Ridge Creek Reunited (Ridge Creek Duology) Read online

  Goddamit.

  I stare astounded at the door for a few beats then refocus my attention on Pierre. Almost laughing out loud, I find him to the side of the room, squatted next to a chair taking a leak.

  “Woops,” I chuckle as I watch a massive puddle creep across the carpet beneath him. “Thatta boy.”

  Moments later, Gina reappears. With incredible speed, her intelligent eyes spot the puddle on the carpet. I watch a small smile tip the edges of her lips before her eyes lock on mine. “Not toilet trained yet?”

  “No, I’ve only had him two days,” I reply as I once again wonder what the hell is going on here. Captors aren’t supposed to be civilised and engage in small talk are they?

  Her eyes slide back to Pierre. “A Dogue De Bordeaux, yes?” She asks as she watches him gallop back across the room to start attacking my feet.

  “Yes,” I reply disinterestedly, my mind back on Jake and the events of the past hour or two. “Is Jake Holder dead?” I ask again not expecting an answer.

  “No,” she announces confidently moving her eyes back to mine. “He should be fine. I understand that Ritchie ‘winged’ him on purpose. He didn’t fire a kill shot.”

  “Thank God,” I murmur as a wave of relief pours over my body and I think I feel my heart miss a beat. “What’s ‘winged’?” I ask.

  She considers her words carefully. “A nick to the latissimi dorsi. Ritchie is an excellent shot. I’m inclined to believe him. Joe and Alex also reported he was alive and well when they restrained him and left. Unless something happened after the boys moved out, he should be fine.”

  Well at least Gina is being helpful and answering my questions. I decide that if my current situation were different, I would probably even like her.

  “We need to get you downstairs to Mr. Bradford. He’s causing merry hell and won’t let them stitch him until you’re within sight. Can you come with me please?” She asks softly in a voice that almost sounds caring. “I can take your dog for a walk outside if you like. While you talk to Mr. Bradford.”

  Mr Bradford is the old man?

  Now even more confused, I decide to agree. “Okay.” What more can I do. At least I know Jake is alive so now I just need to work out what they want with me and start planning my next move. I also need to know why Mr. Bradford is so interested in me.

  “Good,” she announces scooping up Pierre.

  “His name is Pierre,” I tell her as I lift from the bed to follow her.

  “Great name,” she chuckles as she turns towards the door to leave. “I’ll see you after you’ve finished with Mr. Bradford.”

  Following her at a near jog in my attempt to keep up with her long Amazonian stride, she moves along a hallway, down the stairs and stops before a set of double doors to our right. Giving me a hand signal to wait, she leaves me standing alone in the huge open room that surrounds the base of the stairs. She opens a door and disappears through with Pierre.

  Again, weird.

  No one is stopping me leaving.

  Although she does have Pierre in her arms so it is unlikely I would leave without him even if I were planning on running towards the front door to try at an escape. Jake gave me that puppy and told me he goes wherever I go. That means I don’t leave him behind.

  Glancing around me I take in the grandness of the room I’m standing in. It’s wide, the floor is polished marble and the walls are painted a pale china color. There are huge oil paintings of the Australian outback hanging at regular intervals along the walls. It is as I decide that I will move over to look more closely at one of the paintings when the door reopens and Gina returns. Holding the door open, she announces that Mr Bradford is ready to see me.

  I give her a small smile as I nod and reach out to give Pierre a quick rub before I turn and walk through the door.

  Mr Bradford as I now know him; is perched on the edge of large wooden desk. He looks agitated. His shirt has been removed and a tall, silver haired man with long delicate fingers stoops over him inserting tiny stitches into what looks to me like a horrifying, gaping wound. A wound that I gave him. I can now see why Jake said the bullets packed a punch.

  Mr Bradford however, appears far more concerned about my arrival than the size of his wound or the stitches being so intricately sewn into his body. “Pe… Arianna!” He announces as his blue eyes settle on mine. “I am pleased to hear advice that you and your puppy are unharmed from the events earlier this morning. I cannot tell you how relieved I am.”

