14. Fourteen
The room smelled of wet wood, and humidity permeated the air. She could feel the oppressiveness of it as she tried to take a breath. Kat opened her eyes, but all she saw was darkness, as she was blindfolded. Her mind searched for where she was, panic flooding her senses. She remembered being grabbed by the man in the woods and had fallen asleep after being tied to the chair. Kat wasn’t one to fall apart in a crisis, but she also had never found herself gagged and bound to a chair on an Indonesian island either. She felt her heart beating in her chest at a frantic rate as the panic grew.
She was going to die; they were going to kill her; she knew too much about their operation, and no one would know, and really, who would care? Her mom would be sad, and probably her younger brother Cam would miss her. Caleb her eldest brother might be a touch sad, even if he didn’t know how to show a single emotion. Lydia and Cher would be sad, but they were all about to go their separate ways anyway, or at least it appeared they were. They hadn’t talked about what their futures held.
Would West even care? They weren’t anything to each other. Sure, he had just given her the best orgasm of her life, but that didn’t make them anything. He hadn’t professed any feelings for her, and even if he had, she wasn’t sure she could believe him. West wasn’t capable of long-term commitment.
She groaned, and it echoed in the vastness of the dark room. Her head ached; her body hurt. She should be worried about getting out of this situation, and yet all she could think about was him. She wanted him to run away, to get the keys to a boat and flee the island as they had planned. To leave her and not try to save her. But deep down, she knew better. He wouldn’t leave her here, and he would get caught. They were both screwed.
Moving her wrists, she could feel the rope digging into them, making it impossible to get free, her arm protesting at the sharp angle. She discovered they’d tied her feet just as tightly when she tried to pull them away from the chair.
“Stop your struggling.” A voice rang out into the silence, making her jump.
She saw light from beneath her blindfold. Contrary to what she’d thought, it wasn”t night. She was in quite a predicament. Heavy, booted footsteps stalked closer to her, and she tried to push herself farther back into the chair. A hand touched her head, ripping the blindfold off. Light flooded her eyes and she squinted. A man she hadn’t seen before stood in front of her.
He leaned down so his face was right in front of her. He smelled of weed and something else. She guessed it was cocaine, although she was unsure of what that smelled like when someone smoked it.
“So, you’re the pain in my ass my guys found on the beach?” He smiled, and she saw he was missing a couple of teeth. Her head drooped, and she wondered if they had drugged her, causing her to sleep through the night. He pulled her head up by her hair, and it took everything in her not to wince in pain. She wouldn’t let him see he was hurting her.
“You better hope your little lover boy shows up soon, or we’re going to sprinkle breadcrumbs to help him find his way.” He looked around at her tied-up hands. “You don’t need all your fingers, do you?”
Pure terror enveloped her as she instinctively tried to pull her hands loose. The man laughed, let go of her, and backed away.
“You’re dying either way, darling. Boss’s orders. I can make it quick or slow, that’s up to your man.” He eyed her up and down, a lascivious look in his eyes. “Although it’s such a shame to let you go to waste.”
That hadn’t been the news Kat was hoping for and she tried to scream, the gag blocking the sound. She knew it was a waste of time, and no one would hear anyway. They had locked her in what appeared to be a storage warehouse for their finished product before they shipped it out. Even if someone did happen to hear her, no one would save her. But that didn’t mean it didn’t make her feel better. She screamed again for West, but of course he didn’t come.
The man chuckled, the sound unsettling her. It was nothing like West’s laugh, which wrapped her in warmth. This one made her feel like she had a rock in the pit of her stomach.
“You keep screaming, girlie, you’ll just wear yourself out. Might help your guy find you quicker though.” As if he had just had a brilliant idea, the man stepped up to her and took the gag off. Kat sucked in huge gulps of air, on the verge of screaming for West again before realizing that was exactly what he wanted her to do.
“You want him to find me?” Her voice was raspy and not her own.
