Snatched (5 page)

She knew the damage drugs could do. Had seen the ravages
on
both relatives and friends. She
definitely
didn't want to be anywhere around dealing
.
With that thought, s
he hastened her pace but found that speed walking was not good on a stomach – and a head – full of
Sangria
. She stumbled
a little a
s she reached the crosswalk.

Déjà vu again. The bikers
practically
mowed her down even though she had the light and had already stepped off the curb.
A quick step back to move out of the way of the marauding bikes landed her
square
ly on her ass.
An explosion of red sauce splattered the sidewalk
as
the
bag
burst on impact. Ribs, fries and sweet potato pie were now street litter.

Sitting among the destruction
,
Nailah's
earlier resignation
morphed into something feral, something
white boiling hot
.
Fed by anger, denied hunger
and liquid courage, she
picked
up a
rib bone
and rose. The last of the bikers
was still crossing against the red light, just past the crosswalk.

Her aim wasn't sure.
However,
the gods of barbecue
must have
lent a bit of luck to her trajectory
because the
bone smacked the last rider square on the cheek
as he rode past
.

The next minutes blurred in
a quick succession
.
The impact of the sudden projectile caused the rider to lose control. His b
ike skid, wobbled, then
toppled
beneath him
. The spectacle
of it all
made
her laugh with righteous vindication.

He extricated himself from his bike, sauce smearing his jaw
and
dripping on
to
his
shirt
.
She realized too late that laughing wasn't exactly the wisest thing to do in a situation like this.
She e
specially
realized this
when
his eyes fell on her
in a thunderous stare
.
Inwardly she
blame
d the
Sangria
for her stupidity
.
Or
rather
a mixture of
Sangria
and Ms. Barton. Both were about to get her killed.

Word must have gone down the line of bikers because they were turning around
, the sound of engines a chorus
as they headed back in her direction
.
Just like the
chorus of laughter
that
erupted
as the bikers
stopped and
took in the scene.
The bikes jammed the intersection forcing cars to move around the blockade.
She hadn't realized there were so many of them.

"Hey
Dele! Looks like the
bitch's
trying to get your attention!
Maybe you got somethin' she wants!"
This from a ZZ top wannabe with a
blondish
beard down to mid chest.
T
he others see
med to take their cue from him and laughed
.

"You need to show her the errors of her ways," the "leader" offered
, this time without a trace of mirth
. "She needs to learn a
thing
or two
about frontin' off to a
Demon
."

The first rider wiped sauce from his face, never taking his eyes from her.
Unlike the others, he didn't sport a full beard but rather a few day's growth.

"We don't have time for this shit," the man
answered
. "We've got business to take care of."

"Bro, I decide when and what business we handle. Now t
his black bitch think
she
's gonna
get away with
dissin' one of my crew. I say
it's
our business to
show her some reality."

Nailah had been quiet up until that point,
her
anger
duly
squelched
by her sudden
"reality." But she had learned a thing or two about getting out of
bad situations and she definitely had to use some ingenuity to get out of this.

"
Y
ou're going to hurt me with
all these
witnesses
around
, not to mention
a few
strategically placed traffic cams
? Tha
t's about
ten to twenty
when you're caught
.
And s
ince
I'm guessing
most
of
you aren't
unfamiliar with the inside of a jail cell
, I figure
there'll be some cumulative time
tagged on
.
Now, do you think I'm worth all that?
"

The ZZ top guy smiled. "Who says we'll get caught?
But you're right about the cams. What we'
re going to
do to you won't be recorded.
Grab her, Dele."

The man they called Dele he
sitated for a second with an "ah
shit" expression
on his face
. But in the end he moved toward her even as Nailah try to evade his reach. Unfortunately his reach was longer than she calculated and an arm roughly encircled her waist. He dragged her toward his now erect bike, pushed her onto the seat.

