Chapter Five
Maria
There’s a bottle of Jameson on my night stand perched just within reach. It might as well have ‘sanity’ written on it. I’ve got three on-demand movies lined up, featuring the divine trifecta of Hugh Jackman, Chris Hemsworth, and a young Marlon Brando.
It’s the low season here in Missoula — as if there ever is a season where people would want to come to this town — and I’ve got the volume on my TV way up because practically all the rooms nearby are empty except for mine.
Things are as good as they’re going to get.
I’m partway through my first movie — I don’t even know what’s happening in it, all I give a damn about is admiring Hemsworth’s golden-haired mimbo-ness — and I’m partway through my bottle of whiskey, wholly convinced that alcohol and fantasy escapes will be the only way I survive this nightmare that is Missoula, Montana and working for David Ardoin.
I can still feel the spot on the small of my back where that man touched me as he walked past me up the stairs. I can still hear the sickly heat in his voice as he whispered my name right as his fingers gripped me tight.
That man is justification for capital punishment.
He is the man I’m going to work to ensure gets the best deal possible for his cooperation.
He is why I’d better be promoted when this is all over.
A knock at the door pulls me away from my half-drunk fantasy harem and back to alertness.
I take a pull from my bottle of Jameson and stumble towards the door.
“Who the fuck is it?”
“Room service,” comes the reply with slightly-drawling accent.
I frown. “I didn’t order room service.”
A pause. “It’s compliments of the house. The manager knows you’re going to be staying here a while, and wanted to send up a bottle of wine as a thank you for your patronage.”
Wine? Fine, I’ll take it. I’ll save it for tomorrow morning to nurse my hangover and work myself back to a point where I can finish off whatever’s left of my Jameson.
“Ok, just a second.”
I take another pull from the bottle, letting the whiskey and it’s burn linger in my mouth, and open the door.
The handle turns, the heavy door moving slow against it’s hinges.
There’s a shove. Abrupt. Powerful. Brute hard force that sends the door rocketing backwards and crashing into me. I feel the echoes of the impact reverberate through my bones. I fall, the air leaves my lungs in a sudden whoosh, and the world starts to move way too fast.
Stunned, I watch through blurry vision as a steel cart shoves itself into the gap — screaming and squealing as metal grinds against the heavy wood and hinges cry out in resistance.
A man, nicely-dressed and ill-intentioned, forces his way through the gap and lunges toward me. There’s a smile on his face that is wholly frightening and he moves towards me like a predator, lashing out with his right hand and punching me square in the gut.
The concussion jars me, sending my heart racing and adrenaline flooding through my veins. My eyelids flutter, blinking clearness to my vision as I look up and see him.
He consumes my vision.
He towers over me.
Crooked nose — broken at least once — and eyes a sickly shade of green flecked with brown. A confident, twisted turn of his mouth shows two missing teeth and a yellow grin.
“Don’t scream. Don’t move,” he says, his voice disturbingly quiet.
His hand goes for my throat.
I spit. Jameson and saliva stream towards his face, spraying him all across his busted mug. It’s enough to give him pause, make him shut his eyes to keep the burning alcohol out of them.
It’s enough to give me time to scramble backwards.
I need to get away.
I turn around and scramble on hands and knees towards my bed. Deep inside, a quiet voice whispers to me about how foolish it is to head further into my room and away from the exit, but all I can think about is the man standing just feet away from me.
I have to get away from him.
That man is here to kill me. Or make me wish I was dead.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says. “It only makes it harder on you.”
That voice is drowned out by my own screams. They burst from me the second that man clamps his hands around my ankles and yanks me backwards across the floor like a ragdoll.
I kick at him — my foot hits his forearm — and though I kick him as hard as I can, it’s fruitless. He laughs.
“I’m glad you’re struggling. I love the look women like you make when you’re afraid. You think you’re so tough,” he says, and he flips me over on my back so easily. He forces himself between my legs, putrid breath caressing my face. “Nothing’s as hot as a tough woman when she’s afraid.”
“Get the fuck off me,” I scream, my cries blending with the cacophony emanating from my television. I claw at his face — drawing a line of blood across his neck and a satisfying growl of pain from him — before he seizes me by the wrists, pinning them to the floor.
“This is only going to hurt as much as you want it to, bitch,” he says, his voice burning barely above a whisper, his face right next to mine. “So give up and let this happen.”
Fuck him.
I lunge and I do the one thing I can. I bite him right on the face.
My teeth sink into his cheek. I taste copper and heat.
Fuck him. Fuck him for thinking I’ll be easy.
“You bitch,” he screams.
I earn a punch that leaves my ears ringing for my trouble. I fall back to the ground and look up at him and the bloody wound in his cheek.
“Get the fuck off me, you piece of shit.”
A drop of blood falls from his face, and then another and another, landing on my forehead. He smiles at me, but there’s a frighteningly dark light in his eyes.
“Are you done?” he says.
“What do you want?” I say.
I force myself to keep my voice even, though my heart is shaking in my chest. I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me shaken.
“Your client. Alone. Dead. Before he talks.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to do that?”
He shifts his grip on my wrists, pinning both of them under one of his meaty paws, and, with his free hand, he trails his fingers along my cheek. Blood continues to pepper my face, dripping from the hole I bit in his cheek.
