Bridgette

 

Bridgette hated herself for making any noise. One of Martin’s men had violently wrenched on her pinky finger, though, and the pain had been too much for her. She didn’t want to give them the satisfaction, and she didn’t want Kyle to hear and rush into anything on her account. If he didn’t figure something out, she was as good as dead anyway, and if he showed up without a plan and without backup, Martin would off them both just for the sake of convenience.

 

“…will be the last you hear from your girl.” Martin ended the call and slipped the phone back into the pocket of his dress slacks.

 

Bridgette tried to stand up, not exactly knowing what she intended to do. She desperately wanted to throttle him, but that desire was rooted in nothing but the rage and despair coursing through her. Making the attempt wouldn’t do her any good. She wouldn’t make it anywhere near Martin, not with his men hovering behind her and her hands and feet bound. All it would do was invite retaliation, and that was the last thing she needed right now.

 

It was her own damned fault that she was here. That thought weighed on her like a steamroller. If only she hadn’t gone back to the bakery. If only she’d been sensible enough to realize it wasn’t worth the risk. And now where was she?

 

Tied up to a chair in what looked like a decrepit warehouse that had seen its heyday at least fifty years prior. There was no light in the building apart from what little sunlight made its way through the dingy, smashed windows. The whole place reeked of what she could only assume was dead vermin and decay.

 

She didn’t remember anything of the trip out there. One of Martin’s guys had shaken her awake, and she’d found herself bound in the chair, staring down a couple of burly thugs and a heavyset older man who was dressed way too well to be hanging around in an abandoned warehouse.

 

Martin. One look and she knew. His black hair was balding, and his neatly-trimmed mustache was starting to show streaks of grey. He wore a black business suit with pressed slacks, complete with a blood red tie—an outfit that screamed that he was a powerful man, someone you didn’t want to mess with.

 

“So we meet at last,” he’d drawled. He’d stared down at her so coolly, as if she hadn’t been forcibly abducted, but rather was sitting for an interview with some high-end powerbroker.

 

“I don’t have what you want,” she’d insisted. “I don’t know why you keep harassing me, but you’re making a mistake. I don’t know what you’re looking for—“

 

“Ah, but I think you do. Or, at least, your boyfriend does. I wouldn’t have had you pegged for the risk-taking type. I thought it was coincidence when I finally heard from Mateo where he’d stashed the drugs….We figured they had to still be there. I didn’t hear about anything new on the streets. So, I thought to myself, this will be easy. Mateo can’t have stuck it anywhere too complicated. He was never too smart. We’ll just break in, take what’s ours, and be on our way.

 

“But then….” Martin had shaken his head at her. His terse grin, plastered over a thin veneer of admiration, belied an icy rage roiling beneath. She could see the depth of his fury in his eyes, where it glimmered like steel. “Then your boyfriend shows up out of nowhere. The pesky little prick. I thought I was done with him years ago. He wasn’t smart enough to count his blessings and stay away, though. He was right back to his old game, trying to cheat me out of what is rightfully mine.”

 

Martin had spit on the ground then. “You thought five kilos of pure, uncut cocaine would make a nice honeymoon fund. You bought that shit hole-in-the-wall place and sat on it for him for months. And when we started sniffing around for it, you called him up and told him it was time to move.”

 

“No,” she’d protested. “I didn’t even know about any drugs. How the hell would I?”

 

“Like I said, you wouldn’t. But a rat like your boyfriend? He would have heard through the grapevine about Mateo’s arrest. Maybe someone let the address past the prison guards. We can ask him when he gets here. Because, my pretty little thing, my boys and I are going to make sure he knows I have you. And if he doesn’t come with what I want, I guess we’ll have to see about getting you to talk.”

 

The whole time she’d listened to him, Bridgette had felt cold. Numb. All of it was sheer dumb luck, pure coincidence, but it seemed as if the universe had conspired not only to make her life as difficult as possible, but to entangle both her and Kyle in a web that neither of them had woven.

 

The universe had flipped her the middle finger. Because what were the odds that she would choose to set up shop in the one building in town where some drug runner had stashed his boss’ cocaine? What were the chances that the drug lord in question would have some kind of a vendetta against Kyle and that Kyle would show back up to investigate just for the hell of it?

 

The worst of it was the niggling doubt that was worming its way into her mind with each passing second. She knew Kyle still felt something for her, and that he was twice as determined to be a part of her life now that he knew about Gabby. But did that mean that he’d throw away his life in the vain hope of somehow saving her? There was nothing he could do.

 

Even with the few guys from his MC who were still hanging around town, there was no way he could save her. Sure, he could call the cops, but that would turn this into a hostage situation. Or worse, one of Martin’s dirty cops would tip Martin off with enough time to take off with her.

