Page 4 of Fervent
“Don’t get any ideas,” the guy with the gun said. He wore a dark hoodie, and his stance was aggressive, as wide as his broad shoulders. “I don’t have to kill you to keep you from running. Your kneecaps will do.” He lowered the weapon to make his point.
I clenched my teeth and stood up straighter, though weakness still lingered in my limbs. My arms trembled from the effort of holding them up. If I could overtake the guy, then Alex might have a shot at getting away.
But could she outrun the other two? And what if there were more? I hadn’t miscalculated. There’d been more than three men on the island, and one of them had worn a baseball cap and sunglasses, but he wasn’t here now.
“Where are the rest of your buddies?” I asked, hoping to get a better idea of how many assholes we were up against.
Approaching headlights beamed from behind me, and Hoodie tilted his head so the light hit him at just the right angle to keep his face hidden in shadow. The car rolled to a stop, and doors creaked open and slammed shut. “Does that answer your question?” he asked.
Not even close.
From the corner of my eye, I spied motion. More weapons cocked, and I didn’t have to look to know they were all aimed in my direction.
“What do you want with us?” I asked Hoodie.
He shook his head, and the hood of his jacket fell back just enough to reveal a face manic with the promise of pain. “Don’t try anything stupid. If you fuck with us, she’s the one taking the heat for it, got it?”
Suddenly, his form swayed in front of me. No, I was the one swaying. The trees behind him morphed in my vision, as if they danced lazily on the other side of a funhouse window.
I blinked several times until my sight cleared. Holy fuck. When would the drugs stop messing with me? Alex couldn’t run. Not with all the guns and muscle surrounding us. I needed time. Time for the drugs to dissipate. Time to come up with a plan that wouldn’t get her hurt, or worse, killed. Then I’d have a chance at taking them on. I didn’t care what happened to me, so long as she got out of this alive.
Hoodie gestured toward her with his gun. “Get out slow like your boyfriend.” She gave no indication of moving, and as he took a step forward, I backed toward the trunk.
“She’s scared. Pointing a gun at her isn’t gonna help.” I cranked my head and glanced at her pale face from over my shoulder. “It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t okay. I swallowed hard and willed my voice to remain steady. “Get out of the trunk.” Every part of me rebelled at the thought of her crawling from that space and facing these assholes.
As she pushed to her elbows, the other men inched closer. What the fuck did they think we were going to do? Make a run for it in the dark with a bunch of assholes on our tails, guns firing? I was fucking useless, pathetically helpless, and I didn’t like it one bit.
I’d let her down. She’d stood in my living room hours ago, gazing out the fucking window because something had bothered her. She’d sensed this coming, and I’d sent her to my bedroom alone, unprotected. I prayed to God they hadn’t done more than just take her from my bed. A small hand slid into mine, bringing me back from the pit of self-flagellation I’d dived into.
“Good,” Hoodie said. “Now that we’re all here, let’s take this underground.”
“Where are you taking us?” I asked, not entirely sure I wanted to know what he meant by “underground.”
“Shut the fuck up and move.” Two men came from the sidelines, guns at the ready, and gestured for us to start walking. The guy I recognized from earlier, with the cap and sunglasses, shoved me forward, and my grasp on Alex’s small fingers slipped. Without thinking, I swung around and slammed my fist into his face. He drew back then lunged for me with a powerful blow that pummeled me to the ground like I was nothing. I struggled to my feet, ignoring the sway of the scenery and the gun he pointed at my head, ready to deliver another punch, consequences be damned.
A cold, hard voice froze me to the spot. “Touch my brother again and I’ll put a bullet in her head.”
A skinny guy who looked to have more prep than hired goon in him held a gun to Alex’s skull. I traded a glance with her, struck in the gut by the firm set of her jaw. She’d been conditioned to silently accept hell, even with the barrel of a gun pressed to her temple, and that pissed me the fuck off. She shouldn’t have to accept this shit as normal, shouldn’t have to harden herself against the next fight.
“Chill out, Vinnie,” Hoodie warned his man. “He’s got no power here.” Even though he’d ordered the guy to stand down, Hoodie’s dark eyes threatened retribution for the punch I’d unleashed on his buddy.
I dropped my arm just as Hoodie nodded to one of his men. Something sharp pricked the back of my neck and the world wavered. I slumped toward the ground, the enclosing wall of trees sliding horizontal, and Alex’s scream echoed through what was left of my sanity.
My piercing cries for help obliterated the air, but Rafe lay unresponsive on the ground, his crumpled body unmoving no matter how much I begged him to wake up. The two brothers of the group had me by the arms, their fingers banding around my biceps in bruising grips. They dragged me away from him, and I dug my toes into the ground.
“Rafe!”
“Screaming isn’t gonna do anything. In case you hadn’t noticed, there isn’t a whole lot around these parts.”
My gaze shifted through the darkness. Trees surrounded us in all directions, some tall and skinny, some with trunks wider than these two men put together. Ferns and other brush interspersed the isolated landscape. They pushed me further away from Rafe, from the road we’d come in on that was little more than a wide trail.
The guy Rafe had punched started down a steep path between two massive tree trunks covered in moss, while his brother—Vinnie, they’d called him—took up the end of our trek into the middle of nowhere, the barrel of his gun pressed to my spine. The quiet babble of a creek teased from somewhere nearby. Most would equate that sound with ambience, but I found it unsettling, a reminder of suffocation and terror.
“Where are we going?” I asked, hating how my voice wobbled. “Why are you doing this?”
“So many questions,” Vinnie’s brother said as we reached the bottom of the incline.
