REBEL, a New Adult Romance Novel (The Rebel Series) (36 page)

“Where’s that, Teagan?” Quin asks me, her bitchy look going full force.
 
“Home.
 
Where
is
that exactly, anyway?”

Anger surges up inside me and drowns me in darkness.
 
I say the first thing that comes to mind.
 
“Fuck you, twat breath.”
 
I step outside the bathroom and slam the door behind me, but not fast enough to block out her parting shot.

“I’d rather be a twat breath than a coward who lets some skanky ho-bag murder my dad for money!”

I hold on to the wall as I walk down the hallway.
 
The room is tilting and I’m seriously regretting drinking all that punch right now.
 
I’m pretty sure there’s more inside me ready to make an appearance.

I make it outside onto the front porch just before I heave again.
 
The bushes will never be the same.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

“YOU OKAY?” ASKS A GUY standing on the front lawn.
 
He walks over to help me.
 
Dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, he looks just like everyone else at the party, but I don’t remember seeing him through the smoke earlier.
 
I was probably too busy going gooey over Rebel to notice anyone, though, so I don’t hold that against him.

“What are you doing out here?” I ask, wondering why he looks familiar.
 
“Party’s out back.”

“Just got here.
 
You’re Teagan, right?”
 
He holds out a hand.

I use my own to wipe off my mouth and take a step back, worried he’s going to get a foul dose of my vom breath.
 
“Do I know you?”

He steps forward, smiling really big.
 
He’s decent enough to look at, but I can’t help comparing him to Rebel.
 
He’s much smaller and more textbook handsome.
 
I immediately decide I prefer Rebel’s brand of hot to this guy’s more basic style.

“Not yet.”
 
He still has his hand out.
 
“I’m Robert.”

I finally take his hand and shake it, giving him the ultimate girly grip, dead fish all the way.
 
I don’t want him getting the wrong idea and thinking I’m interested.
 
“Hi, Robert.
 
Nice to meet you.”

When he lets my hand go and turns to the side, shaking his other hand in his pocket, it suddenly hits me how I know him. Those jingling keys flash a memory of his face across my mind’s eye.

A second guy is coming up the walk but I don’t pay him any attention.
 
Instead I point at Robert.
 
“I know you!
 
You were that guy!
 
The one in the hardware store!”
 
I grin like a fool.
 
My memory kicks ass.

“What?”
 
He smiles back at me, but it’s missing some of the shine it had to it earlier.

I shift my weight to my other leg.
 
“Yeah, that was you.
 
I was buying some stuff for my apartment and then you were there at the end of the aisle, staring at me.”

He frowns.
 
“Nah, that wasn’t me.
 
I don’t think it was, anyway.”
 
He grins again and then glances over his shoulder at the guy who’s almost next to him.

I look at the new guy and take in his outfit.
 
He’s not dressed for a barbecue at all.
 
Who in the hell wears jeans when it’s ninety degrees out?
 
Idiots, that’s who.
 
Maybe he’s selling vacuum cleaners or something.

When he looks up, I do a double-take. “Hey, you’re that guy …”
 
I point to him at the same moment he looks at Robert.
 
They exchange a glance and my super computer brain starts calculating.
 
What it comes up with is making me very nervous all of a sudden.

“You’re the one from the bar,” I say, my tone accusing, “the one that Colin fought.
 
You had a knife.”

“Time to go,” says Robert, looking at the knife guy.

“You guys are together? That’s weird, right?”
 
I take a step back towards the house as they both swing their gazes over to me.

I would like to say that things after that point happened in slow motion.
 
That would be really romantic and cool to think real life is like that.
 
But that’s not really how it goes down.
 
Not at all, actually.

One second I’m standing there on the front walk wondering why two strangers who had been staring at me in the last week are suddenly at the same barbecue, and the next thing I know I’m the meat in a very uncomfortable Teagan sandwich.
 
Each of them has one of my arms and we’re walking as a threesome over to an SUV on the curb.

“What the fuck?”
 
My super-computer brain is in full breakdown mode.
 
I’ve never been manhandled by a perfectly sober guy and never by two at once.
 
I always imagined a threesome to be very different than it’s turned out to be.
 
It doesn’t strike me that I’m being kidnapped until I’m almost to the passenger door of the car.

“Oh,
hell
no!”
 
I scream as Robert flings the back door open.
 
“Fuck that!
 
Fuck
that
!
 
I am
not
getting in that goddamn car!”

A pain like I’ve never experienced in my entire life shoots through my head, via my face.

“You just hit me?!”
 
It probably makes no sense, but I’m going into shock over the idea that a man just hit me in the face for no good reason.
 
I haven’t even insulted him yet.

Luckily, my auto-pilot gets what happening and goes into overdrive.
 
I kick and scream and punch and twist, doing everything I possibly can to keep from being shoved into the back seat.

When I read stories about chicks being kidnapped, I always swore that I’d never let it happen to me, that I’d know exactly what to do to get away.
 
Eye gouge!
 
Kidney jab!
 
Where are those damn testicles, goddammit?!

None of my awesome evasion-of-kidnapping maneuvers works.
 
One more blow to my head and suddenly my feet don’t want to work anymore.
 
It’s hard to tell which way is up, and all kind of hard parts on the car are bruising my arms, legs, and ribs as the two guys throw me bodily inside.

I land face down on the floor of the back seat as the door shuts on the bottom of my feet, shoving them into the car and crumpling my legs up against the vinyl.
 
The carpet is covered in bits of gravel and stank that makes me want to vomit again, but I’m too pissed to throw up yet.
 
I’ll save that awesome sauce for later, when I can aim it at someone’s face.

