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I crossed my arms instead of rising to Rowdy’s bait and hitting him like I wanted to. I’d already figured out who was responsible for the mutilation of my car the moment Joren said someone had stabbed my tires. “I’m sure they were more than deserving,” I returned.
Rowdy released a pissed-off chuckle before nodding. “All right. See ya.” He spun around and started toward his car again.
“What the—Yo!” Joren called out while throwing his arms out wide. “She needs a ride home.”
“Then take her,” Rowdy tossed over his shoulder.
It was so easy for him, wasn’t it? To inject chaos into my life and then leave me to clean up the mess. There was absolutely no way I was getting in the car with Joren. He could barely stand, and his date didn’t look any better off.
Joren’s head swiveled my way, but I was already shaking mine. “That’s okay,” I declined politely. “I’ll take the bus.”
I pulled up the GPS on my phone to search for routes and saw that the closest bus was a half a mile walk away, so I waved goodbye to Joren and his date and started toward the street before hooking a right on Temperance and beginning the trek home.
I must have been walking for all of three minutes before I heard the roar of Rowdy’s Challenger and looked up just as he sped by me before disappearing down Fourth Street.
Asshole.
I didn’t see Savannah in the car, but I knew she was with him.
Pride of Kings was located in the heart of Idlewild, which meant walking down seedy streets at three in the morning. Still, it was better than dying in a fiery car crash or begging for Rowdy’s help. That had probably been his plan all along when he slit my tires.
Fifteen minutes later, I was beyond the business district and cutting through a rundown neighborhood when a sound like a glass bottle rolling over concrete had me glancing over my shoulder.
I searched the shadows, waiting to see if any of them moved, but when nothing jumped out at me, I forced myself to keep going. I was already halfway to the bus stop, so I quickened my steps, only glancing at my phone when necessary since I didn’t know Idlewild well enough to navigate without it.
My heart was racing, and the pounding beat overpowered the late-night sounds of my surroundings until there was only its erratic rhythm and my panting breaths.
Maybe that was why I didn’t hear it until it was too late.
The sound of glass crunched under an otherwise silent foot right before a sack was shoved over my head and all I saw was darkness. It muffled my startled scream and the increasingly hysterical ones that followed as I was lifted off the ground, my feet and legs kicking and flailing as I was carried away.
We didn’t go far.
My hands were quickly tied, and I was tossed inside a trunk, the door slamming shut behind me before I could leap free. The sack was too thick to see through, so I focused on freeing my hands. I fought against the knots of the rope until my muscles burned and my skin was rubbed raw. Eventually, I gave up and started screaming again, hoping someone heard me.
My abductor did.
The music volume steadily rose until it drowned my screams for help, and in a flash, the car raced forward. I was tossed around the trunk for the next few minutes as my abductor drove like a bat out of hell.
At some point, I began hyperventilating as I tried to piece together who my kidnapper could be. The car made another sharp turn, and I was thrown to the other side of the trunk, my spine colliding with the wheel well just as the answer hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest.
Unrequited.
It had only been a week, but they must have grown tired of waiting for me to figure out my connection to the Kings. But why kidnap me if they already knew everything? Clearly, this was a person who didn’t mind waiting if their plan had been for me to uncover everything on my own. It didn’t make sense.
The car finally reduced its speed just as the answer tugged at my memory.
“We needed to know how big of a threat they posed…”
“We know their weaknesses too.”
“It might please you to know how wrong you are.”
The car suddenly stopped, the engine died, a door slammed close, and then heavy footsteps carried my abductor closer as I quickly ran through my options. Scream? Fight? Beg for my life?
I remembered the ruthlessness of Ruen’s crew and knew that nothing I did would make a difference, but I wasn’t going down without a fight.
The trunk opened before I could form a plan of attack, and red and yellow neon lights nearby penetrated the black bag over my head. Two hands closed around me, and now that I knew who they belonged to—what they wanted from me—I fought even harder to escape.
