black mask, which muffles his gruff voice. He hops into the back, and crouched over, walks to me.
Leaving the cloth that’s tied around my head in place and keeping me gagged, he unlocks the cuffs on my wrists.
As soon as my hands are free, I swing my arms at his face as hard as I can. He seizes both of them at once and bends my hands back at the wrists. Pain shoots through my arms, and I give a muffled scream. His movements bear the speed and skill of a trained fighter, the kind I’ve seen Deacon Harmon use a time or two.
Okay, not a good idea to try to get away from this guy without a plan that doesn’t involve fighting him. He releases my arms and draws a gun from behind him, cocks it, and puts the barrel to my forehead.
Terror rips through me. I go still, jerking my head in a nod of cooperation.
“Next time I have to pull this, it goes off,” he rasps.
Another jerky nod.
He shoves his gun into the back of his pants and slaps the cuffs on my wrists. Next, of all things, he jerks off my shoes and socks and tosses them aside.
The idea of his leaving my feet bare, and the horror of what he might plan to do to them makes me panic. I try to kick him without thinking. It’s impossible to aim accurately with my ankles tied, and he easily evades the blow with a grunt of surprise.
As if realizing he can’t get near my legs, he grabs my wrist and sidles backward out of the van, dragging me with him. I’m spun around, pulled out headfirst. He hauls me out so hard that with my ankles bound, I fall to the ground on my backside.
I cry out, the aggression ramping up my fear. He doesn’t bring me to my feet or give me a chance to see where he’s taken me. Instead, he drags me backward by the wrists across scorched, hard sand.
“I should have figured you’d be trouble if he had a thing for you,” he grumbles. “He’s always had a thing for obstinate girls.”
Spider. He’s talking about Spider. I’ve heard Spider say how much he likes my fire. This guy has to be one of the Satan’s Bastards. I can hear what sounds like disdain for the he he’s talking about.
My surroundings pass by in a blur as he drags me across white tiles into a dimly lit back hall. He hauls me into a large white-walled room, past a metal island like you’d find in a restaurant kitchen. At the back of the room, a few feet from the opening of the hallway, he shoves me against a steel surface—a door, because it rattles when my back hits it.
My already pounding head bumps the steel, causing the pain there to blaze. I groan.
He squats and takes out his gun, shoving it under my chin. “A word to the wise.” He puts his face close enough to mine that I can see the fine fiber weaving of his mask. The smell of stale smoke and gunpowder from him makes my nose twitch. “I have orders to keep you intact, but if you make this difficult for me, I have no problem killing you. Understand?”
Intact? The phrasing strikes me as odd, but it’s also alarming. The words reduce me to an object, a thing without emotions to consider. I shiver as my panicked brain works out what he’s getting at.
The Satan’s Bastards want me alive and undamaged so that the president can deal with me personally. Revenge against Spider for the death of his brother. Theoretically, my captor can’t hurt me, but if I put up too much of a fight, he’ll kill me and then probably find some way to justify it to the Bastards when they show up.
He might be bluffing to keep me in line, but I know better than to take the chance.
I’d give anything to spit in this guy’s face, but I wouldn’t dare do that either, even if I wasn’t gagged. I force myself to nod.
The kidnapper removes the gun, putting it away again. He unlocks the cuffs, then pulls my wrist up, cuffing it to a metal handle that runs the length of the door, a few inches above my head.
Fear swells in me until I can barely breathe, but there’s nothing I can do except let him cuff my other wrist to the handle too.
His job done,