Taken and Misused.

“Did you fill up the tank Vaughn?” Stephen asked as he left the gas station we had stopped by. I was sitting on the trunk of the car Stephen had gotten for us a few days ago, the rich man who had previously owned it wouldn’t miss it. Vaughn was leaning against the car next to me, a hand gently placed on my knee; ever since the night we had made love he was always finding some way to touch me, whether it be just an arm around my shoulders or holding my hand for just a moment. Those small touches seemed to put him in a positive mood. However, when Stephen approached Vaughn put a little more distance between us. I knew Vaughn knew something I didn’t, and I was sure it dealt with Stephen. Vaughn did everything to hide our relationship from Stephen.

“It’s full,” Vaughn replied, taking the gas nozzle out of the car’s gas tank and replacing it on the pump. Stephen had already paid with cash.

Stephen handed me a bottle of lemonade, my favorite drink, and gave me a small smile. “I picked up a few snacks for us as well,” he added, tossing a bottle of Pepsi to Vaughn who caught it with ease. Stephen cracked open his own bottle of water and took a long drink. “Did you figure out where your friend lives?” Stephen asked, leaning against the car between me and Vaughn. I had a moment to note Vaughn’s apparent distaste for Stephen’s closeness to me, but it was gone quickly. Vaughn pulled his crumpled map of this city out of his back pocket and smoothed it out on the roof of the car, I turned slightly to get a better view of the map and so did Stephen.

Vaughn pointed to a street on the map, “he lives on this street but it won’t be easy getting him to see us,” he said, scratching his head and smoothing his hair out. It was a nervous gesture of his.

“You said the two of you were the best of friends,” Stephen said, his tone dry of any humor.

“Before I held a gun to his head we were,” Vaughn said, I widened my eyes but he just chuckled slightly, his signature grin on his lips.

“I honestly cannot comprehend how you keep any friendships,” Stephen muttered, handing the car keys to Vaughn and going over to the passenger side. I got up and followed him, he opened the back door for me and I got in. He slipped into the passenger seat and Vaughn did the same on the driver’s side.

“I called him and he said he’d be waiting, I guess he got over it,” Vaughn said with a shrug as he started the car.

“Oh really? And what tone did he use?” Stephen said, that same dry humor entering his voice again.

“You got me there buddy,” Vaughn replied, flashing his friend a reckless grin. The two of them had slowly been bonding over the last week.

“Where are we going?” I asked, sliding forward on the middle of the back seat so I was wedged between the two of them, being in the back seat always made me feel left out.

“To visit an old acquaintance of mine,” Vaughn answered, pulling out onto the street.

“For what?” I asked, we hadn’t really spoken to anyone other than each other since the night this whole disaster happened. Going to look for outside help seemed odd.

“We need some new documents,” Vaughn answered, blasting through a yellow light before it could turn red.

“Some what?” I asked, not familiar with the term.

“ID, birth certificate, passports, those documents my Liebling,” Stephen replied, his eyes trained on the road ahead.

“You speak German too?” Vaughn asked after a long pause.

“Yes, I learned it a few months ago,” Stephen replied, giving Vaughn a very hard stare.

I felt the tension in the car and I desperately wanted to know what the word liebling meant but I also didn’t want to know. The two of them were just beginning to become friends again and I didn’t want their fragile friendship to shatter.

“So, how far away is this man’s house?” Stephen asked, effectively changing the subject.

“Just another ten minutes,” Vaughn replied, entering a less than respectable part of town. There were scary looking men hovering around, a few watched the expensive car we were in drive down the street at an idle speed. It was the first time Vaughn had ever followed the speed limit and it was the first time I wanted him to break it. I felt like one of these men was going to run over and break into the car. There was a group of men sitting on a stoop of one of the rundown apartments, their eyes followed our car and one of them whispered to another and pointed at us as Vaughn parked the car along the curb and got out. “This is the place,” he said, closing his door behind him. Stephen got out and opened my door for me. He stood like he was blocking me from seeing the house, but when I noticed where his eyes glanced to I figured it out. He was protecting me from any prying eyes.

