“Ugh!” a man cries in surprise. “They pay extra for the chubby, feisty ones?”
Another man laughs, and then my entire body is thrown. I’m airborne, and when I hit the surface, it’s the floor of something dirty and rubbery. Some kind of a van or a truck, because after I’m thrown to the floor, I hear two large doors clang shut. “Hey!” I manage to howl, but the words only come out muffled.
Someone is towering over me then. I can tell by the shadows that fall over my face even though I can’t see. I whimper and kick, to no avail. I feel a sharp pain in the spot where my neck meets my shoulder, a jab.
And everything goes black.
FIFTEEN
Crosby
When I step into the apartment, nothing seems awry at first. And then, I notice the Fender. My baby’s got a guitar string missing.
Yeah, my hackles are way the fuck up. So many hackles, whatever those are, are sky-high.
Somebody’s here.
Despite my size, I’m not much of a fighter. In my heightened state of awareness, I recall what I’ve seen in horror movies because that is what this feels like. So, before gingerly stepping any farther into the apartment, the first thing I do is check behind the door.
And that is when I’m jumped from behind.
Immediately my hands go to my throat and thank fuck they do because someone is trying to garrote me with a guitar string.
“Hey!” I grit out, twisting my body with one powerful jerk, sending my attacker crashing to the floor. The man looking back at me is not someone I recognize, but I recall the tattoos and symbols on his leather jacket. Yeah. I knew, sooner or later, they would come for me.
“Where the fuck were you waiting for me, in the fridge?” I ask.
That’s when I hear a muffled scream outside. My lungs explode. “Leela!” But it’s too late.
My attacker rises from the floor and tackles me in my momentary distraction while a second guy comes out of nowhere and pins me to the floor, face down.
I roar out again and struggle with everything in me, but throwing two huge dudes off me takes a while.
“Where’s the money, Jason? Where’s the fucking money?”
I don’t even care that they think I’m my cousin; I don’t even care that these morons were sent here by their boss and don’t know that I’m not the guy who stole the money or the weed or hid my cousin and facilitated a significant theft from the gang’s drug inventory. All I care about is getting to Leela before something happens to her.
With a rush of white-hot rage, I manage to writhe and twist and get free of the first guy, who’s attempting to twist my guitar string around my ankles. One mighty donkey kick connects with cartilage, and the momentum combined with the shock of spraying blood from the first guy’s nose throws the second guy off my back.
I sprint toward the concrete stairs through the open door and bellow her name again. “Leela!”
My assailants are right behind me, and the next thing I know, one of them has my arm twisted behind my back, and the three of us are tumbling down the concrete steps.
My ribs and face are scraped up pretty badly by the time we crash to the bottom, but I feel no pain. One of my attackers lies at the foot of the stairs, unconscious and with a leg bent in the wrong direction. The other is cursing and groaning, holding a rib, but still looks like he intends to come after me.
I use the railing to pull myself to my feet and scramble out to the parking lot.
Scanning the lot, I see that she’s gone. The instantaneous feeling of utter desolation overwhelms me and brings me to my knees.
Where the fuck did she go?
SIXTEEN
Leela
When I come to,the first thing I notice is the stench of oil and metal through the fabric of the burlap sack that’s been shoved over my head. I move my arms, intending to remove the thing covering my face, but my wrists are tied to the chair that I’m sitting in.
I sense someone nearby, and I try to kick out, only to discover my ankles are also restrained.