Her smile takes over her entire face and she gives me a wink. “I’m due for a change.” She shrugs her shoulders and hurries away.
I don’t go right inside of my own home, instead I walk over to the small chair I have next to the house, and I sit down. I stare up at the big Texas sky. I’m thankful that although I live in town, it’s not the city, and I can see all of the stars that litter the sky.
“Dammit Sadie, why?” I curse in a whisper. “Why did you not tell him? Why did I not tell him? Why does all of this hurt so damn bad? I’m scared, really fucking scared big sister.”
Sadie doesn’t answer, of course she wouldn’t have even if she were alive. She’d say, “that’s tricks, bitch,” and run off to her next adventure. To the next guy, to the next high. Whatever the case, she’d run with a smile on her face and a fuck the world attitude.
“Shit,” I hiss. Closing my eyes, I inhale a deep breath. “Shit.”
KEYS
LEAVING AXE IN HIS BED, and Carson on her ass, my chest aches as I turn my bike away from them. I feel the desire to stay, to make sure she’s okay, to apologize for being a dick. Then the farther I ride away from them, the angrier I get.
She kept my kid from me, my fucking son.
Mine.
Fuck that.
I don’t have to be nice to her, no matter how sexy she is. No matter how tight her ass is, or how her tits look like they’d fit in my palm perfectly. No matter how pouty her sexy fucking lips are, or how fantastic they would look wrapped around my cock. I’m still fucking pissed off at her.
Making my way back to the hotel, I park my bike then dismount. Glancing around, I notice that the other guys are here so I jog toward our room. Opening the door with the keycard, they both look up at me.
“He’s yours, yeah?” Houston asks.
“He’s mine,” I grunt.
Baby nods. “What happens now?”
“Carson’s going to come with us to Canada, bringing my kid along with her,” I shrug.
Baby frowns, running his hand through his short hair. “Carson?” he asks, lifting a brow. When I don’t explain further, he continues. “Then what happens to her? After she drops him off at the clubhouse?” he asks.
I smirk. “She’s stayin’.”
“Brother, are you sure you want to do that shit? That’s a big fuckin’ can of worms you’re openin’ there. Your ex-girlfriend’s sister, and your kid? You know Snake ain’t gonna be happy about you bringing some woman who ain’t yours up there.”
“She can live in the trailer behind the bar. Hell, she can work in the bar, I don’t really give a fuck. They’ve been swamped lately anyway,” I shrug.
Baby shakes his head, pursing his lips together, but he doesn’t say anything. We spend the next couple of hours going over our plan for the compound, all talks of Carson and Axe ceasing. Houston takes out a piece of paper and draws a crude map of the compound, then circles where he thinks the kids could be.
“What happens if we don’t find them on the first couple of tries?” Baby asks after we’ve gone over how much time we have and how quickly we’ll need to burn the fucker down.
I shake my head. “We can’t get caught, Baby. It’s only us here. This was supposed to be in and out. Other crews are going to help us on the Montana and South Dakota compounds, but this was all on us. It’s going to be a hard blow, but if we can’t get them out…” I let my words trail off.
The thought makes me sick to my stomach. The idea of killing women and children, but children especially, it makes me fucking sick. I hope it doesn’t come down to that. I know that the three of us are on the same page, it’s the exact last thing we want to have happen.
“You got the van?” I ask Houston.
He lifts his chin, the mood in the room somber. “Got it, brother,” he confirms.
Together, we gather everything we’re going to need, then load up in the van. A rented van just for this occasion since Fish took off with the club’s van. The three of us make our way toward the compound, Houston driving us there.
The entire drive is in silence. My mind is consumed with thoughts of Carson and Axe, of what the future holds for us. Maybe I shouldn’t force her to come back with us. But honest to fuck, I don’t know how to take care of a kid, and she’s been Axe’s sole caretaker his entire life. I don’t want to admit it, but I need her.
Houston backs the van up to our lookout from earlier this morning, then kills the engine. “You’re sure this side isn’t under surveillance?” Baby asks me.
