Page 2

Chapter

Two

GRACE

T he scent of oil, gas fumes, and something far more noxious…

“Damn, Goblin,” Alphabet grumbled. “What the hell are we feeding you, my dude?”

I’d never been so damn happy to hear his voice. The van, we were in the van. I cracked my eyes open, but squeezed them shut almost immediately. It was dark, but the light from the dashboard stabbed me right through the eye like an icepick.

My stomach chose that moment to roll as I burped something distinctly hot and unpleasant. I hated vomiting more than this so I did my best to try and quell the all-out rebellion in my gut.

Goblin licked my face, the roughness of his tongue grounding me in the present. I raised a hand to rest it against the side of his head. He went from nuzzling gentle kisses to licking me from chin to eyebrows. It was almost funny, except it was making the pounding inside my skull worse.

Didn’t stop me from laughing, or at least attempting to laugh. The pain, however, the sound generated made me groan.

“Hey, Gracie,” Alphabet said from ahead of me. “How you doing?”

There was a ten-thousand-dollar question. Kidnapped. Attacked. Assaulted. Kidnapped again. Chained to a wall. Assaulted again? Maybe. Then freed—sorta. Treated. Taken home. Another kidnapping. Attempt that time. Then away with the guys only to be chased, shot at, attacked again , and then…

“I don’t know,” I finally admitted. It was all too much. Each time I tried to sort through it all, the thundering inside my skull took on a jackhammer like quality. It pounded apart the thoughts before I could cobble them together and scattered the debris like so much rock dust.

Goblin let out a little whining sound, but at least he wasn’t licking me anymore. Though he leaned heavily against my shoulder and I kind of wanted to cuddle him.

“Hang on dude,” Alphabet said. “Finding us a spot right now.”

A spot for what? Belatedly, the fact the vehicle was slowing down registered. Goblin leaned into me as our inertia carried us forward. I didn’t go far though, there were straps over my legs and my arms.

After the van came to a stop, Alphabet threw the driver’s side door open and I made the mistake of cracking my eyelids apart. The muddy light from the dim overhead was like a blow right between the eyes.

“Hold tight, Gracie,” Alphabet said. Then the door next to me slid open. The rattle and grind of metal on metal was pure torture. The cacophony just seemed to echo inside my head adding to the hell and agony pulverizing my thoughts. “Goblin, come.”

The puppy left me with a wag of his tail. At least I could register that as it brushed over my hand. Putting my hands down, I tried to push upward, but the seatbelts were kind of in the way.

“Hang on.” Alphabet was there and the snap of the buckles releasing seemed ridiculously loud inside the van.

Warm air teased my skin. The smell of corn chips, a hint of syrup, and a dusting of cloves and cedar, with something spicier. The competing scents were not helping my stomach.

“Let me do the work,” he said, half-lifting me from the seat and I grimaced.

My head did not like the movement. The smell was even worse, it was like rusty metal or something. The cloying odor clung to my nostrils and coated my throat. My stomach rolled, and the sensation of throbbing right behind my eyes made me groan.

“I’m going to throw up,” I warned him.

“I got you,” he promised, then I was mostly upright and turned so my back was to his chest. Oh, look, there was dirt and clumps of grass in front of me.

The sick burned its way up. Vomiting produced nothing but bile and acid. The act, however, hurt my throat as much coming up as it did add to the thunder in my head. Panting, I leaned over the arm that Alphabet kept around my midsection.

Probably a good thing or I would have fallen. My breath came in short little pants. I needed to lift my head cause leaning just seemed to add to the pressure on my forehead.

“Worst. Hangover. Ever.” No sooner did the complaint pass my lips than I frowned. I hadn’t gotten drunk. I hadn’t even been at a party. The present threaded its way past all the pummeling in my skull to offer me a series of unpleasant reminders.

Right.

Not drunk. Not even a little tipsy.

We were in Mexico. At least, I was pretty sure we were. The dry air around us and the darkened landscape offered zero clues. We’d been in a little safehouse, a rustic farmhouse with rattling air conditioning and few amenities.

