The Hostage Sister: Blades and Red Skulls (Hellriders Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  The Hostage Sister

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Epilog

  The Bad Sister

  These ARE standalone stories

  They CAN be read individually.

  Part one, The Stray Sister

  DOES NOT HAVE

  to be read first.

  They are in chronological order, though

  and you may find that you enjoy them

  better in sequence

  The Hostage Sister

  Tiffany huddled and shivered from shock in the thin blanket. Blue and red lights flashed over the dark asphalt and radio noise crackled through the night air. She was distant, disconnected, as if she were watching firm male hands steer someone else to the open door of an ambulance.

  Questions rained down on her but they bounced off and faded away into the blur of noise and movement as her senses began to shut down.

  They poked her mouth with spatulas. Took swabs. Shone lights in her eyes and turned her arms over.

  Felt everywhere.

  All over her body. Again.

  Someone gave instructions. Drips, injections. Measurements.

  “We’re going to get them,” a strong, male voice said. “There’s plenty to go on, Miss. Don’t you worry about a thing now.”

  Them. One of them, she wanted that bastard caught. For what he did, she wanted him behind bars, his skin turning pale and gray while he waited on years of appeals against the death penalty. But the other one… not the other one…

  All the voices, all the sounds of boots on shale, they all receded into the soft, soothing darkness.

  The clocktower bell clanged and her eyes flicked open. She was back in the funk and gloom of that square, bare, windowless room.

  Chapter 1

  Tiffany spent the bright spring Saturday morning putting wear on Daddy’s cards at the mall. Her first weekend off from her med school internship roster at MountainView Hospital and she meant to recreate.

  Serious party plans were afoot with her gang of med students, and they knew how to rip the night wide open. She just hoped that nobody leaked any of the details to the notorious Doctor Mastermann. She didn’t need her slender skills in martial arts tested again.

  She cruised the food court, picked out some Thai vegetarian nibbles and schlepped her big bags full of upscale grungewear and Urban Decay makeup—most of it in shades of black—over to a table.

  Leaning on the balcony rail above were two bikers. They looked pretty hardcore, probably members of Blades MC. The local trouble, or the local heroes, depending on whether you took Daddy’s outlook or her sister Jesska’s.

  Mean shades poked out between their unruly masses of wiry hair. One had a mess of light brown tangle, the other had a dirty blond thatch. The darker-haired one wore a thick, neat beard.

  Cut-off leather jackets over cut-off hoodies left the hard cords of their arm muscles on show, and their jeans covered but did nothing to conceal two heart-stopping clenched asses. You could stack a row of textbooks on those asses. If books were what was on your mind, that is.

  Tiffany didn’t see the bikers take any notice of her at all but, if they were around any longer than her samosa, she meant to make sure that they did. She had used up most of her morning plan for spending Daddy’s money, so she had nothing else in mind for the day.

  Bikers. Tiffany’s little sister, Jesska had always been fascinated by bikers. Fascinated to a point of obsession. She rode motorcycles herself, and Tiff was sure that Jess had been hanging around some biker bar. She wondered why she was so sure.

  It was a few weeks ago Tiff decided that was what happened. Why? Because Jess stopped talking about it. Duh! Obvious as soon as she thought about it. Was she having sex with bikers? Wow, you heard pretty wild things about bikers clubs. All exaggerated, Tiff was sure. But still.

  She snuck another glance at the bikers. They were pretty hot. In a rough kind of a way, but definitely hot. They didn’t look like any of the boys in med school, that was for sure. She gave her attention to her veggie nibbles.

  Tiffany casually checked then noticed with satisfaction that the two Blades men were still in sight. In fact they had hardly moved. They still didn’t seem to have registered her tiny faded denim skirt or her black stockings, torn across her thighs and laddered all the way into her short, patterned cowboy boots.

  Not even the deep scoop of her t-shirt seemed to have caught their eyes yet. The tee, without too much study revealed that she wasn’t wearing a bra. That was in case the pert, bouncing nipples under the soft white shirt hadn’t made that point—those points—already.

  Tiffany dressed in black, mussed up her dyed-black hair and wore black makeup, so as not to be noticed. She said so all the time. Deep cover, as a smart-ass in med school called it. As she stepped onto the up escalator, she thought she saw another man in the bikers’ cut and jeans on the far side of the food court.

  He slipped backwards behind the pillar with the clock. Ten of two. The clock showed its happy face.

  When the escalator let her off on the first floor, she saw only the blond biker but that wasn’t so bad. He was the cuter of the two. Tiffany’s hips rolled slowly as she strutted nonchalantly by and the heels of her boots snapped nicely on the polished floor.

