Up in Smoke (King #8)

I don’t give the thought time to process because time is a luxury I don’t have.

I spring from the bed and bolt across the room. My legs are screaming because something is clawing at them from the inside, raking down my every muscle like jagged knives being dragged across my skin. I run as fast as I can, but I know it’s not fast enough because I’m limping like my feet are anchors I’m struggling to drag behind me.

I’m lifted off my feet and tossed through the air with ease, like a newspaper flippantly tossed onto a porch on Sunday morning. I hit the mattress with such force I bounce off, landing on my stomach onto the dirty carpet on the other side of the bed. The wind is sucked from my lungs on impact. My cheek stings as if I hit concrete instead of wiry shag carpeting.

My captor thuds over to where I’m gasping for breath. He growls, and it’s like I can feel his anger sailing toward me with the dust in the air. I hear it in the way he cracks his knuckles. I see it in the way he cocks his head from one side to the other and his nostrils flare. I can smell it permeating off him like a new Calvin Klein fragrance. Hatred, for men.

He’s dressed like he was when I first saw him at the service station. Tight black t-shirt revealing the vast number of interconnecting colorful tattoos running the length of his muscular arms. Plain black leather vest. Dark low-slung jeans. Black scuffed boots. He’s got two thick silver bracelets adorning both wrists, a chain connecting each pair.

He moves closer. They aren’t bracelets.

They’re handcuffs.

A pair for each wrist.

Revulsion and loathing cross over his tanned face, twisting his thick lips.

How did I ever think this man was beautiful?

“Please. Don’t hurt me. I’ll give you whatever you want.” I beg, hating the way I don’t recognize my own voice.

“Yes, you will,” he says, crouching closer, his breath on my cheek. He isn’t touching me, but I can feel him everywhere. Around me. Against my skin, in the pit growing in the bottom of my stomach. In the spike of adrenaline surging through my heart. “Where the fuck is your old man?”

My old man. My father.

My lungs inflate, drawing in a much needed gulp of breath, bringing new life to my thoughts.

He wants my father, not me. He doesn’t know the truth.

I’d feel slightly relieved because it means my work is safe, even if I’m not. At least for now.

“Answer me!”

“I…I don’t know,” I lie on a strangled exhale. I turn my head back to the floor, the curtain of my hair I’m used to hiding behind falls between us. But he isn’t a high school kid. My hair isn’t going to do much to protect me now.

“Bullshit,” he growls, taking a handful of my hair and twisting it in his hands so I have no choice but to face him. My scalp burns.

“Let’s try this again,” he seethes. He flips me over onto my back and cages my torso in with his big thighs on each side of my hips. He lifts my wrists above my head and holds them there. “Where’s your old…” his words suddenly trail off. He leans closer. His brows lift then furrow again, lining his forehead in confusion. He’s unmoving. Unbreathing.

I do the same, remaining as still as I’ve ever been in fear that even the smallest blink will trigger his rage and set him off down a path there won’t be an escape from.

Eons pass before he blinks back through wherever it is he’d gone. He flips me over onto my back, keeping my hair firmly between his fingers. He twists it until I can hear hairs ripping free from my heated scalp. “The truth. Now,” he demands.

I can barely think with the pressure mounting inside my skull. I’m at this man’s mercy, and that’s only if he has any.

“I haven’t spoken to my father in years,” I tell him. My eyes water.

He yanks my hair back so hard I have no choice but to look up at him. Tears leak from my eyes and spill down my cheeks into my ears and hair.

He scans my face again, this time not in confusion but like a human lie detector conducting a scan. He reaches up with his free hand. I try to pull away but only manage to inflict more pain on my own scalp. He surprises me by running his fingertips over my lips, slowly tracing both the top and then bottom. My stomach turns as fear stabs its way through my body.

“It’s a fucking shame I can’t keep you. You’d make a pretty little pet.” His dark words are laced with even darker meaning. “Tell me, hellion.” He says. “Why didn’t you ask me why I was taking you? Or why you’re here?”

“I…I…” I stutter.

Shit.

“I think it’s because you already know.”

He releases my hair and I fall forward onto the floor at his feet. Relief and pain crash into the top of my head.

“I don’t know what you’re…”

“Don’t play dumb. That shit won’t work. Not with me. Your old man stole from the wrong people,” he grinds out. On the side of his neck is an elaborate tattoo of a pocket watch where a thick vein throbs directly under the second hand. “People who aren’t as patient as I am.”

“I’m telling you the truth. I haven’t spoken to him in years,” I tell him.

“The question is where he is, not if you’ve fucking chatted lately!” He leans down so close his nose is almost touching mine. His nostrils flare. He’s losing his patience, and I’m losing my shit.

“I don’t have any money,” I tell him. “But I-I can get it. I just need a laptop, and I can—”

“Even if I believed you, that’s not gonna fucking happen. Money isn’t all your old man stole.” He stands, towering high above me like a god looking down from heaven, peeking into Hell.

He’s living proof that as humans our outsides don’t always match our insides. His good looks are wasted. A travesty. A distraction. No more effective than marker filling in for wallpaper.

“If you won’t tell me where he is, then we’ll have to make him come to us. You know how we’ll do that?”

“It doesn’t matter. He won’t come for me.” It’s the truth. I feel a little stronger for being the one holding the cards even if those cards are face cards, and that face is the grim reaper. I take a deep breath. One and then another. Each painful inhale gives me more strength. More determination. More will to fight.

“You’re awfully smart for a girl who’s so fucking dumb,” he says with a shake of his head.

“I’m not dumb,” I say through my teeth. “My father used to tell me I was dumb. He was wrong, too.”

“Oh yeah? You jumped from a moving car,” he points out, his voice so deep it rumbles like the engine of his motorcycle and I can feel his words as well as hear them.

“That was brave,” I argue.

He’s looking at me with interest but doesn’t say anything.

“If you’re going to kill me, then just do it,” I challenge.

His chuckle is low and menacing. “You’re not doing much to prove your point about not being dumb, hellion.”

I meet his gaze. “Death on my terms? Seems pretty smart to me.” I shrug. “I can’t give you what you’re looking for so I’m dead either way, right?”