It wasn’t.

Then I kicked, screamed, bucked, elbowed and scratched and the man who had me was having trouble holding onto me.

Then someone else entered the room, I heard a weird popping and crackling noise, something was touched to my neck and I went out.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Patience

“You get the picture?”

Lying on a filthy bed in a filthy apartment, whereabouts unknown, with my mouth gagged and hands bound behind my back with hard, tight, plastic strips that hurt a lot and the same with my ankles but fortunately over my boots, I watched Darla, with a black eye, bruised cheekbone, busted lip and angry marks on her neck, talk into the phone. She’d taken a picture with her phone of me lying there and sent it to multiple someones, one of whom she was talking to on the phone.

“Yeah, that’s from me, bitch,” she hissed into the phone. “We got her and you can have her for two hundred large.”

Well, the good news was, I was worth two hundred large which was a lot. The bad news was everything else. Absolutely everything else. Including the fact I was gagged and bound, the plastic restraints biting into my wrists and I feared they broke skin, or at least it hurt that way. I was in a filthy apartment somewhere I didn’t know. I’d been transported there lying in the back of a filthy van which was uncomfortable and, at times, like when the van turned and I was powerless to stop myself from rolling and slamming into the walls, painful. I didn’t know what had become of Brett but I didn’t think whatever it was was good for I figured Brett had orders to protect me and he’d follow those to the letter and guns had been fired, furthermore, he had a baby on the way and he was nice. And, lastly, Darla wasn’t working alone.

There were three men with her. One was, at that very moment, bent over a mirror snorting coc**ne into his nose. Another was in the bathroom, the door open and I could hear him relieving himself.

But the third was sitting on a chair pulled up to the bed, his forearms, which I’d scratched and opened skin, were resting on his thighs, dangling between them held in his hand was a gun and his very unhappy eyes were on me.

Hysterically I noted he could have been hot if he wasn’t so rough, he wasn’t so freaking scary and he so obviously didn’t want to shoot me.

“Oh yeah, you’re right,” Darla went on and my eyes went from scary, murderous kidnapper to Darla. “I was your friend, until I got picked up and worked over because of your shit. Now, not so f**kin’ much.”

Your friend?

Oh God. She was talking to Ginger.

Ginger didn’t have two hundred large! And if she did, she wouldn’t give it up for me.

Shit, I was screwed.

“Bullshit,” Darla snapped into the phone. “You got that and you got more. I know it, you stupid bitch, so don’t think I’m a stupid bitch. Now you get it together and call me and I’ll tell you where the drop off is. And, ‘cause we’re friends, I’m givin’ you a discount and first dibs. You don’t call me back in an hour, I shop your sister out to people who’ll pay a lot more and be a lot less gentle than me and Skull.

Instinctively I knew Skull was scary, murderous kidnapper. I knew this because Skull was the perfect name for him.

And scarily I grew even more concerned about what “a lot less gentle” meant considering Skull and his crew had not been gentle in the slightest.

Darla flipped her phone shut then flipped it open immediately and punched some buttons. She put it to her ear and I knew she engaged when she spoke.

“Yeah, Dog, you saw it, she’s with me and Skull,” she snapped into the phone. “You tell Tack two hundred and fifty Gs. He’s got an hour or we shop her out.”

She didn’t wait for a response, she flipped her phone shut. Then she glared at me a second, turned and walked to the coc**ne station.

I avoided Skull’s eyes, stared at the filthy comforter and wondered if Hawk still had eyes on my house, saw that Skull, Darla and her crew entered and therefore he mobilized immediately. I wondered if there were any neighbors at home who heard the gunshots and called 911 and therefore, whatever happened to Brett, there was someone seeing to him and he wasn’t bleeding to death in my living room meaning his baby would grow up fatherless, never knowing his Dad’s voice got soft when he talked about his Mom and that he was ripped and bulky and kind. And wondering, if Tack came up with the money, what that would mean for me.

The man from the bathroom came out, lit a cigarette and at the sound of the lighter catching, my eyes lifted to him only to see coc**ne kidnapper headed my way. My eyes locked on him as he approached and his eyes scanned my body as he did it.

He, on the other hand, wasn’t hot. He needed a shower and a sandwich. He was way too skinny and not in a slinky, ultra-cool, rock ‘n’ roll Steven Tyler way but in a need to lay off the coke in a serious way way.

He put a hand in the bed and leaned over me, his fevered, coc**ne-brightened eyes on my br**sts.

“I like this,” he muttered, reaching out a hand to run it down my arm as I tried to scoot away. I succeeded in shimmying back a few inches but he just leaned in more. “We got an hour,” he noted, “maybe we can take turns.”

I made a small, involuntary, terrified noise against the gag and shimmied back further.

“Lay off, Skeet,” Skull warned low.

“C’mon, man,” Skeet cajoled, his eyes not leaving my chest, his fingers trailing down, coming close to the side of my breast as I frantically shimmied back further, his knee hit the bed and he followed me. “This cunt looks like sweet cunt. Haven’t had sweet in awhile and, dude, I earned it.”

Oh God.

I shimmied back further, he followed me then he wasn’t there.

I arched my back and my neck, my eyes following the sound of a body thudding violently against the wall.

“Tack’s rabid for that cunt,” Skull ground out, his long, lean but fit frame pressing deep and predatory into Skeet’s slight one. “You think he’d be rabid for it, pay his fee for cunt dirtied by you?”

I didn’t think so and I would have shared that if I wasn’t gagged.

“Tack doesn’t pay,” Skull went on, “you think, we put her out to bid, they’d pay for somethin’ broken? You got a vase worth three hundred large, it’s worth three hundred large because it’s clean and unbroken. You break it, you f**kin moron, it ain’t worth shit.”

Skeet didn’t answer. Skeet was busy pushing against the hand wrapped around his throat at the same time beginning to gag.