Loaded: A Bad Boy Romance (5 page)

“This will go better if you don’t try to make a scene,” I tell her. I’ve been careful about how I talk all night, but I can hear Chavez Heights slipping into my voice now.

“Trust me on that.”

Her eyes flick to the window, where Andres is still on the ground outside.

I take that as her agreement and back out of the parking spot. I pull out onto Sunset Boulevard and take that to the freeway. It’s nearly midnight on Saturday, so there’s no traffic. In no time at all, we’re out of Los Angeles.

I
try
to distract myself by keeping track of the route we’re taking. We took Sunset to the 405 to the 5, and now we’re taking the 14 through the desert mountains, my ears popping. My mind is spinning out of control, and I’m remembering every TV show and movie I’ve ever seen where someone got kidnapped. Keeping track of where we’re going seems like a good idea, and more importantly, it’s the only idea I
have
.

I’m shaking and crying and trying not to do either. I put my seatbelt on even though it seems like I’m going to die. My feet are sore from kicking at the windows in my heels.

I have no idea what the
fuck
is going on: I was at Karen’s wedding, and things got a little crazy with this guy, and then he shoved me into this car.

When someone tried to stop him, he beat that guy senseless, and now Alex or whatever his real name is won’t even speak to me.

I feel like I’m in a nightmare, only it’s obviously real. Knowing what highway I’m on feels like it’s the only thing anchoring me to reality and keeping me from spinning out every terrifying possibility. It’s the one thing I can actually
do
right now.

Is this some sort of horrible, horrible prank? Are Nick and Andrew behind this, somehow?

Am I being kidnapped? Sold into sex slavery?

Are we bound for some weird desert cult, where I’m going to be a bride for the cult leader and have to bear him ten children or something?

That’s the same thing as sex slavery
, I think.

I take a deep breath and let it out, shuddering.

I didn’t think middle-class white girls got kidnapped into sex slavery
, I think, staring out the window.

Then I immediately feel bad for thinking I’m above it.

It’s just... I have friends and family who’ll raise the alert,
I think.
There has to be someone easier to kidnap
.

He’s listening to a rap station, but suddenly the volume goes down and he clears his throat.

“You don’t know what this is about,” he says.

I can see his ice-blue eyes in the rear view mirror. A wave of revulsion passes through me, and I clench my fists,
furious
at myself.

I do not, as a rule, let strangers finger me at weddings. Of
course
the one time it happens, it’s with the worst
possible
person.

I shake my head at him.

“Well, you can blame your dad,” he says.

I blink. My eyelids feel like they’re covered with sandpaper.

My dad?
I think.

My dad has glasses that were last cool in the 1980s, exclusively wears short-sleeve button-down shirts, and has eaten a bologna sandwich with horseradish and mayonnaise for lunch every day that I’ve been alive. He listens to Rush in the car and plays the air drums
very
enthusiastically at stop lights.

For a moment I’m too confused to be scared.

“What?” I ask.

“Your father took on some accounting work for a... criminal organization,” he says.

I stare.

Then I burst out laughing. I have no idea why.

It feels like someone else is in my body, and I’m just sitting there watching it happen, but that’s just so fucking ludicrous that there’s no other response.

“No, he didn’t,” I say, between hysterical giggles. I can barely even get the words out. “He fucking loves — oh god...”

I’m laughing so hard I can’t speak. Tears are running down my face.

Somewhere, I’m aware that I must be losing my mind.

“He fucking loves Fleetwood Mac,” I finally get out, gasping for air.

I snort when I inhale. I’m starting to get a stitch in my side, and I massage it with one hand.

“He’s not working for criminals,” I say, wiping tears from my face.

Then, a glimmer of hope.

“Did Andrew and Nick put you up to this?”

“Your ex and his friend?” he asks.

Please say yes,
I think.

I’ll fucking
murder
them, but it’s miles better than any alternative.

“No,” he says. “Your father does our books, and he’s threatening to go to the feds.”

I try to make my face serious, but I can’t stop laughing. I don’t even
want
to laugh. I don’t think this is funny, not at all, but it feels totally beyond my control.

“That’s fucking ludicrous,” I say, taking a deep breath. A giggle escapes, and my voice pitches higher. “I don’t think he’s ever gotten a speeding ticket.”

“People will do surprising things for money,” he says, softly.

Still half-giggling despite myself, I lean forward and cover my face with my hands.

“You have to have the wrong person,” I say. “There’s just no way. There’s no fucking way.”

