Rising Heat (24 page)

Stinky Guy climbed off the bike and gestured for me to walk toward the building.

“What you got there, Mops?” a guy standing near the edge of the overhang asked. Mops? I looked at Stinky Guy’s hair. The nickname made sense.

Beanpole glared at him, and he shut up.

Behind me, Hairy Belly reached out and grabbed my arm. I instinctively reacted by trying to yank my arm from his beefy grasp. “Let go of me!” I demanded, then cringed. My voice had come out like a squeak. He laughed.

Beanpole stared at the three of us as we approached. Then he glanced at Hairy Belly. “Let her go, Digger. She ain’t goin’ nowhere.” He eyed me for several moments, then twisted his mouth in annoyance. “See any sign of him?” Beanpole asked as we neared the steps to the porch.

“Sorry, Spider, didn’t see him. I think he ditched her.”

Beanpole was called Spider? Sorry ass names, not much better than the nicknames I had given them.

Once again I was forced to face some unwelcome worries. Had Ash really abandoned me? As I thought about it, I honestly didn’t think he would. Maybe he and Bones had gone somewhere. Maybe there had been a change of plans. I hated not knowing. I hated feeling this uncertainty. Even an inkling of a suggestion that Ash had deserted me made me feel… what?

“Come on in, Kathy,” Spider said.

Said the spider to the fly, I thought. And at the moment, I was the fly, caught in a web of their making. I was the stupid, ignorant fly that had flown into danger without thinking. That had allowed Ash’s good looks and my curiosity about him to ignore my own instincts. At this very moment, I should be at the pet store, dealing with customers, not… not this.

We walked into the interior of the diner, or whatever it was now. It still had a counter, like that of a diner, though it was old, warped and dirty. A number of bikers sat on old bar stools in front of the counter, some nursing bottles of beer. My entry elicited hoots of laughter, some catcalls, suggestive comments, and whistles. I wanted to disappear. I refused to meet the eyes of any of them. Spider clutched my arm and pulled me toward one of the corners.

The space was cluttered with about a dozen small freestanding tables. Along the edges of the interior still stood a few booths, their vinyl seats torn and stained. The Formica peeling off the tables. Cobwebs hanging from the ceiling and in the corners. Dust on everything. I felt a sneeze coming, but it stopped when I realized that everyone had grown silent.

I glanced up to find everyone looking at me. Or Spider. I glanced up at him. Saw the look in his eyes as he stared at his gang members. Looking around, I realized I didn’t see any women. The absence of them caused a shiver to run up my spine. The place smelled of beer, smoke, pot, and something else I didn’t immediately recognize… then I did. Filthy bathrooms. Stopped up drains? My stomach turned another somersault.

I blinked back my tears, tried to keep my chin lifted and my shoulders straight as I followed Spider toward one of the remaining booths in a corner. After several seconds of overwhelming silence, the talking began again, mostly hushed now, a mere buzz of sound. Not boisterous and obnoxious like it’d been only seconds ago.

“Have a seat,” Spider said, gesturing toward the booth. The red plastic was torn and ripped, the white stuffing bulging out. Stains from God knew what all over the place. The tabletop smeared with grease spots, dirt, and likely a myriad of germs. But at least we weren’t near the short hallway that led to the bathrooms.

I had to pee. Fear? A nervous bladder? I tried to ignore it. I sat down, careful to keep my hands clenched in my lap. Didn’t want to touch anything in this place unless it was absolutely necessary. The mumble of conversation continued around me, but I still felt eyes on me. I quickly cast my gaze over Spider’s shoulder, saw that while the others were still looking at us, they had relaxed somewhat. Beyond the counter was what used to be a serving station. Now it was just a bunch of rusted, broken stuff. A glass cupboard of sorts that might have held slices of pie. A large percolator-type coffee machine that had seen better days. Bottles of beer standing side by side on the other side of the coffee machine. On the walls hung decades-old placards.

As I looked at the faces of the Outlaw Biker Boys clustered in the diner, I couldn’t imagine what had prompted Ash to join them. They were a scruffy lot. Some looked like they hadn’t bathed since birth. My gaze latched onto one man; an older man who looked to be in his sixties, at least, who hovered near the edge of the counter, a scraggly gray beard reaching down nearly to his belly button. He stared at me, his gaze unblinking. Assessing. I swallowed heavily and pulled my gaze away from his, only to find Spider staring at me with the same assessing expression.