“Well, of course, we got to kill you both. The boss knows he snuck up here a few nights ago, and now you’ve seen the operation, so you both gotta go.”
She cocked her head to the side, realizing this man liked to talk. Maybe she could get him to confess. Isn’t that what all villains did? Well, maybe in novels and soap operas, but maybe she could get something useful out of him if she played to his ego.
“I thought you were the boss,” she practically purred, batting her eyelashes.
He puffed up his chest, and she bit back a smirk. “On the island, I’m the boss, and you best remember that. But it’s a global operation. There’s a group of bosses. My boss answers to those guys, so it’s got a big hierarchy.”
“How fascinating.” She pretended to practically swoon. She looked around the large warehouse. “This is quite the operation. It must be a lot of work. To keep it all going, you must be rather skilled.” She gave her most radiant smile.
He walked closer to her, and for a moment, she had to suppress the urge to shrink away from his touch. She wanted him to untie her, and if flirting got the job done, she could push aside the massive icky feeling it gave her. His hand came out, and he grabbed a strand of her hair, wrapping it around his finger.
She had decently long hair—it was one piece of her culture she had tried to keep. After going through a phase of cutting and chemically altering her hair, she now wore it more naturally. It was much healthier and smoother, and her natural waves gave her the perfect beachy look every day.
But now that this rough-looking man had his grimy hands on it, she was rethinking the no-cutting. She felt gross and defiled as he wrapped the silky strands around his finger. West had done something similar, but she had allowed him to, had wanted him to. How starkly different the two situations had been.
“You have no idea how much work it is, darling. A man could definitely use a reward for his hard work.”
She tried not to throw up in her mouth as she thought about what reward he was alluding to.
“Lock . . . Mr. Lock, are you in there?” she heard another voice call from around the corner. Thankfully, he dropped her hair, turning around to greet the newcomer who appeared at his side.
“What do you want, Williams?” he said gruffly, annoyed they had been interrupted. Kat made a mental note to thank Williams at her earliest convenience.
Williams was no more than nineteen, maybe twenty, years old and nearly shook in his boots. He was about five-foot-ten, but reed thin. He was American, like Lock, with greasy blond hair and obsidian eyes. Kat was curious how this boy had ended up on a remote island in Indonesia, but that would be a question for later.
The boy stood there wringing his hands, his eyes averted. “There’s . . . there’s . . . a . . . a . . .”
Lock crossed his arms over his chest. “Out with it, kid.” His patience was clearly being tested.
“There’s a fire in field four.”
“What? Why didn’t you say that right away?” Lock ran to the desk and grabbed a gun, handing it to the boy. “Don”t let her outta your sight. I know this is the work of her man. If you see him, shoot first, ask questions later.”
The gun looked comically immense in the boy’s skinny hands. He weighed it in his palms, and Kat sincerely hoped he didn’t scare easily. One little sound and she had a feeling he’d be shooting that thing off.
Her heart leaped into her throat as she realized West was coming. That had been their plan—start a fire in the field—and he had done it. Why he had done it in broad daylight while everyone was awake, she had no idea, but he was coming to get her, and she felt entirely too giddy for a girl tied to a chair. She was also worried about him. This Williams kid was standing there with a gun he did not know how to use, and in her mind, that was more dangerous than someone who did. West wasn’t going to just walk through the front door, and if he spooked Williams, he was going to get himself shot quicker than he would if he had faced off against Lock.
She was formulating a plan to distract Williams when a blur of something raced across her peripheral vision.
It was West.
He was crouching behind some of the boxes that had been packaged to be shipped. His blue gaze struck her where she was, and relief and dread inundated her whole being. He was in danger if the boy caught him. Williams would shoot on sight, she was sure of it. She subtly shook her head, trying to get his attention, as she motioned toward Williams, in hopes he would see the gun in the kid’s hand.
West peered around a crate, and Kat saw he had the pocketknife in his hand.
Who brought a knife to a gunfight?
