Killer Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 3) (18 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Six hours later, King looked at Aidan, exchanged glances with Honey. Aidan was staring through the two-way glass of the safe house interrogation room, his hands clenched, his whole body tense.

“Aidan?” King said quietly.

“Yeah?” Aidan rasped, not taking his eyes off Ace.

“What’s the plan here, man?”

“He’s going to tell me where the fuck Gabi is.”

“And what makes you think he’s going to tell you?” Honey said, baffled. “You going to say pretty-please? Or you going to go all bad-ass and beat the crap out of him?”

“I’m going to do neither.” Without another word, Aidan left the room and they followed him.

King entered the room, saw Ace’s sneer of contempt and Aidan’s scary calm. The man had something up his sleeve, no doubt about that, but King had no clue what the hell it could be.

What do you have on him, Aidan? And if it’s that good, how did you find out about it?

“Ace.” Aidan sat down across from him.

“Fucker.” Ace leaned back in his chair.

“Where’s Gabriela?” Aidan said, his calm totally unruffled.

“Who?” He blinked, a look of complete innocence on his face.

“You going to make me do this the hard way?”

“Go on, man.” Ace’s dark eyes were crackling with hatred. “Do your fucking worst.”

“OK. If you insist.” Aidan narrowed his eyes, lowered his voice. “Shall I bring Spider in here to join us?”

King and Honey watched as Ace exhibited the most dramatic reaction imaginable. His mouth fell open, his face drained of all color, his whole body tensed up. They looked at each other, stunned and telegraphing their shared confusion.

What the fuck is Aidan talking about?

“Spider?” Ace said, going for bravado and failing badly. “Who the hell’s that?”

“Your ex-boyfriend.”

Honey actually gasped and King thought his jaw might hit the damn floor.

“My – my… fuck you, man.”

“So you want me to have someone drop by his café, bring him over here?” Aidan cocked his head. “Maybe he can help us out?”

“I – he – you…”

“Good usage of personal pronouns,” Aidan said. “But that doesn’t answer my question: should I ask Honey to go and get Spider?”

“You – you can’t.”

“I sure as hell can.” Aidan crossed his arms. “I can
also
ask him about where the money came from five years ago for him to start up that café.”

Ace gulped.

“Or maybe you can tell me?” Aidan said. “Save Honey the hassle of a trip to The Web Café on Brock Street? Though if she hurries, she’ll beat the morning rush-hour traffic.”

“Come on, man,” Ace said, the pleading clear in his voice. “Don’t – don’t involve him, OK?”

“Why the fuck not?” Aidan rubbed the bandage on his neck. “You sure as hell involved Gabi and Maria.”

Ace looked away.

“OK, now.” Aidan’s voice was quiet. “You tell me where she is and I’ll forget that you and Spider were in a secret relationship for three years. I can
also
forget that when you moved up to VP in the club, you ended it with him to protect both of you… though you did meet up off-and-on for more than a year after before
he
called it totally quits. Finally, I may
also
develop amnesia about the fact that you gave him enough money to shut him up – money that he used to start The Web.” His smile was terrifying. “You want me to forget all of that, Ace?”

“I – I – yes.” The game was over now and he knew it – how the hell did this asshole know all of this? Where had Ace fucked up? They’d always been so careful, for obvious reasons. And if Carter knew, then who the hell else did? “Yes. I want you to forget all of that.”

“You sure? ‘Cause I’m
positive
that your fag-hating MC brothers would be
very
interested to know that a closeted gay man was their VP.” Aidan’s voice was gaining strength now. “They’d probably be happy that I enlightened them, actually. Might even ask me to join up, huh? Maybe take over your job when the post is vacant, when you go on that mysterious and very sudden ‘long trip’ out of town?”

“No. Don’t.” He was almost shaking. “They won’t just kill me, OK? They’ll kill Spider, too.”

“You really begging me for mercy? Did Gabi beg the same way? And how much mercy did you extend to her?”

Ace was silent, then he shot King and Honey a look.

“She didn’t get any mercy.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Aidan said calmly. “But you tell me where she is and you and Spider just might. Now, I’m not asking again… where the fuck is she?”

“About fifteen miles out of town, up in the mountains.”

“In a cabin?”

“No.” Ace looked down. “She’s – she’s buried.”

