“One more day,” he said. “Then it’s over. Want to talk to her one more time? This’ll be the last if you don’t get me something I can use.”

“Please …”

“Stop whining. Nobody likes a whiny cunt.”

I heard a rustling sound, as if he’d put his hands over the mic. Then Jessica came on the line, her voice soft and weak.

“Loni?”

“Jess, how are you?”

“It hurts, Loni,” she said. “It hurts all the time. My hand hurts so bad and I have dreams and I want to come home …”

“I’ll get you home,” I promised, although I had absolutely no idea how I’d pull that one off. Maybe I should just shoot Bolt and raid his office. So what if they killed me? All I needed to do was get Jessica free—after that? Whatever.

“I need you to come get me,” she whispered. “I’m so scared, Loni. They hurt me. Last night they …”

She paused, and my mind raced, filling in the blanks.

“That’s enough,” the man said, his voice muffled in the background. The call stopped and I nearly drove into the ditch because I couldn’t stop the tears filling my eyes. Couldn’t see for shit.

I took a long detour heading home, wondering how I’d explain that to Puck, and then deciding I didn’t care what he thought. I’d just tell him I got distracted and didn’t notice I’d gone down the wrong road, or something like that.

He didn’t ask, though.

When we pulled up to Reese’s place, he just parked his bike and got off, following me into the house. Reese sat at the dining room table, flipping through a motorcycle magazine and drinking a beer.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, looking up at me. “Come here, sit on my lap for a while.”

“You need me for anything else tonight?” Puck asked, his voice bored but his gaze focused, taking in everything. That’s what unnerved me about him the most—the fact that if I made even the slightest mistake, he’d catch it.

“You’re free for the night,” Reese said as I came to a stop next to him. He caught me by the waist, lifting me easily to straddle him across the chair. His hands lifted and framed my face, those brilliant blue eyes of his seeming to stare right into my soul.

What did he see there?

“You can talk to me,” Reese said, and my heart stuttered. He knew. He had to know. Why else would he say that? “Whatever it is, if some-thing’s wrong talk to me, babe. It’s the only way I can help you.”

I felt like my face was cracking, but I managed to smile at him.

“What brings this on?”

“One of the girls down at The Line,” he said. “She got herself in some trouble a couple days ago, and instead of talking to us, she decided to sell us out.”

I closed my eyes, trying to force my pulse to slow down. Could he feel it racing under his fingers?

“What’ll happen to her?”

His eyes darkened, and he didn’t answer. I felt his hand slide around and into my hair, fingers combing through it lightly, and then he caught it up, twisting it around his wrist until it just almost hurt. He tugged my head back, exposing my throat. Then he wrapped his other hand around my neck lightly, caressing me.

“You don’t want to know,” he whispered. His hand tightened in my hair painfully and he tilted my head, taking my mouth in a hard kiss. It shouldn’t have turned me on. I was scared of him, scared of the men in San Diego.

Scared of everything.

But his dick was hardening between my legs and I wanted him so bad it hurt. When he let my mouth go and cupped my butt in his hands—lifting me and carrying me back into the bedroom—it never occurred to me to protest.

I wanted him way too much.

All of him.

His smell, his strength, the way he’d thrown himself over me when my house blew up. The love in his eyes when he saw his daughter, and the fact that I’d found two stunning diamond pendants in blue Tiffany boxes next to the letter his wife had written him, right in the top drawer of his dresser.

None of that would ever be mine … But for tonight, I’d take what I could get and pretend my world hadn’t ended.

“What did you find for me today?”

That voice. It haunted my dreams. I think it would’ve been easier if he yelled at me, or even if I sensed that he enjoyed hurting Jessica. But we could’ve been talking about the weather or what I’d eaten for lunch. The guy was like an exterminator, and I could tell he’d shoot Jessica and then go home and put up his feet, maybe watch a TV show.

We weren’t even human to him.

I drove on slowly, Puck following me on his bike, wondering if I should just turn out along the highway and head for the high bridge. Then I’d drive off the side. End of story. Suddenly I heard the bloop of a police siren, then caught the flash of blue lights in my rearview mirror. At first I couldn’t tell if they were after me or Puck.

Then he pulled over and the cop stopped behind him. Thank God for that—no way I could deal with the police and this phone call at the same time. Puck might’ve just saved Jessica’s life by distracting the cop for me, I realized. Was her existence really hanging by a thread that thin? Yes, it probably was. Sweat broke out on my forehead.

“London? I’m waiting.”

Catching the phone between my head and shoulders, I reached up to swipe at the moisture with the back of my hand.

“I don’t have anything,” I admitted. “Reese didn’t want me cleaning today, so I didn’t even make it inside. He said they were shutting things down. Security situation. Same excuse he gave for having someone follow me around. I think he knows what’s going on—”

“Who’s following you?” the man asked, his voice casually curious.

“A prospect named Puck,” I said. “He’s with the Silver Bastards. He’s not following me right now, though. The cops just pulled him over and I’m still driving.”

“Interesting. Why not a Reapers prospect?”

“How should I know? Maybe they’re watching the other girlfriends and old ladies. Things are really tense right now. I talked to Marie this morning and she said that even Maggs had someone with her, and she’s not part of the club anymore.”

“So why would you think they know about you?” he asked. “All the women are under guard. Things are tense, and you don’t even know why. Unless Hayes has been talking to you?”

I shook my head, then realized he wouldn’t be able to see it.

“No, he doesn’t talk about anything important. Not about the club or business or anything. He said a girl at The Line sold them out, but I don’t know the details.”

It was his turn to be silent.

“He give the girl’s name?”

“No,” I whispered.

“So, you’re on your own right now?”

“Yes.”

