Sex & Mayhem 04 No Matter What (38 page)

Priest exhaled,
watching him without a word. He pulled off his reading glasses and
folded them neatly in their case. He shook his head and slapped
Tooth’s hip with the back of his hand.

Tooth smirked.
“Let’s go,” he said, walking past Ghost.

“Where to?”
Ghost asked, but already got up to follow him.

Tooth’s massive
frame cut through the crowded bar like a sledgehammer. “He’s in
Detroit, and we should find him unless he decided to go
barefoot.”

“Wh―what?”
Ghost’s mind was blank, but all his focus was on Tooth’s voice.
Tooth pushed open the door and walked into the yard, going straight
for the bikes. He put on his leather jacket.

“I didn’t trust
him,” said Tooth.

It finally
clicked. “You put a
tracker
on Luca?” Ghost uttered.

“Two. But it
looks like he’s thrown away his phone.” Tooth put on his helmet,
and Ghost didn’t wait any longer with getting on his own bike.

“Thank you,”
Ghost muttered. He knew he should be angry about the lack of trust
in Luca, but if that was what would help them get him back, Ghost
was ready to be forever thankful.

“Don’t act on
your own,” said Tooth before rushing forward with a roar of the
engine, which sounded like the growl of a furious grizzly bear.

Ghost nodded
and followed Tooth out of the compound with his heart in his
throat.

Ghost:
I see you
checked in somewhere exclusive! ;D

Zara:
Are you
spying on me now? LOL They do have great cake here. Might as well
spend BF’s money. It’s not like he’s good for anything else.

Chapter 22

Ghost’s mind
was in an odd place between absolute focus and scattered attention,
alternating between those two without warning. He followed Tooth
like a sheep, knowing that if there was anyone able to truly help
him now, it would be Tooth.

When they
stopped by the side of the road, close to his childhood home,
Ghost’s heart skipped a beat when he thought they were close to
Luca, but it turned out it was Luca’s phone that Tooth picked up
from the withering grass.

“They’re
moving, and they’re heading out of town,” Tooth said and got back
on his bike.

Ghost
swallowed, but gave a quick nod, and they were off again. He didn’t
even care that they went over the speed limit long ago.

The farther
they went, the fewer people Ghost spotted around. They were in an
industrial area, long lost to recession. Old warehouses with broken
glass in the windows, a house with a huge hole in the roof, a pile
of rusty bicycles without wheels. Tooth led him along a huge thatch
of disused land, now covered by withered grass and spots with tiny
trees. It felt like an episode of one of the popular
post-apocalyptic television series, with one huge, fenced structure
looming in the background. Ghost was surprised to see Tooth slow
down until his bike stopped in the middle of the poorly kept
asphalt road.

Ghost stopped
right by him. “I don’t see them,” he whispered, afraid Luca and
whoever was with him could hear them. Luca didn’t have a car, so
someone must have picked him up. Judging by the fact it was Antonio
who brought him a few weeks ago, naked and barefooted under the
large sheet, Ghost was guessing it had to be him.

Tooth pulled
off his helmet and dismounted his bike, trying to keep his hair out
of his face―a challenge with the strong wind rushing over the
grassy landscape. “They’re close. We need to lie low. Don’t want
anyone to know about us too soon,” he said, pulling his bike off
the road and toward some bushes.

Ghost followed
and hid their bikes behind a pile of trash someone had dumped here.
“How accurate is that thing?” he whispered and pointed to Tooth’s
phone. The abandoned factory towered in front of them, and Ghost
was sick to his stomach at the thought of what Antonio could have
brought Luca here for. It wasn’t even rape he was thinking of, but
death. As far as Ghost knew, Frederico was a secretive bastard, and
after tormenting Luca, he might just want to get rid of him.

Tooth sighed
and nodded toward the old, gray buildings. “They must be somewhere
over there, but the fucking tracker keeps moving about on my map.
Maybe there’s some problem with the satellite.” He positioned his
bike so it wouldn’t be visible from the road. “Switch off the sound
in your cell, so that you don’t get a fucking network message in
the worst possible moment.”