  As she passed him his scent wound and curled into her head, but she felt it land deep in her stomach. A dark scent, unusual to her nose but definitely not cheap, patchouli and something exotic, as well as a light but unmistakable sweet-stale whiff of freshly burned weed. Behind all that was the kicker. The only word for that smell is ‘man.’

  Her shoulders slouched to shove open the door to the parking levels, and her eye just happened to peek back at him. A thrill beyond satisfaction fizzled up through her as she saw him pull up his hood and he followed her. And he was speeding up.

  Tiffany let the heavy door swing closed behind her, and headed behind a partition for the pay station. She sensed that somebody was already there. Before she moved to look around, a huge gloved hand clamped over her nose and mouth. An arm across her stomach pinned her arms and squeezed the breath out of her.

  Struggling against the force that held her, Tiffany could hardly move her head. She shouted, but only the tiniest grunt escaped past the gloved hand. As her body shook, the restraining arm didn’t move, but the fingers of the hand on her stomach, her abdomen and her hip pressed in, exploring.

  She tried to kick backwards but she was held too tight, forced against the hot, hard body of her captor. She felt the taut ropes of his abs, the tough thighs pressed against the soft cheeks of her ass. Between them a thick, uncoiling swelling pressed against her.

  As she shook and tried to shout, she felt a quick, rhythmic pulsing in the body of her attacker. He was chuckling. It amused him to feel her desperate attempts to shake or kick herself free.

  He hadn’t made a move for the purse under her arm, but her phone, her money, her cards—well, Daddy’s cards—they were all in there. Tiffany was sure that was where this was headed.

  Daddy would shout and yell about it and make it her fault. Give her endless lectures about her being irresponsible and not taking enough care. Then the insurance would pay. So what? No biggie.

  Rapid footsteps thudded from behind and the blond bik
er stood in front of her. His hood was up and he had a red and black bandana over his nose and mouth. How much more perfect could it be? She gets attacked in the car park and the biker is right there to rescue her.

  Only he doesn’t rescue her. First he looks hard in her eye and puts his gloved finger to his pursed lips. Her eyes are wide and afraid now, but she makes a rapid nod. When the hand comes off her face, the blond biker straps tape across her mouth.

  She tried to shake her head, she wanted to tell him, It’s OK, I’ll do what you say, but he grabbed her by the jaw, his pale blue eyes burned over the top of his shades. His finger went to his lips again. A tear threatened to well in her eye. He paused to brush it away with his thumb, giving her time to catch a slow breath through her nose.

  He turned her by her shoulders and took her shopping bags and she heard him put them down. As she was turning, she tilted her head to look for security cameras. Someone would see this. She’d be out of this in no time. These assholes were going down.

  She located the camera. It was right above her head and there was no way it would have a view of what was happening here. They had chosen their spot. They knew what they were doing. Her hands were pulled behind her back and a tight plastic strap vibrated as it tightened around her wrists.

  A dark van pulled up sharp by the pay station and another biker got out. The one from behind the pillar when she left the food court. A girl in denim and leather with big shades covering her face and a hoodie up appeared with her hand out.

  The blond biker turned her again to face him. He said, “Car keys, parking ticket.” He pointed at the purse under her arm. She nodded. He took the purse, didn’t yank the strap, snapped the purse open, but held the opening towards her so she could see.

  He found the pocket in the side where the ticket was, and her car key. He handed them to the girl. He snapped her bag closed, and put it back under her arm. His eyes were hard and cruel, but his movements were soft and kind.

  The girl went to the pay station as Tiffany was bundled through the side door onto a bench in the back of the van. The bench looked like it came out of the back of a long-dead Chrysler sedan. Smelled like it, too. The partition between the front and the back of the van had a scratched, milky Plexiglass window.

  The brown-haired biker, the one who had grabbed her from behind, he slid in to drive and the blond biker sat up front with him. The other one climbed in the back after Tiffany.

  He sat on a crate and watched her as she lay across the bench in the darkness. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the narrow black shades.

  The engine started and at the same time, from the far side of the parking level, Tiffany heard her turquoise Mini chirrup its cheery greeting to the key. The van moved and Tiffany was wedged into the crook of the bench, her arms twisted and cramped under her.

  When she struggled to get less painfully uncomfortable, the biker lunged forward. Her head jerked as he slapped her across the jaw and he grabbed her thigh, hard. He held a big, balled fist up close to her eye. She couldn’t see anything of his face, just the bandana and the shades. No expression, no clue.

  He was black-haired. He had straps on his biceps, fingerless leather gloves and a black bandana over his face. Her first instinct was to just nod and comply, but she didn’t see how she could go any distance with her arm hurting so much.

  She raised her eyebrows and twitched her head towards her shoulder, keeping her eye on the faceless face in front of her, hoping that he would understand. He was still.

