Victoria
She regretted it immediately.
If being shot at by a stranger was scary, being stuck in a car with Darren Saylor was even worse. Especially when that very same man was refusing to tell her anything, except for telling her to get in his car and pretty much swearing that it wasn’t his club that shot at her. Not “his club.” Probably some other club, then, although he hadn’t said as much.
She leaned over the console to look out the driver’s side window. The windows in Darren’s car were dark. She guessed that the tinted glass was to ensure that no one else could see in, and it sent a shiver down her spine. She wasn’t worried he would hurt her, crazy as that seemed, but she also wasn’t totally at ease with everything that was happening in her life today.
She was sitting in the passenger’s seat. It was difficult not to hug her knees up to her chest, but there was no way she could do that. Darren probably already thought that she was some type of weakling. And she wasn’t, really. She had actually been through enough. Not enough to make her tough shit, but enough that she liked to think of herself as that. Regardless of all that, she was damn near shaking in some guy’s car while she waited for him to get in.
She looked out the window again. What was he even doing anyway? Darren was standing outside of the driver’s side door, with his back pressed against it. She couldn’t see his facial expression from here, although she longed to. There was no way she was going to get out and start asking him things, though. He didn’t have his playful demeanor like he’d had on last night, and something was definitely wrong.
# # #
Darren
Something was more wrong than Victoria could know. Darren breathed out angrily, watching the empty parking lot in front of him. If he’d had time to look, he could probably find a bunch of stray bullets lying around on the concrete. Then it would only be about asking a few questions to figure out who was responsible for this, but he didn’t even need to do that. He already had a guess.
Someone must have seen the way they were talking to each other last night. Maybe they thought it was a couple fighting. Either way, it had to be the doings of a rival MC. He just needed to prove it and bring it up to the right people. The Bloody Saints fought with other gangs, and they argued and they made bad coke deals, but shooting at a woman because they thought she was his girlfriend was too far.
He turned loosely so he could look into the car without Victoria seeing the look on his face. She looked scared. Definitely scared. And that meant he was going to have to take care of her. Annoying as that was, he couldn’t turn his back on her. He hadn’t paid this much attention to a woman since his last relationship, and that had ended messily years ago. But now he felt responsible for Victoria. He just hoped he wasn’t about to start a repeat of the past.
He couldn’t think like that. He was done with dating. Done, for good. He’d just have to find a way to take care of this woman without anything happening between them.
He whistled low under his breath. If he could find a way to do that, he could find a way to do anything. But for now, he had to make sure that Victoria stayed alive. That way she could worry about man troubles later in life, instead of dying within the week. He got in the car.
“You know,” Victoria leaned back in the seat as she talked. She wasn’t as at ease with leaning back like she owned the place as Darren was, but he couldn’t fault her for it. If he did, she would probably slap him. “You basically kidnapped me.” She paused, then said, “No. Scratch that, you did kidnap me.”
The car came to life with a purr of the engine as Darren put the keys in the ignition. He didn’t have to drive that fast now that he knew this chick was alive, but maybe he should anyway, and scare her into shutting up. He didn’t. Instead, he said, “You got in the car willingly.”
“You made me.”
“I think, actually,” he said, backing out and not looking at her as he talked, “that you walked over to the car after demanding the keys, opened the door, got in the passenger’s seat, and waited for me to come get in with you.”
That was exactly what happened. Darren refused to give her the keys, but he’d unlocked the car for her with a quick beep. He didn’t care about Victoria. It just wouldn’t be right to let an innocent woman be murdered to serve as a message to his club. She was a stranger. That was it. A hot stranger, but a stranger nonetheless, and that was exactly how she was going to stay.
“There were implications,” she said.
“Implications aren’t admissible in court.” He’d pulled the car out of his space now, not really caring to check his rear-view mirrors and make sure he wasn’t reversing into someone. There was no one there. Even if there was, they probably weren’t people who should be there, so Darren wouldn’t exactly care if he plowed into a pedestrian or two.
“They are when they’re threats.”