“Yeah, yeah,”
Ghost quickly turned off the sound in his phone.

It was dawning
on him that Luca could be anywhere on the premises of this
worn-down monstrosity, being tortured even, and there was nothing
he could do about it. Yet.

Tooth exhaled
and pulled off his jacket, leaving it on his bike along with the
helmet. He pulled his hair back into a ponytail and started jogging
toward the old factory. “We don’t know who’s there, so be careful,
all right? Don’t call out to him even if you see him,” said Tooth,
running ahead. The clouds were low over their heads, and there was
a sense of gloom in the air.

Ghost didn’t
even have a gun on him, and it had to be the first time in his life
that he regretted not taking one. He’d just left it at home, like a
complete idiot. Easy for Tooth to say ‘don’t call out to him’.
Tooth had punched a nurse unconscious to get to his boyfriend,
Ghost would do his best though. Antonio surely had a gun, and
fighting him would put Luca in danger.

He was so
focused on the target that he didn’t even feel tired by the end of
the run, when they reached the concrete wall with a bit of barbed
wire on top. There was some graffiti painted all over it, but Ghost
just saw psychedelic colors that were fucking with his mind, and he
needed to be alert.

Tooth glanced
at him with a frown. He put his thick finger against his lips and
looked at the open gate. It wasn’t even the real thing, just a kind
of metal crate mounted on concrete blocks, and it could probably be
moved with relative ease, yet kept stray animals out. Tooth stopped
at the gate and slowly, very slowly looked through the steel
bars.

The place
looked even bigger inside, but it was the sight of a sparkly clean
black BMW parked at the other side of the wall that truly freaked
Ghost out. This was real. Luca was somewhere here, and for what
other reason would they stop here if not for some horrendous ordeal
that wasn’t supposed to have witnesses? Luca could scream all he
wanted, and there would be no one to hear him for miles.

The space
within the walls was quite large, with the huge factory building in
the background. Its tall windows were intact but covered by some
kind of brownish film. Other than that, there was a small house
along the wall on the other side of the gate, another one on the
right, next to the BMW, and a bigger building that looked like a
cheap hotel with three stories.

Tooth’s body
stiffened. “Villani’s car,” he uttered, pulling out his gun.

“How about I go
check out the old worker’s houses, and I’ll text you if I find
them, or you can do the same if you do. If Antonio wants to kill
him, we don’t have time to go together.”

Luca had been
through so much in life already. He didn’t deserve to die here, or
suffer any more violation. Ghost’s hands were itching to pull him
close, welcome him in his arms again, no matter what had happened.
All would be forgotten the moment they were together.

Tooth nodded
and slowly walked out from behind the wall. He waited, and when
nothing happened, he grabbed the gate and moved it gently, just
enough so they could walk through the gap. “Don’t play the
hero.”

Ghost nodded
with a frown. He knew Tooth was right. And if only the situation
allowed it, he would wait. Or at least analyze the situation, not
risk everything without the need to. As he rushed toward the
crumbling residential building, an unpleasant déjà vu assaulted his
senses. The landscape around them reminded him of the empty bombed
cities they passed when he was in Syria. Even walking into a
building like that created a hazard.

From the corner
of his eye, he could see Tooth sprinting across the yard, past some
rubble, but all his attention was on the empty doorway of the
house.

It was old,
much older than any of the other buildings around here, and he
realized it could have been here before the factory itself had been
built. It was dead silent, with no glass in the windows and a devil
fucking a nun painted across the wall in the corridor. With the day
so bright, Ghost didn’t have to use his cell phone to know this was
not the place to look for Luca. The first two steps inside made him
back away when the oddly soft wooden floor gave under his weight
slightly. It felt like the swollen body of a three-day-old corpse.
And fuck, there was a hole in the middle of the empty hall.

His palms were
sweaty, his skin hot, and his heart pounded blood faster than it
should. He thought he heard someone move, but it only turned out to
be a rat. He backed out, and rushed to the second building, trying
to be as quiet as possible. Thankfully, the wind kept howling
around the yard, so it silenced his steps. On the other hand, it
also silenced any sounds he could possibly hear.