“Patrick Fulbright, West Valley Circle, Encino, California?” he asks. “Worked at Smithman Associates for thirty years?”

I look up but don’t answer.

“Wears a lot of short-sleeve button down shirts?”

Finally, I stop laughing. I try to wrap my brain about this but I can’t. It still seems like it’s happening to someone else, in a dream.

“Have you seen your dad in the past few days?”

I think. The last time was Tuesday, when he took me to our favorite burger joint for our weekly dinner. He refuses to call it a date, because he thinks that’s creepy.

I don’t answer Alex, though.

“He’s missing,” Alex goes on. “You’re leverage so he doesn’t talk.”

I rub my hands over my face again, because touching myself grounds me somehow.

“What does that
mean?
” I finally ask.

“It means that he comes back, doesn’t go to the feds, and we let you go,” Alex says. “Easy as one, two, three.”

“Bullshit,” I mutter.

“We don’t kill innocent American girls,” Alex says. “That tends to bring the law down, you know.”

“You just kidnap them?” I say.

“Not usually,” he admits.

“Then what the fuck do you have a kidnap car for?” I ask. “There’s no way out of this backseat. It’s not for moving pot or guns or whatever the fuck
business
you’re in.”

He doesn’t answer, and I regret mouthing off
immediately
.

What kind of idiot argues with the guy driving her kidnap car?

Alex doesn’t answer me, not that I expect him to. I get the impression that he’s already told me too much, or at least more than he was supposed to.

We’re both quiet for a long time.

Then I see a sign coming up: Palmdale, next five exits.

I have an idea.

“I have to pee,” I say. I don’t, but I’ll try anything.

He fucking
smiles
. I can see it in his eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Look under your seat,” he says.

I fish under the seat, then pull out two adult diapers.

I stare at them.

Fuck this,
I think.
Fuck this guy, and fuck his organization, and fuck my dad for doing this bullshit, and fuck Karen and Eddie for getting married and fuck the Beverly Hills Resort for having no goddamn security.

Fuck pissing in a diaper in the back seat.

I sink my fingers into a diaper and
pull,
trying to tear the thing apart. Someone’s screaming with rage and then I realize it’s
me
, screaming and tearing at a pair of Depends.

My fingernails pop through the plastic lining and then I just fucking tear at it, scraps of cotton filling or whatever the fuck is in an adult diaper coming out and flying around the back seat. I scream and shred the thing until the backseat is covered in tiny pieces of white fluff, it’s on my dress and in my hair, and I’m breathing hard.

In the driver’s seat, Alex is chuckling.

“Fuck you,” I spit.

“Never seen anyone do that with the diaper,” he says.

“You’re going to fucking
jail
,” I say. I know I should shut my goddamn mouth, but I can’t. “You’re gonna get caught, and you’re gonna go to jail and I swear to
god
I will help put you there, and then some big guy named Tony is going to bend you over in the shower and fuck you in your asshole until it bleeds while his friend Joe shoves his cock down your throat.”

He’s looking at the road, not me.

“I hope you get gang-raped every
day
in prison,” I say.

“Won’t happen,” he says quietly.

I snort.

“Who do you think controls the prisons?” he asks.

I frown. I don’t even know what that question
means
.

“It’s not the guards,” he says, still quiet.

I feel like I’m looking down a well, into some kind of underworld that I’ve never seen before. I’ve never given a single thought to who controls prisons. Isn’t it... the police, or something?

“What are you talking about?” I ask, suddenly uncertain.

“Gangs run prisons,” Alex says, his voice still quiet. “Even if I go, I’m well-affiliated.”

Then he fucking
smiles
.

“Don’t worry about my asshole, Tiger. It’ll be fine.”

G
od
, I can still smell her on my fingers as I drive. Her scent is still there, still intoxicating, and I have to fight my hard-on.

Tessa rages in the back seat, and I just let her do it. She can’t hurt anything back there — except the adult diaper, apparently — and if there’s one thing I understand, it’s being put in a shitty position by your own father.

Besides, it’s kind of hot. There’s something I never thought I’d say: I’m watching a kidnap victim scream and tear apart a diaper, and I’m kind of turned on.

I drive through Palmdale and Lancaster, the last outposts of civilization, and then we’re in the empty desert. Tessa looks exhausted, slumped against the window, watching the darkness roll by. Every so often, a tear rolls down her cheek and she wipes it away.

I feel bad. I do. She doesn’t deserve this, but I’m just doing my job, and if I thought too much about who deserved what, I’d have gotten a bullet to the head a
very
long time ago.

