Convict: A Bad Boy Romance (27 page)

T
hey don’t bother blindfolding
me, so I try to watch where we’re going, but after about fifteen minutes we’re somewhere outside Tortuga and I don’t recognize it anymore. It’s just grasslands and chaparral as we climb, going over the coastal hills. It gives way to pine tree as we get over that front range, and then it’s dark and we’re in deep forest.

I see one of those big, retro-looking signs that says
Welcome to Los Gatos National Forest! Land of Many Uses,
but I only have a vague idea where Los Gatos is.

Luna’s phone has shifted, so now it’s sitting awkwardly next to my dick. If the car jostles too much, it pinches my balls, and I try not to make a face. I’m also pretty sure it’s getting sweaty.

I wish I could take it out and throw it through the window, but my arms are still bound behind my back. My shoulders screamed in pain for the first twenty minutes, but now they’ve started to go numb. Plus, there’s no way I could get rid of it without someone seeing me.

I hate this. The phone down my pants is everything I like about Luna — she’s quick and she’s clever and determined — and I fucking
hate
that it’s there, that she’s planning something and I can’t even get a phone out of my underpants. I don’t want to alert these guys out of fear that they’ll go back for her.

But if she’s following me,
that
puts her in danger too.

Goddamn it, Luna
, I think, as we keep driving and driving.
All I wanted was to keep you safe, and you had to fuck that up.

I don’t know what they’re going to do to me. I know they’re going to kill me, but if that’s it, I’d be dead already. All I can think is
what if they go back for her.

What if she’s coming after me and they kill her too?

I tell myself that Luna is smart. Smart enough not to try something, smart enough to let me go and get on with her life and maybe someday look back fondly on the brief affair she had with an ex-con.

But I have a bad feeling that that’s not what’s going to happen, and it’s not just her phone pinching my balls.

* * *

I
t feels
like forever before the SUV comes to a stop, the headlights glaring at trees in front of us, making them look like tall, thin ghosts. My gut clenches as Hammer stops the car, cuts the engine, and looks back at me.

He doesn’t say anything, but the other three guys open their doors. One grabs me by the arm and yanks me, sending pains shooting up my shoulder.

“I can get out of a fucking car,” I say, but he ignores me.

Finally, I jerk my shoulder from his grip, and he pistol-whips me across the face. I stumble and nearly fall, half from surprise and half because my hands are behind my back, my balance off.

“Son of a bitch,” I say, spitting blood onto the leaves.

He jams the barrel of his gun right under my chin, forcing my head up.

“What?” he says.

You’re already a dead man,
I think.
Fuck it
.

“I called you a son of a bitch,” I say, enunciating at clearly as I can with the side of my face swelling and a gun under my jaw.

There’s a click as he takes the safety off.

Just do it,
I think, gritting my teeth together.
I die here or I die later
.

“
Red,
” says Hammer. “Fucking knock it off, will you?”

I laugh, even though I shouldn’t.

“Yeah, knock it the fuck off, Red,” I say. “Or you could shoot me and probably save yourself some work.”

There’s a vein standing out in his forehead, but he puts the safety back on slowly.

Then he pistol-whips me again, on the other side of my face, but I’m expecting it this time.

“Enough,” Hammer says, walking over to us. “We’ve got a film to make. And Ellwood, if we don’t get what we want, we take our disappointment out on Luna. Got it?”

I look him dead in the eye. I’m pretty sure the skin over my cheek is split and already swelling, but I don’t care.

“Don’t you fucking
touch
her,” I say.

“Or what?” mocks Red, but Hammer just puts up one hand.

“Then you know what to do,” Hammer says, then looks around at his henchmen. “Let’s go,” he says. “We’ve got a schedule.”

I’m starting to think Hammer isn’t the meathead I assumed he was. He turns away from us, flips on a flashlight, and starts walking through the woods on a vague path, though he looks like he knows where he’s going. He still has a limp.

Red shoves his gun into my back, even though we both know that’s not the real threat, and follow Hammer. I can feel Luna’s phone slowly working its way to one side and then, with every step, sliding a little further down.

After a few hundred feet of walking, it’s finally sliding down the legs of my jeans, and I start sweating. I
can’t
let them see the phone fall out.

I hit my foot on a root and pretend to trip, and it throws me off-balance and I almost trip for real, but it shakes the phone loose.

“Watch it,” Red growls behind me. Hammer and the other guys turn around, look at us, and then keep walking.

The phone falls out onto the ground, and we all keep walking.

I finally take a deep breath.

Please don’t find me,
I think.

W
e’re too late
, I think, over and over again as we speed down the two-lane roads of Los Gatos national forest.
I should have just gone alone. Maybe I could have taken one person with me, and we could have taken those guys down, right?

I glance again at the GPS, the red dot representing my phone flashing on the screen. It hasn’t moved in thirty minutes. I look through the windshield again and force myself not to think about what that might mean.

Maybe it just fell out
, I think desperately.
Maybe he’s just hurt, but he’s alive, or they found it and threw it away somewhere
.