I flinch.
He laughs.
“You’re a smart girl: figure it out. You know your client has pissed off a lot of people. You had to know that some people would come looking for him. But if you want some further motivation, pretty lady, well, I’ve got a little time and I am awfully comfy here between your legs.”
I shut my eyes.
No.
I try to kick, try to squirm, but I can barely move.
There is no way out.
“Don’t do this,” I whisper.
At least I don’t scream.
“It’s too late for that.”
I don’t know how to get him what he wants; I don’t know how to get around a federal and local police protective detail; I don’t know how to get out of here.
I’m lost.
I shut down. My breath and my resistance leave me in one heavy gasp.
“I don’t know if I can,” I mumble.
It makes me sick how much my voice shakes. How helpless I feel.
Hands paw at me, touch me in ways that will live in my nightmares forever, that will leave scars on my heart for the rest of my life. I shrivel beneath him.
“Guess you need some encouragement, then,” that lightly-drawling voice chuckles. “Well, damn, my night just keeps getting better and better.”
My shirt slides up, ripping in his grip, the tearing sound of fabric making me start and shake and struggle. The chill air in my hotel room raises goosebumps on my chest and I whimper as his calloused fingertips slide across my breasts.
“Bet a woman like you loves it rough.”
“Please don’t.”
Lips and hot breath touch my collarbone. A grimy kiss hits my neck. I smell smoke and alcohol and sweat — the dirty musk of him — and I can’t take it — I scream again and squirm, trying to get my heels against him, trying to kick and push him away and none of it works.
None of it works.
He holds me and he laughs. Something firm pokes against my inner thigh.
“You feel that? I’m going to fuck you senseless.”
I shut my eyes again.
There’s a slam. Wood on wood. The door opens and closes.
“Bloody fucking hell. What the fuck is this?”
A voice I’d never thought I’d hear makes me start and I open my eyes just in time to watch a heavy set of hands take hold of my attacker’s neck and wrench him backwards, hurling him into the wall like he’s as light as a ragdoll.
“You think you can touch her?” Ozzy bellows. “You’re a fucking dead man.”
Ozzy. Fucking Ozzy.
I hop up to my feet, holding my hands folded across my chest, and just stare at him, trying to wrap my fear-fuzzed brain around how the hell he got here.
It’s him, but he looks nothing like the lovable lunkheaded biker I remember from Stony Shores, from Roxy and Nash’s wedding, from the texts and pictures we’ve traded back and forth since.
This man is rage.
Fierce, protective rage.
Muscles bulge in his arms; his fists clench and un-clench in uncontrolled anger.
“I’m going to kill you,” he says as he charges my attacker.
In a blink, he has the other man pinned to the ground, raining fists against his skull one after another, each impact opening a bloody gash across the man’s forehead and turning his face into a busted bruise.
My attacker kicks back, hitting Ozzy just above the groin and pushing him backwards into the wall. He’s on his feet in a flash, ramming a fist into Ozzy’s gut and shoulder-barging him into the wall hard enough that I feel the force of it across the room.
“Fucking cunt,” Ozzy growls, grabbing hold of the other guy again by the shoulders and head-butting him, turning the gash in the other man’s forehead into a geyser of blood. “You were dead the second you touched her.”
The other guy punches back — a right hook to the face — but Ozzy doesn’t loosen his grip. He doesn’t even flinch. He seizes the other guy by the back of the head, forcing him face-first to meet his up-coming knee. There’s a crack — a nose-breaking, bone-shaking snap — and then another, and another, until the only thing keeping the other guy upright is Ozzy’s grip on his head.
He does not let go.
He does not stop.
I watch, feet rooted to the floor, while he brutalizes my attacker until all that’s left is a lifelessly limp body.
When he lets go, and the man hits the floor with a thud.
“Son of a bitch,” Ozzy mutters, spitting a gob of blood onto the dead man.
Chest rising and falling with adrenaline and exertion, knuckles and face and knees of his jeans bloodied, he turns away from the man’s prone body to look at me. The mask of rage on his face softens, concern lights his eyes, and he comes to stand in front of me.
He pulls me into a hug.
Gently, he brushes some of the other man’s blood from my face.
“Are you ok?” he says, his voice soft. Warm.
What the fuck is going on?
I shake my head. I am not ok, not by any means, and my tongue and my brain are both frozen with fear and confusion.
“Maria, please, answer me: are you ok? Did he hurt you?” he says again, voice surging through with caring and concern. He’s covered in blood, knuckles busted and who knows what else is hurt, and the only thing he gives a damn about is me.
Me.
I wish I could answer him.
I wish I was composed enough to tell him ‘thank you’.
I wish he didn’t have to see me so fucked up and afraid.
But all I can do is put my arms around him and bury my face in his chest and let loose all the fear I’d been holding back because I didn’t want my attacker to have the satisfaction of seeing me so broken.
I break against him.
He holds me. He holds me while the minutes slide by and I let everything free against him.
When I’m empty, he speaks again. It’s startling how gentle his voice is. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up. We’ve got a bloody lot to talk about.”
I put my hand in his and let him lead me to the bathroom.
I don’t know why Ozzy’s here, and as grateful as I am for him, I’m scared.
Whatever brought him here means that my life is about to become a lot more complicated.