VENDETTA: A Bad Boy, Motorcycle Club Romance (23 page)

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BOLT

Chapter One

No white knight was on his way to save her and fix her problems. She’d have to do it herself.

Anna picked up the egg cartons, bacon packages and cheese wrappers cluttering the prep area around the grill. Jim, the hashbrown-slinging cook at the Easy Bake, didn’t believe in clearing his own space, gathering his own ingredients or talking about news with women, but he made a damn good omelet. When she’d come to work late that night with bourbon on her breath, he’d sighed and made her one stuffed with mushrooms, sausage and cheddar to help her get back on her feet for work.

The trash bag was still only almost full, so she walked into the seating area and over to the bathrooms, emptying the small cans into the larger bag. Back in the dining room, she surveyed the people who’d come to eat just before closing at three—a couple of college kids and an old man with a newspaper. Typical crowd.

Pushing through the swinging portal and back into the kitchen, she dropped the trash by the large steel door that would open to the alleyway and took a deep breath, her head still spinning from the bourbon she’d consumed before leaving her apartment that night. She should have called in, but Marta was still out with her new baby and Steve, the owner, didn’t have anyone else. He’d had to come in himself to help out with the dinner crowd, which he almost never did. He hated working nights.

Now he sat by the grill, chatting with Jim about a baseball game he was going to in New York the next week. Mel pushed through the swinging doors with a tray of dishes. “It’s just the last guy now,” she said. “Those kids went back to campus.”

“I hope they brought a car.” Jim was making himself scrambled eggs, but turned from the griddle to eye Mel. “Did they?” Detroit’s streets were nowhere for young people to be alone at night.

“Yeah,” said Mel, putting an arm around Anna’s shoulders. “I watched them get into the car and leave.”

“Fuck this city,” Anna said and Mel squeezed her closer. She knew what tonight was.

“The night’s almost over. You have tomorrow off. Maybe go out to Anne Arbor and get a pedicure?”

“Maybe,” Anna said, rubbing the tense skin at her temples with her fingertips. “I don’t know.”

“It’s going to be okay.” Mel smelled like menthol and lavender, which made Anna want a cigarette more than she had since she got bronchitis twice in one winter four years ago when she was 16 and quit smoking for good. “When I get back from Hawaii the week after next, why don’t you come over to my boyfriend’s place for dinner?”

“Trying to set me up again?” She smiled weakly because it was expected, and because Mel was trying. She knew how hard this night was, and she was trying. It was enough to make Anna try too.

“You know it.”

Steve looked over at Anna and sighed, then heaved his bulk out of the chair and started across the sticky floor. Each step made a sucking sound as the rubber sole of his shoe connected with the floor and the floor reluctantly gave it up again. He picked up the trash bag she’d left at the door. “I’ll take this out,” he said. “Why don’t you help Mel clean up and we’ll all go home.”

“No,” said Anna, taking the bag from him. “Thank you, but honestly I could use a minute alone. Mel, can I have a cigarette?”

Mel’s lips tightened, but she slid a Marlboro from the pack she kept in the pocket of her apron and tucked it behind Anna’s ear, then pulled out her lighter and slipped it into Anna’s apron. “It’s going to be okay,” she said, not for the first time that night. She rose to her tiptoes and pressed her lips against Anna’s forehead, stroking her long blonde hair with a steady hand.

The summer air was hot, heavy when she pushed open the door and entered the alley. Immediately she was damp with sweat that clung to her neck and back. Fuck, it was humid. She missed Augusta, the cool summer air and the way the pine forests pressed in on the home where she’d grown up. But she was 900 miles and 21 days away from seeing it again. Her mother had probably already made a list of foods she was going to make for Anna’s visit, had planned ways to lure her only daughter back home for good, even if they both knew she didn’t really want her home.

The Easy Bake wasn’t the classiest place to work, but the neighborhood wasn’t the worst Detroit had to offer, either. Her skirts were long enough that none of the groping regulars got a look at her ass, but short enough that she could go out for a real drink after a shift without having to change clothes. Maybe tomorrow she’d find an open bar that served cheap drinks and get well and truly smashed, say a toast to Carly and end up in some anonymous guy’s bed.