  Then his hand jerked her thigh, pulling her legs apart. Her tiny skirt rode up. The tops of her torn hold-ups were exposed and the bottom of her sheer black knickers.

  She was yanked onto her back. His grip on her thigh was rough, and his fist was still at her face. The head in front of her cocked to the left. It was a question. Better? Her arms were less painful now. She nodded, once. She tried to wriggle to get her skirt down. But the fist held closer to her face, so she stopped.

  As the van lurched through the barrier, out of the car park and into the sunshine, Tiffany thought, Everybody’s wearing shades, and she realized, Nobody talks. It gave her hope. They don’t want me to be able to identify them. That means they at least have a plan that involves not killing me.

  Chapter 2

  From her position on the bench, nobody looking into the truck would be able to see her and, looking out through the misty window, she could hardly see anything but sky and the occasional blur of an unrecognizable building.

  Bumping on the bench, able to breathe only through her nose, Tiffany was stifled by the stale air, with a light but old male stench beneath it. Her wrists were sore from the chafing of the plastic tie, and her arms ached.

  To distract herself, she thought about the direction of shadows as the van moved. She thought she might get an idea at least of what direction she was traveling but, this time of day, there weren’t enough shadows for any clue. She probably wouldn’t have been able to figure anything out or even keep track.

  With the eyeless black sunglasses watching her, Tiffany began to despair. She told herself that was a bad thing, she had to stay positive. But it didn’t do her much good.

  They rattled and slewed along in silence. The one thing Tiffany thought she could detect was that the sounds outside, of people, horns, traffic and general city noise, were fading. The air was becoming drier. They were leaving town, heading out into the scrubland.

  After a long time on a straight road, the van veered off to the left. The road became progressively bumpier until the wheels began to skip and the driver had to slow down. A couple of minutes of that then they veered again, onto a smooth surface and then, suddenly, into darkness.

  Tiffany’s eyes couldn’t adjust. For her, it was pitch black. She knew they must be inside a building of some sort. The van lurched to a stop. When the engine cut and the doors opened, she heard a big, dry echo. The two men got out of the front of the van and shut the doors behind them.

  She lifted her head from the bench. Immediately, her face stung and her head snapped to the side from the slap the biker delivered. He knocked once on the Plexiglass, then he seized Tiffany by the throat with one hand, and held her down with the other hand pressed on her mound, through her panties.

  He held her like that and Tiffany was alarmed at the rising tides of tingling sensation that welled up in her. She could smell her own juices. She knew that the biker must have been able to smell them, too.

  She remembered reading that women lubricate when they are about to be raped. The scientist who made the study said that it was self-preservation. Tiffany wondered if that was the whole story.

  A pair of boots clomped back the way the van had come in, twenty-eight paces. Then the sound of a heavy door sliding and a clang when it shut. Twenty-eight paces back. Tiffany felt better knowing that some skill had shown itself to her. She was a drummer. She could count.

  Without even thinking about it, she had listened to the footsteps go and come back, and then replayed the rhythm in her head, counting as it played. She had a sense of the size of the building, which was pretty big. Some old warehouse or something.

  The side door of the van opened. The black-haired biker let go his grip on her throat. His hand dragged away from her panties, but much more slowly. Then he held a finger in front of her nose. The finger pointed to say, Don’t move, but she was more aware of it carrying her own scent.

  The biker climbed out and the blond biker climbed in. He still wore the bandana over his mouth, and he had a black cloth in his hand. He sat on the bench opposite her. She couldn’t see his eyes through the shades, but she saw his jaw muscles working beneath the bandana.

  He reached across towards her purse. She shoved her shoulder towards him to indicate that he could take it. Really, what choice did she have? Again, he took the purse, but again he opened it towards her so that she saw as he reached in for her iPhone. Then he snapped the purse shut and returned it under her arm.

  He dropped her iPhone
in his pocket, then held up the black cloth. Her eyes narrowed and stung as he wrapped the cloth tight around her head and tied it at the back.

  He took her by her shoulder and guided her to sit up, then he helped her out of the van. The floor was hard and gritty, like old concrete under her boots. He held her upper arm and led her along, up to a set of three metal steps.

  At the top of the steps, she was walked through a doorway. Seemed like a trailer or a camper. Something that was sprung, for sure, because she felt it move and give as she stepped in, and again as the biker walked in behind her. He took her across to a low, soft couch of some kind.

  Slumped back into the couch, with her bound arms cranked up behind her, Tiffany was stuck like a turtle on its back.

  It felt like a trailer somehow. It seemed too light and bendy, the floor moved too easily for an RV or the back of a truck.

  The biker walked back across the sprung floor and out of the door. She heard it close. Now she felt panic. They couldn’t leave her like this. Her mouth covered, her arms cramped, useless and hurting. The blond biker was walking across the concrete outside. She counted his steps.