Before I could speak, four men who’d been at the back of the house joined us in the entryway, and the energy in the room went from tense to electric. The man holding me let go and I dropped to the floor in a heap of arms and legs. As I scurried to get my limbs under me to crawl away, I heard the men arguing above me. Beard Guy never raised his voice, but the way he spoke was much scarier than Jose’s screaming in Spanish. I couldn’t figure out what they were arguing about, but at that point I was too concerned with myself to care. I got to my hands and knees and crawled toward the men in the vests. They had to take me with them. I didn’t care what their problem was with the guys at the party; they couldn’t leave me alone with them.

When I reached the leader, I kneeled at his feet and slowly wrapped my arm around his thigh. He was warm and he smelled good and I wanted to rest where I was for just a moment, so I closed my eyes and laid my head on his thigh.

“What the fuck?” I heard him rumble above me as his hand weaved through my hair. “You fuckin’ drug her?”

He sounded pissed off, but I couldn’t tell who his anger was directed at, so I leaned my head back to look up at his face. He wasn’t looking at me, so I pulled on his pant leg to get his attention. He didn’t look away from the guys across from him, and just when I thought he was going to completely ignore me, he looked down and his brown eyes met mine.

I didn’t think he would help. I was tired and disoriented and afraid, but I knew I had to try one last time to get away from there. It didn’t ever dawn on me that I might be exchanging one bad situation for another.

“Please,” I whispered, but my word was lost in the sound of a gunshot. He shoved me sideways to the floor as another shot rang out, this one closer to us. I whimpered and tried to crawl away, but he held firm to my hair, pressing my face into the floor.

I wondered detachedly if that was my punishment for disobeying my parents, and then everything went black.

Chapter 2

Callie

I woke up on a scratchy comforter, and as soon as I opened my eyes, I squinted at the bright lamp in front of my face. Where the hell was I? It looked like a hotel room, but I couldn’t remember going to a hotel. The last thing I could recall was walking through the house party on Mallory’s heels, trying not to bring any attention to myself.

I lay there quietly, trying to catch my bearings, when I realized I wasn’t alone in the room.  I could hear two men’s voices, one deep and the other raspy.

“You fucked up the meet, man. Slider’s gonna cut off your balls,” the raspy one joked.

“Shut the fuck up. Jose was gonna cause problems and you know it. Had nothin’ to do with the girl,” the deep voice replied, sounding frustrated.

“Yeah, but it wouldn’t have been a fuckin’ gun fight if you woulda kept your head.”

“I kept my head. Someone starts fuckin’ shooting at me, I shoot back. It’s fuckin’ common sense. Jose’s low level, no one’s gonna miss him or his men.”

Then, another voice joined the discussion.

“Dude, it’s gonna look like you took Jose out over a piece of ass,” he said quietly.

“Then you’ll have to explain matters, won’t you?” the deep voice warned.

“Not sure what I’ll be explaining. You took them out and then grabbed the bitch and left. Looks pretty cut and dry to me…”

“Brother or not, I’ll fuckin’ drop you where you stand.”

“Fine.”

I tried not to panic as someone grabbed a hold of my foot at the edge of the bed and shook it.

“Grease, man, it looks like your girl is waking up,” Raspy Voice said to someone else in the room.

I lay there silently, begging to be anywhere but in that fucking hotel room waiting to see what would happen. My head was starting to throb with the beat of my racing heart, and when someone spoke from right behind me, my whole body jerked.

“Get your fuckin’ hand off her foot,” the deep voice growled. “Don’t fuckin’ touch her.”

The tone of his voice was enough to clear all the cobwebs from my brain. Before he even finished speaking, I had pulled my legs up and pushed with my heels until I was sitting, curled into a ball against the headboard of the bed. As soon as I was as small as I could make myself, I jerked my head up to see what I was dealing with.

There were four men in the room—really big men—and when I saw them I whimpered a little in the back of my throat. Three of the men were wearing matching black leather vests, tattoos covered their arms and they all had beards. They looked like they belonged in a Hell’s Angels documentary, and I swallowed hard, knowing they belonged to some motorcycle club. Motorcycle Clubs were full of criminals, weren’t they?

God, if I had just stayed home like I was supposed to, I wouldn’t have had to deal with any of the mess I had created for myself. My eyes raced around the room, taking all of them in, and I was surprised when I saw the fourth man. He wasn’t wearing a vest, and his clothes seemed similar to the ones I saw every day at school. The only thing setting him apart from my peers was the Mohawk on his head and the tattoo that wrapped around his left hand. He didn’t seem scary until I looked at his face. He was scowling at me and his eyes were empty.

I didn’t know what the hell I was doing there, but I knew it was bad. They looked scary. None of them were smiling, and for the life of me, I couldn’t think of one good reason that I would be in a hotel room with four men. My clothes were still intact—I even had my shoes on—but I was afraid they had been waiting for me to wake up.