I lift my chin. “I’m sure,” I say, grabbing the bolt cutters. We’re going to cut a hole in the fencing then try to go as undetected as possible to the cluster of buildings we think the kids are being held in, together.
Slowly and quietly, we walk over to the fencing. It doesn’t take me long to cut a hole big enough for us to walk through. We all three pull our guns as we walk through the field. A smell crosses our noses when the wind blows in our direction and I almost gag.
“She’s still here,” Houston whispers, his eyes focusing on the ground in front of him.
We all stop, looking down at the poor woman we watched be murdered. Whoever that man was, he just left her out here to rot. I lower my head, paying my respects at the same time Houston whispers something to himself, most likely a prayer of some kind.
“I’m not going to feel bad about burning these assholes up, that’s for damn sure,” he growls once he turns back to us.
I snort. “Me either,” I agree.
Turning toward the cluster of buildings, we hurry, more desperate to get this night over with. I need to get my son back home, where he belongs. Then I need to figure out what I’m going to do with Carson. I know what my cock wants to do with her, but after that, I’m not sure.
CHAPTER FIVE
KEYS
THE FIRST BUILDING we walk into is a bust, it’s the fucking kitchen. Feeling a little defeated, we quietly make our way to another long, metal building. You wouldn’t think that they would put kids in metal buildings in the middle of Texas, but these fucks are downright evil.
The door is unlocked, and I slowly twist the handle, pushing it open as I stand to the side. Houston and Baby walk in past me, both with their guns drawn.
“Holy fuck,” Houston rasps.
I step in behind him and we’ve hit the motherload. All of the kids are sleeping in cots. They are pushed close together and packed in so tight it looks like it’s just one gigantic bed, rather than dozens of small ones.
“Are you going to hurt us?” a small voice asks.
I look down to see a little girl, she looks maybe eight years old, her eyes wide and scared. Shaking my head, I crouch down next to her. “I’m here to help you. Is this all the kids?” I ask.
She nods. “The babies are in the next building, but we’re all three and older here.”
I press my fist to my chest and rub on the ache. How in the fuck? Why in the fuck? These sick fucking assholes.
I lift my chin to Baby. “Get these kids to the van,” I order.
“They’re not going to all fit,” he urges.
Shaking my head, I ball my hand into a fist and place it on my hip. “We’ll stack them in, we’ll do whatever, get them the fuck in the van,” I growl.
He lifts his chin and starts waking up all the kids. They’re sleepy, too fucking sleepy and disoriented, which makes me think they’re kept drugged and compliant.
“Can you show me where the babies are? And do you know how many women are in there watching them?” I ask the same girl.
The little girl looks down at her feet, then back up to me. “Nobody watches them at night, mister. They all go home to their men. They come back at four in the mornin’ to feed them,” she breathes.
Fuck.
Fucking Fuck.
“Go with that man, help him with the other kids, we’ll get you to safety,” I promise.
I feel guilty for promising it, because in reality, we’re just going to dump them
off, and into the system. But goddamn, they cannot stay here, not like this. Houston and I hurry over to where the little girl told us the babies were being held.
This place does not have any decent security, the door is unlocked, and we just walk right on in. The babies are in a similar sleeping arrangement than the kids were. They are in cribs that are lined up one-by-one. Luckily there aren’t as many of them as there were older kids.
I reach for one sleeping baby and he doesn’t even twitch in his sleep. “They’ve all been drugged,” I guess, turning to look at Houston.
“Seems like it. There’s six of them, how are we going to carry them all out?” he asks, changing the subject.
“I’ll help,” a man’s voice announces.
Houston brings his gun up, pointing it toward him, but the man holds up his hands. I blink, taking a closer look at him, he’s not a man, he’s a teenage boy. “They brought me here when they took my mom a few years ago,” he announces, explaining himself.
“Where are the women?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “They are a lost cause. The kids are drugged for compliance. I don’t know what they give the women but they are fucking zombies, sex zombies.” He shivers. “They’re a lost cause. I just want to get back to my dad,” he rasps.