She moves her head against the glass of the window, and I can see her eyelids flicker. We’ve still got another two hours in the car, and I glance at my tuxedo jacket in the passenger seat.

What’s wrong with you?
I wonder.

Have you not fucked up this job enough yet? Is that it?

Her green eyes slide shut, then pop open, and she blinks.

There’s an exit ahead. It’s nothing more than an off-ramp to a dirt road, but I get off on it anyway, and Tessa sits up straight in the back seat, looking from window to window like she can memorize where we are.

I pull over to the side of the road and stop the car. She’s wide awake now.

“Can I trust you not to do something stupid?” I ask.

“Probably not,” she says.

I ignore that.

“I’m going wind your window down and give you my jacket,” I say.

“I don’t want it,” she says.

I ignore that, too, and wind her window down four inches.

Before I can open my door, she’s got her arms out of it, her face against the opening, and she’s screaming bloody
murder
. It doesn’t matter. There’s no one around but me.

I stand by the car patiently, jacket in hand. After a few more screams, she stops and just looks at me.

“You done?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer. After a few moments, she scoots away from the window. I shove my jacket through the opening and hear it fall onto the seat on the other side, and I get back into the driver’s seat.

“Watch your fingers,” I say.

Her hand is still out the window.

“It’ll break all your fingers,” I tell her. “Seen it happen.”

“You probably did it,” she says.

She’s right, but I don’t respond, I just wait. After a moment she pulls her hand back into the car.

I put the window up and drive back onto the highway.

I
t’s
a little after four in the morning when I pull off the highway and onto a gravel track. Tessa finally drifted off to sleep, and even though she refuses to use my jacket for a pillow, in her sleep she’s clutching it in one hand.

I’m always amazed at the places people can fall asleep: airplanes, bathrooms, in a car while being kidnapped, though in her defense, she’s half-drunk, totally exhausted, and lots of people fall asleep in cars.

When we start rumbling over the gravel, she wakes up but doesn’t say anything. The plan called for blindfolding her, but the plan also called for Andres doing this part while I went back to the wedding, and I didn’t think to get the blindfold from him.

Besides, it’s dark, she’s half-asleep, and we’re in the middle of nowhere. The gravel road is pretty slow to drive, even in this car, and it’s about fifteen miles long. The radio signal has been gone for hours, so the car is dead silent.

“Are you sure you’re not going to kill me?” she finally says, so softly I can barely hear her.

“If I were going to kill you, you’d be dead already,” I say. “I’d have done it back in Los Angeles.”

She nods and looks at the window, but I know she can’t see a damn thing.

“If I killed you it would be to send a message,” I say. “I wouldn’t take you to the middle of the desert when no one will ever find you. I’d want you to be found.”

I can just barely see her nod in the back seat.

You’re probably not making her feel much better
, I think.

We don’t speak for the rest of the drive, until I pull up to a house. It’s a double-wide, pre-fab with white vinyl siding, and the desert is already starting to take its toll. There’s a six-foot chain link fence around it, and I stop the car, get out, open the gate, and drive through.

“We’re here,” I tell her.

She’s leaning forward, peering through the windshield.

“Where’s here?” she asks.

“Our safehouse,” I say. “We’re fifteen miles from the nearest road. The closest town is Ballarat, California, and it’s a ghost town that’s thirty miles away. During the day, it usually gets up to one-ten, one-fifteen out here.”

I’m looking through the partition at her, and finally her eyes meet mine.

“You’re telling me there’s nowhere to go,” she says.

“You got it,” I say.

“Are you gonna tell me that the car’s got a thumbprint lock, too?”

“No,” I say. “But the keys are in my pocket, and if I were you, I wouldn’t try to get them.”

She nods slightly, her eyes flicking back to the house.

“Can I get out now?” she asks.

I get out of the car and close the gate. I don’t worry about locking it; she can’t go anywhere, and I hate feeling trapped.

I open her door and offer my hand, which she ignores. She’s covered in wisps of diaper material, and her long dress is wrinkled, her hair half falling down.

I can’t help but take a moment to appreciate how
hot
she is, even now, and I think about her legs wrapped around my waist and that soft
oh!
she made when she came.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says.

“Like what, tiger?” I ask.

She’s looking at everything around us, not me, as she answers.

“Like there’s a chance we’re still gonna fuck,” she says, her voice hard and cold.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I say.

I don’t think there’s an
actual
chance. I’m pretty sure I blew
that
by kidnapping her.

Doesn’t mean I can’t look at a nice ass.

“Come on,” I say. “Inside. Ladies first.”