Page 4 of Babydoll

With good acting skills, no one could see who you really were.

And that lesson is still serving me well.

Once the paramedics arrive, I slip away and take the stairs two at a time to the back door. Bursting through it, I buckle forward, grabbing my knees and draw in as much fresh air as I can.

“What’s happening in there?”

I look up, still panting and blink at a huge, bald, biker-looking dude standing five feet from me in the near-empty parking lot. With a coppery, goateed-covered chin lift indicating the top apartment—Gage’s apartment, he repeats his question. My eyes drop to his leather cut and the emblem on it and then I glance over my shoulder to buy time to think and calm the fear growing inside me.

Satan’s Ransom was a well-known one-percenter biker club with hands in pretty much every criminal endeavour in River’s End and a five-hundred-mile radius surrounding it. And their members weren’t known for their love of small talk. Or muchtalk at all. What they were known for was action. The violent kind.

The blood seems to drain from my limbs and I start to tremble. This is bad. Very bad. For a second I consider calling for help. Maybe the creepy guy from the front of the building will come, but I toss the idea before even really considering it. I know it won’t do any good. The guy wouldn’t stand a chance against the biker even if he had a good Samaritan bone in his body, which is doubtful in itself. Nope, I’m on my own and the big biker is waiting for an answer.

“In there?” I ask, my voice cracking. Turning back in his direction, I keep my eyes low, noticing the butterscotch candy wrappers scattered around his feet. A biker with a sweet tooth? How bad can he be? But as my gaze rises to his chest, I know the answer.

Very, very bad.

Dude’s a patched member. His name, ‘Python’ is right beneath the Satan’s Ransom insignia on his cut. Getting patched isn’t easy and it most often means you’ve done something so awful that it isn’t worth turning on your MC brothers because no amount of information could get you a deal for a lesser sentence.

“Yeah, in there.” Python presses his lips and his jaw ticks. He’s losing patience with me.

Feeling lightheaded, I take in our surroundings.

The reflection of lights flashing blue, red, and yellow, bounce off trees, ramshackle houses, and cars so old I doubt they run. The police, just out front, are responding to my nine-one-one call. But having just dumped evidence down the toilet, they’d likely think I was involved. A junkie, or a dealer like Gage. Jesus, why did I come here? Why was it so damn important I repay the debt I owed Gage?

But I know the answer. It burns, invisible, inside my chest like the scars hidden beneath Gage’s hair where they made burrholes to stop the swelling in his brain from killing him. Because when we were kids, he’d saved me from a drunk foster father named Carl with unzipped pants and lust replacing the usual cruelty on his face. And because he goaded the pervert into beating him so badly, there was no denying we were abused.

He couldn’t even remember what happened that night. His brain had been damaged too badly by the boot stomps. So yeah, I owed Gage. I owed Gage a lot.

Python takes a step closer to me and my knees buckle. He catches me by the arm and I wince.

“Uh, guy overdosed I think,” I say, forcing myself to look at Python’s face. My heart beats wildly in my throat, both from the memory of Gage and my current predicament.

“Someone you know?” Python’s eyebrows lift in question, but his eyes tell me he damn well knows the answer.

Maybe I can run. Go to the cops, explain what’s happened. Maybe they’ll believe me. And if they don’t, isn’t jail better than whatever this biker plans to do to me?

Fear flares further as he yanks me closer. But I can’t answer. My mouth opens, but the words, if I have any, are frozen. My jaw gapes like a Venus flytrap or something. And my brain shuts down as if it packed up and left with a wave and a ‘see ya, you’re on your own with this one’. Even breathing is difficult—which makes sense since it’s part of the autonomic nervous system, controlled by the brain. Which is gone, remember?

And then we both look behind me at the sound of a firm shout.

“All clear back here.”

Brain coming back online, I start to shout, but stop as the words sink in.

All clear back here.

The biker’s hand clamps tighter around my upper arm.

“Keep your mouth closed,” he warns. “I don’t want to have to break your fucking arm.”

He says this so casually it’s as if we’re having a normal chat and he’s not threatening to hurt me in a parking lot behind a drug dealer’s apartment. A whimper escapes my mouth and tears burn behind my eyes. I won’t be walking away from this. I’d clawed my way out of hell years ago and now I’m falling right back in.

Python grabs my chin and turns me to face him.

“Name’s Python and you’ll be coming with me.” He releases my face and tugs me to follow him. Despite my resistance, he drags me toward his bike with ease.

“Walk properly, gorgeous. You don’t want to piss me off, yeah?”

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