 

Gabby would be all alone. Kyle would be truly helpless. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the fallout from that. Because she was sure they’d torture her, and eventually they’d figure out that she had a daughter.

 

And that was assuming Kyle would even try to save her. He might just bail again and save his own skin. She didn’t want to think, even for a second, that he could do that to her. She wanted to believe what he claimed—that he’d left for the right reasons the first time. But the wound still stung, and now, when the stakes were so high, she couldn’t help but let doubt poison her thoughts.

 

It wasn’t long after her first conversation with Martin that a phone buzzed. The large man to her left pulled a phone from his pocket and glanced at the screen.

 

“Kyle Parker,” he announced.

 

Shit. It was her phone. Why was she surprised that they’d taken it from her?

 

“Let it ring through.”

 

Bridgette had waited in pure agony as the call buzzed through. When the message had recorded, Martin played it on speaker for her to hear.

 

Tears sprang to her eyes when she heard him. He still sounded a bit grudging, but he was much calmer. He wouldn’t have called if he hadn’t wanted to make things right after their fight. And it was so painful to know that when this may have been the last time that she would get to hear his voice.

 

“How sweet,” Martin crooned. “I think we should call him back. Let him know you’re all right.”

 

After they were finished with the call, Martin put the phone away once more. He smiled cruelly at her. She could feel the force of his eyes on her, probing her, reveling in her misery. He was enjoying her distress, the sick bastard.

 

Bridgette forced herself to look away. As much as she wanted to give in to despair then and there, she knew she couldn't. She had no intentions of playing the damsel in distress. She was going to keep her eyes peeled for every opportunity to get a message out to Kyle.

 

If he could at least get the drugs out of the ceiling tile, they'd be in a marginally better position. They could use Martin's precious stash to leverage the drug lord into negotiations. They would at least have some collateral that would keep Martin from wasting Bridgette on the spot as soon as he got what he wanted.

 

But she had no idea how she was going to get that message out. Martin seemed like he would wait out the time he'd given Kyle elsewhere and leave her in the hands of the two thugs at her side. Maybe that would make my task easier, she thought. She'd just have to pull one over on them rather than distracting the drug lord.

 

But what were the chances of her actually getting her hands on a cell phone long enough to get a call to Kyle? She doubted they would be that careless with her, not when Martin thought he was so close to getting what he wanted.

 

Martin strolled away, leaving her alone in the warehouse. His two men didn't say much. They idled by her side, pacing on occasion, stretching their arms. But apart from that neither seemed inclined to chat. Which meant she wasn't likely to get them engrossed in a conversation long enough to somehow get her hands free.

 

Not that she could manage that in the first place. Why the hell hadn't she paid better attention to all the action movies she'd watched? Wasn't there some trick to getting free? Stretching your hands, or dislocating a wrist or something? Maybe that was for escaping straightjackets.

 

She glanced around the warehouse, searching for any exits. An escape would do her no good if she couldn't plan her route to safety. Again, not that she had any clue where they'd taken her. She had a bad feeling that they were in the middle of nowhere, which meant that even if she did manage to free herself from her bonds, sneak out of the warehouse unnoticed, and get herself far from the area where Martin was keeping her, she still faced a long walk back to town. And given the local landscape and the lack of cover, that translated to being recaptured and possibly roughed up for her audacity.

 

Her best hope was still waiting for Kyle and praying that he had some miraculous plan to fix all of this.

 

That was what he'd promised her, right? That he would fix everything? That he would somehow get her life back to normal, so she could take Gabby home and reopen the bakery and get on with her plans for the future?

 

It was a silly promise to cling to. She doubted he thought it would ever come to this. And she had made the cliché mistake, she reminded herself, by going back to her business after he'd told her not to. After she'd been assaulted there twice.

 

But that promise was all she had. She had her daughter to think about. And it took an immense amount of willpower to mentally block off the instinct to imagine what life would be like for Gabby if she didn't get out of this. How would her daughter ever go on? There wasn't enough counseling in the world to stitch up the pain of losing a parent, especially with no closure and under such awful circumstances.

 

No. She couldn't even entertain that thought. She had to stay positive. She had to keep looking for ways to fix this, to make it better. She had to make sure that she got out of this alive.

 

"So, Mateo stashed the goods at a bakery?" one of her guards asked. His tone was strangely conversational.

 

Bridgette shook herself out of her storm of inner thoughts in order to focus on what the two were saying.

 

"Not a bakery, you moron. He said it was an abandoned building. But it took months to get even that message through the system. Martin was waiting for more details, but someone took Mateo out, remember? Some guy. Gangbanger, I think. There was bad blood between them."

 

"Oh."

 

And that was it. The two fell silent again.

