Collared By Four Ruthless Men

Chapter 1

The car died on me at the worst possible time. No warning, no sputtering, just stopping in the middle of no where. Engine cut out like it was done with me personally.

I sat there for a second, hands still on the wheel, staring at the dead dash. Twelve hours on my feet. Twelve hours of coffee refills and fake smiles and a apron that smelled like bacon grease. And now this.

I grabbed my bag, got out, and started walking.

The route home wasn't complicated but it wasn't short either. I knew a faster way through, cutting behind the strip of businesses on Caldwell. The roadhouse sat at the end of that stretch. Iron Ruin. I'd seen the sign a hundred times driving past. Bikes out front most nights, men in leather, the kind of place you don't look at too long. But it was late and the lot would be empty and I just wanted to get home.

I turned down the side road.

The air smelled like motor oil and something else underneath it, something metallic and wrong that I couldn't name yet. I pulled my jacket tighter and kept moving. Gravel crunched under my shoes. The lot was dark except for two yellow security lights on the back of the building, casting everything in that flat, washed-out glow.

I told myself I'd cut straight through. Head down, quick pace, out the other side in thirty seconds.

I rounded the corner of the building and stopped.

There were four of them. Big men, all of them, standing in a loose half circle. Leather cuts. Boots. The kind of stillness that isn't calm, it's controlled. A fifth man was on the ground between them and he wasn't moving and there was dark liquid spreading slowly under him across the gravel.

My brain took a second to process what my eyes were already seeing.

One of the men turned his head and looked straight at me.

He was the biggest one. Dark hair, broad shoulders, a scar cutting through his left eyebrow. His expression didn't change. He just looked at me the way you look at something that just became your problem.

I ran.

I don't even remember deciding to. My body just went. Bag swinging, feet hitting the gravel hard, cutting back the way I came. My heart was so loud in my ears I couldn't hear anything else. I thought maybe, maybe if I was fast enough, if I just didn't stop —

Something caught the back of my jacket and the world lurched.

I was spun around so fast my feet left the ground for a second. A hand gripped my arm, not rough exactly but completely immovable, and I found myself looking up at him. The one with the scar. Up close he was even bigger. Solid in a way that made me feel like I'd run into a wall.

I opened my mouth.

"Don't," he said. One word. Low and flat. Not a threat, just a fact.

I closed my mouth.

He walked me back across the lot and I went because I didn't have a choice. My legs were still moving, still trying to find the angle where I could pull free, but his grip didn't shift even slightly. The other three watched us come back. None of them looked surprised. None of them looked particularly anything.

Except one.

He was standing slightly apart from the others. Tall, dark hair, arms crossed. Something about the way he held himself made it clear without any announcement that he was the one in charge. He looked at me the way someone looks at a problem they're already solving in their head.

The man holding my arm said, "She came from the south side of the lot."

The one in charge looked at me for a long moment. His eyes were dark and steady and I had the uncomfortable feeling he was cataloguing everything about me in real time.

"What's your name," he said. Not a question really. More like a formality he was extending out of courtesy.

My voice came out smaller than I wanted. "Sloane."

He nodded once like he was filing it away.

"Please." I hated how that word sounded coming out of my mouth but I said it anyway. "I didn't see anything. I was just cutting through, my car broke down, I just want to go home."

None of them moved.

A man to my left, curly dark hair and sharp green eyes, tilted his head and almost smiled. Not kindly. More like he found something interesting about the situation that no one else had spotted yet.

"She's got a good face," he said to no one in particular.

"Shut up, Dax," said the one on his right. That one had hazel eyes and an easier posture than the others, though easier was relative in this company. He glanced at me and something in his expression shifted, just slightly. Less calculation, more something else.

The one in charge, the one I somehow already knew was the person whose word ended conversations, looked at me one more time. Whatever he was deciding, he decided it fast.

"She's not leaving tonight."

"Wait —" I started.

He was already turning away.

The man with the scar, the one who had caught me, put a hand on my shoulder and steered me toward the roadhouse door. Not rough. Just final. The kind of pressure that doesn't leave room for interpretation.

The door opened. Warmth and low light spilled out. I was walked inside and I heard, behind me, the sound of the lock turning.

It was a very loud sound.

I stood in the middle of the room and stared at the door and understood, with the particular clarity that only real fear brings, that my night had just stopped being about getting home.