Struggling to get up, I suffer a few more punches, this time to the back of my thighs.

“Sit still!
 
Stay down there!” growls one of the kidnappers.

“Fuck your father and your mother!” I yell back, howling with rage when a knuckle to the thigh brings up a charlie horse so bad all I can do is fetal-ball it and wait for the pain to stop.

“Easy, Dack,” says Robert, “you don’t need to mark her up or anything.”

“Dack?
 
That’s your name?” I laugh, forcing it out in loud barks.
 
“You look more like a
Dick
if you ask me.”

He turns around and slaps me, the whiplash motion throwing my hair across my face.

“You want to get caught driving through town with her in the back?!” Dack yells.
 
“Who the fuck arranges a pick-up without a trunk?”

Robert yells back, “Hey, I’m not some sort of practiced criminal, okay?!
 
Jesus!”

Through the blaze of agony searing my cramped leg, I sense my one chance at salvation.
 
Maybe Robert has a heart somewhere inside him, or at least a strong fear of being butt-raped in jail.

“You are a criminal, you know,” I gasp out, pushing myself into a ball behind Dack’s seat.
 
“Kidnapping is a federal offense.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Dack says, turning around in his seat.

I can’t see him, but his chair is bouncing against my body telling me he’s about to reach around and bring more of that pain he seems to enjoy doling out.

It’s probably better if I follow his instructions, but there’s some sadistic part of me that’s too pissed these two idiots got the jump on me, and it’s not going to let me or them go quietly into the night.

“Shut the fuck up,
Dick
, you redneck scab eater!” I scream.
 
My third grade insults have apparently risen to the top like really good cream.

Robert laughs.
 
“Scab eater?
 
That’s creative.”

Dack punches Robert in the arm, causing the whole car to swerve over to the side.

Someone honks and I leap into action.
 
Knowing someone might see me fires me up like nothing ever has before.
 
I jump out of my hidey hole spot and throw myself against the passenger window, screaming with every ounce of volume I can muster and doing my best to ignore the horrible pain in my leg.
 
“Help!
 
Help!
 
I’m being kidnapped!
 
Call the cops!”

I bang and bang and bang on the window, hollow thumps that sound way too muffled in the air-tight truck. The person in the compact car next to us sees nothing.
 
The driver’s sitting about a foot below where we are on the opposite side of the road, and he’s about to turn left and leave us in the dust.

“Noooo!!” I scream as I’m hauled back away from the window.
 
Dack has a fistful of my hair and he’s not afraid to rip it out, apparently.

“Lie down!” he roars.

I reach behind me to try and get him to let go.
 
I manage to inflict at least one good scratch on his face somewhere before it’s game over.

I’m not sure if it’s his fist or a sledgehammer, but something very heavy and solid makes contact with my temple, and that’s all I remember of that stupid kidnapping mobile.

CHAPTER FORTY

I WAKE UP ON A ratty brown couch in a small, damp warehouse, instantly regretting my first instinct to sit up quickly.
 
Holy massive headache.
 
I have to remain still for a few seconds until the waves of pain subside.

“You’re finally awake,” says a voice off to my left. Robert is sitting in an armchair that’s in way better repair than my couch, his cheesy smile nowhere in sight.

I don’t know why I ever thought he was handsome.
 
He’s more the butt-ugly type, the kind that eats goldfish for fun and then brags about it.

I say nothing, saving all my brain energy for getaway plans.
 
My eyes roam the space, trying to figure out what my options are.
 
There are no windows I can see.
 
The only light comes from a lamp enclosed in a wire cage, fixed up high in the corner of the room.
 
There’s a metal roll-up door about twenty feet in front of me.
 
I helped Quin’s brother move once, and he had a storage unit where he kept some stuff.
 
I have a feeling I’m in one of those.

“So, we brought you here to ask you a few questions, get something from you.”

I can’t play the silent game anymore.
 
He’s too stupid for words.
 
“If it’s sex, I’m fresh out.
 
Sorry dude.”
 
I point to my crotch.
 
“Herpes. I don’t recommend it.”

“It’s not sex.
 
It’s something you received from your father.”

My brain short-circuits for a moment as I digest that little bit of information.
 
“Say what?
 
What’s my father got to do with the sex trade?”

He frowns.
 
“Sex trade?”

“Yeah. That’s why you kidnapped me, right?
 
Sex slave ring?
 
You’re going to sell me to the highest bidder?
 
Listen, I saw the movie.
 
I know how this works.
 
But rough luck on that, man, seriously.
 
I’m tainted.
 
And not a virgin besides.
 
You’ll be lucky to get fifty bucks for my shit.”

He rolls his eyes and frowns as he shakes his head, like I’m the dummy in the room.
 
“We’re not into that business, thanks.”

“No, thank
you
.”
 
I look around some more, wondering if yelling might help.
 
I’m just a little worried that the scab eater Dack the Dick is here and that he’s still in the mood to give me a concussion.
 
I’m not sure my skull can take too many more hits before my brain is permanently damaged.
 
Maybe it already is; I have this nonsensical desire to antagonize him when it’s probably smarter to kiss his ass.

“So why exactly am I here getting my ass beat by a guy with an IQ of forty?”

“That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Robert looks worried so I press my advantage.
 
“If you let me go, you’ll be fine.
 
It’s keeping me and beating my head in that’s going to be a problem for you, legally speaking.”

“I’m not worried about it.”

“Liar.”
 
I smile bitterly.
 
“Federal crime means maximum security, dude. And
that
means getting it up the butt nightly from an axe murderer.
 
You’ll totally be some big black guy’s bitch for about a week before they kill you with a broom handle broken off in your colon.”