  I stare blankly at him, unsure how to respond to that greeting when right now, the last place I want to be is here.

  His agitation increases with my lack of response and he starts to fidget. He looks as if he is about to stand up and stride across the room to meet me when I see movement to my left. Within seconds, Ritchie, the bald headed man from the car, crosses the room and places a hand on his shoulder. “Sir, be still.”

  “Hurry up!” Mr. Bradford snaps and I watch as the silver haired man looks up at Ritchie with an exasperated look on his face. Ritchie rolls his eyes and they both seem to ignore Mr. Bradford’s snap.

  Taking a closer look at Ritchie, I almost physically cringe. Boy is he ugly. His calm, smooth voice belies the ugliness of his features. With his bald head, a huge nose, heavy brows, beady brown eyes and an enormous chin, I almost feel sorry for him. Being that ugly must make life hard.

  I am, however, not sorry for him because first he kidnapped me and second, he is the man who ‘winged’ Jake. “You shot Jake,” I bark as I narrow my eyes on Ritchie.

  “You shot Mr. Bradford,” he replies calmly looking slightly amused.

  “You shot Jake first,” I point out the obvious. “I heard the bang.”

  “He looked like he was going to get away, I just slowed him down,” Ritchie replies almost instantaneously.

  Unsure how to respond to that statement, as well as to his blaze’ responses to my accusations I falter. Why is he so unconcerned? It’s as if he thinks he did the right thing.

  Deciding I’m revolving through another dead end conversation, I swing my attention back to Mr. Bradford. Mr Bradford is now watching the stitches as they are quickly and neatly inserted into his body. He is looking even more agitated than before. Like a cat on a hot tin roof, I can see it is taking a lot of willpower for him to remain seated while his side his sewn up. “Why am I here?” I bark directly at him.

  He swings his eyes back to me for a brief moment before they return to his wound. “Hurry the fuck up!” He snaps again. The silver haired man nods and Ritchie squeezes his shoulder again.

  “Why am I here,” I ask again wondering why he hasn’t answered my question. Perhaps I would be better of finding and asking Gina, at least she answers direct questions with direct answers.

  “Because you’ve been rescued,” Mr. Bradford announces without removing his eyes from his wound.

  Rescued?

  “No I haven’t, I’ve been kidnapped,” I inform him.

  Lifting his eyes to mine, he looks slightly worried. I watch as his eyes crinkle slightly like he’s wincing. “It may look like that right now, but I assure you, you’ve been rescued,” he states again.

  Watching his eyes I sense I need to listen to what he has to say. There is something going on behind his eyes that says a whole lot about this man that I don’t yet know. That by instinct I have a feeling I need to know.

  “Okay then, if this morning you were there to rescue me, why did you shoot at my boyfriend and then knock me out.”

  “That wasn’t meant to happen,” he says without blinking, his eyes on mine. Things got a little out of hand. The biker reacted more swiftly than expected.”

  “You shot Mr. Bradford,” Ritchie reminds me.

  “That’s not her fault,” Mr. Bradford snaps quickly, turning on Ritchie with hard eyes. “I shouldn’t have pointed my gun at her.”

  He’s not mad at me for shooting him?

  Ritchie shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “For Christ’s sake, j
ust tell her who you are so we can all move on. This conversation is done.” Looking back to me Ritchie says, “Arianna, I’m sorry I shot at the biker… Your boyfriend. I only did what I thought was the right thing to do at the time.” Removing his hand from Mr Bradford’s shoulder, he looks to see the silver haired man has made fast work of sewing and has now closed the wound up completely.

  “I think we should leave Mr. Bradford and Ms. Lovett alone for a while. They have a lot to talk about,” Ritchie then tells the silver haired man. The man responds by nodding his agreement at the same time as Mr. Bradford does. Mr Bradford relaxes slightly at Ritchie’s words.

  Still standing just inside the doorway, I stare dumbly at the three men.

  This is all too weird.

  With swift and practiced hands, the silver haired man places a large square wound dressing over Mr Bradford’s stitches, gathers his suture kit and moves towards the door. He looks like he’s in a hurry. Richie follows him, stopping briefly to give me a squeeze on the shoulder. I stare at him blankly, confused.

