Chapter Twenty-Two
It didn’t take Wayne more than a day to decide that Betsy needed to be tied up. The two of them had argued, over and over, about the diamond. She kept moving it through her luggage and her purse and clothes so he couldn’t get to it. But Wyatt wanted it for safe-keeping, and she wasn’t giving up.
So after the very loudest, and longest fight yet, just hours after her plan to heist the money for the un-ranch-able ranch, Wayne demanded the diamond.
She told him to fuck off.
He tied her up and threw her in the back of the car. Not the trunk, yet, but she could see that was what he was considering.
“Really, Wayne? She ain’t going anywhere.” It was a bit of a shock that Wyatt was defending her, but she was grateful for it. But his defense was short-lived after they drove the four and a half hours to the ranch.
To her new jail.
Wayne pulled into the barn, which was in a state somewhere between abandoned and collapsed. He pulled open one of the stable doors and yanked Betsy out by her hair first, then her arms trapped in the ropes. He tossed her into the stall and grabbed a leg iron and chain that was bolted into the cement. Snapping it shut around her ankle, he pulled off the ropes and threw them out of the stall.
“Wayne! What the fuck are you doing?”
Wyatt had exited the car and was standing bewildered at the door.
“I don’t know why you trust the bitch so much, Wy.” With a heave, he pulled the stall door shut. A clang signaled his locking the padlock. “She won’t give us the diamond. She knows too much.”
“You’re going to leave her out here? It’d December. She’ll freeze!”
“Tough shit. She wants house privileges, she needs to pony up the stone.”
“So you’re gonna come out here and feed and water her like a dog, every few hours? Maybe take her to the bush to piss?”
“She can—”
“If you let her die, we’ll never get the diamond back. Don’t you get that? If you walk out of here, with her last dying strength, she will figure out a way to fuck us out of that gem. Either treat her like a human, or figure out to farm this ranch in this unfarmable area.” Wyatt stared straight at his brother. “The plan was to have a good life, not one where we spend our dying days trying to make horrible decisions work for us.”
“You calling this ranch a terrible idea?”
“I’m calling the idea of shoving our meal ticket in a horse stall in the middle of a Nevada winter a bad goddamn idea!”
“I don’t care if she lives, Wyatt. We’ve gotten by just fine without her before.”
“I am not a murderer, Wayne. I won’t let her die. I like being a thief and a pickpocket. I like stealing. But I will not cross the line to murderer. She either comes inside, or I’ll tie you up out here with her.”
“She doesn’t get the house until we get the diamond!”
“And I just told you what she’s like! She’s smarter than both of us, jackhole! We’ll never see the stone again.”
Wayne’s empty eyes turned to her and tried to pierce her, frighten her. But without the depth of a soul behind them, it did nothing to her. He snarled.
“Space heater, two horse blankets, and two bales of hay. Keep her alive. That’s it.”
“Bathroom?” Betsy whispered the question.
“Piss in the corner, bitch!”
She listened as the two of them walked away arguing. Three days ago, she was on the roof of the hotel, staring up at the stars, and now she was shackled in a horse stall that looked like it was going to collapse and kill her if she sneezed too hard.
“Shit.”
It was too soon to give up hope that Niko was going to find her, but damn, this felt like there was no way out. She didn’t know how the shackle was locked, and who shackled horses anyway?
Waiting another moment, she reached into her cleavage and felt the tissue paper that the diamond was wrapped in. Not quite between her breasts, but not below, it was nestled safely there. If one of the brothers grabbed her, they wouldn’t feel it hiding there.
One of them. More likely Wayne. Wyatt didn’t want this ending. He might be a raging asshole, but he didn’t want to go to jail for murder. Or rape. He was abusive, and he was as guilty as she was, but he wasn’t a murderer.
Brushing the little hay in the stall into a corner, she lay down and decided to try and get some sleep. Who knew how long she would be here.
