weight. I’ve come a long way in accepting my curves again—I’m not fully back to completely accepting them, but I’m pretty damn close.
When we’re about five feet back from Sasha, someone comes up on the other side of me. I hear a whistling sound and my head jerks toward the new person and when I see a metal cylinder in a large hand, I turn back toward the clubhouse in fear.
Sasha cries out a muffled sound and then drops.
“What did you do?” I hiss at him.
“Tranq dart, now shut the fuck up, bitch, and keep moving.”
Fuck! Please let Sasha be okay and that they find her soon. Who knows if they made the shit in that dart too powerful for her.
I stumble when Stephan suddenly steps away from me and the guy that darted Sasha scoops me up into his arms and starts walking toward the condos. When they reach them, they check to make sure no one is following them and then they run toward the tree line.
My mind whirls with what I could do to leave hints for the guys as to where we went. I mean, the snow might help. I’m not sure when it started snowing, but we’ve already got a few inches on the ground. Unfortunately, it’s also still snowing. With not knowing how much we’re supposed to get, I don’t know if our tracks will be covered by the time they notice me missing or not.
Then I remember the tracker.
Thank God both Patch and Smoke pushed me to get it tonight! Otherwise, I’d only have my phone and bracelets, and I have no idea how much longer I’ll have those on me.
Thankfully, Stephan’s buddy has my right side toward his chest, and I lower my hand, acting like I’m going to itch my leg, but he shifts and his hand latches onto my wrist, preventing me from activating it.
“What are you doing?” he growls and I wince, thinking up a lie real quick since he noticed.
“Sorry, just have a bad muscle twinge. It’s happened ever since he broke my leg.”
He pauses as he looks around and then drops me to the ground.
I hiss in pain as I land hard on the frozen ground, the fresh snow easily soaking through my clothes even worse than before.
My eyes widen in surprise when the man pulls rope from a bag he was carrying and starts tying me up.
“Hurry up,” Stephan orders him and the man grunts.
“Take it up with your bitch. She was trying to signal them somehow.”
Pain explodes on my cheek as Stephan hits me before he grabs my jacket, yanking me closer to him before hitting me again.
Immediately I can tell that our time apart has not been good for him. He’s greasy, unkept, and he stinks to high heaven.
“I wasn’t doing anything!” I lie right to his face. “My leg has been giving me problems ever since you broke it and meathead over here was making it worse. Because of your threat, I knew I had to stay quiet, so I was trying to put pressure on it, hoping to get it to go away.”
He sneers down at me. “Why am I not surprised? Anything that you’re involved with always goes to hell in a handbasket. I’ll be glad to finally be rid of your pathetic ass.”
I bite my tongue as curses threaten to escape. Back talking now would only mean more pain for me. If he could have just let me go, he would have been rid of me, but no. He had to keep coming after me.
He stares at me for a few moments while meathead finishes tying me up. Before he can pick me up, Stephan pulls back his foot and kicks me right in my stomach. Air whooshes out of me and I groan in pain, not able to hold the noise in.
The other guy pulls out a hanky out of his pocket and even though I resist, he still winds up gagging me, which makes catching my breath even harder. Then he hoists me up over his shoulder and I groan again as his shoulder makes contact with the spot that Stephan had just kicked.
To help keep my mind off the pain, I look down to see how I’m tied up. My hands are tied in front of me and then there’s a few loops keeping my arms tucked against my torso. I can feel the rope circling down my hips and legs, down to my ankles. At least he didn’t tighten the ones around my ankles too tight because of my cast.
Meathead continues onward through the forest. The further he walks, the more the coldness creeps in as the snowflakes get bigger and start falling even harder. However, it seems like the trees are blocking a lot of them from falling on us, since there doesn’t seem to be much on the ground. I try to lift my head to look behind us, but I can’t really see through my curtain of hair.
I’m not sure how long we continue through the forest before we come to a junker of a side-by-side ATV. Meathead lowers me roughly onto the passenger seat and I’m surprised when he buckles me up, but it’s something I’m extremely grateful for. I know how shitty of a driver Stephan is on a good day. Add in the fact that we’re going to be driving through the forest in the dark, I’ll take all the protection I can get. Especially since I can’t even hold the ‘oh shit’ handle with the way I’m tressed up.
Meathead climbs onto a bench behind us, but instead of facing forward, he faces behind us. Stephan starts up the ATV and when he looks at me, fear spreads throughout my body. I know that look, and I know it means I’m going to be hurting big time in the near future. He presses on the accelerator and as the weak beam of headlights light up the path in front of us, I realize they’ve cut a path through the underbrush and forest. How long have they been out here prepping this? How were they not noticed?
Turning, I look over my shoulder, but I can’t see anything through the trees or darkness. Not even an orange haze of the fire.
Have they noticed that I’m gone yet?
God, I hope Patch and the club find me soon. If they don’t, I don’t know if I’ll survive the punishment Stephan will dole out this time.