I look out the window. I’m in the back of a Sheriff’s Office SUV, along Cedar and a couple SWAT guys who are all very serious, facing straight ahead. There are more in the other two SUVs, along with Batali and Tony.

They all insisted on coming. Or, more accurately, Batali and Tony simply informed Patricia that they were going, and Cedar argued until he wore her down, since he’s the one who knows the national forest.

The SUV slows, and we turn onto a smaller road, this one with no dividing lines down the center. We’re getting closer but we’re still too far behind, and I bite into the skin on my thumb as we bump down the road.
Anything
to distract myself.

It feels like a dream, like a weird, bad,
dumb
dream. It’s past three in the morning. I’m in a car, wearing a bulletproof vest, with a SWAT team, riding off to the rescue of an ex-con who screwed up his witness protection.

If you’d asked me two weeks ago what I thought I’d be doing tonight, I’d have said
sleeping
. Hell, if you’d asked me that three hours ago I’d have said
sleeping
. This is
insane
.

We bump along the bad road, moving way too fast. The SWAT guys look stoic. Cedar pats my knee. I try not to think that Stone is dead.

* * *

I
t’s
another twenty minutes before we find the black SUV, parked at the end of a long, rutted fire road in the forest that doesn’t so much dead-end as finally peter out. We all get out of our SUVs, headlights off, the SWAT guys amazingly quiet, and let our eyes adjust to the dark.

Cedar looks at a topo map with a red light, and the SWAT guys crowd around. He points to a spot.

“We’re here,” he says, keeping his voice low and quiet. He points at another spot. “There’s a hunting cabin right here that’s a likely possibility. About a quarter-mile in, surrounded by forest, a pretty easy hike.”

“And if he’s not there?” one of the guys asks.

Cedar taps another spot on the map.

“Right here is the foundation for something that was never built,” he says. “I’m not sure what it was going to be. And here,” he says, drawing a circle on the map with his finger, “There’s a microwave array with a small cinderblock building, but it’s on a rocky outcropping and it’s a fairly difficult hike from here. The cabin is our best bet.”

The SWAT guys all nod. They mutter amongst themselves, then to Patricia. She gives Cedar, Batali, Tony, and I a stern look.

It’s a
stay here because we discussed your unsuitability for this
look.

I want to go. I want to go that cabin and kick in the face of those guys, who thought that they could threaten me and hurt Stone, and who thought they could get
away
with it.

But instead I nod at her, because I know I wouldn’t do any good.

They move into the woods, moving almost silently over the pine needles carpeting the forest floor. I sigh and lean against the SUV, looking at the stars above us through the trees.

Cedar rubs my shoulder. Tony’s got his hands on his hips, and Batali’s got her arms crossed in front of herself. I don’t know why, exactly, they insisted on coming, but they’re here now.

I close my eyes. All I can do is wait, and hope, and try not to think that the worst has happened.

“
T
ell us where you are
,” Hammer says, his voice oddly conversational.

He’s standing behind a tripod, a small camcorder mounted on it. I’m sitting in a chair in front of it, my hands still bound behind me, my legs duct taped to the chair’s legs. I can’t fucking move at
all.

I nearly tell Hammer to go fuck himself, but he’s already spent some time describing
what
they’ll do to Luna if I don’t comply, so I swallow my pride.

Just get this over with
, I think.
You’re just prolonging the pain
.

“I’m in a shitty cinderblock bunker in a forest,” I say.

They forced me up a rocky outcropping to a cinderblock building below a huge microwave array. It’s got one door, one small, dusty window, the roof is half rotted through, and the light is all from a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. I have no idea how they found this place, but it’s remote as hell and hard to get to.

I thought about throwing myself off, but with my luck, I’d just survive the initial fall and die slowly. Better to make it to the top and get a bullet to the brain.

“Are you having a good time right now?” Hammer asks.

“Sure,” I say, before I can stop myself. “This is ten times better than Disneyland.”

One of the thugs comes over and punches me hard, right in the gut. I double over as stars dance in front of my eyes and pain flashes through my torso, and I do my best to suck in a breath. My ribs are at least bruised. Maybe broken from being kicked earlier.

Hammer clears his throat as I gasp.

“No,” I finally say. “I’m tied to a chair, getting the shit beat out of me.”

“Why?” he says, like this is a fucking interview.

I spit blood on the floor. My left eye is swollen nearly shut, and even spitting hurts.

“Because I snitched,” I say.

The red light on the camcorder keeps blinking, recording everything that I say. This is how they discourage others from reporting on their activities.

First I’m humiliated,
then
they finally kill me.

I don’t like that it’s come to this. I’d prefer not to die. The life I had going was pretty nice: a job, a house, no running from anyone. It wasn’t thrilling, but it was good, and I think it was just about to get a whole lot better since I met Luna.

But I can’t say I’m
surprised
I’m here. It feels almost inevitable, to be honest.

Bad life, bad death.

I just wish they would get it over with.