* * *
Niko, Amy, and Keni stared down the drive to the house, about a half mile back. “What the hell is this place?”
“Tumbleweed ranch,” Keni said.
Amy glared at her. “I did some actual research on this place. It was shut down in 2009, on cruelty to animals charges. The owners apparently purchased just-past-prime thoroughbred and bred them, constantly. They were never walked and the condition of the place was written up as horrendous. Ninety percent of the horses had to be humanely euthanized after they were found.”
The look on Keni’s face said it all for the three of them. “Who does shit like that? And why did they pick this place to live?”
“I don’t know,” Niko said. “Go knock and ask.”
“Fuck off, Puff.”
“What’s our plan of attack here? We have to find out where she is and what kind of guns and weapons they have around here.” Keni raised the binoculars to see if she spotted anything beyond the house or the scrub that lined the small rise behind the house.
“I was hoping you could scry or something.”
“I don’t scry. Ever. That’s Rijn’s thing. I do magic.”
Niko leaned back in the seat of the car and stared at the ceiling. “I guess we just have to sneak around the property. I wish I had my dragon. I could fly over the ranch and figure it out.”
“There hasn’t been a puddle out here in months.” Amy sadly shook her head. “And even if there were water…”
“Yeah, I know the rules. Better than you. Keni, you’re still our best bet for this. Can you do some fancy magic to get them to come out here or just release Betsy?”
“Compulsion is black magic. I don’t do that. Sorry, man. Keep trying. It’s not like I haven’t been trying to come up with something, but if you drop some ideas, maybe I’ll get some as well.” She stared beyond the hill. “Here’s what I can tell you. She’s here. I can feel her. I don’t know where. If you get us on the property, I can find her. I can probably magic something up to keep Wayne and Wyatt in the house. I can’t protect you from bullets, but I can make it so that we’re harder to hit. Illusions aren’t that hard for me. Screw with their heads, make them miss if they shoot.”
Nodding, Niko agreed. “It’s something. Do we want to do this tonight? We have to get her back soon. I can feel the burning, now. This has to either be brought to flame or put out completely.”
“Let’s do this tonight. I can get some spells and goodies cooked up for us if you don’t mind helping me find some supplies. We don’t want to go in there unprotected, not when I have all this magic I never get a chance to use.”
The distinct sound of the gun being cocked in his ear made him turn and look at the passenger side window. There was a shotgun in the window and a man holding it. There was another rifle beyond him and a hand gun pointed at Amy in the back seat.
“Gentlemen.” Niko tried to stay cool.
“What the hell are you doing out here, watching the house?”
Answering as fast as she could think, Amy tried to cover them. “Uhm, we thought it was still for sale. We were thinking about asking for a viewing of the property. Are we on your land here? We’ll happily move to a less inconvenient parking place.”
The man holding the handgun cocked it and pulled a round into the chamber. “You ain’t here to look at that property.”
“Wayne told us there might be people coming to check out this place. Guess you’re it.” The shotgun man popped the door open and motioned them all out. “Let’s go. I don’t know what you’re doing here, and I don’t care. You’re about to be Wayne’s guests.”
The amount of laughter behind him told the three of them that there were more men they couldn’t see and there were probably more guns that were trained on them. Poking Niko with the shotgun, he motioned him out of the car. Once Niko was clear, another man, no gun, came running up and clapped a pair of anciently looking shackles on his wrists. They did the same thing with Amy and Keni.
There was no mistaking the look of pain on Keni’s face as the shackles hit her wrists.
Amy had also seen the pain cross her face. “Are you all right?”
Cringing, Keni held her arms up, desperately trying to tuck the sleeves of her shirt under the shackles. “Iron. Iron and magic don’t mix.”
“Lead and brains don’t mix neither.” The goon with the handgun shoved it in her back and moved them across the street, toward the house.
One of the others in hiding popped out and was already on the phone. “Yeah. They were parked across the way, checking the place out. Barn with the bitch? You got it.”