“Who’s your dad?”
He picks up two toddlers and holds them against his chest. Houston picks up two babies, and I grab what looks to be like two fucking newborns. “His road name’s Hoss. He’s part of the Nevada chapter of the Notorious Devils.”
Lifting my chin toward the door, we walk out of the building. We fall in line in the back of Baby’s trail of kids. This boy taking up a place right next to me. “We’ll get ahold of your daddy, kid. We have to drive through Nevada on our way home. We leave first thing in the morning, you can join us.”
“Thanks,” he breathes. “My mom left him, took off and made me go with her. Then we settled just a few miles outside of Texas on the Oklahoma border. She started going to church regularly. I was only ten,” he shrugs.
Sounds a lot like what I’ve heard about the compound, about how they get some of the women. Some they just kidnap, but lately, they’ve been recruiting more and more on their own. Especially with the fall out of their supply from the Cartel, from us.
It takes us far too long to load all the kids in the van, and they’re stacked and sandwiched in like goddamn sardines, but we get it handled. Houston and Baby stay behind to torch the compound. I’ll be making my way back to them once I get the kids handled.
The drive to Austin takes a little over two hours, and the van is eerily quiet. Once we’ve reached a firehouse, I look behind us, and my heart fucking bleeds. “You’re going to leave us here,” the little girl from earlier whispers.
I look down at her and I lift my chin. “Yeah, sweetheart. But you’ll be safer here than where you were,” I explain.
She nods as a tear slips from her eyes and rolls down her cheeks. I want to keep her, fuck me, I want to keep all of them. This is not what was supposed to happen, this is not how it was supposed to go. These poor fucking kids. Now that I have one of my own, I swear to Christ my heart goddamn bleeds like it never has before.
Safe Haven laws are only for kids a few days old, I know because I looked them up. However, we don’t have the manpower that we did last time we did this up in Canada. Not only that, we don’t have the connections at the shelters.
Leaving the kids behind, I try not to let that guilt fill me and swallow me up. I tell myself, repeating it over and over on a chant that they are better off, safer than they were. They’re breathing, and soon their parents won’t be.
We drive away, me and the teenage boy, back to Houston and Baby. The sun is just peaking when the kid breaks the silence.
“It’s a crap shoot if the life you just delivered them to is better than where they were,” he announces, and I grunt because I feel the same fucking way. “But,” he continues. “At least they have a chance at something other than being bred, or fighting a fucked up cause,” he shrugs.
I lift my chin. “Yeah, kid. You’re right.” I dig my phone out of my pocket and make a call to the Nevada clubhouse.
I don’t know who his dad is, but I have every clubhouse’s number programmed in my phone. I bet there’s a father out there who is going to be pretty fucking happy we found his boy.
CARSON
MY CHEST IS tight as I finish packing the small suitcase. We don’t have much that we need to take with us. I don’t really have anything nice or expensive, I could never afford it. Even if I could, I would save it for Axe.
I pack Axe’s favorite toys, his clothes and his pillow along with his blanket. For myself, I pack my clothes, what little toiletries I own, and a few little keepsakes that I’ve collected over the years, things that hold special meaning.
All-in-all our total possessions each fit in our suitcases plus one medium-sized box. It’s pathetic. With a frown, I hurry and pack up what I can in the kitchen. I don’t bother with the Goodwill pots and pans, or the Dollar Store silverware. No, I pack up the dry and canned foods. I spent a lot of money on this food, and I’m not about to let it go to waste.
“Well I hope your man gets here soon,” Roxanne announces as she tugs her gigantic suitcase into the kitchen.
I snort. “Not my man, but why?”
Her eyes widen and she bites on the corner of her lip. “Tim doesn’t know I’m leaving. He’d probably drag me back by my hair if he found out. I need to be gone before he wakes up from his all-night binge.”
My brows knit together and I’m just about to ask her what exactly all that means. Obviously there’s more going on in their relationship than she’s led on. My words get stuck in my throat, though, when my front door swings open so hard it bounces off of the wall.