He wasn’t going to be able to do much with that. She had to distract the kid, but he wasn’t looking at her, and seemed not to have the same interest in her as Lock. A cougar, she apparently was not.
“Hey, Williams,” she said in her most sultry voice to get him to turn around. If West could sneak up on him, he could get the gun from him. He could easily overpower this scrawny boy, of that Kat had no doubt, but he was skittish, and that made her cautious. Williams didn’t turn around, and barely acknowledged her. “Shut it,” he yelled over his shoulder. He wasn’t the most intimidating, but he tried.
“How old are you?” she asked. “You can’t be more than, what, twenty?” She saw his jaw jump as he turned around, gun raised at her head.
“Old enough to shoot you. Didn’t I say shut it?”
West moved, inching closer to Williams.
Okay, that struck a nerve. She leaned on his anger to give West a chance. “Yes, you certainly are man enough to do that, so why don’t you go ahead and do it?”
He looked at her, confusion written on his face. “You want me to shoot you?”
“Lock said I’m dead either way, might as well go quickly. You’ll be merciful, right? Or maybe you’re not man enough to do it?”
She saw the anger return to his eyes as he cocked back the hammer on the gun. “Oh, I’m man enough. Lock will probably thank me for getting rid of you.”
He leveled the gun at her head, and Kat, never one for prayer, closed her eyes and prayed to the spirits of the earth that West would get to her in time before she had her brains splattered across the walls of this makeshift warehouse.
If she wasn’t about to get herself killed by some incompetent idiot who didn’t know the first thing about holding a gun, he might have killed her himself. Kat had lost her mind, and West was watching in slow motion as she stared down the barrel of a gun. He wanted to roar and make his presence known, but he knew he had to be stealthy about his attack. He had a perfectly good plan to disarm the boy, and then Kat had gone and pissed him off, causing him to turn the gun on her.
Now West was going to have to tackle him and save her rather than his original plan of sneaking up on the kid. He gripped the knife in his hand, and watched as the boy closed in on her head. Then he lunged at him, slipping his finger behind the trigger before he could pull it.
“What the . . .!” he yelled out as West used the pocketknife to stab the kid in the side. It wasn’t playing fair, but he had felt his heart pulled out of his chest and trampled the moment he had seen that gun pointed at Kat. He’d seen red and would kill him if he had to. No one would ever put her in that kind of danger. She was his. She just didn’t know it yet.
Surprisingly spry, the kid’s elbow sprung back and knocked West in the nose, sending him backward, his knife flying across the floor and landing behind Kat’s chair. West wiped at the blood trickling out of his nose as he regained his equilibrium. Losing to some snot-nosed kid half his age was not an option, but the gun was still securely in his hands.
West was a boxer and enjoyed sparring with his friends, but he had never been one for hand-to-hand combat, and he was not trained to disarm anyone. Seeing where he had cut the kid with the knife, West punched him in the wound. He cried out, and West lunged for the gun. They both grappled for control, and it went off. For a moment West stood still, worried Kat had been shot. It felt like his heart was lodged in his throat as he prayed that she was fine. Relief swamped his senses when he saw she was fine, more than fine. She had grabbed his knife and was trying to cut herself loose. Her face contorted in agony as she worked to cut herself free.
That had been a mistake, because Williams, the name Kat had called the kid, punched him in the face while he was distracted, and it wasn’t too shabby a hit. West’s head recoiled on impact; he stood, and the room went in and out of focus. He lunged for the gun and pulled, but Williams’s grip was stronger than he’d expected. With all the strength he had left, he pulled on the gun, but because of the awkward angle, it went flying across the floor. They both went after it, but Williams stopped him, punching him in the side. West doubled over in pain, and as Williams paused to celebrate his hit, West grabbed him around the waist and flung him to the floor.