She heaved the large black bag over the rim of the dumpster, then slumped back against the wall, disappointed with everything in her life. One year ago tonight, her best friend, partner-in-crime, and roommate had been kidnapped from an alley behind a club they’d frequented, leaving only frantic voicemails and shadows on a convenience store surveillance video. Carly wouldn’t have gone out alone that night if Anna hadn’t been a bitch and snapped at her about the guy she was seeing.

It was her fault.

That night, she’d brought home a guy from the bioassay lab where she performed tests on wastewater from industrial operations. He’d had short-cropped blond hair and was slightly soft in the way guys are when they spend all their time at a desk. When he’d gone down on her, she’d tried to focus on his mouth and fingers, but really she’d been regretting making another nasty comment about the guy Carly was causally seeing. He was also seeing four other girls, but Carly was convinced she could change him.

“You can’t ever change men,” Anna had argued. “You’re throwing your life away on losers. Just date someone nice.”

“Maybe I don’t like nice guys,” Carly had said, tears welling in her eyes. “Maybe I like this one. I love you, but back off.”

“Fine.” Anna had stormed into her room and refused to come out when Carly asked if she was ready to go to the club. “Go by yourself if you need to spend so much time with shitty men,” Anna had told her through the door. “I can’t stand to watch it anymore.”

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand and she reached over to check who it was. Carly. Anna hovered a finger over the Call button, then pushed the phone away. “Keep going,” she said to the blond guy, reclining on the pillows and trying to lose herself in the tentative motions of his mouth.

A minute later, the phone rang again. Anna reached over and silenced it, sending the call to voicemail. She couldn’t take another night of hearing about that useless guy or whatever loser Carly had found in his stead.

The blond guy left after they’d fucked and now, just a year later, she couldn’t even remember his name. A few hours after he’d gone, loud pounding against the front door of her apartment jolted her out of sleep. She wrapped an old blue bathrobe around herself and pulled open the door, ready to do violence.

It was two police officers who proceeded to hammer her with questions about Carly, about the bar where she’d gone for a drink, about the man who’d taken her. Someone had taken her.

She’d called 911 from the trunk of the car, but was put on hold. She didn’t get through. She called the police and begged for help, but the call had disconnected.

Anna had pulled her phone from the charger, listened to the desperate messages and then given the phone to the police. The next afternoon, she had enough presence of mind to log into her mobile provider’s website and download the voicemail messages to her computer. It had turned out to be a good move, because she’d never gotten that phone back. After the police had stopped looking, they told her it had been lost.

The first message had been whispered and hard to decipher, muffled. “Anna,” Carly’s voice sounded like she was speaking from far away. “Anna, please help me. Help me. I don’t know who, but someone, there’s a man, and I’m—.” The call cut off there.

The second message. “I tried to call for help. Where are you? I don’t know how long I’ve been in the car, the trunk, I’m in a trunk, I can’t see anything. Help me, please.”

The third message. “Blue car. Vine tattoo. The alley behind Dungeon. Help me. Please.” The sound of brakes and a metal clang. “No. No, motherfucker! No! Let go of me.” A deep voice said something unintelligible. Then the sound of something breaking and the call disconnected.

No other calls had ever been made from her phone.

Anna had listened to the messages again before coming into the Easy Bake tonight, but it was just to remember Carly. Her long red hair and easy smiles and metallic eyeliners. She’d lost her job after Carly had been taken, locking herself in her apartment, buying a gun and spending every night at Dungeon with low-cut dresses and her weapon strapped to her thigh. No good.

So she hired a PI and paid him all of her savings. The report, delivered two weeks ago, was grim. Carly had been taken by a professional cartel of men who sold women for profit. She’d been shipped to Thailand, then China, and killed in Shanghai. Her body was already buried in a pauper’s grave.

Anna cringed, imagining her friend’s delicate limbs splayed out in soil, then shook her head to clear it. She reached for the cigarette again, put it to her lips and then abruptly snapped it in half.