There, standing in my doorway are three big ass bikers. Ace is in front, but two equally as big men are behind him. “Fuck, I think I just came a little,” Roxie says behind me.
I turn my head, looking back at her from over my shoulder. “You do know they’re forcing me to go, don’t you?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I’ll take the two in the back, they look like a wild ride.”
I hear someone chuckle and I turn my head back around to see one of the men in the back laughing. The other is staring at Roxie and he doesn’t look amused at all whatsoever by her words. I can’t tell if he looks pissed off, or just wary.
“Um, Roxie is going to be joining us on our adventure,” I squeak.
Ace frown as he looks at me then moves his gaze over my shoulder. “You know you ain’t comin’ back, don’t you?” he barks.
Roxie exhales, then I hear her suck in a breath. “I’m counting on that,” she says. He grunts, his brows furrowing before he lifts his chin.
“Pack their shit up in the car,” he orders the other two men. They stomp toward me and look around in the kitchen. There are two boxes and two bags in there, nothing else. “Where’s the rest?” one of them asks.
“This is it,” I whisper.
He turns his head to look back at Ace. “Brother,” he says, shaking his head. Then without another word they gather our things up and carry them outside. They don’t even need to make two trips, that’s how pathetic I am.
“Where’s Axe?” Ace demands.
I point toward our shared bedroom. “He sleeps really heavy until about seven. You’re early so I haven’t woken him up yet.”
He lifts his chin to acknowledge he’s heard me then stomps back to the bedroom. A few seconds later he emerges with Axe tucked in his massive arms. I swear my belly dips, and my entire body swoons at the sight.
“Fuck, my ovaries,” Roxie moans behind me.
“We got a stop to make in Nevada. We’ll have an extra body with us until then. You drive?” he asks lifting his chin to Roxanne.
She snorts. Does she drive? Yeah, like a bat out of hell and too damn fast, but she drives. “Hell yeah, I drive,” she announces.
“Y
ou stay with us. You do not, I repeat, do not lose us. You do and I’ll find you, I’ll hunt you, and you will not like how I’ll punish you,” he growls. I hear her gulp, but I’m unable to take my eyes off of Ace’s angry gaze. He shouldn’t look as downright sexy as he does right now. I shouldn’t think he is, either.
“You,” he barks, looking down at me. “You’re on the back of my bike.”
I shake my head. “I’ve never.”
He smirks. “A virgin, nice. You’re on the back of my bike, babe. Get a jacket, jean or somethin’. If you have leather that’d be better, but something is better than nothing. Just in case I have to lay it down.”
I take a step back from his words, lay it down, what the fuck? Roxanne wraps her arms around me and rests her chin on my shoulder as Ace walks away with Axe still sleeping in his arms. “That man wants in your teeny tiny panties,” she whispers against my ear.
Shaking my head, I let out an unladylike snort. “Yeah, right. He had the wild sister, what would he want with the tame one? He’d be bored to death, I’m sure.”
It’s Roxanne’s turn to snort. “Okay whatever you need to believe, sweetie.”
“All loaded, ladies,” one of the other men says as he walks into the house. He’s tall with dark hair, and he’s handsome. I would notice him walking down the street and definitely give him a second glance, you know, if Ace weren’t anywhere near.
Roxanne is the first of us to start moving, she lifts her hand and makes a circle in the air. “Let’s ride cowboys.”
I follow behind her, and the other man only to have Ace stop me from walking out the door. “Here,” he says shoving an envelope at me.
“What’s this?” I ask.
His dark eyes meet mine and he shrugs. “Figure it would be bullshit to stiff your landlord. It should cover a couple month’s rent,” he explains.
“Ace, you don’t. I mean, thank you,” I whisper. I set it down on a table next to the door. “That was really sweet of you, are you sure you can spare it? I mean I paid first and last when I moved in.”
Blended with Pain: Notorious Devils (Cash Bar Book 4) Page 4