Page 4 of Pay the Price

“I didn’t know Ax’s cousin owns that diner,” Otis said.

“He doesn’t,” Jace said.

Otis scowled. “Then why’d you tell Crash he did?”

“Because there’s nothing worse than someone who steals from his own.” Jace’s honor code was militant and unconventional, but it was there.

I walked to Benji’s driver’s side and turned over everything Crash had said.

I looked at Jace and Otis over the roof. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Are you thinking someone might be holding Daisy at the dam downstream from Mossy Glen?” Otis asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” I said.

“If we’re all thinking the same thing, then why the fuck are we standing around holding our dicks?” Jace asked, opening the passenger side door. “Let’s fucking go.”

Chapter 2

Daisy

Iwas drifting through a blissful darkness when heavy footsteps pulled me from sleep.

I struggled to get my bearings as the man in the ski mask entered the room with a tray of food. Usually I heard the key in the door first, but sleep had become my sanctuary in the hours between food drops and escorted trips to a utilitarian bathroom down the concrete hall outside the room where I was kept prisoner.

Only a little bit of light leaked in from a row of narrow glassless windows set into the wall under the ceiling, but I’d had more food deliveries than I could count, so I was guessing I’d been here at least a week, maybe longer.

The door swung shut behind the guard but I didn’t bother making a run for it. I’d tried that exactly once in the early days of my captivity. Not only had the door locked automatically when it shut, but I’d gotten a punch to the face for my trouble.

My jawstillhurt.

Like all the guards, this one was big and obviously male, but the ski mask and his clothes — jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt— hid anything that might have given me a clue to his identity, except for a tattoo on the back of his hand, some kind of ax with a thick handle that looked like it was made of sticks.

He set the tray on the floor near the door, then turned to leave.

“How much longer am I going to be here?” My voice bounced off the brick walls of the room and was distorted by the intermittent rush of water that came from beyond my prison.

“Take it up with the boss,” the guard said, unlocking the metal door.

“I’d love to. Can you ask him to pencil me in for tonight?” It wasn’t the first time my dad had resorted to harsh measures to make his point, but this was ridiculous. This wasn’t taking my credit cards or kicking me out of the house.

He’d had Calvinkidnapme, was holding me prisoner, clearly trying to teach me a lesson because I’d moved in with the Beasts.

“Tell him… tell him I’m sorry. That he was right.” It hurt to say it out loud, not because I had a problem admitting when I was wrong, but because I’d started to care about the Beasts. I’d given my virginity to Wolf, had gotten close to Otis, had wanted to get closer to Jace.

It was both humiliatingandpainful.

The guard pulled the door closed and the lock clicked into place with a finality that drained me of hope.

I walked over to the tray by the door, the concrete floor cold under my bare feet. I didn’t know what had happened to my heels, but I assumed they’d fallen off when Calvin grabbed me off the road. At least I’d been wearing jeans when I’d been kidnapped after work — my nice ones, but they were still better than a skirt.

I picked up the tray and took it to the twin-size mattress on the floor. It never stopped being weird to see the gourmet salad and smoothie (not the kind I made myself, but still healthy, withfruit and yogurt and protein powder that left an aftertaste on my tongue), the whole-grain bread and bougie bottled water.

The cognitive dissonance was enough to make me feel crazy — eating food that might be served at Chasen’s, the high-end bistro favored by tourists in Blackwell Falls, while being held prisoner, and not the princess-in-a-tower kind of prisoner either.

Leave it to my dad, the king of discipline, to prioritize healthy food. He’d always insisted we eat “clean,” part of the reason I was so rigid about my morning smoothie, among other things.

I had to force myself to take a drink of the smoothie, not because it wasn’t good but because after days of nothing but health food, I was starting to dream about Syd’s cheeseburgers, gooey pizza, donuts.

---