My eyes go as wide as saucers, and when Tristan squeaks a ‘holy shit’ in my direction, I’m the first one to break the huddle and haul ass. I seriously have them eating my dust. I can hear King yelling at me about not fucking my knee up, but it’s like I’ve been turbo boosted by my time with Hayes, Puck, and Koz. I feel free as a bird, and light as a feather and sure enough I don’t wobble once in my haste to get to the last part of the day, getting faster and further away. Even apparently beating Lew or Rhodes back to the car.
Leaping in the car, I slide over the seat, making a mess of all the vests lined up. Koz also laid out a discrete holster. I’m so well practiced in putting the holster on, that I do it in about four seconds max, including sliding the small gun home. The bracelet is next, it’s leather and silver and has the weirdest clasp that I have to focus on as I wait for the girls to hurry up.
I never for a moment thought I’d need to pay attention to what was going on around me. For the simple fact we have an army of people watching. It’s the eerie silence followed by an explosion of alpha aggression along with the roar of ten men and the screaming of three omegas that lets me know how spectacularly I messed up.
The door I’m leaning against opens so quickly and unexpectedly, I have no time to brace and I spill right out of it. Straight onto the bloody chest of Rhodes. As if his cold blood soaking through Koz’s jacket wasn’t horrific enough, it’s Reid’s face that stares down at me.
“Hello, Sweets.” He smiles like a crocodile.
“Don’t call me, Sweets. I fucking hate that nickname. And always have!” I hiss back before I can stop myself.
“Come on, Sweets,” he exaggerates, “I did tell him I was coming to get you. Up you get,” he says calmly. It’s at complete odds with the wave of chaos swarming towards us. Reid’s calm is not like Hayes’s peaceful calm, and it has me locking up in fear as I try to figure out what my next move is.
From behind the car, surging forward are a group of people who I can only assume are part of Reid’s entourage.
“You won’t be needing these,” he laughs, throwing out the vests as he reaches for the door handle, locking me inside the car with him. My shock makes me slow, but eventually I manage to get my finger around the door handle, but Reid moves with me, snapping something around my other wrist.
Handcuffs in the bedroom are sexy. Out of the bedroom, the sharp, cold metal cuts against my wrist as he physically drags me onto his lap to use me as a human shield. Of course, Reid went extra and made the handcuffs longer, using another couple of feet of chain.
“Figured, since you were a dog, I may as well leash you like one.” He steals any response and my submission by pressing the tip of a knife to my throat, putting me in a no-win situation.
“I brought a friend along,” he says at the same time he hits the automatic window button, lowering the rear windows right down. From the reflection on the one next to me, I come face to face with the desperation and rage of my soon to be pack, my family, and my girls.
The guys are too far away to even realise that Talon sits in the driver’s seat. For an instant I didn’t notice him there either, until his distinctive campfire, leather scent hits me. Part of me relaxes as soon as I scent him, until the reality he’s with Reid makes my heart nearly stop. I fell for everything he said. Every. Fucking. Thing.
“I told them to take out Colt first. Then the alpha you think can replace me. But also, because I’m really fucking angry at you, King and Joker had to go. Shooting them is only about hurting you as much as I can,” he taunts like a wasp, his voice low and menacing. My stomach rises in a rush when Reid leans in so close his lips nearly touch my ear.
Four gunshots ring off over the noise of the car. I fight against Reid, needing to see but get stopped by his cruel laughter in my ear and an agonising freeze rushing from where the knife was sitting.
I got that wrong too. Evidently, it’s a syringe, and I’ve got something about to render me vulnerable burning through my veins while Koz and everyone else fade away the further we drive.
The faster Talon drives, I should say. And that’s a bitter betrayal to swallow.
ChapterForty
RANEY
Reid takes delight in watching the way the drugs start burning through my system, a malicious smile spreading over his face the more my breathing changes.
I’m berating myself, using every word known, at how I ended up in this position, but also how I ever thought he was the one. It’s funny how that keeps me more motivated to keep my head in the game. And no shit, it’s like I start making a list of all the things about him that turn my stomach. It gets long quickly. It’s the way the colour of his eyes deepen with his obvious enjoyment at my fate. His eyebrows, so sculptured and fake, keep rising up as he soaks in the moment. I think of all the ways I could rip them off his face to settle the race of my pulse. There was a time I used to think the freckles over his nose were so endearing, and now I’m literally cursing each one to an endless cycle of pain in hell. I use anything and everything on his face to feed my hate. Hate is good, hate will keep me alive until help arrives.
And it will. I have no doubt about that.
The wind whips my hair over my face, the faster the car speeds away, but I’m stuck in a slurpy, spaced out place where I’m staring at Reid. Until he loses the game we were unwittingly playing by looking away as he also closes the windows. And it’s hard not to laugh knowing I won. Of course, he takes losing to heart and smooshes my face in a punishing grip until his ringing phone interrupts him.
He chooses to answer the phone. Which in my mind means I win again. He shoves me backwards, hopefully because he was tired of looking at the challenge in my eyes or it was knowing I’d be making it impossible for him to talk. Foolishly, he doesn’t pay me any attention, nor does he see my gun fall to the floor.
“Dickhead,” I slur out. The noise makes me smile and laugh like I’m stoned as hell.
Half listening to him on the phone, I add the sound of his voice as another thing on my ‘I hate Reid Anders’ list. Lying down, I probably look unconscious, and I make that work for me since he doesn’t even think to triple check.
The drugs are weird, they make me slow, but I’m aware, and if anything, I feel like I’ve smoked a bit too much. I guess I was thinking if you drugged someone, you’d completely incapacitate them, unless of course Reid fucked that up too.
That makes me laugh in my head because he probably did, and as I keep my features relaxed and my eyes closed, I try to figure out what to do next. I don’t even bother trying to figure out his conversation because his voice grates on me that much. In between the spaces where Reid’s not yelling, I pick up on whistling.
The whistling gets more personal in a sense, so either the drugs are mind bending or Talon’s being all shifty for some reason. Besides him being a two-faced snitch, that is.
But he most certainly does keep whistling a slow version of Gun’s and Roses, Patience. It’s hard to keep the act up that I’m out cold because that song, Talon and I go way back. Like one summer and a bottle of wine listening to bad 80s glam rock back. I have to employ all the calming techniques I learned in Maintaining Submission to keep my breathing slow as Talon keeps muddling my brain. The way he whistles the start of that song over and over, like he’s purposely toying with me.
