BIKER QUEEN AND HER HELLBOUND KING

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Grace

The wifi password was written on the underside of a barstool.

I had found it by accident on my third day in Velmore, when I knocked a stool over trying to reach a glass on the top shelf and caught myself on the seat. Someone had written it in black marker, small and cramped, like they hadn't wanted it to be easy to find. ‘VenomRiders1845.’

For all the efforts they had put into hiding it, the password was surprisingly easy to memorise.

I had memorized it then and done absolutely nothing with it, partly because I wasn't sure who I would contact and I also didn't have a phone, and partly because every time I thought about it, I could hear Kent's voice in my head telling me the Collector was tracking my surge.

But it had been a week and a half now, and the walls were starting to breathe down my neck.

I waited until the bar was completely empty, which happened reliably between two and four in the afternoon when most of Velmore seemed to vanish into their own routines. I sat at the far end of the counter with the phone Kent had given me a few days ago face down on the wood, staring at it like it might solve the problem for me. Then I flipped it over, typed in the password, and watched the signal bars climb.

The phone connected.

I had only one person I could call without thinking too hard about it. Diane, my old lab supervisor, the closest thing I had to a friend and the only person who would notice I was gone. I didn't even know what to tell her, she might think I died in the explosion or I had been kidn*pped.

I pulled up her number and stared at it for a long second before I typed out a short text.

I'm alive and okay. Don't call the police. I'll explain when I can.

I hit send before I could talk myself out of it.

"Put the phone down."

I spun around so fast I nearly knocked the stool over again. Kent was standing in the doorway behind the bar, arms at his sides, eyes fixed on my phone with an angry expression on his face. I hadn't heard him come in, I never heard him come in with how he often moved like a ghost.

“It won't work, Grace.” he said, walking towards me.

"I sent one text," I said, keeping my voice steady. "One. To let someone know I'm not dead in a ditch somewhere."

"Is there a law against trying to use the internet in your little sanctuary?" I asked, defiantly, maintaining eye contact even though my heart was beating so fast I was beginning to feel nauseous. "Or is access to the outside world restricted to the inner circle?”

"Turn off the wifi," he said when he finally got to me. "Right now."

"I am not doing that." I stood up from the stool and put the counter between us out of pure instinct. The look in his eyes made me shudder, he looked terrifying when he was angry.

"I have a life, Kent. I have a career and people who are probably calling the police right now. You can't just keep me here like some specimen in a jar, I have been here for almost two weeks. Two weeks, Kent. I did not call the police if that's what you're worried about, I only sent a message to my friend so she wouldn't be worried about me”

"The police won't find this place, and if they did, they wouldn't survive the first five minutes," he said. His voice was low, devoid of any emotion. "If you send a signal out, the Collector will trace it before the data even hits a satellite.”

"You keep saying that!" I shouted, my voice cracking. I was tired of being afraid, tired of being told I was some battery or whatever, I was sick and tired of it all. "You use these names like they’re supposed to mean something to me. The Collector. The Marked. It’s all just stories you tell to keep everyone in line. You're not a guardian, you’re just a prison warden with a better wardrobe.”

I felt so suffocated with it all. I hadn't tried to find a way out of this place, I have followed his stupid rules and yet he was lashing out at me because I sent a text. Who does he think he is?

Kent took a step toward me, the energy radiating off him making my knees buckle. I held onto the counter, I refused to show weakness in front of him.

"You think this is a power trip?" he asked. He was so close now I could see the tiny lines of ink on his collarbone. "You think I enjoy spending my nights at the edge of the woods making sure things don't crawl into your window while you sleep?"

"I didn't ask for your protection!" I screamed. "I asked for my freedom! You have no right to decide who I contact. If I want to put myself in danger, that's my choice."

"It’s not just your choice," Kent growled, his eyes starting to flicker with that amber light. "Who were you trying to contact? That doctor you work for? Your family?”

I flinched at the mention of Dr. Fenn, I haven't thought of him in a while now, it stung to have Kent mention him so casually.

“Dr. Fenn is dead, okay?” I snapped at him.

"Then who is it?" he asked, and I looked away, refusing to answer.

He grabbed my chin and turned my face until we were making eye contact again. “Who?” He asked again, his voice dropping.

"My old supervisor. She's completely human, she doesn't know anything about any of this, she would have no idea what—" I said barely concealing a stutter.

"It doesn't matter if she knows," Kent cut in. He let go of my face and I stepped back, and he reached for the phone before I realised what he was doing. He picked it up and turned the wifi off himself, his jaw tight. "You have no idea what you could have done."

"What I could have…" I repeated, and something hot climbed up through my chest. "What I could have done? I sent a text message. I didn't launch a missile.”

He dropped the phone and turned to me again. “Did you realise the moment your signal pinged, they would have found her? They would have found everyone she knew. They don't just take the Conduit, Grace. They harvest the roots. You contact her, and you’re signing her death warrant."

"You're lying," I whispered, though my heart was hammering and I knew I was losing the argument. "You’re just trying to isolate me.”

“You're lucky I took precautions beforehand, I knew you would pull something like this.” He said, and that only made me angrier. He was talking like I was immature and couldn't do anything right.

"So you already knew I would try to contact someone, and you let me try? You didn't think to tell me the day you gave me this phone” I took deep breaths, I felt dizzy from all the rush of it all.

I took a step towards him and grabbed his shirt. “Was it fun? Was it fun to watch me sneak around trying to find the perfect time to send a message?”

“Grace, stop.” He said firmly, trying to pry my hands away from his shirt.

“Did you and your crew get together to laugh at my pathetic attempts? Did you find it amusing?” I was yelling now, anyone standing outside the bar would hear but I didn't care.

"Grace—"

"No." The heat in my chest was spreading now, pushing up into my throat. "Don't say my name like you're calming down a child. You have kept me here against my will for almost two weeks. I don't have clothes that actually fit, I sleep in a room I didn't choose, I eat whatever gets put in front of me without complaints, I have followed all your rules and done everything you asked, and now I can't even send one text to tell one person that I'm alive? You don't get to do that. You do not have that right."

Kent looked at me for a long moment and forcefully tugged my hands off him, ripping his shirt in the process. When he spoke, his voice hadn't changed volume at all, and somehow that was worse than if he'd shouted. "Sit down."

"Absolutely not."

"Grace, I said sit down." My body went still. I felt it again, the same feeling I got on the first night I came to this town. My body developed a mind of its own, moving against my will and dropped on the chair behind me.

“What did you do to me?” I screamed, anger burning through my veins.