Page 2 of Property of Mercury

“When I woke up, I was in a small building, like those sheds that some people have in their yards. No, that’s not exactly right. Maybe a cabin? It was all one room except for two doors and one went outside, the other went to a bathroom. I had a chain around my ankle, but there was enough give in it so I could move around. Not enough to escape, though.” Her laugh is anything but humorous, almost as though she’s putting herself down for not being able to get away.

“If it makes you feel better, I think this kind of thing has been going on for quite some time,” I impart, looking over her once again. When I realize I’m able to see her collar bones and that her clothes are dirtier than I would anticipate even though she was running through brush and wooded areas, I ask, “How long were you with them?”

“What’s today’s date?” she questions. When I tell her, she blanches even whiter than she already is due to her injuries and says, “I’ve been gone for a month now, give or take a few days.”

Fuck. Me.

“Did you see any of your captors? Do you know how many there were?” I can’t help but fire off my questions while I wait for the cavalry to arrive. We’re going to take her to the hospital ourselves and not to our local one. No, we’re going a county over and I’ll have the guys help me figure out who the hell we can call to help.

“I think there were only two of them, but since they always wore black ski masks and gloves, I couldn’t tell you what they looked like. One would come in with a gun pointed in my direction while the other would bring me food. I probably should’ve been able to work out how long I was gone because they only came once a day, but they gave me just enough food to keep me from dying of starvation.”

Seeing how thin her wrists are as I take her pulse, I manage to hide my wince. Before being abducted, she was likely average size for a woman, but despite the torn clothes she has on, I can tell she’s dropped a significant amount of weight. As far as I’m concerned, a woman shouldn’t be nothing but skin and bones… and that’s what Finley is at this point.

“So, there could have been more than two and they might’ve swapped out,” I muse, thinking out loud. “Anything else you can tell me?”

“It might have been two days or so ago, but when I woke up one morning, there was a recording playing on a loop. It gave instructions for me as to how the ‘game’ was to be played. If I managed to get away, then they’d let me go,” she replies. “What they didn’t tell me, however, was that I was their prey. They hunted me like I was a wild animal, Mercury!”

Seeing that she’s getting worked up again which I don’t need her doing because it’ll elevate her blood pressure and that won’t be good for her overall health, I lightly grip her hand in mine. “Shh, it’s okay, Finley, you’re safe now, I promise.”

“You can’t promise that, Mercury. Nobody can.”

“Yeah, I actually can. I’m a member of the Kings of Anarchy MC and have so many brothers that have my back that nobody will be able to get to you. You wanna know why?”

“Why?”

“Because nobody fucks with the Kings. It’s our club motto and trust me, if someone tries, we fuck them back harder.”

CHAPTER

ONE

Finley

I go in and out of consciousness, doing everything I can to hold onto that thread that’ll keep me aware of my surroundings. I fail more often than not, but I hear flashes of words consisting of Neptune, medic, clinic, no hospital. I try to verify that but my tongue feels swollen and heavy, formulating words is near impossible. But I do manage to nod my head when I hear Mercury state that I was insistent that I’m not taken to the hospital.

“Don’t worry, darlin’, we’ll get you taken care of,” a foreign male voice promises as I feel myself being lifted into the air.

I whimper from the movement because everything on my body hurts, even the follicles of my hair are painful against my scalp. My feet are raw, scraped, and bloody from running through the foliage without shoes. The arrows and bullet wounds should be the biggest pain I feel, but those areas have grown numb. Nausea has bile climbing up my throat, but I instinctively know that if I vomit, it’s going to hurt so much I’ll probably pass out.

“H-h-hurts,” I manage to wheeze out. My lungs feel like they’re collapsing, but that could be my imagination.

Mercury’s face comes into view and I see him frown when he looks at me. “Neptune? She sounds wheezy and her chest is sawing in and out.”

“Thinking one of the arrows or even the bullet might have punctured a lung,” Neptune, the voice I didn’t recognize, replies. “Not much I can do for her right now, but we can’t afford to waste any time, brothers.”

I can hear the warning behind his words and realize that while I was fortunate enough to be rescued, I’m nowhere near out of the proverbial woods, especially as darkness encroaches on me once again. As the blissful oblivion creeps over me, I whisper, “I don’t want to die.”

“You’re not dying on our watch,” Mercury insists. “Try to relax, Finley. I know that’s hard to do under the circumstances, but if you tense up, this is going to be harder on you in the long run. We have to go down a dirt path that is on an incline so you’re going to be jostled.”

I grit my teeth and prepare for the worst. My entire being already feels like it’s on fire, and if their adjustment of me already has me wanting to reach out for the bliss of darkness, I can only imagine that feeling is going to get ten times worse as they carry me out of this nightmare. Digging deep inside to the place where the runner I used to be lives, I mutter, “Just do it. Rip it off like a bandaid. Worse that can happen is I pass out and that might be for the best all things considered, right?”

“She’s not wrong about losing consciousness,” Neptune imparts. “Her respirations will automatically slow down, which will help with the punctured lung.”

“Then let’s go,” Mercury commands. “Just be as careful as possible, y’all,” he warns.

I don’t know what I’m on, to be truthful, because my vision was already blurry, but it’s almost like I’m on a stretcher, but I know I’m not correct. Maybe it’s like one of those things they use when they’re doing mountain rescues. While the word I’m looking for is just out of reach, I focus on that instead of the pounding pain that’s now coursing through me as they move me. One particularly rough bump has me diving into the darkness, no longer worried about the pain I’m in or what happened to me. The male voices float away from my subconsciousness as I drift off into the land of unawareness.

Beeping sounds hit my ear drums as I begin to rouse. I don’t know how long I can hang on to my conscious state, but I can tell by what I am hearing that the men who rescued me are standing around me as Mercury tells them everything I shared with him. My eyelids are too heavy to open, but my ears are tuned into their conversation.