Burned: Devil's Blaze MC Book 2 (13 page)

Guilt is eating me up inside and I hate it! I never meant for Torch to get so hurt. I hope he’s okay. Surely someone has found him by now. Probably that damned waitress who was already panting after him and drooling. Somehow, I ended up with a different trucker than my original mark. I liked the first guy; he had a kindness in his eyes. Torch managed to take him down though and that left me with Mr. Hands over here.

I’ve gone along with him though because after everything I’ve done, I
need
to get away from Torch. I have to get to Bethie, but more than that, Torch is going to be pissed as hell at me. If he gets a hold on me again, I’ll never get away. He has a right to be pissed, I guess, but he was holding me captive! He was forcing me into a situation that would put my niece and my sister in danger, and he wouldn’t even try to understand. He’s an asshole and I should
not
be feeling guilt.

I try to breathe and consider my next move. When I climbed up into the rig, Mr. Hands made a big show of helping to boost me up. In reality, it was just so his hand could cup my ass, hence the nickname I gave him. Since then though, he’s been okay. I’m just letting him drive and tell me about how little women like me need to be careful, how I need a man to protect me, and how if he was my man, he’d spoil me like a queen. Do women really fall for this stuff? I don’t get it.

Then again, I’ve never had use for a man past one night. Never even thought about it. I ignore the way an image of Torch comes to mind. Okay, so I thought of keeping him longer than one night. I would have never done it.
Never
. He’s a player and I will never fall under the spell of a man like Bethie did.
Never.
Did I mention never? Because it’s true. Definitely true.
Never, ever, ever. Freaking never!

“Wait. What are you doing?”

“You’re too keyed up, sweetness. I’ll show you how a real man works that out of you. Then, we’ll see about getting you some clothes.”

Fuck!
Suddenly, I’m reminded of how my shirt is ripped and my bra shows through. I’m also reminded of Torch calling me “sweetness” and how I kind of like it, but when this guy says it, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

While I’m reminded of all this, Mr. Hands is pulling off into a seedy motel. If this is how he treats the women in his life that he wants to make his
queen,
it’s no fucking wonder the man is single. Though, I bet if the truth was known, he has some poor schmuck of a wife sitting at home who has no idea what her man is up to while on the road. 

“Listen, I appreciate your help, but I’m not going into that motel with you. This is where I find another ride,” I tell him, and before he can say anything else, I unlatch my seatbelt, open my door, and climb down.

I’m thankful I have my boots on because, honestly, I’ve done more on my leg in the last few days than I have in months. The pain is constant, but I’ve dealt with it, and my boots give me extra support which helps. Still, when I jump from the bottom step of the eighteen-wheeler to the ground, I land wrong and my ankle curls. Pain shoots up my bad leg and it’s so fucking intense that I cry out.

“Whoa there! I got you. You should have waited on me. A woman like you with that fine little body, you aren’t made to handle big rigs like this,” Mr. Hands says, and surprise, his hands go around me and hold me by my
ass
.

I jerk away from him. “I’m fine. Like I said, this is a no-go for me. I’m going to go find a different ride. Thanks for your help back there, but I think I’m done with men for a while.”

I push away from him and turn to walk back to the road. Hopefully the next person to pick me up won’t be some horny trucker with an overactive libido. Or an axe murderer; not really wanting that either. I make it a few steps when he grabs me from behind. This time, his hands are on my boobs. What is it with my luck lately? 

“I’ve got a ride for you, sweetness. I got a nice long hard ride for you.”

Oh, God. 

“Listen. You don’t really want to do this,” I warn him.

“I do, and I can guarantee you that I’ll make you want it too,” he says, and yeah, that pretty much seals his fate.

No one is
making
me want shit.

I bring my elbow back and slam it into his abdomen. I stick my ass hard into him while he’s bent down. My hands go up behind my head to lock around the back of his neck and I use the force of my body and his motion to propel him over my head. Really, my self-defense instructor would be proud. He falls to the ground in a puff of dust, looking up at me like he can’t believe what I just did. I use that same foot to slam down on his crotch, grinding the steel-toe so damned heavily, I figure his balls might burst. He cries out, which brings me a small level of joy. He’s curled into a ball now, but I know he’ll get up quick, and because Torch has my clothes and took away the weapons I normally carry, I’ve got to move fast. Shit. Shit.
Shit.

I run—well, mostly hobble—to the big rig. I climb up on the driver’s side. The key is still in it. I can drive a six speed dually; surely this can’t be that much different, right? Luckily, it’s old-school; no fancy push-buttons, so I’m not completely lost. I’m ridiculously helpless at backing up anything with a trailer, even my jeep, so I cut the wheel deep and pray. I manage to only side swipe the back end of one car before I complete my turn, then go back onto the road. I won’t be able to drive this for long because soon, I’m sure the cops will be on my ass. Still, if I can manage ten minutes, that should get me on the freeway and off to the next exit. Hopefully I can find another ride, or else a less conspicuous car to hijack. It takes some gear-grinding, and each time I have to use the clutch, my foot screams in agony. Despite it all, I find my groove and get the hell out of dodge.