The guys had been out and Bones was a dick. So I took a walk and then…

“There was a guy.” It was taking a minute to sort through all the disparate pieces and fit them into place. Some were chipped and a little broken, but I had most of it. The giant man with his fat hands and…

“The guy is dead,” Alphabet said, the ease in his voice grounding the panic bubbling in my already beleaguered stomach. “You were out when I got there. Did he do anything I need to know about?”

Did he do anything…?

He’d tried to throttle me. The tightness of his grip on my throat and face seemed to have been permanently imprinted there.

“Just—I don’t know. You were out there calling me.” That little piece just jostled loose. The guy had been gripping my throat and then he hit my head on the wall. I lifted my hand and touched my fingers to the skin at my neck like I could still feel the guy.

My feet were getting steadier. The dry air wasn’t cold, but it seemed chillier against my overheated skin. When I tugged a little at Alphabet, he eased his arm from around my midsection.

“Take it easy,” he warned. “I don’t want you falling.”

“Ditto,” I murmured. I needed to move, to get away from the furnace he seemed to create pressed up against me. The slide of his hand over my abdomen to my hip was light and not remotely invasive.

That was something.

I was so over people grabbing me. Just…

Tears burned in my eyes and I shook my head—a mistake—and squeezed my eyes shut to make them go away.

“Careful,” Alphabet cautioned again after my first wobbling steps.

“Where are we?” I focused on that rather than what could have happened or did happen, shutting all of that away in the same box I’d been stuffing everything else. It was going to burst sooner or later, but I couldn’t afford to fall completely apart.

Not yet.

I will , I promised myself. Later.

Ruthlessly suppressing everything wasn’t healthy, blah, blah, blah. But I needed to be aware of what was happening and the emotional fallout was going to make all this other trauma look like a walk in the park. So yeah, for now, shutting that shit down was the way to go.

“Honestly,” Alphabet said with a long sigh. “Not really sure. I mean, we’re halfway between where we were and a town called La Seguridad .” Tiredness marked the words.

I frowned, adding that new snippet of information to the other bits and pieces. Hands on my hips, I continued to pace away slowly.

“Here,” Alphabet suddenly appeared next to me, bottle of water in hand.

That looked frigging amazing. It was also cold and I rinsed my mouth with the first couple of sips then spit it out before I took a longer drink. Closing my eyes, I pressed the bottle to my cheek.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Alphabet said by way of answer, and it took a moment for those three syllables to sink in. Twisting, I finally looked at him.

It was still an almost impossible dark out here, but the muddy little light from inside the van offered a suggestion of illumination. But Alphabet stood between me and the van so it made “seeing” him a challenge.

“For what?” I grimaced. Honestly, he could be apologizing for just about anything really. Holding me captive. Not letting me call or go see about my sister. Maybe the fact that boney boy was a dick. The possibilities were a little wide and varied.

A damp nose brushed against my hand and I glanced down to find Goblin had rejoined us. Another bump of his head to my palm, I gave him a gentle scratch between the eyes.

“For you getting hurt on my watch.” Alphabet turned away. “Shouldn’t have happened.”

“It’s not your fault.” I ran my fingers through my hair, carefully aware of the tenderness along the back of my skull. There was definitely a lump and the hair had matted some. I pulled my hand back and stared at my fingers. I couldn’t tell if there was blood on them.

“I said you would be safe with us,” Alphabet said as he continued to the back of the van. He popped open one of the doors and the muddy light there hit him. The dark stain on his shirt extended down to his jeans and across his neck.

The rusty smell hit me again when the breeze shifted. Alphabet peeled the shirt off of himself. The way it stuck to him as he dragged it upwards and seemed to fight letting go made me grimace.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Gracie,” he said without looking at me. He dropped the shirt to the ground with a plop and my stomach rolled. With the light on him, the stain on the shirt had also smeared his chest.

It was blood.

He was covered in blood.

