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I text my brother: It’s on you now.
Max’s message back is almost instantaneous: Take the bus home. Meet you there.
Yeah, our house isn’t exactly the best place to take a kidnapping victim, but our neighbors are the kind of people who only pay attention to their own shit. The houses might be close together, so old some are falling down from their age, but it’ll work.
And the moment we get our money? We’re gone. We’re going to leave this city, find a new place to call our own, and start fresh. By the time our mom gets out, we’ll be ready to take care of her and be there to help her. And then, for the first time in twenty-two years, we can be a normal family.
Not going to lie, it’s the desire to have a normal family, to be ordinary, that drove me to this point with Max. There’s nothing more I want in the entire world. I’ve tried to make money the old-fashioned way, but it’s not enough to truly start over. No amount of minimum-wage-paying jobs can pay enough for you to leave a city like this.
I don’t let anyone know I’m leaving. I grab my stuff out of my employee locker and head out through the side entrance in the alley, where the dumpster is. I throw on my jacket as I walk away with a quick pace, yanking off that silly bowtie as I go.
The nearest bus stop is a five-minute walk from the club. At night, the traffic in the city isn’t so bad, so I’m not slowed by waiting for too many crosswalks. I reach the bus stop and wait, though I do check my phone every few minutes just to make sure I didn’t miss anything from Max.
No new messages from my brother, so I’m hoping that means everything is going without a hitch, that he has our target. Still, I know I won’t feel better until I’m home and can see my brother with my own eyes.
The bus arrives after ten minutes, and by then I’m not the only one waiting for it. I get on first, mostly so I can pick a seat closer to the door, so I can be the first one out once the bus reaches the stop closest to our house.
Time drags on. I pull up the picture of the man and stare at it, remembering the heated kiss. I can’t shake the unease that settled in my gut when I first saw the picture, when I realized our target was the guy whose lips made me forget what it was like kissing anyone else. It wasn’t a good feeling, let me tell you.
I didn’t want to kidnap this guy, even if he is from a rich family who can pay a hefty sum to get him back. What exactly do I want to do with him? Uh… nothing that involves my brother, that’s for sure.
I shut my phone off and try to force myself to think of other things, but no matter how hard I try, my mind always returns to our target.
If I have to guess, I’d say he’s in his thirties. Too old for me, yes, but still a damn fine specimen of a man. His hair, his face, his clothes; there wasn’t a single thing about him to complain about. The literal perfect definition of a man.
What does get me, when I think back, is the look on the guy’s face at the bar when I went over to our target and acted like he was my boyfriend. I thought the man at the bar looked shocked that my boyfriend was present, but now that I’m thinking about it, his reaction might’ve been more than that. Maybe it wasn’t shock. Maybe it was unease.
That makes two of us. I feel like I want to throw up.
The bus slows to a stop a few blocks away from my house, and I stand to get off. The moment my feet hit the sidewalk, I walk with a brisk pace, the path so familiar I barely have to pay attention to it. Max and I rode the bus long before we were able to save up for a car; it’s how we got around in the city when we were young, when our mom was too busy losing herself in the bottle.
Max and I had to take care of ourselves since we could walk, basically. We wound up in the system once or twice, but Mom always got her shit together long enough to get us back. She loves us. She’s not a terrible mother, although she wasn’t so good at it, either. She’s never been good at helping herself. I think it’s why Max and I grew up knowing who we could truly depend on: each other.
That, and we promised each other we would never end up like Mom.
I heave a giant breath when I reach our house. The driveway sits between houses, the unattached garage in the back, though we never use it. Though it’s dark out, I can see a different car sitting where our rust bucket usually is—sleek and all-black, not a speck of rust to be seen.
Shit. That must be his driver’s car.
I pull out my key as I step up the three steps to the back door, but when I reach the door I find it’s not locked. My eyes roll at my brother, and as I enter the house, I say, “You know, anyone could just walk right in when you don’t lock the damn door—” I stop when I see Max standing in the living room with our target, Mr. Sexy.
Mr. Sexy’s arms are behind his back, and I spot a glimmer of handcuffs around his wrists. His wide chest is bound with some duct tape to the kitchen chair Max must’ve dragged into the room. His black-haired head hangs forward, the man out like a light. His feet are each duct-taped to a leg of the chair.
“How the hell did you get him in the house?” I ask my brother, slow to step closer to the unconscious man.
“Eh, he might have a few new bruises, but he’ll be fine,” Max says, shrugging my concern off. “Here.” He offers me something. “In case he wakes up. I need to go drop his phone and the car off. I’ll be back in an hour, okay?”
I look at what he’s trying to hand to me and see it’s a gun. “What do I need that for? Where did you even get it?”
“It’s his,” my brother says. “And you need it just in case. You never know with people like him.” My brother flashes a smile that, under normal circumstances, would sway me to his side—his used car salesman smile. Toothy, easygoing, and charming. His blue eyes are lighter than mine, his hair more brown than blond, but he has an innocent face that disarms most people.
And he learned that fact young, which is why he’s so good at putting it to use now.
“People like him?” I echo, slow to take the gun. It’s just a pistol, but it’s heavier than it looks. Max points at the safety and mimics how I would need to cock it back to put a bullet in the chamber. “Who is he, anyway? Now that he’s here, in our house, I think I should know who we’re trying to ransom off.”
The look my brother gives me after that tells me I’m not going to like the answer, and his awkward silence further confirms that suspicion.
“Max,” I take on my scolding tone, “who is he?”
