Victoria
It took way too long for Darren to get there. Victoria wasn’t sure why she was even fathoming waiting for him to come save her. Was that what was going on? Was this supposed to be some kind of rescue situation? She didn’t get rescued. She also usually didn’t get shot while she was driving her car to work, though, so there were first times for everything. Except for Darren coming within a reasonable timeframe, of course. He hadn’t said he was coming at all, though; she’d just assumed he would. But maybe he wouldn’t.
He probably wouldn’t.
She didn’t move out of her spot. Her body was starting to ache from being twisted up, and she’d dropped her phone a long time ago. It was beneath the driver’s seat. When had she put it there? She didn’t remember, but it had happened, apparently. The screen went bright for a second, and she thought that there was maybe a text for her.
She stretched her arm out to grab it again, but couldn’t. Her arm had gotten stuck in this position, and the bones in it cracked painfully as she moved. Her eyes were close enough to the screen to skim over it regardless of that; there was nothing there. No text (or missed call) from Darren, anyway. It was probably some email promotion for some stupid newsletter she’d signed up for a while back in exchange for a coupon.
It was hard not to beat her head against something in frustration. Why was she so focused on this guy? She should probably call 911 or something instead. There didn’t seem to be a point of that, though. She was in the parking lot of a bar frequented by a bikers’ club, and emergency vehicles didn’t really like going out there anyway.
Dammit.
# # #
Darren
Darren was coming. Victoria just didn’t know it yet.
He didn’t see the point of telling her his intentions, since that seemed like it should be pretty obvious. Besides, why call if she wasn’t expecting help? She was probably in her car waiting for him to get there right now.
Or she was dead.
Fuck’s sake.
There was no reason why this should be bothering him so much. She was just some bar chick. Not only did he barely know her, she was a complete bitch to him. Well, that wasn’t the word he’d use to describe her. He might with other people, but there was something about the way that Victoria wasn’t afraid of him that sent almost nervous energy coursing through his veins.
And now he was worried about her.
There was no way she could ever know this. He’d thought she was taking him up on his offer for a booty call when she’d first called, but now he knew the truth and he felt horrible. The way his stomach lurched at the thought of her being hurt shocked him. It wasn’t that he liked hurting people, or imagining them hurt; quite the opposite, actually, but he was usually neutral to it by now. He had to be.
Darren Saylor grew up in as dysfunctional a family as any, and jumping from job to job as a teenager before finally dropping out of high school and getting in with a club hadn’t made his life any better. Maybe Victoria would. Some part of him was imagining that they might have some kind of life together. That didn’t make any sense either; their only interaction with each other had been a fight. Although, could it even be called a fight when the chick was just yelling at him while he smirked at her? He felt bad about that now. He hadn’t then, and why should he? Well, their interactions had been that and a kiss in the parking lot.
That kiss…
Fuck.
Now she was being shot at.
His foot found the gas pedal in his car. Fuck, he was stressed. He couldn’t be stressed. He was never stressed. He had to keep his cool. He revved his way out of the parking lot outside his gated apartment.
# # #
Victoria
The sound of tires peeling into the parking lot made Victoria jump. She couldn’t hold on to her conviction to not move at all from her position, and she had ventured a little bit out from under the dashboard. Now she was on her knees, peeking out from beneath the steering wheel with her hands on the edge of the driver’s seat. Her eyes looked around nervously, trying to peek through the surrounding parking lot without making her position known; the shooter or shooters had probably left, but the way that car entered the lot couldn’t be a sign of anything good to come.
She ran her fingers along the inside edge of the door. Of course she couldn’t tell what the damage was from here, but the door seemed normal enough from where she was. And the bullets had sounded like they were coming from the opposite direction, like they were trying to make their way through the passenger’s side doors and get to her. She was sure the doors were riddled with bullets. If someone shot at her again, those probably wouldn’t hold up too long, if at all. Victoria didn’t know much about cars, but getting shot at probably did some damage to doors, like it did to pretty much anything.