She’d spent too much time out here already, reliving a tragedy. Carly was gone and there was nothing else she could do to find her best friend or make up for ignoring her when maybe, maybe it could have made a difference. It was time to accept defeat, buy a new transmission for her car with her tips from the Easy Bake, and head back to Maine for good. Detroit was nothing but trouble and bad memories.

Before she could push back through the steel door, she heard a cry and the sound of shattering glass. Mel had probably dropped the last tray of coffee cups. Anna took a last, deep breath and then pushed through the steel door to help with the cleanup.

The kitchen was empty. Jim’s eggs were hardened and smoking on the griddle, so she rushed across the room and flipped the switch, shutting down the power. She grabbed a spatula and pried them off the bar, sweeping them into the trash bowl that they used for old food, then turned to the swinging doors to see what was so important that they’d left the griddle unattended.

She looked through the door just in time to see an enormous mountain of a man lift a gun to Jim’s head and pull the trigger. His corpse slumped to the floor, next to the wasted bodies of Mel and Steve. Their faces were empty. No. No. Not them.

Anna jerked back, the breath leaving her lungs so that her mouth opened and closed like a fish on the line. She needed to make it to the steel door and out into the alley, but couldn’t take the steps. Her legs felt like spaghetti noodles, weak and limp, unable to move. She cartwheeled back, blindly reaching behind herself for the door and slammed into the cart with plates. They fell to the floor and shattered, glass raining across the tile floor.

“What the fuck?” The man who’d shot her friends pushed through the door and surveyed the room, his eyes stopping on Anna. Before she could move, he grabbed her by the arm and marched her into the dining room. The wall behind the bodies was smeared with blood and brain matter. She clapped her free hand to her mouth and swallowed back the vomit that threatened to erupt. Her body felt like it didn’t exist anymore, like it was light and this was a dream and in a minute she’d open her eyes and they’d be alive again.

Except they weren’t.

“Who’s this pretty little thing?” A handsome man with tanned skin and coal black hair crossed the room and took her face in his hands. They were dry and rough against her cheeks. “Hello, girl.” The large man took her other elbow so that both arms were trapped behind her and she could do nothing while the handsome man examined her. A spatter of blood was casually smeared over his cheek. Anna gagged, averting her eyes before she lost the omelet Jim made her. The man’s gaze was a violation, lingering on her breasts before dipping lower and moving slowly back up.

“Why?” she asked. He brought his eyes back to hers and smiled softly.

“He didn’t want protection,” he said. “Didn’t want to be part of the team. Think of this as an object lesson.”

“Want me to add her to the pile?” Her stomach dropped when the big man spoke, his voice a low rumble. She turned to meet his eyes, but stopped halfway when she spotted the tattoo peeking out from his black shirt sleeve. It wrapped around his arm, a black curved line covered in thorns, ending near the elbow. Her mind shut down, all thoughts of safety evaporated like a puddle in the desert as the surveillance video, the phone messages, the man with the black vine tattoo all jumbled together in her head.

“You,” she finally said, the words barely a whisper as they slipped past her trembling lips. “You took Carly. You motherfucker.” She pushed back against him, her shoes slipping against the floor, and elbowed him in the gut. He coughed, but gripped his fingers harder into her arm. The third man walked over and punched her hard in the gut so that she doubled over, only held up by the large man’s hands.

“You know Little Red? Interesting.” The handsome man looked at her again, his gaze sharper this time. “Maybe we should consider a reunion.”

“I thought I recognized her,” said the man with that tattoo, tightening his grip. “You don’t really want to keep this bitch around, do you?”

“Let’s keep her for a day or two. She might be fun.” They both laughed and Anna tried to control her breathing. Red spots danced in front of her eyes and she fought to stay conscious. “Help me drag this mess behind the counter.” The tattooed man passed her off to the man who’d hit her and joined the other to begin to move the bodies. The sound Mel’s shoes made as they dragged her over the floor resonated in Anna’s head and she closed her eyes, slumping against the man who laughed as his nails dug into her skin.