Goblin let out a low whine and it jerked my attention downward.

“Take a deep breath,” Alphabet said. “We’re both alive and the threat has been dealt with.”

I crouched to pet Goblin rather than waver on my feet. I was already fighting to keep from getting sick again. The water helped and the air helped, but…

Alphabet had wipes in his hands and he was cleaning himself up. “Good girl,” he said, shooting me a look. “Just give me a sec and you won’t have to smell or see it. Then we can get you cleaned up too. How’s the head?”

“Still hurts,” I admitted, sliding past the idea that I needed to clean up too, especially since my back was sticky. “Hurts a lot.”

“Keep hydrating,” Alphabet advised as he studied his arms before wiping them down again. He glanced over at me. “Sit on the ground if you need it or sit in the back of the van. I don’t want you to fall or pass out.”

I’d have argued that I wasn’t likely to pass out, but somehow, I didn’t have it in me to pick the fight. With Goblin planted next to me, I took a seat on the hard packed earth. The dog leaned into me, his tongue lolling in that happy grin he wore.

With a sigh, I glanced back at Alphabet as I took another swallow of water. He wore a gun strapped to his hip. I somehow doubted he planned to change his jeans out here. Hopefully, they weren’t as bloody.

I avoided looking at his crotch as I swept my gaze lower and then froze. “Oh my god…”

“What?” He was two strides away from the van and the gun that had been holstered was now in his hand. He swept the area with a look before he focused on me. Even Goblin had gone still and alert next to me. “What did you see?”

“You have a knife in your leg—and your foot.” I gawked at him. There was no mistaking the hilt that jutted upwards from his boot and lower shin. How the hell was he even walking around like… “I don’t really know first aid, but we need to do something.”

There was a brief pause as Alphabet glanced down at his leg and then back at me. “Oh. That’s not a problem.” His faint smile held no amusement or comfort. “I thought something was really wrong.”

He slid the gun away with a sigh, then made a flat hand motion and Goblin went back to panting and relaxed against me.

“ Not a problem?” I stared at him. “You have a knife in your foot.” Yes, my head was killing me but was he insane ?

“Easy, Gracie,” Alphabet said, making that same flat hand gesture even as his voice took on a soothing note. “Come here.”

“Why?” Instantly suspicious, I put the cap back on the water bottle.

“I’d say trust me, but I know we’ve lost a few steps there. So just come here and I’ll show you why it’s not a problem.”

He was going to show me why…

Maybe I’d just taken one too many blows over the past few days, or the latest concussion had knocked something loose in my brain. Pushing up from the ground, I rose carefully.

Hand extended, he took a step toward me and I had to repress a shudder at the fact he was putting weight on that leg. Still, I took a beat to make sure I wasn’t going to fall on my face before I headed toward him.

Goblin trotted next to me, seemingly unconcerned. Once I made it to the back of the van, Alphabet backed up a couple of steps and motioned to me to sit. At my bland stare, he gazed back—waiting.

Right, if I wanted to know, I had to cooperate. “I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I’m really not good with orders.”

“You’re not?” He even managed to sound scandalized. “Total shocker, Gracie-girl.” I rolled my eyes and sat.

“Ass.”

“Sometimes,” he said, and this time there was a real hint of humor in his smile. “Now, take a breath. The knife is fine and I kind of forgot it was there.”

How the hell did you forget something like that?

He braced his foot on the back of the open van next to me. Yes, it gave me a wonderful up close and personal view of the hilt of the blade, the bloody smears on the handle and the fact that his jeans did have blood on them—only none near his lower leg or foot.

“Gonna yank it out,” he warned me about two seconds before he jerked the blade out. It took some effort for him to get it out and there had to have been four or five inches of steel embedded in him.

No blood sprayed.

He didn’t make a sound.

And the knife was out.

“Like I said, not a problem,” Alphabet said. When I lifted my gaze to him, he set the knife aside and then rolled up his pant leg to reveal the prosthetic beneath. “See?”