Billionaire Ransom (3 page)

Katie stared at Craig. Actually she was glaring at him, beyond angry. He’d taken her to a small house in the middle of exactly nowhere. She was terrified and mad as hell, but also confused.

He seemed to be the biggest dagger at the moment.

Since they’d arrived, he had gone out of his way to be as charming as possible, even apologizing when he had to tie her to a chair.

It has gone dark outside and she now sat staring at the plate of food he had cooked for her. Barbequed steak, potatoes, carrots with a brown sugar glaze… all the aromas floated up into her nostrils. She hadn’t eaten all day, and the savory scents teased her. She jerked her head to the side, jutting her chin out. “I’m not hungry.”

Craig hadn’t loosened the tape or rope he’d used to bind her to the chair. He held a fork to her mouth, and as she watched his face turned from charming to angry and vicious, she wondered if she had pushed him too far. He slammed the fork down and hissed, “You need to eat.”

“I’m not hungry.” She was hungry, actually. The smells reminded her how starving she really was. But she didn’t want anything he’d cooked, and she wasn’t fool enough to believe he was simply trying to feed her out of a sense of goodwill.

He had been trying to seduce her ever since she’d gotten there.

He had tried to fill her ears with stories of the crimes Morgan had committed, the people he had hurt. He had managed to make it sound like he had nothing to do with Morgan’s activities. While he spoke, he kept touching her, his fingers resting on her arm and thighs too often.

She shuddered every time he touched her. He kept staring at her all day, and his eyes were usually fastened on her chest or her legs. She was scared, terrified actually, that he might just rape her if she didn’t willingly go to bed with him, but she was equally determined that he would have to rape her; there was no way in hell she was going to sleep with him willingly.

He gave her what she figured was his winning smile, “Katie, I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

“But you will if you don’t get your way,” she snapped. “I get it.” She tried moving her chair away from him, with no success. “Let me inform you now that you’ll have to kill me before I’ll ever give in to you. I’m
never
going to sleep with you, or believe anything you have to say.” She swallowed, resisting the urge to spit in his face. “I know damn well that
you
fucked up. Morgan has been your friend since forever, and you let greed and whatever else you had in you take over and fuck that up! You put yourself out of the Orphans, not Morgan. Nobody but you are responsible for your own actions. I’m never going to believe differently, you sick, lying sack of shit!”

Craig snarled, “Damn it, you’d better listen to me—”

“What’s taking me going to net you, Craig?” she cut him off. “I don’t want you. You could rape me, but I will do my best to kill you. I won’t ever stop fighting, if not in body then in spirit. Morgan’s going to kill you when he finds you, and he
will
find you. You know it too. He won’t stop until he finds does.”

Craig stood then sat again. He yanked his own plate toward him and started to eat, refusing to look at her.

She watched him eating, and her stomach let out a painful cramp to remind her that she was hungry. She sighed, and looked away then said, “You can’t win like this, Craig. Morgan wants to believe in you again, I know he does. You’re like his brother, but taking me goes beyond what’s acceptable. If you just let me go, maybe…”

He banged a fist down on the table. The plates rattled. “Shut up!”

“You didn’t think this through, did you? You’re so mad at him and you can’t manage to look past his exiling you to see that he had to. He had to, Craig; you gave him no choice.” She shut her mouth, suddenly realizing she’d pushed it past the breaking point.

“I know that.” His plate went flying. The potato splatted as it hit a wall and then slid down it, smearing butter and sour cream on the plain beige paint. “Damn it! Don’t you think I know that?”

She decided to try a different approach, like a good cop/bad cop routine. “I’m sure you want to be a part of the crew again. I get it. Morgan knows it too. If you hadn’t done what you did, he could let you back in. Hell, he never would have exiled you in the first place, but what he did—he had to do. He didn’t have any other choice. You betrayed the club.”

He stared silently at the table, refusing to look at her or answer.

She tried to play nice a little more. “Morgan and the others had to spend days working to make that money back. Letting you walk was the only way to keep Nate and them from killing you. They would have killed you.” As she spoke, anger and frustration slipped into her voice. “Morgan saved your fucking life, and this is how you repay him?”

“He should have fought for—”

“For what?” Her cry cut across his angry exclamation. “For your life? You expect him to put the lives of his entire crew in danger just to keep you? How fucking selfish is that?”

“You don’t understand. It was ride or die. We’re brothers. We were brothers.”

“But you made that impossible, not him.” Her voice fell, “Craig, how can you not see that?”

He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I do see it. I also know that once exiled, there’s no way back. I’m out forever.”

“So why do this if you know he won’t let you back in? Why do it if it won’t force him to give you back your patch?”

“Because I want to!”

“Do you hear yourself?” She shook her head. This was beyond frustrating. Craig wasn’t completely a bad guy—an idiot, maybe—but he wasn’t all bad.

“You don’t understand…” His words trailed off, as if he expected her to answer for him.

“Oh, I think I do.” The utterly funny part of it hit her. She was actually commiserating with her captor, basically counseling him. Things couldn’t get any stranger. “I know what it’s like to be a part of something. I know how scary it is to walk away, even when you want to but don’t know how. I know it hurts that you got exiled, but for shit’s sake think about this for a moment.” She watched him. He looked actually sad and lost. It was pathetic really. “If Morgan didn’t still think of you as a brother, despite everything that you did, would he have let you walk? Would he have done everything he did to make sure you lived?”

“No,” Craig said. “I know that. But that doesn’t mean I don’t owe him some pain.”

She sighed inwardly. The code that the bikers lived by was an honorable one, but it was also a little self-indulgent as far as she was concerned. Revenge did nothing for anyone; it just caused more problems. “Craig, don’t you think he owes you some too? I mean, you stole from Nate and his crew, and you got the whole crew involved in a mass murder. You got the bar shot up, and people got hurt.” She shook her head, trying to get her bangs out of her eyes. “This isn’t the first time you’ve done something like that, is it?”