Losing his cool for the first time, Aidan shot to his feet, his chair hitting the floor. “Buried
alive
?”

“Yeah.”

“How long ago?” King asked, seeing that Aidan was paralyzed with horror.

“About… ten hours.”

“How long can someone survive being buried like that?” Honey said, her voice hushed. “How many hours?”

“Depends,” King said. “I’ve seen people survive up to a day.”

Aidan found his voice again. “Where exactly?”

“I’ll show you on a map. You can be there in fifty minutes.”

“Talk fast, you fucker,” Aidan snarled. “If she dies, I’m burning your whole life to the ground. You get me?”

Ace nodded, hoping to Christ that the bitch had enough fight left in her to still be sucking down air. “Can you pull up a map on your cell phone?”

**

King drove the back roads like an Indy pro – he barely slowed down for the curves or bumps, barely paused at crossroads. It was pre-dawn and the roads were deserted… the fuckers had certainly chosen a lonely spot to kill Gabi. Nobody would hear her; nobody would stumble across her. Her body would never have been found, King was sure of it.

Aidan was still silent and King risked taking his eyes off the road to glance at the other man. He hadn’t said one word since they’d left an unconscious Ace with Honey and he sat there now, his face a terrifying blank.

“Aidan?”

The blond head turned towards him. “Yeah?”

“You doing OK, man?”

“No.”

King took a big breath just as his cell beeped. “Check it, yeah? The guys might already be up there.”

Aidan opened the text and gave a grim smile. “Knox and Tank are there with the shovels. They say that the earth has clearly been disturbed.”

“So they found her.” King spun the wheel hard to the right to avoid a fallen tree trunk.

“Yeah.” Aidan set the phone down and went back to staring silently out the window.

King left him alone; he couldn’t imagine what the man was thinking or feeling right now. Hell, if that were Naomi down there? Just the thought made him sick and furious and the MC’s reasoning for doing it made the whole thing even worse, if that was at all possible.

After Ace’s revelation about what they’d done with Gabi, Aidan had managed to ask one more shocked, stunned question.

“Why bury her?” Aidan had demanded. “Why not just shoot her at my place, kill her on the spot? Kill both of us, actually?”

Ace had the decency to look a bit ashamed. “Trigger wanted to… to drive you all crazy. He wanted you to know that we’d taken her alive and for you to always wonder where she was – if she was still alive and being tortured or raped somewhere. He wanted to… to completely break you guys that way.” He looked down at the table. “He also said that he wanted
you
to know that you’d completely failed your girlfriend when she needed you the most. For you to – to live with that.”

Aidan had stared at him for a few seconds before hauling back and punching the man hard enough to knock him out cold. Then Aidan stopped talking until just this moment, torn up inside in ways that King couldn’t even begin to imagine. Fucking animals, burying sweet Gabi alive, like a piece of garbage. He hoped that she was holding on to some of her nerves of steel right now – not panicking may be the difference between life and death.

The calmer she is, the more air she has, and the more time we have to get to her. Come on, sweetie. Breathe slow and shallow. Hang in there.

They broke through the trees to a clearing and before King had fully stopped the vehicle, Aidan was out and running to Tank and Knox who were already knee-deep in a hole they’d dug. Without a word, Knox handed him his shovel and stepped aside; he knew that Aidan would want to
do
something now. Anything would be better than standing helplessly by and watching someone else try to find the woman he loved.

Aidan thrust the shovel in to the earth, threw dirt over his shoulder, attacked the ground again. Tank was moving just as fast, his muscles rippling and straining. Within minutes, both men were sweating heavily but they didn’t stop long enough to even wipe their faces. They were both panting and their breaths were the only sounds in the clearing. King and Knox stood to the side, watching, silent.

Five minutes passed, then ten. Aidan was slowing down now, out of sheer exhaustion, and that pissed him off. He doubled down, gritting his teeth, ignored the ache in his arms and legs and back. The stitches in his neck pulled and burned, and he ignored that too. If he ripped them out, he wouldn’t care at this point. All that mattered was finding her.

A loud clunk echoed around the forest. Everyone was so surprised, they actually all froze for a split second. Then when they realized what this meant, Tank and Aidan dropped to their knees and started scraping at the dirt with their fingers.