  He flicks me a small smile and moves towards the door. I swing my attention back to Mr. Bradford as I hear the door click closed behind me. Mr Bradford is now sliding a clean, gray t-shirt on. He’s moving quickly, belying the fact that he’s just had his side sewn back together.

  Shirt on, he does not hesitate for a moment longer. Striding towards me with his hand out he announces quickly, “Arianna, let me introduce myself. My name is Stephen Bradford and although I know this is going to be a shock, I’m just going to spit it out so we can move on. I’m your father.”

  Focusing my eyes on his hand, I blink in confusion. Did he just say he was my father?

  My blood rushes to my ears and my head starts to feel thick with confusion. Dizzy, I find myself staggering sideways, reaching out towards a bookshelf to steady my feet.

  Father?

  “Arianna, please sit down, I’ll fetch you a drink and then we can talk.”

  Nodding my confused agreement, I let him guide me to a leather couch at the side of the room. Slumping heavily down onto the seat I look back up at cornflower blue eyes that look even more familiar now. “What did you say?”

  Chapter Four

  Jabba The Hutt

  Three hours later, Jake…

  “I have no fucking idea what you are talking about,” the fat blob of shit blurts again, blood and mucous pouring from his lips. I sneer in satisfaction as another one of his teeth appears among the stream of mess as it slides down his triple chin on its way to the pool of blood and teeth on the floor.

  “Not sure you’ve got that many teeth left but if you insist…” I growl as I flick my chin to Luke again. Luke nods and for the fourth time, bends down to grab Altieri by the handcuffs holding his arms behind his back. Yanking hard, Luke shoves his knee in between Altieri’s shoulder blades to straighten him up. Without a moment’s hesitation, I step forward onto my left foot and swinging my right foot through to smash against Altieri’s face.

  I once again hear the satisfying crunch of his teeth against the steel cap in my biker boots and feel nothing but contempt. In fact, right now it’s taking all of my willpower to not just pull my piece, hold it to his disgusting fat head and pull the trigger. The only reason I don’t is that I still don’t know where Ari is.

  Even I have to admit, he’s being one tough nut about giving her up. I’ve seen men give up at the first blow from a steel capped boot to the mouth but he’s taken four. Unusual for someone who looks like him. A fat as fuck, greedy man who clearly has no self-control over himself and his body.

  Stepping back, I consider taking another swing at him but change my mind as his eyes roll into the back of his head and he passes out this time.

  Fuck.

  More blood and another two teeth dribble out of his mouth and down his chin. If I don’t bury him, this fucker is going to have one hell of a dentist’s bill.

  Feeling Altieri’s weight go dead against his leg, Luke grunts in disgust and pushes him away from his knee with a rough shove. Altieri hits the floor face first and he groans.

  Wakey, wakey Jabba.

  “Maybe he doesn’t know where she is,” Zane muses as he pushes off from his position leaning on a wall to my right.

  “Starting to feel that myself,” I announce looking to Luke for his opinion.

  Luke looks thoughtful as he stares at Altieri lying on the floor in front of him. “Gotta say, he looked fresh when we grabbed him. Not like a man who’d been on the road all night after a trip to Ridge Creek. Something that could be easy to explain if he’d paid someone else to pick her up for him. Maybe he was on the way to a handover?”

  “It doesn’t add up,” Zane cuts in. “Even if he did pay someone else to do his dirty work, don’t you think he would have prepared for the fallout? We picked him up leaving his house this morning looking like he didn’t have a care in the world. Only two men were with him and neither of them were alert. Surely if he knew what went down in the early hours of this morning he would have been moving more cautiously. Aware that blowback was likely. His men would have been alert and it would have taken more effort to snatch him out from under their noses. It was all too easy.”

  “You’re right,” I announce as I lift my hand to press my thumb and forefinger into my temples. “We’re missing something here.”

  Altieiri groans again and starts to move. His head slides weakly back and forward against the floor as he struggles against his own weight. He looks like the literal beached whale and without the use of his hands, he’s not going anywhere.

