“We want you to take a deep breath,” I said and popped around my guys with a needle filled with enough medication to knock out a racehorse, ironically enough. “And then relax.”
I jabbed it into the driver’s arm, and the man’s eyes went wide. He looked shocked, blinked a couple of times, and said, “This is new.”
And then he lost consciousness. He fell into Ryker and Kingston’s arms, and they went to quick work using zip ties to bind his wrists and ankles together. Archer and Valen went over them with duct tape, just to be sure. We added a strip to his mouth to silence him on the absolutely slim chance that he would wake up with Maksim getting into the car.
We carried his body to the back of the SUV, opened up the hatch, and rolled him in. I made sure he was on his side so he wouldn’t aspirate his own drool or vomit, but I felt good about him being out like a light. It was going to work out. It had to. Otherwise, I might lose my mind for good.
CHAPTER19
“I hope he stays quiet,”Archer said, donning the driver’s black cap. He was dressed in a black suit and looked quite professional. Sexy, too, because I could envision myself climbing him like a tree and tearing that suit off his hot body. But, of course, we were all hyper-focused on the task at hand, even if the horny little hamster in my head constantly played out sex fantasies while spinning in its wheel.
“He should be okay,” Kingston said. “This is enough to knock anyone out. Just turn the music up for the first couple of blocks.”
That’s where he’d stop at an intersection, and we’d flood into the SUV to capture Maksim. I couldn’t wait. I was vibrating with anticipation. Not just for the look of terror and outrage on his face when he realized what was happening, but the look of recognition when he clued in that it was me.
“Just make sure you come to a full stop and make sure the back doors are open,” Valen said.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Archer snapped, but he seemed nervous. He wasn’t usually the alpha dog in this pack, so to speak. He wanted to be, at times, and he would lead us in certain areas or when Ryker and Kingston were happy to take a back seat. But he’d never handled anything like this on his own before, and I hoped he would find his normal cockiness to push him through. His face softened, and he smiled at Valen, gave him a quick hug, and said, “But thanks, bro. Having you work out the logistics on this has been good for the plan.”
Valen had worked everything out based on Ryker’s overarching plan. Ryker had great ideas, but Valen was good with the details. Those little nagging bits could make or break a situation.
“I think everybody is ready,” I said after shutting the back of the Rolls SUV. We walked the shortcut through the back streets to the intersection, and Archer climbed inside to go pick up Maksim.
The four of us were silent as we walked, ignoring most of the people we passed. There weren’t many out at this time of the morning, and thankfully, we were lucky that Maksim wanted to get to the races first thing. I suspected there was more than just horses on his mind, though. Apparently, the track was a meeting place for a lot of criminal types. Knowing Maksim, he had something else on the side. There was always more to his actions than he let on.
We stood on the corner of the intersection near the stop sign and waited for the SUV to make its way down the street.
“This is weird, isn’t it?” I asked suddenly, rocking back on my heels. I was wearing stylish low-cut boots with a short lift, nice enough to compliment my outfit but flat enough for me to kick or run if I had to.
“What do you mean?” Ryker asked.
“All of it,” I said. “Why can’t our lives be normal? Just a month ago, we were living near campus, going to school, being normal.”
“We’re never going to be normal, princess,” Kingston laughed.
“Why not?” I demanded. It irked me that he laughed at my statement. Sometimes I longed for a white picket fence and a boring, predictable life.
“Well, you have four boyfriends to start,” Valen said, stating the obvious.
The three of them laughed at that, and I bunched up my shoulders and pouted. I hadn’t thought about that during my little self-serving pity fest. Of course, I couldn’t be normal. I’d never been anything close to normal. Normal wasn’t being in love with four men and sharing my bed, my body, and each other with them.
It was obvious that normal for me was just a setting on the washer. Normal was never going to represent my life.
Still, I didn’t like to be wrong. I opened up my mouth to express a counterargument but was stopped dead in mid-breath by the appearance of a Rolls SUV turning the corner three blocks away and cruising slowly down the street.
The reason we chose one with a stop sign was so they would have to stop. If they’d gotten a green light as they went past, we would have been fucked and running after them.
This way, it wasn’t suspicious for Archer to come to a full stop, and we could make our move.
We looked down as the SUV pulled up, but I caught Archer looking at me from the driver’s seat. He was proud, and he had a look on his face that made him beam with his success. I was proud of him, it had been a freaky assignment, but he’d understood it and pulled through.
“Holy shit, we might pull this off,” Valen breathed next to me.
I nudged him and smiled when he looked down.
“Fuck yeah, we are,” I said, and the SUV came to a stop.
As we’d planned, Ryker and Valen opened the doors next to the sidewalk while Kingston and I rushed to the other side. It all happened so fast that I didn’t remember to breathe until I was sitting inside and Archer was hitting the gas. The SUV accelerated, and I was thrown to the seat.