“Goddamn, you are uppity, aren’t you?” He was smiling regardless of the words, but there was no harm in being a little rude. Maybe if she thought he was a complete asshole – and he was, sometimes – she wouldn’t want to be around him, and they could part ways without any of that messy bullshit afterwards. They would have to be stuck around each other for a while, anyway, so that seemed like the best move.
“I’m actually not.”
“Sure.”
# # #
Victoria
Lapsing into silence seemed like the best way to deal with being stuck with Darren Saylor. Victoria didn’t know where they were going or why they were going there, and she was getting pretty pissed off at how casual Darren seemed about the whole thing. But maybe he wasn’t being too casual about it. She looked over at him. His hands were gripping the steering wheel tightly as he drove, and that didn’t look like something a man in control would do.
Still. Whatever concern he might have undoubtedly wasn’t much. It was still enough to make him freak out, though, and Victoria wasn’t sure how she was supposed to feel about that. It was probably better to say nothing instead of making him flip out on her, though, because that seemed like something he might do. So she just leaned back in her seat and kept her mouth shut.
She wasn’t sure where they were going after he’d backed out of the parking lot. The road she was so familiar with from her commute to Lanterns steadily disappeared, but he kept going. There were more trees around them than city by the time she decided she’d better speak up. What if he was just tricking her and was actually a murderer?
No.
That just screamed paranoia.
But she had a right to know what was going on. This was about her, after all. And he wasn’t telling her anything.
“Where are we going?”
He didn’t reply. She looked over at him again. She knew she should probably be looking straight out ahead or out of the window to get a bearing on her whereabouts, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t focus on anything but the silence in the car and how tense it all felt; there was something in the air between them and it hurt her to ignore it. She tried to be patient with Darren’s lack of response, occupying herself by running her eyes over Darren’s face to his neck, to his shoulders, to where his arms reach out for the wheel and, finally, to where his fingers held it.
His entire body was tense. The farther away they got from the city, however, the more he relaxed. No distance could make him quit clutching the wheel so tightly, though, and the sight of it made Victoria’s stomach churn in the worst way. But she was angrier that he hadn’t responded to her question than she was worried about whatever he was worried about. What was wrong with this guy? Who did he think he was?
She knew almost nothing about this guy besides what she heard from rumors, and what they’d said to each other, which was pretty much nothing. Now they were on their way to the middle of nowhere for God knew what reason.
They passed more trees. Darren pulled onto another road and went down it, turning onto another road, and then turning onto another and then going down another…
Victoria wouldn’t know where they were even if she was intent on tracking their course. Luckily, she wasn’t all that intent; in actuality, she didn’t care at all. She just wanted to make sure that this guy wasn’t planning on murdering her once he got her where he wanted.
He stopped the car in silence, and Victoria decided to try asking a question again. Information looked like it was going to be hard to pry from this guy, but maybe if she asked enough questions he would eventually have to answer some of them.
# # #
Darren
And again, he didn’t answer. What was he supposed to say to her? He wasn’t even sure he could look at her yet. This was a huge pain in the ass. She’d done nothing, besides start yelling at him, and he’d done nothing, besides kissing her. And now he was stuck with her. He was undoubtedly stuck with her; he couldn’t leave her alone to go run off and get killed, and that was definitely what was going to happen if he just let her go off on her own.
There was no way it was his club that had done this. Usually he didn’t mess around with civilians when it came to this stuff, and he especially didn’t bring women into it, which was another key reason for why he refused to get into a relationship, but there was little point in ignoring the issue here. Someone must have seen them together at the bar. That bar was dominated by people from Bloody Saints, but sometimes other characters made their way onto the scene there too. It wasn’t like the bar was a clique; it was a public business, and anyone could come in if they wanted – and once there, they could deal with the club, or get kicked out.
The person who saw them, and who decided to kill Victoria, had to be from the Broken Skulls. The Broken Skulls and the Bloody Saints weren’t always friendly. In fact, they were huge rivals, and they were always fighting over business, fighting over women, fighting over who had better bikes, anything. That had changed recently, and now their rivalry had turned deadly. More serious.
