Page 33 of Magnetic Temptations

“I know,” I tell him. “But I’d like to know where the fuck my brother is. But I have to warn you, I’m not going to be able to hold off on telling my parents much longer.”

“Give us until he wakes up and we get an hour or so to try and get him to talk,” Hydro proposes. “We’re good at what we do, Mason. It can’t always be given a time restraint.”

It’s not like I can argue with the man, I don’t know how they operate. For now, I’ll have to bide my time and hope we can get this resolved and Myles home before we have to break the news to my folks.

As we ride back to the ranch, I snicker in glee when I notice the way Benji is shifting on the bitch seat of Tex’s bike. He’s loosely secure which means every bump we hit he is jerked up and slams back down. His limbs are tied on each side of the bike, but again, not tightly, so he slips from side to side. Tex isn’t cautious when he resituates him, doesn’t give a damn if his fingers or bare feet touch the hot pipes.

Earlier, Maverick showed the men the back way onto our property so that’s the route we take as we ride over the rocky path. I know that alongside pipe burns and potentially a concussion, Benji boy is going to be sore as fuck and I couldn’t be any happier about that hypothesis. He’s made his bed and now it’s time he lies in it.

When we hit the patch of land where Laura is still strung up, wide-eyed and panic stricken, I shoot her a blinding, maniacal smile. As she tries to talk through the bandana shoved in her mouth, I ask, “How are you liking the accommodations at the Triple M, Laura?” As she struggles to speak through her gag, I laugh. “You’re being treated more hospitably than you deserve. You won’t receive any sympathy from me, you bitch.”

Tears streak down her cheeks as she pleads with her eyes for us to give her mercy. As I stated, she won’t find any from this group of men. We all believe you reap what you sow.

“Wah. Wah. Wah,” Tex mock cries as he cuts the ropes from his motorcycle. “Stop being a little bitch, you put yourself in this circumstance. Murder is not okay, unless you’re us, then it’s always okay because we’re rectifying a wrong. Like you and old Deputy Dickface here being born.”

Kruger walks up behind Laura, leans around the tree and whispers, “Boo.” When she jumps he bends over laughing. “Gotcha, didn’t I? Don’t worry, our play time isn’t over, it’s just on a temporary pause.”

“Quit taunting the dumb bitch, Kruger,” Gunner admonishes. “Help Tex string up her bestie.”

Murmurs in rapid succession can be heard behind her binding, but none of us stop and try to understand what she’s saying. We don’t give a flying fuck, nothing she says can save her now. She was going to kill Cotton in cold blood. She may not have been the one to pull the trigger, but she was planning on being an active participant.

I watch in amusement as Benji’s head lolls from one side to the other as Tex, not so carefully, drags him by his ankles to the tree across from Laura. When his head bounces up because of a rock, I shudder then say, sarcasm thick in my tone, “Well, that’s gonna leave a mark.”

“One of many,” Tex concurs, glancing over Benji’s bare legs which bear the marks of his body hitting the hot pipes. “He won’t have to worry about infection setting in, though, because he’ll be worm food long before those white blood cells start multiplying to show one is coursing through his body.”

“You’re so poetic,” Kruger says, assisting with stringing up the not-so-good deputy. “Think we should gag him or wait until he wakes up? I don’t want him choking to death before we get answers. Pres?”

“There’s enough land out here that no one is gonna hear either of them scream,” Gunner muses, looking at Hydro. “I say, we keep him ungagged for now. Who knows what we’ll hear when he wakes up? Tex, put something on that head wound, he’s bleeding like a stuck pig from that fucking rock.”

“Great, Benji, now I gotta give you first aid,” Tex sneers. He rips off the deputy’s T-shirt then ties it around his head. “That good, Gun?”

Gunner pinches the bridge of his nose, which seems to be a common occurrence around his brothers, and I instinctively know that all of these men have given him many headaches over the years. “Yeah, Tex, that’ll work for now.”

Tex beams as though he just performed brain surgery and takes a bow. “Now we need to figure out how long before the fucker will wake up.”

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

MANE

“Mane.” I hear my name relentlessly called as my body is slightly shaken. I guess while slumped into the couch as we watched some true crime documentary about the mindset of serial killers on television, I passed out. I remember my eyelids becoming heavy the longer I sat still, and my body mercilessly begging me to give into the fatigue.

“Why?” I whine, not wanting to wake because I’m nice and cozy underneath the throw blanket I must’ve pulled down from behind me where it rested on the back of the sofa.

“The guys have been calling us, they want us to come to them. Mamba is going to meet us behind the house and take us to them. They want you to do that human lie detector thing you do,” Ella tells me through a yawn.

“Okay,” I say, reluctantly moving myself out of the cocoon-like nest I’d made for myself in my sleep. Once I manage to unwind myself from the blanket, I rub my eyes as I force one foot in front of the other toward the front door where I slid my shoes off when we came inside earlier. Since there was a train of shoes neatly lined up, Ella and I figured they didn’t wear their shoes in the house so we added ours to it.

As soon as our shoes have been slipped on our feet and tied, we grab hoodies and toss them over our shoulders since nighttime around here gets cool, and then we finally exit the house and wind ourselves around to the back.

When Mamba sees us, a chuckle leaves him as he shoots us a blinding smile. “You two look like you could be cast as supporting characters in night of the living dead.”

“We were sleeping,” I grumpily defend.

Mamba shakes his head then the joking ends as he gets down to business as he escorts us through the mass of trees. “The good deputy hasn’t woken up yet but I think Laura could be flipped. She’s freaking out and has resorted to begging. We’re fixing to rouse the badge carrying, Billy Bob Thornton wannabe and that’s when we need you to watch his body language and let us know if he’s telling us the truth or not.”

“He may not tell us jack shit,” Ella muses.

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