16
Alexis woke up in a chair with her arms tied behind her back. She looked around the small room with no clue where she was. It appeared to be some sort of industrial building with concrete walls and a musty smell.
The only way in and out of the room was through the door on the other end. She was alone at the moment, her captors having left the room without a word after tying her up.
The tracking device sewn into the hem of her dress was the only saving grace she had. When they were still in the hotel room, Lonnie pulled out a tracking device from a bag of gear he kept on hand. Alexis hesitated for only a moment before agreeing to it. She wouldn’t have put it past Vic to always have people searched for trackers when they kidnapped them. But she knew if they were to grab her, a tracker might be the only way she would be found alive.
Alexis agreed to add it to her dress in a discreet spot. Lonnie had a small sewing kit in his bag, so Alexis got to work sewing it into the hem of her dress.
She knew Lonnie would head her way. She only hoped it would be sooner rather than later. Alexis didn’t know what Vic’s cronies had planned, but she also didn’t want to find out.
She worked at trying to free herself from the zip ties around her wrists, but it was proving futile. The only thing it was doing was tearing up her wrists. But she had to try. She had to dosomething.
The door opened again, and in walked her captors. She recognized only two of them. Vic’s right-hand man, Thomas, and the creepy man who kept coming into the shop. Alexis had always found Thomas charming, but now that she knew he was a drug dealer and helped murder people who got in Vic’s way, she had lost all respect for him. He wasn’t the man she had thought he was.
“Thomas, let me go. You know me. We were friends,” she said.
Thomas smiled, but it was menacing. Not like the nice guy she had grown to know over the years. “Now, now, Samantha. We were never friends. I told Vic you’d cross him. But he didn’t listen. He should have let me pop you sooner.”
Her blood ran cold. They had discussed murdering her. While she had expected that they had, it was different hearing it from someone she had known for a long time. She needed to do something.
Buy some time for Lonnie to come.
“Now, now, Thomas. Is all love lost?”
He backhanded her across the face, and the force had her head pulling to the side and tears stinging her eyes. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth.
“Shut your mouth, bitch,” he said gruffly. Then he dialed a number and held the phone in front of him.
“You got her?”
Alexis would always recognize that voice. Vic.
“Got her, boss,” Thomas said.
He turned the phone so Alexis could see Vic sitting at a table with a large steak in front of him. He wore an orange jumpsuit with a prisoner number on the breast.
The smile on his face reminded her all too well why she had run… why she was testifying against him. If she made it to the courtroom.
“My dear, Samantha. Or is it Alexis now? It looks like you misspoke and Thomas had to teach you a lesson,” Vic said.
She shook her head to get the hair out of her face before sneering at Vic. “My dear, psychotic, pathetic excuse of an ex-boyfriend. It looks like you’ve manipulated the system to get what you want. A steak and a cell phone in prison? Glad to see how my tax dollars are at work.”
Vic laughed, and Alexis’s stomach rolled. But she kept a straight face. She wouldn’t dare show she was terrified of him.
“It pays to know people,” he said.
“I guess so.”
“Now, now. What are we going to do with you? I think we need to teach you a lesson.”
Alexis swallowed hard and stared straight into the phone at Vic. “You think hurting me will give you satisfaction?”
Vic laughed. “More than you could ever know.”
The door banged open, and Alexis’s head snapped up. Lonnie, Amy, and Clint were in the room, holding Vic’s men at gunpoint.
“Put the gun down,” Lonnie said to Thomas.
