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My blood starts boiling. We dart down the main boulevard and head north, leaving the city center behind and delving deeper into the night. “Oh, shit,” I mumble. I know exactly what this is about.
By the time we reach our destination, I understand what I’m dealing with. We take a dirt road and pull up outside a building. I’m guessing we’re about two or three miles outside of Everton, far enough away from the highway for this place to go unnoticed.
It appears to be a clubhouse of sorts—a bar on the ground floor with rooms and offices upstairs. Its parking lot is filled with motorcycles and a couple of trucks. Judging by the noise and the number of vehicles, there must be at least thirty or forty people inside.
My handler waits for me to get off the bike first, but I’m too frazzled and shocked even to move. I try to sift through my options. Do any of the people inside know what’s happening out here? Is this some kind of plot? What is their endgame, and what does it mean for me?
“You’re the Steel Knights,” I say.
“And you need to get off my bike,” my kidnapper replies.
I curse under my breath and climb off the bike. My knees are shaking, though, and my mouth feels dry. The seriousness of my predicament soon hits me; we’re in the middle of nowhere, close to the city yet far enough away to be out of sight. There are hills behind the clubhouse, but they’re covered with orchards, vineyards, thick bushes, and miles and miles of wilderness beyond. A person could easily get lost in there, and I know I wouldn’t be able to make it back to Everton on foot even if I were able to escape. Not tonight, anyway.
Whether I like it or not, I have to stay here, at least for the night. But I will escape and find my way back home. I have to.
The men turn their engines off and look at the clubhouse.
“Back door,” my kidnapper says.
“We’ll go through the front and meet you upstairs,” one of the others replies.
They take their helmets off, and I now have a full view of my abductors. I stare at them in sheer disbelief. How can criminals be so damn good-looking? It’s unfair. My kidnapper is dark-haired and dark-eyed. The second guy is bulkier, muscles struggling against his black T-shirt, while his short blonde hair and piercing blue eyes nail me to the spot. The third guy carries himself with a light boyishness and a smile to match, wonderment in his hazel green eyes, slightly messy brown hair, and a five o’clock shadow.
“We know you’re smarter than you look,” Blue Eyes tells me, straight-faced other than a muscle twitching in his square jaw.
“Is this because of my father?” I ask.
The first guy drags me away from the parking lot, and while I’m tempted to protest vocally, I catch a glimpse of his holstered gun and remind myself to be a good girl until I figure out a way to get out of there. It’s my only option. If this is the MC’s clubhouse, which I’m pretty sure it is, then everybody in there is a Steel Knight, which means I can’t turn to any of them for help.
“You will keep quiet,” the man orders as we enter through a back door.
The corridor ahead is narrow and dark, but music and laughter echo from the front.
“You will stay in your room, and you won’t try anything stupid,” he adds, dragging me up the wooden steps leading to the upper floor. “If you do as you’re told, no harm will come to you. That, I can promise. If you don’t comply with our demands, however, there will be consequences.”
“Yeah, I got that from the gun pointed at my head,” I mutter.
I’m thrown into a room with a double bed and barred windows. Though it’s not small, it still makes me feel claustrophobic. At least there’s an ensuite bathroom. A TV mounted on the wall is encouraging; perhaps it will help pass the time more quickly while I plot my escape. If Harvard couldn’t trap me, the Steel Knights won’t either. This could be sheer delusion, but I’m entitled to it.
“What do you want from me?” I ask, finally at my wit’s end as the man checks the room before pulling out the key to the door. “What is this all about?”
He’s joined by the other two. “All good?” he asks them, completely ignoring me.
“Yeah. They know to stay away from this room,” Blue Eyes says.
The other one chuckles softly. “She’s going to be a handful, you know that, right?”
That’s it. I grab the first object within my reach—a glass ashtray that’s heavy enough to crush a man’s skull—and throw it right at them. It crashes into the wall, exploding into thousands of shimmery particles, startling the men to the point where at least one places his hand on his weapon. But I’m too angry and aggravated to care.
“What do you want from me?” I ask again, my voice eerily calm.
The men look at me with hard, cold eyes. “You’re nothing more than a means to an end,” the kidnapper says. “You’d better hope your daddy values your life.”
I’m stunned. All I can do is watch them as they leave, closing and locking the door behind them. I stand there in the middle of the room for what seems like forever. I can hear the classic rock music reverberating through the floor from the bar downstairs, muffled voices, and the sound of billiard balls crashing together. Life in the clubhouse goes on normally while I’m trapped between four walls and barred windows.
“This can’t be happening,” I whisper to myself and start looking around, panic setting in as I try to look for something, anything, that might help me escape. The bars on the windows are wrought iron. They’re mounted on a metallic frame, but I can’t unscrew the screws with my bare fingers. I try and almost rub the skin right off in the process.
“God dammit,” I hiss from the pain, sweat dripping down my face.