“Put this on,” Stephen said, his voice quiet and calm, he held out his black coat. I was already wearing a sweater and jeans so I wasn’t that cold in the post-winter air. I was about to refuse his offer when he held it closer to me, “it’s not to protect from the weather Elisabeth, you’re quite beautiful and I’d rather they not notice,” he elaborated.

“Oh,” I mumbled, glancing around him to see the group of men who were still sitting on their stoop staring at us, one caught my eye and a smug smirk pulled over his lips, he winked at me. I quickly looked away and took the coat from him; Stephen helped me slip my arms through it. He patted my shoulders gently and led me forward with a hand on my back. Vaughn walked in front of us with his hands held out with their palms forward.

“Hey you guys, thought I’d stop by and visit Jake, is he home?” Vaughn asked, spinning off the words quickly, the four men stood up. One reached his hand behind his back and another slipped his hand into his coat, Stephen immediately stopped me from going any closer by putting his arm in front of me. “Woah, woah, woah, I’m here to play nice,” Vaughn said, holding his hands out in surrender.

“We’ll take you up to Jake,” one of the men said, he had dark eyes and absolutely no hair.

“Is that really necessary?” Vaughn said, chuckling. I couldn’t figure out what was so funny.

“Yes it is,” the bald man replied. He gripped Vaughn by his upper arm.

“Watch it baldy, I’m not into men,” Vaughn replied, groaning when baldy’s fist slammed into the side of his face.

“Vaughn!” I exclaimed, trying to reach out to him but Stephen kept me from moving. He pulled me back against his chest and brought his lips to my ear so only I could hear his next words.

“He is just trying to get them to lose their focus by angering them,” Stephen said, his words rushed because two other men were advancing towards us.

“I’ve got the cutie,” one of the men sneered; he had a dragon tattoo around his arm.

“I bet that’s the closest you’ve ever gotten to a girl,” Vaughn jeered, but his voice held a hint of true anger.

“Shut up,” baldy ordered, jerking Vaughn around and pulling him into the house we were in front of.

The man with the dragon tattoo grabbed my upper arm tightly and jerked me forward; I stumbled and tried to pull his hand off of my arm. “That hurts,” I said in a stern voice.

“Too bad,” the man sneered, pulling me into the house after Vaughn and baldy. No one spoke as we all went up a flight of stairs, down a hallway, and stopped in front of a door. The hallway was filled with noises that I did not really want to place. Loud music pumped from behind one of the doors and banging and moaning emitted from another door. The hall way was dark and looked like someone had decided to tear down the wall paper at one point but then gave up.

Baldy knocked on the door and a voice from inside instructed us to come in. The man waiting for us had a dark head of straight hair that hung down to his shoulders but was partially pulled back to reveal high cheek bones and dark eyes. He was sitting behind his desk and typing on his mac computer. He looked really focused, a pen was tucked behind his ear and his eyebrows were pulled together. When he looked up to see us being led into the room he scowled. It seemed the sight of Vaughn’s smug grin was not a happy sight. “I thought I had made it clear that you weren’t welcome here,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair.

“I came here to do business Jake, nothing more,” Vaughn said, shrugging his shoulders as best as he could with the burly, bald man gripping his arm tightly.

This Jake guy seemed to think for a moment on what he wanted to do. After a few moments he heaved a deep sigh, “why do I feel like I’m going to regret this,” he mumbled to himself. “Make sure they don’t have any weapons then leave,” he said, directing his order to the three men holding onto us. Vaughn and Stephen lifted their hands in a surrender position and the men who had led them up here began patting them down. I was confused for a moment as to what I was supposed to do and the man holding me, the one with the dragon tattoo, jerked my arms up and shoved my feet apart so I was very off balance. I made a soft sound of protest and dragon tattoo man gave me a look that almost dared me to give him an excuse to do something.

“Watch it dragon boy,” Vaughn threatened, his face set in a glare directed at the man with the dragon tattoo.

The warning didn’t seem to deter the man and he went behind me and firmly patted me down, he ran his hand over my flat stomach and down the fronts of my legs, he wrapped his large hands around my thighs and stopped there for a moment.

“Jake, if he keeps this up I swear I’ll kill him,” Vaughn growled, the promise in his voice painfully true.

