“Hold on.” He could hear her typing. Then she rattled off a street and a number that was smack-dab in the middle of the Basilisks’ neighborhood. “But Ozzie,” she said, “you’re not going there alone, right? You’re going to call the police and get backup, right?”
He didn’t want to lie to Delilah, so he thanked her and thumbed off his phone. Putting the pedal to the metal, he listened to the Mustang’s engine roar. “Hang on, sweetheart.” His whispered words were whipped away by the wind screaming through the open window. “I’m coming.”
*
Basilisk Clubhouse
Venom disconnected his call to Crutch in the bike shop, turned to Samantha, and smiled.
Things were going off without a hitch. And Samantha, pretty Samantha, was just where he wanted her.
She had yet to shed a tear. Not when a pistol was pressed against her skull. Not when he bound her hands behind her back and slapped a length of duct tape over her mouth. Not even when he dragged her into the clubhouse, sat her atop a barstool, and taped her ankles to the legs of the chair.
He admired her for that. Admired her, and looked forward to breaking her.
Breaking the strong is always so much more satisfying than breaking the weak.
“Time for you and me to have ourselves a little talk.” He ripped the duct tape from her mouth. She winced and made a small sound as a drop of crimson appeared in the middle of her plump bottom lip. The duct tape had taken some skin with it. First blood. That always made his dick hard.
“There’s nothing to say,” she growled. “Besides the fact that you’re totally fucked.”
“Ohh, such ugly words coming outta that pretty mouth.” He delighted in the fire in her eyes.
“I thought you guys were smart,” she grumbled. He could see the vein pulsing in her neck. He wanted to bite it. “Thought you had to be smart to run all these criminal enterprises without getting caught. But now I know you’ve just been lucky. Because only a dumbshit would snatch me off the street when one of his buddies is rotting in jail for attempting that very thing not twenty-four hours ago. This is the first place the police will look for me.”
Venom grabbed a barstool and pulled it in front of her. He sat, adjusting himself until he was so close, their knees touched. He could feel the warmth of her body. Smell the fabric softener she used and something more. Something earthier. Sexier. Or maybe it was just sex? Yeah, that was it. Samantha smelled of sex.
Dirty little whore. He liked dirty little whores. “See, that’s where you’re wrong, Samantha.” Samantha. He loved saying her name. It felt…intimate. “No one knows where this clubhouse is. So even if the police do come looking for you, they won’t find you. And even if they do suspect the Basilisks are the ones that took you, there’s no way they can prove it. Mr. Danielson can’t identify us. We were wearing masks. The SUV we kidnapped you in is currently being smashed into a cube of twisted steel and plastic at a local junkyard. And the rest of the boys who were part of today’s little human heist? Well, they’re back at work. And we have ten people who’ll swear they’ve been there all day long. So you see, you’re not the only one with sources. But you are the one who’s totally fucked.”
Her lips quivered. That made him so hard, he had to reach down and rearrange himself. Samantha followed the movement of his hand. When she saw how stiff he was for her, her cheeks went white as winter snow.
“Don’t worry,” he told her, anticipation making him sweat. He shrugged out of his biker jacket and smiled when Samantha’s eyes widened. He was a big man. Huge, some might say. And he loved the look that came into people’s eyes when they realized they were in the presence of a predator larger and stronger and far more deadly than themselves. “We’ll get to that in a bit. I promise you. But first I needa know what Marcel Monroe told you two mornings ago. Tell me what you know and how you know it, and I won’t make you pay for shoving that sniveling little shit of a pansy-ass reporter out of the SUV.”
He saw her teeth set, the muscles in her jaw harden.
Just as I suspected, he thought. She’s gonna be a tough nut to crack. Perfect.
He reached out one hand, keeping the other on the butt of the pistol resting against his thigh, and started unbuttoning her shirt. Pop went one little button through its hole. Pop, pop went two more.
She shivered. Either from fear or repulsion. He didn’t care which. It was all the same to him. Holding her gaze, seeing himself reflected in the wide pools of her pupils, he cupped one warm breast and squeezed. A gurgle of pain sounded at the back of her throat. It hit his ears like the sweetest music, traveling down his spine to settle in his cock.
“Samantha,” he whispered, drawing out the S sound at the beginning of her name. “I know it’s a cliché. But there are two ways we can do this. The easy way or the hard way.”
“Fuck you,” she snarled, her hot breath tickling his cheek.
His mouth was next to her ear, so she didn’t see him smile. “Hard way it is then.”
Chapter 20
Ozzie slunk around the back row of shops, searching for the rear door to Feeney’s Flowers. It was the only place still in business in a decaying strip mall. The other shopfronts were closed and shuttered, and the parking lot in front was crumbling and full of rusting shopping carts. In fact, if not for the occasional bark of a dog or the squawk of a TV inside one of the dilapidated houses surrounding the strip mall, Ozzie would have thought perhaps he’d entered a ghost town when he parked at the curb a half block away.
Crouching low and picking his way through empty beer cans, malt liquor bottles, and cigarette butts, he counted doors. Feeney’s Flowers was the fourth business down. And the motorcycle parked out back, especially when combined with the one he’d seen angled in front of the flower shop, was all the evidence he needed to know he was in the right place.
This is their den. He could feel it in the hairs that lifted over his body.
The place was perfect for the bikers. The people who lived around the strip mall were not the kind to call the law, for fear they’d be arrested on drug charges or for squatting in houses that were probably condemned. This was the kind of place where Live and let live was the rule. And Die and let die was a foregone conclusion.
The smell of poverty hung in the air, mixing with the scents of fried food and addiction. A chain-link fence separated the backyards of the houses from the alley behind the strip mall. But the fence was falling down in places, grass and trees taking over where nobody was interested in taming them. The sound of two cats fighting or fucking was obscenely loud in the relative silence.
Adrenaline poured through Ozzie’s bloodstream like battery acid, making his whole body burn and the damaged muscles of his thigh twitch. It was a welcome sensation. As he descended the six steps leading down to the flower shop’s basement door, he racked the slide on his Beretta. The sound of a round chambering was familiar and somehow comforting. What wasn’t comforting was the padlock attached to the back door.