 

Shit, why didn't she have two chatty Cathies watching over her? She was afraid to squirm too much in her chair, knowing her struggling against the duct tape around her wrists would be a dead giveaway.

 

She had to play the damsel in distress. Even though she wanted to be strong and furious, she had to play meek and helpless. That was the only hope she had of getting them to lose their attention enough to give her a chance.

 

If they dismissed her as a typical woman, overly emotional and cracking under the stress of her situation, she could create an opportunity for herself. Throw a fake tantrum that would send them for a loop. Men like them wouldn’t know how to handle a hysterical bawler, and she was under enough pressure to be able to really turn on the waterworks.

 

Bridgette steeled herself. Then she let loose all the dread and horror she’d been trying so desperately to repress since this nightmare had started. It coursed through her like an undammed river, and before she knew it, she was full-on sobbing. She let her face twist into the ugliest expression and gave full voice to the choked cries that would slip out intermittently between her sobs.

 

She started wailing. At the top of her lungs. Unapologetically. She screamed about how it wasn't her fault, how she had nothing to do with any of this. She called Martin an asshole and a dickwad and any other vaguely profane name that came to mind. She screamed at them for a while until her voice grew hoarse and her insults gradually devolved into sobbing.

 

And she did not sob quietly. No, she sobbed loudly, the kind of sobs interrupted by hiccups and hyperventilation. She whined and whimpered and moaned intermittently between her sobs, trying to get some reaction out of the two men stationed with her.

 

One of them seemed intent on looking everywhere but directly at her. The other rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath about getting stuck with “shit detail.”

 

Guard number two turned back to him, smirking. “Shouldn’t have called Martin’s nephew a spoiled fatass, huh?”

 

The first guard’s brow crumpled in a look of irritation. “So what did you do to get stuck guarding this bitch, hmm?”

 

The second shrugged. “I just don’t cry and pitch a fit any time I get an assignment I don’t like.”

 

The first guard’s scowl deepened, but he didn’t respond, and they lapsed back into silence.

 

She supposed she was lucky that neither seemed too hot under the collar, and that her antics didn’t piss them off immediately. They were, after all, two enforcers working for a ruthless drug lord. She couldn't expect them to have many qualms about beating the hell out of her just to shut her up.

 

If that had been the case, she would have stopped immediately. She didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of actually pulling this off, but she wasn't about to invite any kind of violence against her. She wasn't willing to suffer for no reason, not when her death seemed so imminent and inevitable. And being beaten to a pulp wasn't going to help her get away any faster, that was certain.

 

But luckily they either had orders to keep their hands off her, or they really didn't care all that much about all the noise she was making.

 

Either way, her ploy was turning out to be useless. All it had accomplished was causing her to lose her voice. That, and it had started her head pounding from all the tears and strain.

 

If they weren't going to try to calm her down and give her an opportunity, maybe she'd have to try a little harder.

 

If she could rock the chair, and cause it to tip over, maybe when they bent over to pick her back up, one of their phones would slip out. If she could just get her hands on it, maybe she could keep it hidden and wait for the right moment to try to get a message out to Kyle.

 

It was one hell of a long shot, but what else did she have? She could sit around and wait, or she could try to get herself out of this.

 

She had never really been the type to sit around.

 

So she started to try to rock her chair. Both her guards were looking away for the moment, still trying to ignore her because of her sobbing, she guessed. Maybe it hadn't been a total waste of energy.

 

Bridgette began shifting her weight from side to side, trying to build up enough momentum to topple over. It was working, even though she kept her movements subtle.

 

She could feel the legs of the chair lifting beneath her as she leaned to each side, tilting a little higher with each of her movements. At last she generated enough momentum to cause her to fall off to her right, taking the chair with her.

 

She felt her stomach lurch as she toppled over. She hit the ground hard, landing on her arm, crushing it beneath her weigh and the hard form of the chair. It hurt like hell. The impact caused a bright, hot wave of pain to wash through her arm and shoulder. She gritted her teeth against the sensation, trying to focus her attention on assessing how bad it was. It hadn’t been enough force to fracture or break anything, she was sure.

 

Between the chair and the ground, she'd have a few bruises. But it was worth it.

 

She waited for them to come over and set her back up. And waited. Minutes ticked by.

 

They were going to let her just lie there. Of course. Why would they care if she was uncomfortable?

 

She would have cried again, but after her desperate performance, she felt as if she had no tears left in her. She’d failed. She was out of options. Hell, it hadn’t even been that good of a plan in the first place. Just something she could do so she could feel like she was at least trying to get away.

 

But this was just one of those situations she couldn’t fix herself. Like it or not, her last hope was Kyle. And she would just have to pray that he could somehow keep his promise to her to make it right.