"I'm no
t
fucking
going anywhere with you
!
You're going to
have to kill me here!
"

"Don't think I won't,
"
he said matter-of-factly.

She
made a move to
jump off but he
grabbed her, held on
as he
slid onto the bike
and pumped the pedal,
his motions smooth and sure
.
All around
the idling engines came to life in roars of thunders that nearly split her ears.

"You better hold on or your brains are go
ing to
be all over
this street," he declared as he revved the motor one more time then took off.

Fear, alcohol and the force of a 120 mph wind in her face made her compliant as she
tightly
wrapped her arms around his waist. As far as she knew she was going to her ultimate death.

She cursed the damn
Sangria
. And that damnable Ms. Barton.

Crazy. This whole
situation
was
insane
, surreal
. Yet thro
ugh the miasma of wine and fear
she knew it was actually happening.
She was hanging off the back of a
crazy
bike
r in the midst of even crazier bikers on her way to something
horrible
and right now there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it short of jumping to her death
.
She couldn't really fathom how this had happened.
Just this morning, she'd been part of a
sane world where
the only
bad thing she
'd
faced was continued unemployment. In perspective, not so bad.

Being murdered by a marauding gang was so much worse.

If only she'd kept her promise to God and not succumbed to her urge for
barbecue
.
She could have been finishing up her
Sangria
followed by catching up
on a novel or magazine
.
Instead of
being
here.

She wondered how
they were going to kill her
.
W
ould anyone even find her body?
She thought of her parents and friends,
they wouldn't even know she was missing
.
That is, until they caught images
flash
ed on tonight's news
showing
her kidnapping
captured on the street cameras.

Also,
someone
might be able to provide an
eyewitness account.

Maybe someone had
even
caught a license plate number. God, she hoped so.

She whispered a prayer in her heart, her soul, begging God to spare her this destiny. And again, she foreswore
barbecue
…this time for life.

###

Fuck, fuck, fuck!
The litany of "fucks" ran through his head even as he worked the throttle
.
This situation was so fucked he couldn't see his way out of it.
Unfortunately for the woman, t
here was
only
one ending.

He
thought about what was
going to happen
to her
, what was expected
of him
.

It was a matter of ego and face.
It was a matter of life and death. His life for her death.

He blamed the stupid woman for putting herself in harm's way
in the first place
. What the fuck had she been thinking throwing that piece of meat at him?
Still i
f he'd kept
his
balance
, none of the
crew
would have caught on. And he could've just kept riding.

She was going to die because he'd lost control of his bike. And because she was obviously crazy. Nobody went up against a crew
of bikers
with a piece of…rib?

He felt her arms tighten
around him as he
maneuvered
a
sharp
curve. Skeet, riding along
side
Dele
's bike glanced over, smiled at the woman.
The smile was rife with promise
. Skeet didn't have a woman of his own.

Sometimes death was preferable
to other things
.
Dele
had figured that out
very early in his life
.

Still, h
e was a cop. He couldn't kill an inn
ocent. Someway, somehow
he was going to have to save both their asses. And come up with $50 grand worth of
heroin
.
All within days.
A very pressing agenda
.

Her hand
grab
bed
at the material
of his shirt
that
stretched
along his abs
.
He f
elt the desperation in her grip.
With her touch arose an idea, a way that he
might be
able to
save her
…
in
the
meantime
,
anyway
.
It was t
he only other way
for him
to
save face with the gang and keep her alive.
He knew
instinctively
she would
resist the idea but it was either that or eat lead.
Or
take
cold steel to the neck.

And
at least
it'd buy them some
valuable
time while he figured a way out of this shit of a mess.

The bikes raced along the
freeway toward El Sereno where the gang kept one of its many dens.
The sun was hot on his bare head,
seared
his skin.
The bikes pulled into an unfenced yard behind a small ramshackle home. Off to the right and left were two mobile homes and centered between them was a peeling garage that had seen better days.

As he got off the bike he whispered into her ear.