“Good, I’ve got a new job for you. Do you have a gun?”

“Why on earth would I have a gun?”

“This afternoon you’re going to get one,” he said slowly. “And tonight you’re going to kill Reese Hayes. If you do that for me, I’ll let Jessica go.”

The van swerved. I slammed on the brakes and skidded to the side of the road, wondering if he’d actually said what I thought he said.

No.

Not possible.

“I can’t kill him. I can’t kill anyone,” I babbled. “I don’t even know where I could get a gun—I don’t know how to use one.”

“You have all afternoon,” the man told me, his voice calm and patient. “I’m going to give you an address. You’ll go to your bank and pull out six hundred dollars. Then set your GPS for that address and follow it out there. Someone will meet you, and you’ll buy the gun he offers. You won’t discuss me with him and he won’t say anything to you. If you try to say something, he’ll leave without giving you the gun and Jessica will die. Are we clear?”

My tongue wouldn’t work. I couldn’t kill Reese—I didn’t kill people. Real people didn’t have things like this happen to them.

This couldn’t be happening.

“London, are you paying attention?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“I don’t think you’re taking this seriously enough. Maybe you need some encouragement.”

The phone pinged, and suddenly a video request came through. I stared at it for a second, then closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and hit accept.

Screams filled the air.

Jessica faced me on the screen. A large, muscular hand held her by the hair, which gave me a nasty sense of déjà vu because Reese had held my hair almost exactly the same way last night. Jess wasn’t sitting in anyone’s lap, though.

A second hand flashed through the air, hitting her so hard that she ripped free of her captor and slammed to the ground with a sickening thunk, her head literally bouncing from the impact against the concrete floor. Someone started laughing. The man who’d been holding her opened his fingers, chunks of her hair drifting down across her body. I clutched my side, my vision going dark, and for long seconds I wondered if I’d lose consciousness.

“Jess?” I finally managed to whisper. She didn’t respond. A man kicked her in the stomach, and then I heard some muffled Spanish in the background. Her body jerked, quivering for about ten seconds before falling still again.

Seizure. She used to get them as a child, but I hadn’t seen one in years.

“You need to take her to a hospital. That kind of head trauma can damage the shunt. She’ll die. You can’t let her die!”

The video died, transitioning back to audio only. I raised the phone slowly to my ear, hand shaking so bad I almost dropped it.

“After you kill Hayes, we’ll dump her in front of a hospital,” the man said. “I’ll need proof. Homicide report will do nicely. Call nine one one yourself if you want things to move faster, I have people monitoring the police scanners up there. They’ll tell me when it happens.”

I swallowed. I couldn’t imagine killing anyone, let alone Reese.

But Jessica was dying—hitting the floor that hard would be bad for anyone. But with the shunt her risk was so much higher. One slip, one tear, one tiny blockage … The fluid would start building in her skull and it wouldn’t stop until it squeezed the life out of her brain completely.

It might be happening already—I’d seen the seizure.

I’d do it. I’d shoot Reese, then I’d call the police. Maybe I’d wait for them to get there, or maybe I’d try to get away first. Jessica would need someone to take care of her if they did another surgery …

Pulling up the edge of my shirt, I wiped my face hard to get rid of the tears rolling down my cheeks. Then I grabbed the mirror, tipping it down so I could see how I looked. Red eyes. Nothing I could do about that, and it wasn’t like crying was illegal. I put the van into reverse, then did a three-point turn across the road. I had close to four thousand dollars in the bank. I’d need all of it in cash, if by some miracle I survived the evening, because one thing was for sure.

If the Reapers caught me, I was a dead woman.

When I passed by Puck and the cops, they had him lying face-down on the side of the road, hands behind his back. A second cruiser was just pulling up. Perfect—hopefully it would give me enough time to do what I had to do.

Two hours later I owned a gun.

The man who’d sold it to me wasn’t a gun dealer—he was just a guy in a car with a gun. I met him alone in a field halfway to Bay-view, which I found using the GPS on the smart phone they’d so helpfully provided me. I paid him the money and he’d handed me the weapon, a box of ammunition, and what appeared to be an extra bullet holder. I stared down at them blankly, wondering how the hell I’d even load a gun, let alone shoot it.

My confusion had to be obvious, because he reached for the weapon again and when I handed it over, he demonstrated how to pop another bullet holder out of the gun’s handle like magic. He also showed me how the bullets could be taken out, then had me put them back in again.

The he showed me how to shoot it.

It was surprisingly easy. All I had to do was unhook the little safety switch, pull the trigger, and BOOM. The shell casing popped out and then it was ready to go again. My hand hurt a little after the third shot, but the gun didn’t really have much of a kick or anything. After that, the man got in his car and left without saying goodbye … or anything else. I’d bought a gun and learned how to use it all without either of us talking. Surreal. Fucked up. I could almost pretend it’d been a dream if it wasn’t for the extra weight in my purse.

So. Now I had a gun. I just had to stop off and get some groceries before killing Reese. Oh, and maybe some gas.

You can do this, I told myself. Just take it one step at a time.

I made it halfway back to town before reality hit me. Had I lost my fucking mind?

Killing Reese wasn’t an option.

Letting Jessica die wasn’t an option, either. There had to be a solution. That’s when it hit me—Nate. I’d call Nate. If the kidnappers wanted a police report, Nate could make that happen. I supposed I’d probably end up in jail, but that was the least of my concerns at this point. Jail was nothing to me. Hell, it’d be a vacation compared to this.

I grabbed my phone and found his number.

“Get tired of fucking the biker?”

Did he have to be nasty about everything? How had I ever been attracted to this asshole?

“Nate, I really need to talk to you,” I was working hard to keep my voice even. “It’s an emergency.”