The little squad of armed men marched them up the packed dirt of the drive, and out around the house. Nikomedes watched everything, and he was not ignorant of Keni’s whimpers against the iron. Even though she had gotten the shirt down into the cuffs, covering her skin, it was still burning through that.
As they were marched past the house, two men came out. One was smiling and one was pissed beyond reasoning.
“Are you insane? You had them caught? Do you know what the kidnapping charges for this would be?” The clearly younger of the two ran in front of the older and held him back. “You don’t know who they are. You don’t know who they know!”
The older grabbed the younger by his throat. “You are fucking all of this up faster than I can fix it. I don’t care who they are. They came after your little girlfriend, and they are going to sit and rot with her. If it wasn’t for me, thinking ahead and doing something about this, we’d be fucked. Big time.”
“You trust them more than you trust your own goddamn blood.” The younger of the two was shocked to speechlessness.
Tossing him to the side, the older moved closer and looked at each of them. He walked up to Niko and smirked. “Well, well. So you were who she was fucking, eh? The jeweler. Maybe you can get us some more stones we can sell and we’ll let your little cunt go. Or maybe we’ll kill you all.”
Niko twisted his lip and decided to spit in his face.
The guy was angry at first, but then started to scream. Clawing desperately at his face where the spit landed on his cheek near his eye, he backed away and kept screaming. There was the horrid smell of burning flesh a moment later, and he was grabbing at his shirt to try and wipe the spit off.
The younger brother ran into the house and returned with a water bottle, pouring the whole thing down his face. The screaming finally started to subside, and the older brother pulled his hand away from his face.
Niko gasped and stepped back into the guy who was holding his chains. The brother’s face was burned, right down to the bone, and the wound filled quickly with blood from some of the vessels that hadn’t been burned. He was horrified at what it looked like, and even more horrified that he had done that. How had he done that? It was just spit.
Wasn’t it?
“What the hell are you?” The brother swung and caught Niko in the eye. “Were you holding acid in your mouth? Fuck! My face!”
He turned and headed for the house with the blood streaming down his face. He stopped halfway and turned back to the men holding the three of them. “Barn. Now. Chain them up. I don’t care! Let them all fucking rot!” He shoved a keyring into one of lackey’s hands.
The men with the guns hauled them along roughly to the barn, all of them standing clear of Niko and instead yanking him along by the chains. The guy might have been a murderer, but that didn’t mean he had to sink to the guy’s level. How had his spit burned the guy? He just spat…
One of the gunmen grabbed a rusty pitchfork from the wall and prodded Niko into the second stall. But the building was such a mess that the door wouldn’t slide shut at all. The guy with the keys pulled them out and unlocked the first stall, prodding and poking the three of them into the stall.
Betsy was asleep on the hay. Like some sick twist on the Christmas manger, she was curled up asleep on the two bales there covered with a blanket. The rattle and clang of the stall door had her rubbing sleep out of her eyes and by the time the door closed and resecured, she had sat up.
“Nikomedes…”
Her voice was full of disbelief for just an instant, and then she was in his arms, wrapping herself around him. “Oh, God. Niko.”
“Hey, Betsy. We’re here to rescue you.”
Holding him even tighter, she threw her head back and laughed loudly. “You suck at this!”
“Shit, I missed you.” He lifted his arms and dropped them over her head to hold her close inside the brace of his shackled arms. “I didn’t know what to think when…”
“I will pay for everything. I have the receipts from everything we pawned. I will get back or pay back ever—”
He dropped his lips to hers and possessed her mouth. Partly to shut her up, but mostly to remind himself what she tasted like, what it was like to kiss her and feel her pressed against. Her sweet little moan didn’t do much for his raging... libido at that moment either.
“Ahem.”
Keni had done her best to fold her arm and give them a stern look.
And then, Betsy saw Amy.