“Fuck,” King said. “That’s it.”

They cleared the whole lid and started digging around the sides so they could pry it open. King and Knox joined in now, scrabbling wildly with their fingers.

King knocked on the lid. “Gabi? Gabi! Can you hear us?”

All the men wished hard for an answering knock, but none came.

“Almost there, guys,” Tank grunted. “Another two inches. Come on, now.”

They worked fast, but for Aidan it was an eternity. His fingers were bloody from the stones and dirt and scraping against the wooden lid, but he didn’t notice a thing. All he could think about was the fact that he was mere inches away from Gabi… and that this wooden box may well be her casket.

Finally,
finally
, Knox managed to get the crowbar in to the side of the box and with one strong movement, he lifted the lid. It cracked and the other men yanked off the broken pieces, ignoring the sharp edges. And there she was, still in her pajamas. Covered in dirt and eyes closed and very, very still.

Without a word, Aidan reached in, scooped her up in to his arms. He handed her up to Tank who laid her down on a blanket on the ground. Aidan scrambled out and flung himself next to her, pressed his ear to her mouth. “Gabriela?”

Nothing. No breath sounds.

“Oh, fuck…no.” His fingers fumbled on her wrist and throat, trying to find a pulse. “
No
.”

King took Aidan’s shoulders firmly, pulled him back and away. “Let Knox.”

Aidan sat back on his heels and watched as Knox started CPR. Aidan could have done it himself, of course, but he seemed to have completely lost the ability to cope with anything at the moment. All he could handle right now was kneeling in the dirt, shaking and trying to catch his breath. Rage was close again: he tasted it, it was burning his chest, rising in his throat.

Don’t you fucking lose it. If you lose it, it means you’ve given up hope. And you haven’t done that – not yet.

King was kneeling next to him, still touching his shoulder. That huge hand was a comforting, solid weight and Aidan actually found himself drawing strength from it. King had a steadiness to him that only seemed to increase exponentially as a situation went more and more to shit. The man was masterful in a crisis and Aidan suddenly understood that if he fell apart here, it was going to be King who’d be the one to put him together again.

Knox breathed in to Gabi’s mouth, did chest compressions. Over and over, the rhythm oddly soothing. Aidan kept his eyes trained on Gabi’s face. God, she was just so beautiful and he stared at her colorless cheeks and gray lips and remembered the last time he’d stroked them, kissed them.

Was it really just yesterday afternoon?

When she coughed and gasped for air – brutally hard and painfully, really fighting for a return to life – Aidan gasped too; that was when he realized that he’d been holding his breath. Knox was leaning over Gabi now with his huge hand on her cheek, talking softly to her, offering warmth and comfort as she slowly came around. Aidan made a move to stand up and go to her, feeling frantic and damn-near hysterical, but King’s hand clamped down on his shoulder, holding him still.

“Wait,” he said softly. “Just wait. She’s going to be confused and scared and she’ll need you to be calm. She’s going to need reassurance that she’s safe and it’s all over. You ready to do that for her?”

Aidan looked up in to his gray eyes, saw nothing but compassion. He nodded.

“OK, then.” King let him go. “Be there for her now.”

Aidan sat down beside her just as those astounding eyes opened. She blinked, hazy and lost, trying to focus. Knox stepped back, joined King and Tank a few feet away. There was no privacy but Aidan truly didn’t care: all he saw was Gabi, alone and frightened.

“Gabriela? Baby?”

She startled at his voice, lifted her eyes to his. Her lips moved but no sound came out. He saw that she was forming his name over and over and he smiled.

“Yeah, it’s me. You’re OK now, angel. I’ve got you.” Carefully, he reached out to touch her and was relieved when she didn’t shrink back. “Come here.”

Gabriela let him pull her to his chest. When he settled her on his lap, she curled right up against him, shaking and silent, eyes wide open and terrified. Aidan didn’t hold her too tight, not wanting to make her feel trapped, but he stroked her hair over and over, a soothing motion that seemed to help her relax.

Gabi couldn’t believe that she was back here in Aidan’s arms, pressed to his powerful body. She couldn’t talk, not yet, and all she could manage to do was cling to his shirt with both hands, hard and tight, holding his warmth to her. She’d been so cold down in the ground and she found his heat even more comforting than his strength or his hands.