Fight for Her#3 Read Online Free Page B

T-junction and wildly choose to go right. It’s just a long corridor of closed doors. I’m afraid to go in any of them, as I might get trapped.
    I turn another corner, and before I realize what is happening, arms close around me and I’m dragged into a pitch-black room.

Chapter 7: Parker

    I’ve got her. I’ve got her.
    I can’t think of anything else.
    Maddie fights against me for a moment. The room is completely dark, and I know she can’t see a thing.
    “It’s me,” I whisper. “Stay quiet.”
    Maddie instantly slumps against my chest. “Oh my God. You’re here.”
    I feel along the door until I find the lock and flip the latch. “Yes, I’m here,” I say.
    I don’t know what she’s been through in the last hour, but she starts sobbing.
    I run my hands down her hair. “Shhh,” I say. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
    Footsteps pass the door, rattling the knob. It’s locked, so they move on.
    I settle with my back to the wall, pulling Maddie in tight. “Colt’s here, and some friends of his. We’ve been looking for you.”
    “I was in the van,” she whispers into my chest.
    “Yes, Jax let us know. He was pretty sure you saw him. We covered all the entrances to the loading bay.” I kiss her hair. “You got yourself out before we got in to you.”
    “Is Jax the gray-shirt man?” she asks.
    “Yes.”
    My phone buzzes. I glance at the screen. “Jax and Colt know our location.”
    “What’s going to happen next?”
    “We’re going to teach Striker a little lesson.”
    “Do we have to?” she asks. “Can’t we just go home?”
    I hold her tight and rock a little. “We’ll go home. We just don’t want him back in our lives.”
    “I was so scared.”
    “Did they hurt you?”
    She shakes her head against my chest, and I relax a little. I had envisioned all sorts of horrible things. But Colt was right. They aren’t felons. Just punks wanting to even an imagined score. Colt has just as much right to vengeance as we do.
    My screen lights with another message.  

    You two sit tight. We’ll get you when it’s over.

    I frown. I don’t want to be left out of the action. But I can’t leave Maddie either.
    In the light from the phone, I notice the tears on her dress. “Did they do this?”
    She straightens her legs. “Some fighter named Crunch.” She sounds like she’s recovering from her breakdown.
    “Shit,” I say. I remember that name.
    “You know him? Striker seemed to think he would like knowing I was your girlfriend.”
    “I kicked his ass about a year ago,” I say. “Short fight. One minute, maybe.”
    “What’s he doing these illegal fights for, then?” she asks.
    “Probably couldn’t cut it any other way.”
    Maddie nuzzles into my neck. I feel the shift in her from fear to safety. She’s calmer.
    And we’re fine where we are. The fights are way below us in a basement. These corridors are long and empty. I doubt anyone will come back this way until it’s clear for us to go.
    I’m incredibly relieved I was the one to find her. I kill the light of the phone and wrap my arms around her. “You made it,” I say. “You got through it.”
    She pulls back and bumps her hands against my chest. “They even did our bondage for us,” she jokes.
    I can barely make out the shadow of her arms. I feel along her shoulder down to her elbow, then over a lump of tape. Anger rises in me again that they did this to her. “You want me to look for something to cut it free?”
    “Maybe in a minute,” she says, and the way her voice hesitates lets me know what she’s thinking. My first thought is Really? Here? Now?
    It’s so Maddie. So like her. The old her. Once when I got in a fistfight over some asshole who wouldn’t take her no for an answer, she insisted on having sex right there, behind a convenience store, with the guy out cold on the ground.
    Which I did, of course.
    She twists around on my lap, her knees on either side. I grab the bulky lump of duct tape and