“Where’s Ash?”

Good question. I stared at him a moment, then offered a little shrug. I was actually impressed with that shrug, which probably looked more casual than it was. “I honestly have no idea.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“There’s nothing I can do about that.” His stare was hard, unyielding. As if he could compel me to answer with just that look. I almost felt an urge to smirk. Almost. I didn’t want it smacked off my face.

“You two have been seen together on more than one occasion—”

“We just met—”

Are you going to tell me you have no idea where he is?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.” My voice shook a bit, but he needed to hear it. Would he believe anything I had to say? I doubted it. “Look, I barely know the guy, okay?” My voice had risen in timbre. Spider narrowed his gaze on me. I clamped my lips shut and inhaled a shaky breath, trying to calm myself. That stare. “Seriously, I hardly know him.” I took another glance around the interior of the diner. Saw the same eyes staring at me. That old guy standing exactly where he had been before, his gaze still fastened on me. Was he a gang member? Or did he own the diner, or whatever it was now? I pulled my gaze from him and glanced again at Spider, whose eyes had not left me. “You obviously know him a lot better than I do.”

“Well, let’s just hope that isn’t true, little missy,” he said.

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

He grinned and leaned back in the seat, the plastic beneath him squeaking as he moved. “I made him an offer.”

“You’ve talked to him? When?”

“Nosy little thing, ain’t you?”

I ignored the comment. “You’ve talked to him since those two apes kidnapped me?” My heart skip-hammered in hope. Maybe, just maybe, Ash would find a way out of this. For both of us.

“Oh, you bet we did. I told him we could make a trade. You for him.”

I barely held back a moan. I instinctively knew that if this gang got their hands on Ash, he would die. This was no joke. This was scary. And I knew, even if Ash surrendered himself, they wouldn’t let me go.

“Hey, Spider! How about you let us have a little fun with her? You don’t think Ash would mind, do you?”

Horror gripped me as I looked at the speaker. A dark-haired man with a scruffy short beard, nursing a bottle of Budweiser, his fingernails caked with grease. He was sneering, making a suggestively disgusting gesture with his tongue, a little ring on the end of it flapping at me.

I knew him. Recognized him as one of the trio of bikers I had seen waiting outside of the store the other morning. One of the guys who had ridden up and down the street when one of them had sent a shout-out to Ash.

I pulled my gaze away from his and looked again at Spider, who actually seemed to be considering the question. He saw the look on my face and laughed. “What’s the matter, Kathy? You have a sudden aversion to bikers? You seem to like Ash well enough.”

I swallowed. Found my voice. “I told you that I barely know him.”

He stared at me, disbelieving. “Ash doesn’t waste his time with broads that don’t put out.” He shook his head. “I’m mighty displeased with him at the moment.” He grinned. “I would think that you are too, ain’t you? He went off and left you, didn’t he?”

Was it true, what he said about Ash? Broads that put out? Was that all I was to him? Someone to string along until he had gotten what he wanted out of me? I didn’t want to think so. No. Ridiculous. But about the other comment, I had to wonder. I didn’t want to think that Ash was anything like these… these scumbags, but why would he hang around with them for so long, for so many years if he didn’t fit right in?

He was certainly cleaner and better looking than all of them. He had displayed manners to me, but was that just a put on? To throw me off guard? A man as handsome as Ash didn’t have to work hard to attract the opposite sex. Women were probably drawn to him like a magnet. Like I had been. Had I been fooled by a pretty face and a few manners? Was I about to pay for my foolishness?

“Like I said,” I replied, trying to sound convincing even though my voice still trembled. Nothing I could do about that. “I barely know him. We’ve only gone out a couple of times.”

“That’s not what my guys say.”

“I really don’t care what your guys say,” I said. And I didn’t. At this moment, I didn’t care if Ash even liked me. I just wanted to get the hell away from here. At the same time, I feared what they would do with Ash if he actually did show up for a trade.

As much as I wanted to imagine him swooping in like a knight on a white Harley to rescue me, would he risk himself for a woman he barely knew?