She looked at her hands, her eyes running over her skin to investigate the lack of damage. Damn. She was lucky she wasn’t dead. She wasn’t shaking, though. Where there had been fear earlier, and where there would still be fear for the more average person, there was just anger.
It sounded like the car had parked, or was parking. Its wheels shrieked as the vehicle found its purchase on the asphalt. It didn’t sound like there was any parking space carefully picked out; Victoria could pick up the sound of the concrete screaming in protest as the car’s rubber rubbed up against it. And then Victoria heard the sound of a car door slamming, and footsteps running towards her. Or somewhere close to her. Probably right up next to her car, to make sure she was dead.
She fell back into her spot beneath the dashboard, her limbs screaming at her to just risk being murdered so she could be a little bit more comfortable. Hell no.
The feet were much closer now. Victoria wondered if her pepper spray would do her any good against an assassin, and one of her hands went back to her jean pocket. Of course! She’d forgotten to put the weapon in there when she was hurrying out of the house. That was okay, though. Pepper spray probably wouldn’t do her much good against an armed assailant. And if someone was trying to kill her, she had her nails and her teeth to use anyway.
A thud came from to her right as someone ran their hand over the door. She screamed. And sure, it was cliché, but her life flashed before her eyes. What had she done? All she’d manage to do for herself in her twenty-something years was work in a bunch of run-down bars, trash talk some perverted guys, and sleep a whole lot. She had ambition, but no means to follow it, and she’d never gone after any of her dreams. She still hadn’t gone to college. She didn’t really want to go to college for anything in particular, but the idea that she wouldn’t be able to change her mind about that bothered her.
And now she was dying.
Great. She looked to the sky, wrapping her hands together. She wasn’t really religious, but maybe a quick prayer before her slaughter would make the powers that be kinder to her.
“Fuck,” came the mutter. A male voice.
She heard his voice – it was definitely him – before she saw his face. “Victoria!”
Darren Saylor.
So he had come, after all. She wondered if it was just a blind hope she’d had, or if there was a reason for her thinking he’d come to rescue her. It looked like she’d been right, after all; she wasn’t sure if she should be pleased about that, or if she should take this whole situation out on him. He was definitely no Prince Charming, and it was 100% a fact that this asshole was the reason she’d just been shot at. He had to be. Hell, why else would someone want to kill her? Most everything she did with her life had to do with this shoddy bar, and a murder attempt right after shouting at a king pin of the Bloody Saints couldn’t be a coincidence.
“Here,” she muttered, rising out of her seat. Dealing with this guy couldn’t be in her best interest, but it wasn’t like something worse could happen either. She looked around the car for some wood to knock on at that thought, but there was nothing. She settled on opening the center console and smacking the paper of an envelope in there a few times. It wasn’t wood, but it was close enough, and it would have to do.
She reached for the door. God damn it, moving sucked. Her back hurt from hiding for so long. It felt like hours, even though there was no way that much time had passed. She crawled out fully from beneath the dash, using the driver’s seat as leverage to pull her way up. Then her hand found the lock on her door and she pushed that free, opening it with a scowl on her face.
“Are you going to help me up?”
Darren looked almost relieved to see her, and that sent sparks of confusion through her like wildfire. His face went back to his characteristic impassiveness, though, and Victoria decided that this was the type of guy that was always either neutral or arrogant. He had to be hiding something. No one could be like that all the time, and who wanted to go through their life living out an act?
This guy, apparently.
“I thought you were dead,” he said, his mask slipping before gaining control back in a millisecond. He extended a hand to her and she took it. “Your car is full of bullets.”
She swung her legs out onto the pavement and stumbled shakily to her feet, Darren pulling to help her. As soon as she was out of the car, she withdrew her hand immediately. Something weird had happened the last time they’d touch, and, much as she’d wanted to fuck the guy earlier, it’d be better for her to have her wits about her while she dealt with this.
