And due to the decree of the meathead who was guarding us that we couldn’t talk, I hadn’t been able to ask Ryn about Axl.
God, if I was still talking to Mick, I’d quit talking to him. I’d then cut him out of every picture I had that he was in. After that, I didn’t know. Possibly sew a voodoo doll of him and stick pins in it. Or perhaps burn him in effigy.
Something.
On this thought, the meathead who kept telling us to shut up if we tried to speak got a call. Since I had a view to the door, I watched as he looked at the screen on his phone and then moved out of the room.
A desolate room, by the way.
Four walls.
Wood floor.
No windows.
And four chairs with our asses tied to them.
Oh, and there wasn’t a lot of heat, something I was learning was de rigueur with kidnappings.
It wasn’t freezing, but it wasn’t toasty warm either.
In fact, my fingers were getting numb from the cold.
They’d put us in hoods after they stuffed us in their cars, so I had no idea where we were.
That was fun.
Not.
I watched him go, and the instant the door closed behind him, I twisted my neck and asked Ryn, “You okay?”
“I take kickboxing. I got a good one to the balls of one of them. So now we can say he’s not my biggest fan,” she replied.
“But otherwise, you’re okay?” I pushed.
“Well, if being tied to a chair but doing it breathing and without any broken bones is okay, then yeah. I’m okay,” she said.
Yes.
That was our new definition of okay.
“Axl?” I went on.
There was a beat of silence.
My heart thumped hard.
“Ryn!” I hissed, returning my attention to the door.
“There was a firefight. I mean, like, lots of bullets were exchanged. I think he worried I would get caught in the crossfire. And, you know, I was worried too. He stopped shooting, shouted ‘cease fire’ about a million times, and showed himself, lifting his hands. My guess, he thought, since we were in freaking Cherry Creek mall’s parking garage and someone had to have called the cops, seeing as there were people shooting at each other and hitting cars and windows were exploding and such, those assholes might feel in the mood to negotiate before the cops got there. But when Axl showed himself, he didn’t have his gun. They opened fire on him and, and…”
As she trailed off, there was a beat of nothing, though my blood pressure skyrocketed through it, before I heard a muffled sob and felt our chairs move with her body bucking.
Oh no.
No.
I closed my eyes and dropped my head.
“They shot him?” Hattie whispered, her voice not only quiet, but husky with emotion.
So.
Totally.
Into Axl.
“I-I don’t know. He went d-down, and…and I d-didn’t see him again,” Ryn told her brokenly.
I lifted my head, opened my eyes and focused on the door.
“Maybe he hit the deck so he wouldn’t be shot,” Pepper suggested.
“M-maybe,” Ryn muttered.
I stared at the door.
“Think positive, sweets,” Pepper urged.
Ryn didn’t reply.
I continued to stare at the door.
After a few seconds, Hattie asked, “They’re gonna come and rescue us. The boys are? They’re gonna come get us, right?”
They were.
Absolutely.
They would just because that was who they were.
But Auggie was into Pepper.
And Axl was into Hattie.
Not to mention Boone’s brain had already claimed Ryn as his even if Boone as a whole had not.
And I was Mag’s.
Definitely.
We were moving in together.
We were discussing the proper placement of kitchen items.
We both liked John Wick and Iron Giant. And I’d recently discovered, although the film was hotly debated, we both were on the same side and thought Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was a masterpiece.
Not to mention, the last time I caught him on his laptop, he wasn’t looking at homes. He was looking at awesome, top-of-the-line turntables. This meant he liked vinyl. And I liked vinyl. But more, he wanted to make it so we could listen to vinyl.
Together.
He was going to buy a house and I was going to boho the shit out of it and we were gonna live there, listening to vinyl.
And okay, maybe after Mag asked me if I wanted kids, I’d secretly started daydreaming about little boys with electric-blue eyes and little girls with dark curls.