Spider spoke, his voice raised as he shouted for a guy named Chaps. What was it with these stupid nicknames? I yanked my gaze away from Spider, wondering which one of this motley group was Chaps. To my dismay, and horror, it was the guy who’d been wiggling his tongue at me.

Chaps rose from his chair. The metal legs scraped against the broken tiles beneath it and caused a wave of goosebumps to rise along my flesh. He approached the table with a smug grin.

“Take her to the back room,” Spider ordered, gesturing with his thumb toward the hallway where the stinking restrooms were located. “Tie her up in the office.” He glanced around the room and then looked up at Chaps. “Where’s Sarge?”

Chaps shrugged as he stood beside me. “How the hell should I know?”

“After you get her taken care of, go find him. I have a job for him.”

Chaps nodded and then reached down to grab my arm. I kept it close to my body and turned my shoulder away from him. “I can walk all by myself.” I didn’t want the guy touching me. I didn’t want any of them touching me. Of course, he ignored me. Faster than I could have imagined, his hand snaked out and gripped my upper arm. His fingers squeezed so tightly that my hand went numb.

“I don’t give a fuck what you want, lady,” he snapped. “Get up.”

Before I could even move, he yanked me from the booth. My right hip scraped against the edge of the table top, and I winced, instinctively trying to pull from his grasp. His grip on my arm tightened even more.

“Quit struggling, or I’ll slap the living shit out of you and drag you by your hair,” he snarled. “That what you want?”

I said nothing as I tried to calm my roiling emotions. To tamp down my rising sense of panic. He didn’t release his tight grip on my arm but pulled me toward the short hallway where the bathrooms were located. It stunk so badly of feces, urine, and vomit that I gagged.

He snorted with laughter. “You get used to it.”

I couldn’t respond, nor did I want to. I wasn’t about to engage in a verbal battle with this jackass. Before we got to the bathrooms, I saw a door marked
Office
in black marker that had faded over time. He opened the door and pushed me into a small space. I crashed into an ancient wooden desk; the really heavy, dark wood kind that was reminiscent of the 1930s. I had just begun to regain my balance when he grabbed me again and roughly shoved me behind the desk toward a wooden-backed chair on wheels.

My teeth clicked together when he forced me down onto the seat. He reached behind him toward a shelf, and I cringed, thinking he was going to hit me. He laughed. I turned to watch him, but he grabbed my hair and yanked. Hard.

Tears sprang into my eyes, and I gasped, my chest heaving for air. He laughed again as he grabbed my hands, forced them behind my back, around the chair spindles, and then tightly tied them with some kind of cord. Then he turned the chair and crouched down in front of it until his face was level with mine. He stared at me, his expression amused.

“Not so hoity-toity now, are you, bitch?”

He stood, stroking one of his hands down my shoulder and placing it over my breast. Then squeezed. Hard. I let out a cry of pain and shrank back, trying not to burst into tears.

“And I’ll tell you something else, bitch. As soon as we get Ash taken care of, I’ll be the first one in line to get a shot at you.”

I said nothing but cringed when he removed his hand from my breast and grabbed my chin. He forced me to look up at him. I tried not to cry as he pressed his face close to mine. His tongue darted out and licked my cheek. Then he shoved my face away, and with another curse, left the room, slamming the door loudly shut behind him.

Oh my God, my God, my God… what was I going to do?

Unable to hold back the tears any longer, sobs bubbled up from my chest. I felt like somebody had just punched me in the stomach. It was hard to breathe knowing the remnants of his saliva was drying on my cheek.

I cursed Ash one second and then prayed for him the next. Despite everything, I didn’t want him to get hurt. I didn’t want him to die.

It was then, at that moment, I realized deep down that the connection I’d made with Ash was much more powerful than I had imagined.

My sudden surge of emotion took me by surprise. It wasn’t realistic for me to feel so connected to a man I barely knew, but I did. And it was more than just his charisma. More than sexual chemistry. More than that damned grin of his. More than his good looks.

I’d connected with him on a level I never would’ve imagined. Maybe it was his history. Maybe it was the way he had been so careful to make me feel at ease around him. Maybe it was the image he gave off of not belonging anywhere. Of wanting to believe in something. In belonging. In finding himself. Maybe even forgiving himself.