Page 22 of Biker's Hostage

But I knew, in my heart of hearts, that he wouldn’t. He had been through too much to give up now. And that kiss he planted on my lips in the moments before he had run, that was... that wasn’t the kind of thing you could just walk away from, no matter how much you might have wanted to.

I didn’t want him to go. I hated to admit it, even to myself, but the thought of him leaving after everything we had shared… it was enough to send a sickening shiver down my spine. I was starting to get somewhere with him, I could feel it, and the man that lay under the surface, the one he did his best to hide, that man... was who I was falling for. The man beneath the front he had been forced to put up his whole life, the man who was willing to change, who didn’t try to control me. I couldn’t deny it. I wanted him, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to settle for anything less.

My father lifted a hand and grabbed his phone out of his pocket, bringing it to his ear. His eyes narrowed when he heard what was being said, and my heart flipped in my chest. I had a bad feeling I knew what this was about.

“Good,” he barked down the line. “I’ll be there soon. Wait for me. I don’t want you going in until I’m there.” He hung up.

“What was that?” I asked him fearfully—though I knew the answer already. I knew what was going on.

“We’re going to get the bastard who kidnapped you,” he growled.

I grabbed his arm, trying to appeal to some sense of his decency one last time, desperation getting the better of me. “You don’t have to do this, Dad. You don’t. I know you feel like you do, but that’s just... that’s just what being in the Dogs so long has taught you. You can change that, right? You don’t have to be that man anymore...”

I trailed off as I gazed at him, imploring him to listen to me, to believe me, to trust me. But I could see that it had all gone over his head. He had made his mind up, and nothing was going to change it.

He pulled me into a tight hug and pressed a kiss against my temple.

“Don’t worry, Chelsea,” he murmured. “This will all be over soon...”

And with that, he grabbed his jacket and strode to the door, leaving me standing in that apartment with no idea what to do next—and no idea whether I was going to see Zane again.

Alive or dead.

Chapter Sixteen – Zane

I hooked my bag over my shoulder and pulled back the curtains to peer outside. The place looked quiet, but I knew not to trust that, not for a moment. One wrong move and all of this could have come tumbling down.

It had been a few days since I had been holed up in his hotel, and I had made my decision—I needed to leave Atwood and get back to LeGuin before anything else happened. I wasn’t even sure what I had been doing here all this time, if I was being honest. I should have gotten out of there the moment the Dogs had tracked me down, but I hadn’t.

I could tell myself, if I wanted to, that it was because I was waiting for my leg to heal a little, enough that I could drive without it feeling like I was being stabbed in the thigh every time I needed to brake. But there was more to it than that. When I left this place, I knew I would be leaving Chelsea behind for good. And I didn’t know if I could handle that.

Which was fucking crazy, and I knew it. I needed to get my shit together urgently, if I was thinking like that. I had kidnapped her, for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t like we’d had some torrid love affair. I had stolen her away from her life and her family, and the two of us had wound up having sex a few times. That was all it was.

At least, that’s what I kept telling myself.

Because the truth was, I knew there was more to it than that. She could have run so many times, and she didn’t. She chose to stay close to me. She chose to stick around and unpeel some of the layers I had put up to keep the people around me at arm’s length. And when the Dogs had arrived to break her out, she made sure I got out alive.

Whatever we had, it was unlike anything I’d shared with anyone else before, and it had already burned itself into my brain in a way I couldn’t deny. Which was dangerous, because she was the one person on the planet I needed to be keeping my distance from—given what her family would have done to me the moment they got the chance.

I was leaving tonight. No more waiting around, no more trying to fool myself that I could stay here without landing in even more trouble. No, I was gone, well and truly, and I wasn’t looking back, no matter how tempting it might have been.

My car was waiting outside, and I had a handful of stuff I had crammed into a bag—some food, medicine, fresh bindings for my wound. Within a few hours, I would be back home in LeGuin, and this whole mess would be behind me. Nobody there had any connections with the Dogs that I knew of, and I would get out, home free, no reason to look back or wonder what could have been if things had gone differently.

I left the keycard on the counter and checked around the room one last time. I didn’t know what I was looking for, wasn’t like I could have left any of my stuff here, but I was killing time, trying to buy a little more of it before I had to leave this city once and for all.

I pushed that instinct aside and headed for the door, pulling in a deep breath of the night air and glancing around. Looked quiet here tonight. No reason to think they would have been able to find me here, but I couldn’t be sure of it. It depended on how intent her father was on taking revenge on me. Was getting her back enough, or did he want me to pay with more than just a bullet to the leg...?

I climbed into the car, but there was something hanging over my head. Doubt? Maybe. Something more than that. My gut instinct was warning me that there was something else going on here. I’d cultivated it over a long time of working in this business, and I knew there was a damn good reason it was kicking in. Glancing in my rearview mirror, I searched for anyone who might have been watching me, but there was nothing.

I gripped the wheel, exhaling a long breath and forcing myself to calm down. I wasn’t going to be able to leave this place behind if I spent the whole time in a mess of panic. I slowly pulled the car out of the parking lot and hit the road, taking the path that would lead to the highway out of town and toward my home.

As I drove, I couldn’t help but notice how quiet the roads were, the silence hanging in the air, heavy, as though waiting for something. I kept waiting for a flash of headlights, something to tell me there was someone else out here, but—nothing. That was odd. It was late at night, sure, nearly one in the morning, but there was usually traffic passing up and down these parts at all hours of the day.

All at once, a noise perked my ears—an engine, no headlights, and, by the sounds of it, it wasn’t a car. No, that was a bike engine.

And not just one. Soon, the single engine filled out into a chorus of them, and I put my foot down. The Dogs, the fucking Dogs, they found me—just when I was about to make it out of here.

Shit!

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