Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 119092 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 595(@200wpm)___ 476(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119092 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 595(@200wpm)___ 476(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
Kimber: Dont u dare! We have to chck him out frist. Ur NOT follwing the plan
EM: Yu’ll meet him in a minut come down to Mick’s and we can head from there. We’ll wait outside
I yanked my phone back and glared at Kimber.
“That’s mine! I get to yell at her first.”
“We can’t yell at her in front of Internet Hottie!” she told me. “That’s a cockblock. We’ll yell at her tomorrow.”
I considered this.
“Okay,” I said. “But I still call dibs on first yelling once we ditch his ass.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Whatever.”
We didn’t see them outside Mick’s. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall place we almost missed because it was next to a good-sized club with a long line. I texted Em and got no response.
“She’s probably just peeing or something,” Kimber said, eyeing a group of collegey-looking guys standing in a clump on the sidewalk. They eyed her back and she smiled.
“Hey!” I hissed. “Married, remember?”
She laughed.
“I’m just looking, don’t be so uptight. I promise not to touch, okay?”
My phone buzzed.
EM: Heading out
We stood on the sidewalk for another five minutes. Nothing. I started getting a little nervous. I texted again. No reply.
Another ten minutes passed and I’d had enough. This didn’t feel right.
“I’m gonna go check on her,” I told Kimber. She’d lost interest in the college boys when they’d come over and tried to pick us up. They’d been pretty to look at, but not exactly brilliant conversationalists.
She nodded, concern on her face.
“I’ll wait out here,” she said, looking up and down the street. “Just in case they show up.”
“I don’t want you outside by yourself,” I replied. She jerked her chin toward the bouncer at the club next door.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Anything happens, I’ll scream for him. Go find our girl.”
“All right,” I said, my voice grim. “But when I find her, we’re kicking her ass. This isn’t cool.”
The place was small and dark—just a tiny, narrow little bar, way rougher than I expected. No wonder the college boys stayed outside. The men in here would crumple them up and throw them away like used … um … something. Straw wrappers? No, something worse. I shook my head, foggy from the booze. Focus. There were more men than women, and most kept their eyes on their drinks. My quickly sinking opinion of Liam went down another notch. What kind of guy took a girl to a place like this?
We shouldn’t have let Em out of our sight, I realized.
I didn’t find her in the main bar so I wandered to the back, where a long hallway led past some grotty-looking bathrooms and an office. It ended with a fire door that had been propped open with a brick.
I texted Kimber.
ME: Any sign of them?
KIMBER: No this is bllshit
ME: Not in bar. I’ll look in the ally then com back
I stepped up to the fire door cautiously. Would Em really go out there with a guy she didn’t know? Except she probably felt like she did know him. They’d been calling each other for a while now. Hell, I’d gone on dates with guys I’d only met a few times. Still … I pushed the door open and peeked outside to find a tall, dark-haired man in faded jeans and motorcycle boots leaning against the side of a battered cargo van.
He smiled at me like a shark and winked.
Oh my God. I recognized him. It was one of the guys from that other club, the Devil’s Jacks. The ones who’d come to my apartment in Seattle.
Hunter.
What was he doing here? Holy shit … Coincidence?
Or were Hunter and Liam the same person?
I opened my mouth to scream when someone shoved me from behind, knocking me out into the alley. I stumbled and nearly fell. Then Hunter’s arms caught me, swooping me up and carrying me toward the back of the van. I shrieked as loud as I could—kicking and fighting as he tossed me in—but the pounding music from the club next door almost guaranteed nobody heard me. Em lay on the floor, arms cuffed behind her back, a bandana gagging her mouth. Her legs were tied tight with what looked like white clothesline.
Hunter climbed in after me, wrestling me down and wrenching away my phone. Within seconds my own mouth was gagged and he’d closed another set of cuffs around my wrists. I lay facedown on the floor, eyes wide and staring at Em, who stared right back at me. I felt someone else climb in and heard a door slam, and the engine roared to life.
Hunter spoke, his voice cool and detached.
“Sorry, girls. Hopefully this won’t get too ugly and you’ll get to go home soon.”
The van started moving.
RUGER
His beer had gotten warm.
For once, there wasn’t a party at the clubhouse or a barbecue or anything happening, which was a fucking shame because all he could think about was Sophie out dancing in Spokane with her slut of a best friend. He should be focusing on his trip to Portland tomorrow, but he really couldn’t bring himself to give a damn.