Jake met Vaughn’s gaze, and nodded. “Samson, quit it,” Jake commanded but his eyes never left Vaughn’s. Samson stopped; he took his hands off of my legs and backed away. “Now, the three of you, get out,” Jake continued.

After the men left I let out a shaky breath and hugged myself for a moment, I didn’t like being here.

“Thank you,” Stephen said, butting in before Vaughn could spit out a rude comment.

“All I can find for muscle around here is thugs,” Jake defended, speaking to all of us. “What do you need? Sorry to rush, I’d just rather not have the big guns in this town figuring out you were here,” Jake said, and I got the feeling that Vaughn wasn’t quite the popular fellow.

“New documents for all of us, everything, and I’ve got the money right here,” Vaughn said, taking a manila envelope from his coat, it was thick with what I guessed was money, “and there is an extra ten thousand to speed things up.” Vaughn approached Jake’s desk slowly and set the envelope on it.

“When do you need them?” Jake asked.

“Tomorrow morning.”

Jake looked up from his computer with wide eyes, “three whole sets of documents within one day? That’s impossible.”

“But not for you Jake,” Vaughn said, grinning.

Jake scoffed, “your confidence in me is flattering.”

Vaughn didn’t reply, he just rose up one of his eyebrows in question. Jake heaved a deep sigh and tugged his fingers through his hair, clicking on a few things on his computer. Fifteen minutes later he leaned back in his chair and observed the computer for a moment before looking at Vaughn. “I have a set of documents I’ve been working on for a group of..... people, I have two men that would fit you two and a set for a woman that I could fix to fit your lady friend,” Jake said, “it’s going to set me back with them but I suppose I can make something up if it gets you out of my hair faster.”

“How much faster?” Vaughn asked.

“Is tomorrow afternoon alright?”

“That’s fine, but if you take any longer I’ll go and tell everyone who was nice enough to help me out,” Vaughn said. “Let’s go,” he muttered to me and Stephen. We all turned and left, I glanced back to see Jake typing furiously on his computer, what kind of history did Vaughn have with this man that the mere thought of having Vaughn associated with him made him wet his pants.

As we hurried down the stairs I felt eyes on us, three men, including Samson, were leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairwell. Baldy came out from the kitchen with a bat in his hand. “What’s going on?” I whispered softly to Stephen who was standing close behind me.

“We are doing business with Jake, there’s no need for violence,” Stephen said, his voice calm.

“Your buddy here has got to learn to shut his mouth,” baldy said, tightening his grip on the bat.

“Well, that is kind of hard for my buddy,” Stephen replied, I felt his body tense up and I knew there was going to be more danger.

“Maybe if there weren’t so many things about you I could insult you with I would’ve kept my mouth shut,” Vaughn said, Stephen let out an exasperated sigh.

Baldy came at Vaughn with the bat raised, Vaughn spun out of the way, missing the hit. Baldy’s bat hit the wall and dug a hole into it; he jerked it out and prepared to go at Vaughn again. I tried to rush to Vaughn to pull him back, in hindsight it wasn’t such a good idea. Stephen’s strong arm looped around my waist and pulled me back, “What are you-” he slipped his hand into the inner pocket of the coat he had let me borrow from him and pulled out a small handgun. “What was that doing there?” I asked, my eyes widening. Stephen pulled me tight against his body, his one arm crossed over my upper half. It all happened in a few seconds.

“Stop!” Stephen shouted, his deep voice booming in the small hallway. He had the gun aimed at baldy. Everyone froze; baldy gave Stephen then Vaughn an intense glare. “Move away from the door,” Stephen commanded, his voice level and cold. They did as he ordered and the three of us left the house, Stephen didn’t stop using his body to shield me until we were back in the car and driving down the street.

“You planted a gun on Elisabeth because you knew they wouldn’t really search her for guns, didn’t you?” Vaughn asked, glancing at Stephen who was grinning slightly.

“It is a good thing that you are so alluring Elisabeth, that could have gotten quite messy,” Stephen said, looking at me in the rear view mirror. I frowned at him; I for one did not find the situation at all comical.

“I’m glad to be of help,” I snapped.

Both Vaughn and Stephen looked at each other and grinned. “Just like old times,” they both said at the same time.