“All of you. My office. Now,” Hellfire snaps. “Grimm, I’ll deal with you later.” He turns and walks towards the back of the church, confident that we’ll follow.
It turns out that Hellfire’s office is in the room where the priests used to get ready. There are still floor to ceiling wooden cabinets where their robes used to hang. He sits at a solid wood desk at the back, littered with coffee cups and a couple of beer bottles.
There aren’t enough chairs for all of us. Colt pulls up a seat for me, and he leans against the wall with Priest, while me and Sinner sit across from Hellfire.
“Okay, start at the beginning.”
Right. “I had a thing today. Not official-official, but a photo date or whatever you want to call it with one of the other actresses from the show. We were just supposed to walk along the river together so the paparazzi could get some photos.” I glance up at Sinner. “Sinner and Colt dropped some stuff off at my place, so Sinner offered to drive me over on his bike since he was already there.”
Hellfire’s dark eyes narrow, taking in my words and hopefully making sense of them. I kind of started in the middle. “But you hadn’t arranged that ahead of time?”
I shake my head. “No. I don’t have a car right now so I normally just order a ride or my mother drives me when I need to get somewhere.”
“Everything seemed fine? I guess? Until I started getting messages.”
“What the fuck? What messages?” Priest pushes off the wall like he’s getting ready to punch those messages until they stop bothering me. “You didn’t say anything about that.”
“Sorry, I was a little busy gettingkidnapped.” I pull out my phone and bring up the call log. It’s all right there, the blocked number, the strange photo, and then the threat.Cooperate and nobody gets hurt.“I showed Erika the photo. We thought it was strange that the photographers only sent it to me, and that the quality wasn’t that great, but we were there to get our photos taken, you know? The van pulled up right after the last message. There wasn’t time to get out of the way before the men grabbed me.”
“And you were there doing what exactly? Jerking off?” Priest scowls at Sinner.
“Oh fuck off. I knew there were going to be eyes on the girls so I couldn’t exactly hold her hand, could I? They were in motherfucking Brentport for fuck’s sake. I was more worried about someone calling the cops because I was stinking up the place than Quinn being in danger.” Sinner glares at Priest until Priest sighs and nods. “I was just hanging out on the grass near the parking lot waiting for her to finish up. I had no clue anything was happening until people started rushing by, talking about a car driving onto the path. I got there in time to see a couple guys in ski-masks shoving Quinn into the back of a van. It was fucked up, man.”
“How do you mean?” Hellfire asks.
I snort. “They taped my mouth and put a bag over my head? That’s messed up, isn’t it?”
Hellfire glances my way, unamused. “You mean it was fucked up for a kidnapping, I’m assuming.”
Sinner nods. “Nobody with any experience would plan it like that. Even if I hadn’t been there, so many things could’ve gotten fucked.”
“There’s one other thing I should probably tell you.” I reach out to take my phone back, and find the first message I got. “I already reported this. It was after I had an interview and talked about Axel, the day after Inferno I think. Everyone said it was probably just bad timing. We all get messed up messages sometimes, saying we’re going to go to Hell or whatever.”
“Why didn’t you say anything when I saw you?” Priest looks more than a little pissed off.
“Because I’d already reported it!”
“To your fucking mother?” he snaps.
“Yeah! She’s my manager. She’s the one that talks to the production people and handles all that stuff. I know you never liked her, and yeah, she’s not in the running for world’s greatest mom, but she’d never do anything to risk my career.”
Colt looks at Hellfire. “Protection duty?”
Hellfire shrugs. “Up to you boys. It’s not a bad idea.”
“I’ll handle it,” Priest says. “Something’s clearly going on and she’s not safe. It’s personal and we don’t have to get the club involved.”
“Club’s already involved because you are,” Hellfire points out.
Sinner nods. “I’m in. Don’t bother arguing. Even if I didn’t already want to do it for Quinn, they’re not gonna forget that I shot one of their boys today.”
“All for one, one for all, and all that shit,” Colt adds with a laugh.
I look between the three of them. “You guys can’t just babysit me. How am I supposed to explain that?” The fact that they’re even offering is too much. I’m usually the one looking after Mom. I’m not used to other people focusing on me.
Priest shakes his head. “It’s not babysitting. We’d be your bodyguards until the danger’s over.”
Oh God. There’s no way Mom would accept a bunch of bikers following me around all the time. Not unless…