He sighed low under his breath, the sound almost coming out like a hiss. How was he supposed to explain this to her? Hey, sorry, a rival club wants to kill you for reasons I don’t know.
But it wasn’t really that he didn’t know. As he’d surmised earlier, they probably thought she was his girlfriend. He had no idea how whatever had gone down in that bar could be construed as a couple’s spat. She’d been yelling at him to get out of the bar and he’d been throwing out smart-assed remarks, clearly the interaction of a pissed off female bartender and…he wasn’t sure what to describe himself as that sounded remotely nice, so he skipped that part. This entire thing made no sense, but he didn’t expect someone from the Broken Skulls to be the smartest. Of course, he had kissed her in the parking lot. Where a stray member of the Broken Skulls might have seen, if he happened to be in the right place at the right time.
No wonder Victoria thought he was trouble.
His heart lurched and he sighed again. Whatever she thought about him didn’t matter. He would trap her here if it meant he could keep her safe. How could he explain it? He couldn’t. He could feel her eyes on him as she watched him, and the watching just made it all the harder for him to come up with words to describe this situation.
“Darren?”
Her voice brought him out of his fog, and he looked over at her. She looked shaken, but not too scared, and a fire was starting to blaze up in her eyes as she glared at him.
She continued, “What the hell is going on?”
And just like that, almost all of his worries for her dissipated. He couldn’t be freaking out over some chick who barely cared about him, if at all. It wasn’t like he cared about her; he was just getting warm feelings in his chest at the thought of protecting a woman, something he hadn’t done in ages, and it was distracting him. It had nothing to do with her personally, and she was an average person to him, at best. At worst she was…he shook his head.
Yeah, no. He couldn’t get soft. Fuck that.
Turning his head away from her to avoid staring at her, he pulled the keys out of the ignition and opened the car door.
“Get out,” he said.
She did.
# # #
Victoria
There were enough trees wherever they were that she could barely see the house in front of them because of the woods surrounding it. The car ride must have been longer than she’d thought. Maybe it was because she hadn’t been focusing on how long it took to get there, but wondering where they were going and why they were going there. Oh, and the number one question: “What does Darren want with me?” Either way, her legs were far sorer than she was expecting them to be, and her calves ached as she swung her legs out of the car.
Darren shut his car door. She did the same, and he locked the car without ceremony, throwing his keys in his pocket and then walking forward without another word. She followed in silence, too, not knowing if she should talk and possibly ruin whatever he was thinking about or if that meant…
She quit thinking about that as they approached the house. It was hidden well within the trees, and she could hardly see it when she was walking up to the place. Now that she was closer, the place was more easily visible, and she drew in a breath at the sight of it.
The house was less of a house and more like a really large cabin. She couldn’t imagine it being something Darren was interested in having in his life; the outside of it, at least, looked like something a well-off family from the suburbs would keep around so they could go visit it in the winter, and it was beautiful. The walls were a fresh, healthy-looking cedar. There was a gorgeous patio on the outside of it, with a staircase leading up to it. On the patio was a large double door with glass windows, but Victoria could scarcely see through into the cabin no matter how hard she strained her eyes.
Darren looked at her, watching the amazement flit across her face. It was silly, really, but he guessed he could see how it could be a big deal to someone who’d never really seen a cabin in their lives before. This place was nothing new to him, though, and had been in the Bloody Saints’ club’s possession for…he didn’t know exactly how long.
“This is a safe house,” he said, finally breaking the silence.
Victoria looked at him in confusion for a second, unsure at what he was getting at since he hadn’t talked in the maybe-an-hour drive here. She’d addressed him directly and he’d ignored her, but now he was just volunteering information? She wanted to go off on him like she had the first time she met him, but then he might shut up and then she wouldn’t get the information she so desperately wanted.
She decided to wait until he was done talking. But what he said next didn’t make any sense.
“You’re staying with me,” he told her.
