Page 1 of Accidentally Kidnapping the Biker

Chapter 1

Kat

My bumper looks like an accordion and the left taillight is busted, but the caved-in rear panel isn’t brushing the back tire so I can still drive. I only have to make it twenty more miles to safety. Then I’ll be untouchable by the assholes who are trying to run me off the road. I lost them when I made a quick turn off the interstate onto a secondary highway, but my lead won’t last long. Not when they know where I’m headed.

My temporary refuge is a gas station with two pumps and a small convenience store half a mile south of nowhere, North Dakota. Don’t get me wrong—I love my new home state, but sometimes there is a whole lot of nothing between here and there, and that’s where I am right now. There’s no place to hide and nobody to ask for help, except for the girl behind the cash register and whoever is driving the blue van parked beside the second pump. And I can’t get the cashier involved.

When she sees the blood on my forehead from where my head bounced off the door window, her eyes widen, and she tosses me the key to the bathroom that is on the side of the building. I clean the cut as best I can, but the blood that’s dripped onto my shirt is going to stain. “You’re going to make agreat impression, Kat,” I tell my reflection. I have to leave it. I’ve stayed here too long already.

When I come out of the bathroom, I see a man heading through the convenience store door with a pistol tucked into the back of his jeans. He must have come from one of the two new vehicles bracketing my car front and back. There’s a driver waiting in the second car.

Jefferson Cross isn’t fucking around. All his legal manoeuvres have been a pain in my ass for the last three months, but I never figured he’d take direct action to stop me. Whatever the hell he has going on outside of Lonesome is apparently worth a felony conviction.

I have to move. I won’t get another chance, and the last thing I want to do is bring down hell on the innocent girl working inside. I go the long way around the building, coming out on the opposite side. With my car boxed in, I’m out of options unless I want to try to make my getaway on foot.

My only other chance is the blue van. The driver’s door is open, but I can’t spot the hot, dark-haired man I saw when I pulled up. I don’t have a choice. He’ll be able to call the cops from the convenience store about me stealing his vehicle, and if they pull me over, I’ll have armed protection from the men chasing me. Win-win.

The second driver sees me as I sprint for the van, but he’s facing the wrong way and will have to back up and turn around before he can give chase. I jump into the driver’s seat and slam the door closed. I reach between my legs and grab the lever to pull the seat closer to the steering wheel because whoever was driving before me has legs that go on for miles. Then I jam one foot on the brake, pray, punch the button on the dashboard, and hit the gas.

I hear a thump behind me. Then a groan.Oops. I guess the guy wasn’t in the store after all. “Sorry!” I yell.

“What the fuck?”

I glance in the rearview mirror and see a gigantic, dark-haired man with fire in his eyes climb over the back seat. “Sorry,” I say again.

“Bitch, are you carjacking me?”

“Of course not!” I don’t have a gun. I didn’t even know he was in the car.

“Are you in the wrong vehicle?”

That is a little trickier. “I need to borrow your van.”

“It’s not a fucking loaner. Pull over.” He’s sitting behind the passenger seat now, and I can see what I missed before. Tall, Dark and Pissed Off isn’t just wearing a leather jacket. He’s wearing a cut on top of a leather jacket, with a Lost Souls Motorcycle Club patch barely visible over his shoulder and a name badge on his chest. I can’t keep my eyes on the mirror long enough to read it, not with the road twisting in front of me and the car that just appeared behind us gaining rapidly.

“I can’t.”

“My .357 says you can.”

I risk another glance over my shoulder and see a piece resting on his knee. He’s serious. “Look. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I promise, you’re completely safe with me. I only need your van for twenty miles and then I’ll give it back, but I’m not pulling over. If you want to jump, go ahead, but right now you’re along for the ride. I’ll only take an hour of your time, tops.”

I swear the corner of his mouth turns up a little at my pronouncement, but he taps the barrel against his knee. “That’s not how kidnappings work, sweetheart. You’re going to pay for this.”

I shift my gaze to the mirror and see that the driver of the car behind me has his arm out the window, and he’s holding amatching gun to my kidnappee’s. “Of that, I have no doubt. Get down.”

“You aren’t giving the orders here. Pull over.”

Suddenly the rear window spiderwebs, centered on a new hole in the glass. “Get your ass down. It’s bad enough that I’ve accidentally kidnapped you. I don’t want you to get shot on top of that.”

The fire in his deep brown eyes intensifies, but now it’s focused out the back window instead of on me. “Did those fuckers just shoot at us?”

“At me. Yeah. Sorry about that. They blocked me in at the gas station. My options were to run for it in your van, or fight it out around the gas pumps, and I left my .45 in my other purse.” Damn, I thought Jefferson’s goons were going to throw me in a trunk, not murder me and an innocent bystander. My thoughts jump to the girl working the cash register and the fact that I can’t go back and check on her. “Shit. I hope they didn’t hurt her.”

“Hurt who?”

“The woman at the gas station.”

“Who are they?”

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