And who knew
how much time it would take to find Luca? Trying to control his
breathing, Ghost turned his attention to the hotel-like building,
and he rushed to the partially open door, which flapped about with
each strong gust of wind. The moment he stepped inside, he was hit
by a thick smell of piss, but with dirt and sand on the floor, he
needed to take extra care to keep silent. At least this building
seemed solid enough not to crumble around him.

He stepped
forward, walking over checkered tiles, some of which were broken,
but what worried him more were traces of a recent human
presence―two used condoms tossed into the corner, empty beer cans,
a single Converse.

Ghost counted
to five, to calm down, and walked on, avoiding any broken glass. He
needed to listen, but the furious thudding of blood in his ears
made it difficult to hear much. His own body was working against
him, screaming for him to get out. Ghost wasn’t about to listen
though. He climbed the stairs at the pace of a turtle, making sure
the wood didn’t creak where he placed his feet.

He couldn’t
believe Luca would do this for him, sacrifice his hard earned and
well-deserved freedom so Ghost could leave the club. Maybe if Ghost
had listened, run away with Luca under the cover of the night―

His thoughts
stilled when he heard a dark, masculine voice above. It was as if
his feet suddenly became much heavier and weighed him down. He
couldn’t hear the exact words, but he already recognized that the
melody in them was all wrong. It was not English.

Ghost pulled
out his cell phone and instantly texted Tooth about where he was,
but stepped into the second floor with care not to make any noise.
There were rows of doors on both sides of the corridor, some of
them open. He put a hand over his mouth, listening to the muffled
voice. Behind the door then. Ghost approached the room he
recognized as the source of the sounds as quickly as possible. He
crouched to look through the rusty keyhole, with his own heartbeat
drumming in his head. Maybe nothing all that bad was happening?
Maybe he could wait a few minutes for Tooth?

Luca was just
across from him, kneeling by the window. His breath caught in
Ghost’s throat when Luca moved, with a rattle of metal. He was
cuffed to the rusty radiator, bare-chested, and in the bright light
streaming down the lovely tan back, tension was ripe underneath the
skin. Ghost had never thought of Luca as small or weak, but with
his shoulders curled and head bowed in submission, he was exactly
that: small and vulnerable. It made Ghost sick to his stomach to
think that Luca had been submitted to such cruelty since the age of
fifteen.

Come on,
Tooth…

But Tooth
wasn’t coming, and Antonio went on about something in a raspy
voice. He slowly approached Luca’s hunched form, looking huge in
the shapeless black tracksuit. His hand pushed into the hair at the
back of Luca’s head and pulled, easing his head back. Luca’s face
was devoid of any expression, but his hands balled into fists.
Antonio asked him something, and Luca answered in a choked voice.
He slowly got to his feet, with his knees shaking so hard Ghost
could see it from afar.

Even without
understanding what was being said, Ghost’s stomach clenched, and
bile rose in his throat. No. He couldn’t wait any longer. Luca
could get hurt at any point.

Ghost took a
look at the insides of the room more carefully. It was some sort of
old activity room. All dusty and grimy, but with a table tennis
table and a few chairs scattered around. In case Antonio was going
to shoot before asking questions, Ghost established a place he
could roll over to once he burst in.

One more deep
breath.

Ghost pulled on
the handle, and pushed the door in one quick move, already
crouching. Everything was happening too fast. Antonio looked his
way as Ghost bolted under the table.

Antonio
growled, his hand pushing into the half-open zipper of his jacket.
For a moment, Ghost was lost in the darkness of Luca’s eyes, and
while their gazes only met for the briefest moment, time seemed to
stand still. Luca inhaled, his chest expanding, but the spell broke
when he kicked the side of Antonio’s knee with all the strength he
seemed to have. The beast of a man screamed, dropping the gun he’d
just retrieved with a loud clatter.

This was
Ghost’s moment. He rushed out from under the table and pulled on
Antonio’s leg, only to get kicked in the jaw. Ghost rolled over to
escape another kick, and got to his feet to stand between Antonio
and Luca. The last thing he needed was to have Antonio use Luca as
a hostage.