Sullivan“What do you mean I’m staying with you?” He couldn’t just choose something like this for her. She had a life. An apartment, a job. Well, maybe a job. She would still have to ask Clarissa if she was employed. She didn’t really care at this point, but the more ammunition she had to make Darren feel some guilt, the better. She didn’t have any people necessarily looking for her besides her boss, unfortunately, so she made sure to keep quiet about that. If Darren knew that, he’d probably decide to keep her here even longer.
Darren bounded up the stairs as quickly as he could. He brought out his car keys again – which Victoria noticed had a bunch of keys on the ring. Darren grabbed one of the less-shiny keys off of the ring and brought it to the door, unlocking it. Then he opened the door, leaving it swinging open behind him, and walked in.
What he was saying was obvious. She was supposed to follow him in. Dimly, Victoria wondered if maybe she could just run back towards the car, hot-wire it, and then get back into town. Something told her that if she did that, though, that would be one of the last things she ever did, and she wasn’t interested in dying. As much as she hated the idea of staying anywhere with Darren, the cabin looked big enough that they would not have to be in close proximity to each other all the time. And hanging out with a jerk was preferable to dying anyway.
She stood outside on the porch for a minute, watching the shadow of Darren’s body move from room to room and flip all of the lights on. After the entire cabin was illuminated, she walked in.
And was confronted with the reality that the walls must be super thick or something, because the cabin wasn’t actually all that large. The biggest part of it was the living room, which was directly in front of the door after a short front hallway.
Darren paid no attention to her entering, nor to her roaming the room. She moved through it, running her hands over the glossy wood dresser at the entrance to the living room, touching the couch in the center of it, and leaning over the fireplace at the head of the room. There was no fire lit in it, but there was a stack of firewood right next to the thing, matches, and a poker. Victoria hadn’t really messed around with building a fire before, but it seemed easy enough, so she gave it a try. Soon there was a fire ablaze, warming up the chilly room.
# # #
Darren
Darren watched Victoria struggle with the fire. Yeah, she was definitely a city girl through and through; not that he wasn’t the same, but at least he knew how to start a fire in a fireplace without fumbling and shaking. Was she really that nervous? Fuck. Of course he got stuck with a woman that was this high-strung. He’d hit on, and been with, many women before, but none of them were as anxious as this one.
Or as paranoid.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Victoria swung around as soon as he started walking up behind her, poker in hand.
He sighed. She still didn’t get it? He grabbed the end of the poker, pushing it down and away from them both, and then he took it from her and put it back where it belonged, standing up against the mantle. “Victoria,” he said, “what don’t you get about ‘I’m not trying to kill you?’ This is a safe house.”
“In the middle of the nowhere,” she retorted, rolling her eyes. “And you haven’t told me anything.”
“That’s for your own good.”
He scowled, watching her. She was so intent on making him out to be the bad guy when he was actually just trying to help her. Why was she so frustrating? He clutched his fists at his sides, trying to calm himself, and she did the same.
“Are you mocking me?” he asked. He wasn’t offended by it, like she might be. If anything, it just amused him, and turned him on a little at the same time. Victoria was so much smaller and more helpless than he was, but she was so sassy. He guessed she didn’t know when to just let things go.
“If you don’t tell me anything, I’m just going to walk out,” she replied. Her eyes ran over him, resting on his face like she knew what he was thinking. There was no way she knew that, though. She was helpless, annoying, and way too stressed out – definitely not a mind reader.
He could’ve argued that she couldn’t leave. They were deep in the woods, far outside of the city. The drive here should’ve taken about two hours, but he’d sped and they’d gotten there in a little less than one. She didn’t know where they were, and she wouldn’t know which direction to go in; maybe she’d leave the cabin, but there was no way she was going to make her way back to a main road from where they were now. But that fact sounded too full of ominous implications, so he decided not to mention it.
Instead, he caved. This would be a first, and he wouldn’t do it often. Darren wasn’t the type of man who would break and give in to a woman’s request, just because she was pretty. Victoria could be the hottest woman on Earth, and he’d probably still not like her.
“Let’s talk in the kitchen.”
“Oh,” she nearly shouted, “so you’re just going to have me keep following you everywhere? Is that it?”
He ignored her complaints and her arguments, and she followed him, but she didn’t shut up all the while.