Whatever this was.
“Thanks for noticing,” she said. She liked to hide behind sarcasm. It was a common enough tactic and she knew full well it didn’t make her unique in the slightest, but it usually did enough to make the average guy back off. All it did with Darren was make him look at her more closely, like he was looking for something beneath all her carefully made-up layers. So they were both playing that game? Fine.
“I’m not the one who shot at you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why don’t I find that surprising?”
Glaring at this guy this often was going to either be the death of her or it was going to give her massive wrinkles. “Probably because you know it’s something you’d do.”
“It isn’t, actually.”
“Well, then it’s something one of your lackeys would do.”
“Did you not believe me when I said one of us couldn’t be responsible?”
She turned her back from him and shut the car door before responding. There was no polite way to say this, and she was running through all the possible replies in her head, trying to find the most sardonic, rude, ball-shrinking response she could muster. Nothing in particular came to mind, unfortunately, so she settled on growling out something that sounded a lot like, “No shit, Sherlock.”
“Hm.” He said nothing else for a second, watching as she opened the car door again and slammed it shut. “You’re not going to do your car any less damage doing that.”
This time, she didn’t bother responding.
Darren wasn’t going to wait for her to decide to talk to him, though, so he just grabbed her arm as soon as it seemed like she wasn’t going to talk. This made her tense up again, as usual; she’d expected the touch this time, however, so she wasn’t beating herself up on the inside for not noticing his hand sneaking up on her. His large hand, his fingers, wrapped around her forearm, pulling her back to him like he had yesterday. She didn’t turn back to face him like she had before, however. Getting her lips in sight of this guy didn’t seem like the brightest move; someone was trying to kill her, and kissing Darren Saylor didn’t seem like the area where she should be directing most of her focus.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m going to fix this. Do you see my car?”
Victoria couldn’t really see over the top of her car from where she stood, so she moved away. Darren’s arm fell away from her, and she moved so that she was glancing out from over the hood of her own vehicle.
A few parking spots – if they could be called that – across from her was a shiny black car. She couldn’t identify the model off the top of her head, but it looked new-ish and like something an irresponsible driver would get into on their way for a few joy rides. Typical. The wheels were uneven and going out in either direction from where Darren had just randomly stopped the car, and Victoria identified that as the awful screeching sound she’d heard earlier.
“Definitely don’t see anything.”
He chuckled beneath his breath, but he didn’t sound too amused when he said, “Get in it.”
“What?” That came as a shock. Sure, her car had just had a few clips unloaded into it (at the very least, but it was probably more than that), but that was no reason she couldn’t drive it. She still had a shift to get to, too, although she didn’t care about that as much as the fact that she just didn’t want to be around Darren any longer. “You’re high.”
“I’m actually not, unfortunately.” He laughed for real this time. “It’s in your best interest.”
His laughter set her off, and she snorted; unlike Darren, her sounds weren’t coming from a place of joy. “Right, so you can kill me without witnesses.”
“First of all,” Darren said, “the cameras in this lot don’t even work anyway. Second of all, I didn’t shoot at you. Now get in the car or I’m going to make you do it.”
“You can’t make me do anything.”
“Probably not,” he admitted. “But that’s not stopping me from picking you up and just placing you in the front seat.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
He grinned. “Or the trunk,” he continued. “Your choice.”
He reached his hands out to her like he was about to grab her, since she wasn’t responding quickly enough. She squeaked, hating how it sounded but going with it anyway. What about this man put her so on edge? She backed away from him, putting her hands up in a defensive position.
“Fine! Fine. Give me your keys.”
“I’m not giving you my keys.” He raised an eyebrow at her, for what felt like the hundredth time in the brief time they’d known each other. “Why do you want them anyway?”
“Why do you think I want them?”
A small smile flitted across his face, and then he shook his head. “Passenger’s seat for you, Victoria.”
Sighing, she made her way over to his car, and got in.