West’s fist connected with the boy’s nose, with a bone-crunching punch that had to have broken it. The punch made his own hand hurt. It’s a good thing he wouldn’t be playing the guitar anytime soon because his fingers wouldn’t work right for a while. The boy cried out in pain, gripping his face and crying out as he grabbed his bleeding nose. With all his leftover strength, West gave one last punch, and the kid was out cold. West jumped off him and lunged for the gun, but just as he was about to get it, the older man showed up. Before West knew what was up, he was sucker punched in the face, sending him flying to the ground.
The pain sent sparks through his head, and he saw fireworks. He had been so close and had failed in the last second. The older man picked up the gun and pointed it at him.
“I should make you watch me shoot your girl first, but I’m not vindictive. It’s just business.” He pulled back the hammer, and West searched the room for Kat. He wanted to see her one last time before he died. That was all he wanted. One last gaze upon the woman he realized he was coming to care for, because at this moment, if he had one regret, it was that she didn’t know he was falling for her, and falling hard.
The man pulled the trigger, and the shot rang out. He felt nothing. West searched his body realizing he had no injuries. He sat up as the large man crumpled next to him, blood pooling under him.
West scrambled to his feet, searching for the shooter, and there she was.
Kat.
If there had ever been a woman who looked more like a warrior queen in that moment, he had never seen one. Her unbound hair was cascading down her shoulders and back, her clothes were dirty and disheveled, and her eyes were spitting fire.
He ran up to her, taking the gun and cupping her face in his hands. “Fuck, Kat, you saved me.”
She stared at the man crumpled on the floor, and he pulled her face to look at him. “You saved me, Kat. I’m alive.” He kissed her, making her focus on him and not the man on the ground bleeding to death.
“Is he . . . is he dead?” She was worried she had killed a man, and West didn’t understand why she would care about that piece of crap.
The man made a groaning sound that made them both look at his prostrate form. “Apparently not,” West noted, grabbing her hand. “Let’s move.”
She nodded, and they took off running to get into one of the Jeeps parked in front of the building. He jumped into the driver’s seat and searched for the keys.
“Shit, I’ll be right back.”
“West, where are you—”
He didn’t hear her as he raced back to the warehouse, searching the man’s pockets for the keys to the Jeep. His hand wrapped around the key fob and pulled it from the still man’s pockets—he was no longer groaning in pain, not a good sign for him—and ran back to the Jeep.
They weren’t out of the woods yet though. While he had set the fire intentionally in the farthest field, someone had to have heard those gunshots. The Jeep roared to life and West drove like a madman, intent on getting them to the boats. Kat sat in silence, staring into space, holding her arm close to her chest.
West noticed her wince in pain and frowned, she was now holding her not sewn up arm. “What happened to your arm?”
“Nothing, just drive.”
He didn’t like her evading the question but didn’t pry. She was right; they had to focus on escape first, and then he could take care of her.
He took the tight turns of the switchback too fast as he drove down the hill. He could hear cars behind him but didn’t dare glance back for fear of taking his eyes off the road or the steep cliff they could plummet off of any moment. He saw Kat look back, worry on her face.
“How close are they?”
“I don’t see anyone, just drive. Look.” She pointed ahead, and West saw the marina. He skidded the Jeep into a small parking area where there were five boats docked. Jumping from the Jeep he ran to the other side to help Kat, who was struggling to get down with only one good arm. They took off running across the dock, jumping onto the first speedboat docked on their tiny marina. West saw a Jeep coming down the switchback out of the corner of his eye.
“Here.” He shoved the keys into her hand as they ran onto one of the speedboats. “Get it started.”
He stepped off the boat onto the dock.
“No, West, get back on the boat,” she protested.
“Just get it started!” He took the gun she had used from his waistband as he saw one man aiming. He had an assault rifle and West was outgunned, but he would not let them hurt Kat. She was going to get the boat started and get herself off this island. He heard her fumbling with the keys as she cursed while trying to get it started.
“It’s not the right boat!”
“Then try another,” he called back to her, preparing for a fight.