Craig ran his hands through his hair. His face went pale. “I was really fucked up. I was on too much shit, and I got greedy and scared. I fucked up the only family I ever had.”

“And you’re still doing it, Craig. Let me go before this gets worse.”

He shook his head, “I can’t.”

“You can. You’re the only one who can. Please, Craig,” she pleaded. “Please just untie me and let me go. I won’t say a word to anyone.”

“Shut up!” His shout echoed in the tiny house.

“You want something you’re basically ensuring you won’t ever get. Please just let me go home.” She didn’t have a home, but he didn’t need to know that.

Craig muttered, “Damn it! I had to kidnap the broad who wants to be a fuckin’ hostage negotiator.”

“I don’t want you to kill me. I don’t want Morgan to go to prison for killing you. I’m terribly afraid. Either way, this is a losing proposition for all of us, can’t you see? You don’t have a choice.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Morgan’s voice carried across the room from the door. He stood there, framed by the doorway, and Katie’s heart leaped in her chest. He was here! He would keep her safe!

If Craig didn’t kill them both.

The gun was back in his hand in the blink of an eye. He wore a determined expression that neither of them could deny seeing.

Morgan charged into the room, not closing the door behind him.

Katie’s heart stuttered and started again, far too fast. It made her dizzy.

He paused when Craig raised the gun and clicked the safety off. “Craig, come on, man. This is bullshit.”

Craig waved the gun. His face was white, but his hand steady. “Don’t make me kill you too, Morgan.”

“If you want to kill me, you will. We both know that.” Morgan’s voice was soft, silky, like the sharp end of knife you didn’t realize has the potential to cut right through you.

Craig grimaced. “Morgan, I’m warning you—”

“What? What’re you warning me about, Craig?” Morgan stayed where he was, obviously eyeing the situation; from Katie being tied up, to the chances of him tackling Craig before the gun went off.

“You’re going to have to choose, Morgan. Your crew,” the gun went to Katie, “or her. Pick, because you can’t keep both.”

“Really?”

“Fuck, yeah.” He lowered the gun slightly, but didn’t put the safety back on.

“You’re full of shit, Craig!” You always were, but you were my fucking brother! Fuck, man, we’ve ridden together since we were kids. You’ve totally lost your fucking mind or something, I don’t know. I did you a solid keeping Nate and his crew from wiping the streets with you, and this is how you repay me?”

Craig shook his head “You took the only family I ever had. We could have fought off the OutKasts.” He dropped the gun lower, but didn’t take his hand off the trigger. He wanted to talk, but he obviously wanted to make sure the conversation went his way.

“We shouldn’t have had to, Craig! You kept bringing your mistakes to our door and every time you did, we rode for you. But we can’t ride for you like that anymore, because you screwed the pooch. Do you know how hard we had to knock down doors to get Nate’s money? We’ll be a month recouping the losses and a lot longer recouping the goodwill we had to call in to make that happen in twenty-four hours.”

“You gonna stand there and tell me nobody in the crew had that kind of dough?”

“I’m sure some do. But this was something the whole club had to handle, you know the rules. No brother pulls it out of his own pocket when another screws up. If we let that happen, we’d have guys busting up stuff all over the place because they’d know the others would walk it out for them.” Morgan took a step toward Craig and froze when Craig raised the gun. Morgan held his hands up, as if in surrender. “Everyone hurts when someone hurts the crew, Craig. You should know; it was your rule. You wrote it.” Morgan’s voice was harsh. He walked slowly to Katie and pressed a warm hand on her shoulder. He reached down and began to untie and untape Katie.

Craig shook his head. “So you’re choosing her?”

Morgan continued to untie the ropes around her legs. “I’m taking my woman. If you want to shoot me, shoot me. If you don’t, then shut up.”

“I’m warning you, Morgan. If you take her, you’ll be wrecking your crew.”

Katie’s one hand was free and she reached to free the other one. Craig wouldn’t shoot Morgan. He didn’t want to. She was sure of it. Seventy percent sure.

Morgan paused and then he stepped toward Craig. The two men faced each other, eye-to-eye. Despite the seriousness of the situation, despite the real danger, Katie felt a pulse of desire running through her body.

Morgan, his taut body and intensely powerful charisma, was never more enticing than when they were on the edge of danger. She gulped as she realized that fact. He was sexy as hell all the time, but when things got dangerous he became panty-melting, thigh-uncrossing
hot
.

Her body was aching for his, and she knew that had to be an indicator of something really wrong with her, but it felt so right.

Ever so right.

Craig’s shoulders dropped. “Don’t do this, Morgan. You’re still my brother. Walk away from her and be loyal to the crew.”

“The crew? You’re not part of the crew anymore, so what happens to us is none of your damn business.”

Craig sighed. “Fine. Suit yourself, but remember: you did this.”

Katie, sure she was about to die, held her breath. Craig stepped back and raised the gun. He back away from them before suddenly disappearing through the open door.

Katie heard his car start and tires peel angrily. She gasped, and started to cry.

Morgan cupped her face and pulled her up. “It’s okay Katie, I’ve got you.” His hands were gentle as he held her. His mouth met hers and his arms went around her. She clung to him and the shelter his body gave her. That throb of desire grew, becoming an actual physical ache, and when he stepped away she had to fight the urge to tell him to get naked, and make love to her right there in the house where she’d been held captive.

She was going crazy. “H-How did you find me?”

He sighed. “Craig wasn’t trying to hide, not really. This was…this house was Lisa’s.”

She searched his face, trying to figure out the connection from the pain in his eyes. “Who’s Lisa?”