Page 155 of Snared Rider

Desperation forces words from my mouth that I should not speak. Wilson is unpredictable and I should keep quiet, but I can’t.

“Please help him.” I’m not above begging if it helps, but he gives me a macabre grin.

“Well, if Lawler gives me what I want then I’ll consider it. If he doesn’t…” He shifts his shoulders and my stomach fills with ice.

He’ll what?

Scenarios race through my mind, each one worse than the previous. I know this man enjoys violence. He probably gets off on it. I also know being female is not going to protect me here; he has no qualms about taking a fist to a woman—he’d battered his ex-wife, after all.

None of this helps me right now, though, so I swallow my fear and try to focus. I have to focus; I’m the only hope to get us out of here alive.

I need a plan. To make a plan, I need to think.

“If anything happens to him, the Club will kill you. Trust me, you don’t want the Lost Saxons as your enemy.”

His head cocks to the side and I notice in the change of light how lank his dark hair is. This makes me wonder if he’s been holed up in this colliery ever since he took us out on the road. It would explain why the brothers found it hard to pin him down. These sites may be surrounded by the town, but they are shut off. This makes them the perfect place for a half-crazed psychopath like Simon Wilson to do what he wants without fear of getting caught.

And Wilson is a Grade A psychopath.

“Funny. I tried to kill Dean, I put you in the hospital and I shot up the clubhouse, yet there was no response from the Lost Saxons. I think the Club is all talk.”

This was only because they couldn’t find him. If the lads had put their hands on him… Well, I wouldn’t be trussed up like a side of beef in a creepy, abandoned colliery building.

“The Saxons have friends in high places, Wilson.”

Good. My voice doesn’t wobble, even though I feel wobbly myself. I’m barely keeping traction in my legs.

Wilson gets in my face, and I mean he gets in my face. His nose is inches from mine as he hisses, “I don’t care! They took something from me and I want it back. Now, I’ve taken something from them and I’m not giving you back until I get my wife. And Dean, if he wants you to keep breathing, will tell me where Olivia is.”

Tingles work up my spine. They can’t give Wilson back his wife. He’ll kill her, for sure. But if they don’t he will kill me. My life might be an unmitigated disaster, but there is hope of something better on the horizon. I finally sorted things with Logan, I’m moving home, things are on track. Dying would really throw a spanner in the works.

I tug on my bindings again but nothing moves. Where the hell did he learn to tie knots so tight?

Fuck!

“So, what? You’re pissed off with Dean, so you kill me? How’s that fair?” My voice holds a hint of desperate panic because I am both desperate and panicked.

“No one ever said life was fair, sweetheart. Your boyfriend took my wife, my life from me.”

“Dean isn’t my boyfriend.”

He ignores that small yet very significant fact and continues his diatribe. “If he doesn’t tell me where Olivia is I’m going to take something important from him. It’s nothing personal. An eye for an eye and all that.”

My breath catches in my throat at his matter-of-fact statement because hanging from this hook it feels completely personal.

“This is crazy.” This time my voice does not sound strong at all. I sound exactly what I am: scared out of my mind.

He shrugs. “Crazy’s relative.”

My stomach flip-flops. Does he really believe that?

He stares at me for so long I feel uncomfortable under his gaze.

“I just want my wife back.”

“Why? So you can beat her again? She’s better off where she is than being with you.”

And I realise suddenly where the phrase don’t poke the bear comes from because he loses his mind. He grabs the edge of the abandoned desk and upends it in one heave as his screams echo around the building.

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