She jumped onto a neighboring boat, and then to his everlasting gratitude he heard the engine rev, and Kat screamed for him to get on the boat.
A stream of bullets sprayed across the deck as he jumped on, and Kat pulled away from the dock as fast as she could. West held his breath as the island shrunk in the distance, the bullets bouncing off and spraying the water, but not quite able to reach them. She turned the steering wheel and pushed the throttle forward as hard as she could, sending the boat flying across the water, almost knocking West off his feet.
“You think they’ll come after us?” she yelled over the noise from the boat.
“Probably. We better find a place to hide.”
As much as West wanted her to drive straight to an inhabited island for safety, he didn’t want to risk them getting caught and shot by these people. They drove through the open water for what felt like hours, circling an island or two, before he saw a small cave and motioned for her to pull the boat in there. The sun was setting anyway, and they didn’t want to be out on the ocean in the dark.
She maneuvered the boat in, dropping the anchor when the boat was in deep enough. Ivy and brush were hanging down around the cave entrance and they used it to cover the boat as much as they could. Once the sun went down they would be completely covered, and in the morning they could hopefully find an island with people on it.
Plopping down on the bow of the boat, West found a water bottle and handed it to Kat. She took a drink and handed it back, prompting him to finish off the bottle and savor every drop. It was getting dark in the cave, but he could see something was wrong with her. She was quiet, too quiet considering they had just escaped certain death.
“You’re decently good at driving a speedboat, especially one-handed,” he said, breaking the silence.
She lifted her head, still holding her arm against her chest. “I grew up in the Midwest. Not a whole lot to do. The lake is a big summer activity. We didn’t do much else growing up, like vacations, eating out, or expensive Christmases, but we had a boat.”
“I’m grateful you did. You got us out of there, Kat. That’s the second time today you saved me.”
He looked at the blue and purple bruise growing on the arm opposite of her stitched-up one. He had to get her to a doctor. Between her amateur stitches and potentially broken arm, she needed a hospital.
“How’d you get out of your binds anyway?” he asked.
She glanced down at her arm. “It hurt, I can tell you that.” She gave a slight self-deprecating laugh. “When you lost your pocketknife it slid near me, and I thought if I could just get to it I could get free, so I tried my feet at first, but they were tied tight. I tilted the chair to the side and fell on my arm.” She frowned, and West wished he could take her pain away.
“I’ll heal,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “I just wanted freedom. I had to wriggle a bit, but I got my hands on the knife and cut my bindings. You kept that Williams kid distracted, and that was all I needed to cut myself free.”
West touched her arm and Kat let out a stream of air. “Babe, I wish this was over. I don’t know how many times I can say I’m sorry.” He kissed the top of her head and wrapped his arm around her.
She nuzzled in closer. “Where did you find the gun?” he asked.
She stiffened. “There was a cabinet sitting wide open. There were a bunch of them in there. Do you think I killed him? I know he was a bad man, but . . .”
“Kat.” He stroked her hair, so smooth it still felt like silk across his calloused fingers. It was a simple and intimate gesture that he had never done with other women. “I saw him move. I’m sure he’s alive, but even if he’s not, he tried to kill us. He deserves whatever happens to him.”
“I was aiming for his shoulder, but I’ve only shot a real gun once. I guess I’m not a very good shot.”
West chuckled. “It was an excellent shot to me.”
She snuggled in closer and sighed, and West continued to stroke her hair and her arms, his mind reeling as he contemplated the sheer terror that had come over him when he thought he’d almost lost her. How he had almost torn that entire compound up bit by bit to find her. It had turned his stomach sour as he saw her flirt with the boss to get him to untie her.
She was his and only his, and as medieval and antiquated as that thought was, he didn’t care. Feelings were bubbling beneath the surface he couldn’t quite name when it came to Kat, and he wasn’t sure what he would do if she didn’t feel the same.
He listened to the sound of her even breathing, glad she could fall asleep. They would have to find a way to Jakarta tomorrow. It was time for them to get home.