  My phone rings and I watch as both Luke and Zane swing their eyes to my front pocket. We know this phone call is likely to be Emma. They both know that Emma is working double time to find us information. Anything that might be of use. Any trace of Arianna and where she might have been taken.

  I grab the phone from my pocket, check the screen, see Emma’s name flashing and swipe to accept the call. Nodding to Luke and Zane I watch as they both assume quiet but alert poses, their eyes trained on mine.

  “She’s home,” I hear Emma breathe relieved words into the phone. “I haven’t spoken to her yet but Towball just came to get me from my room and tell me she’s pulled up out the front of the shop in the back of a black jag and she looks fine.”

  What the fuck?

  Relief like no other washes over my whole body. I feel that knife twisting in my stomach loosen just a little. My anger also ebbs, just a little.

  She’s home.

  “Put her on the phone,” I growl as I listen to the sound of Emma hurrying through the Harley shop. “On it,” she huffs as I hear muffled voices and a short time later, the sound of the phone changing hands.

  “Jake…” I hear her sweet voice in my ear and I swear my knees nearly crumble. Since when did I become such a fucking pussy?

  “Are you hurt?” I ask and watch as Luke and Zane’s face register surprise as they realise who I’m talking to.

  “No,” Arianna replies quickly. “It wasn’t Altieri.”

  “I’m starting to feel that,” I announce almost sarcastically. “How’d you escape?”

  “I didn’t…” She responds a little skeptically. “A very long story goes with that. I’m safe now. Well as safe as I can be for now. Are you hurt?”

  “No. I’m fine. Jabba the Hutt, maybe not so much.”

  “Who’s Jabba the Hutt?” She asks and I can hear the confusion in her voice. I also hear Emma laughing in the background.

  “Vincent Altieri.”

  “Oh,” she replies softly and pauses for a while. I start to think she’s not going to say anything else when she finally whispers, “Did you, um… Kill him?”

  I find myself smirking slightly. Trust Arianna to come straight out and ask the obvious. Most people wouldn’t care. Most people wouldn’t even want to know. “No.”

  I hear a small wheeze as she lets go of the breath she was clearly holding. “Oh. Is that a good or a bad thing?” She asks again
hesitantly. “Is he still an… um… threat?”

  “That I don’t know. My guess, if he knows what’s good for him, he’s no longer a threat.”

  “Okay,” she responds softly before another lengthy pause of silence. As I wait for her to speak I watch Altieri start to increase his efforts to sit up from the floor.

  Disgusting.

  “Arianna?”

  “Yes Jake.”

  “I gotta go. I need to finish here and then I got a four-hour ride home. You got anything else for me?”

  I hear her sigh. “Not right now, we can talk when you get back.”

  “Good. Put Emma back on the phone.”

  “Jake?”

  “Yeah Ari?”

  “Be careful,” she whispers softly.

  “I will,” I mumble back as I feel my whole body softening. It’s been a long time since a woman told me to be careful and really mean it. Surprisingly, I like it.

  I hear the phone changing hands again and Emma says “Yes?”

  “This shit will end today. I’m gunna let Altieri know what we know and leave the ball in his court. Do not transfer any money and do not talk to whoever the shitwad was that you and Zane were dealing with. Shut all the negotiations down. You hear me?”

  “Gotcha,” she fires back before quickly adding, “Anything else?” She sounds impatient to get off the phone and talk to her girl. I would be too if I were her.

  “No, tell Ari I’ll see her in about five hours.” Without waiting for her to reply, I hit end on the call and drop the phone back in my pocket.

  “I told you I didn’t know anything,” Altieri sputters from his position on the floor, his face turned to the side and his eyes locked on mine. He looks defiant now, a look I am not happy about.

  “My bad,” I announce as I shrug my shoulders and flick Luke and Zane an amused look. Even though they both look as relieved as I am, they both know we still have a problem on our hands. Lucky for me, I’m an optimist and the way I figure it, the trip won’t have been a waste of time. It’s time Vincent Altieri and I had a little chat about his wives and just how off-limits both Arianna and my business are to him now.