Today is not starting off well. Then, I notice the trucker’s cellphone on the dash, and smile. Maybe it’s getting better.

“What the fuck do you mean you lost her??” Skull screams over the phone, and when I say scream, I actually mean it’s more like a cold, monotone question that’s meant to leave the person he’s talking to dead.
That’d be me.

I just had to break it to him that Katie got away. I questioned the diner and found out what route that trucker normally takes. The waitress helped me where the others just looked at me like I was insane. The waitress made it clear that she’d like to nurse me back to health—especially my damned cock—and it pisses me off that the fucker crawled up and hid! My cock has always been a shower, strutting his magnificent self like a proud peacock and demanding the ladies’ eyes. The last two months, he’s changed somewhat. Nothing interested him—until Katie. But never in my life has he revolted when a woman reached out to pet him. Shit! That crap has got to change. Maybe they have electroshock therapy for your dick. I could get that desperate.

“Are you listening to me asshole?”

Shit, Skull.
I don’t think he’d like to hear me say no. “I am, boss,” I lie. “I promise you, I got this. I already have her hunted down. I’m heading there now,” I assure him, and yeah, I’m lying out of my ass. I know a general vicinity though, and really, how hard can it be to hide a yellow eighteen-wheeler?
Shit.

“You better, motherfucker. If I lose my chance to grab ahold of Beth—I mean, my daughter—I will
end
you.
Entiéndeme?
”

“I got it, boss. I’ll have her by nightfall.”

He hangs up, and I hope like hell I do have her, because if I don’t, I wouldn’t put it past Skull to come down here and hunt down Katie himself. I still have the urge to protect her and that’s fucked up. But boss isn’t thinking clearly. He might say this is to get his daughter, but I know it’s to get Beth. He wants his daughter, I don’t doubt that for a second. But… Beth. He wants Beth. What the fuck he’s going to do with her when he gets her all depends on exactly what the fuck caused her to run in the first place.

The damn jeep is sucking fumes, so I decide to take the next exit. Just another fucking reason to hate cages. If I was on my bike, I’d have already eaten up the interstate. I make a right towards the Shell station, groaning at the backed up traffic. There must have been a wreck. Hopefully I don’t run out of gas while I’m waiting for it to thin out; that’d be the fucking cherry on top of the shit pile that has been my day. My knuckles are bruised, I’ve got a headache from hell, and my fucking ribs are sore. Motherfuckers must have kicked me while I was out.

Traffic slowly starts moving. There’s a policeman directing all the traffic into one lane. As I get closer, I can see why, and I feel a moment of complete and utter fucking joy. There, surrounded by cops in the far lane, is an eighteen-wheeler. Not just any eighteen-wheeler, but a fucking bright yellow one.

I negotiate Katie’s jeep to the median and jump out to see what kind of fucking mess she’s gotten into now, because I have no doubt that she’s in the middle of whatever it is.

“What’s going on here?” I ask.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to return to your vehicle. We’re trying to prevent traffic from being backed up.”

“Oh, I hear ya. It’s just that at the Waffle King in Brownville, that very fucking truck was there, and I saw its driver force a woman into the truck with him. I tried to tell the police there. They wanted me to come in and make a report. I did, but I don’t know if they did anything about it.”

“Shit. You’re kidding me!” The officer goes off running to one of the other men there. I walk closer, expecting to get a glimpse of Katie, but I don’t see her anywhere.

“There wasn’t a woman in the truck?” I call out, and I try not to let my inner fear free. Shit, if she got herself hurt by pulling her damn stunt…

“There wasn’t anyone here,” the officer answers. “Witnesses say they saw a brunette limp out of the truck and start walking towards Casey. They reported her limping heavily and looking like she’d been in a fight.”

“David! We don’t release details of the case,” another cop says, which is kind of stupid, though probably a hundred percent true—and smart. Dumbass. For all he knows, I could be the owner of the truck.

I need to find Katie. Shit. I hope she’s okay. I start to turn away when I hear one of the cops yell.

“Hey! Sarge! Dispatch just got a call from the Angel Drop Motel, said some woman stole his rig.”

“Have one of the men go to the motel and get this guy. Tell them to treat him like a suspect. We have a witness who said this guy might have kidnapped a woman over in Brownville.”

And cue my time to leave
. As much as I want to make sure that trucker gets his ass sewn up, if I have to stay around and be the motherfucker to help do it, Katie will get away. I back away until I’m out of sight, then jump in my jeep and drive off. I take the back road and hold my breath until I find a little mom-and-pop gas station and fill up. There’s been no sign of Katie. I might have picked the wrong route. I thought driving on this back road would be the way to go, but—

I stop when I see her. She’s limping hard, walking along the side of the road. My heart squeezes in my chest.

Motherfucking raindrops in Hell! Until this moment, I refused to acknowledge the fear I felt when I saw the eighteen-wheeler abandoned and Katie nowhere to be found. I didn’t fully believe that she had stolen the damn thing. Jesus. 

I pull up beside her. The window is already down. It’s an older model jeep, so the windows zip. How she could like such a thing is beyond me. “Get in,” I order, and my voice might rival Skull’s in being cold right now.