“Please. Don’t take us to a hospital.”
Ghost’s words had me rearing back in surprise. If anything, I’d have thought she’d want to go back to civilization. “Huh?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“Please.” When she started shifting on the ground, moaning as she moved, I realized she was trying to sit up. “Don’t take us to the hospital.”
I considered myself a dumbass because, just that second, I heard the accent. “You’re an illegal, aren’t you?”
She sagged against the ground. “We all are.”
“That changes things,” Nyx rumbled. He cut Steel a look. “Get Stone on the line. I’ll talk to her.”
“Ain’t no one gonna mention that it’s fucking weird as shit you still have her number?” I questioned.
“I keep an eye on her,” Steel rasped, even as he connected the call and put it on speaker.
“Have pigs started flying? Or has hell frozen over? Far as I know, that was the only time you said you’d talk to me again.”
Steel’s top lip snagged into a snarl, but he turned his face away at the sound of Stone’s voice and left it to Nyx.
Never thought Nyx would be the rational one in a situation like this, but fuck, these were trying times.
“Stone, it’s Nyx.”
“Nyx?” Stone sounded confused. “Oh my God,” she rasped. “Oh, God. I’ll be right there! Don’t you let that fucker die, do you hear me? I’ll drag him back from hell if I fucking have to. Do you hear me, Nyx?” she screamed, making the ghost jolt on the ground in surprise.
“I hear you, honey,” he replied, tone soothing as he shot me a wry look. “We’ll keep him going until you get here.”
“Good,” she barked, then cut the call.
I blinked at Nyx before we both turned to Steel.
“She thinks I’m dying?” Steel growled. “And that’s the only way she’ll come back?”
“Look on the bright side, she doesn’t want you to die.”
He didn’t appreciate my help because he glowered at me.
“At least she’s coming to the compound.”
“Because she thinks I’m dying,” he reiterated.
“Some men would think that was a compliment,” the ghost whispered, but again, I heard a sliver of amusement in her voice.
How the poor woman could find anything humorous about this fucking situation, I didn’t know. But sweet fuck, I was just grateful she wasn’t sobbing and was coherent.
“Stone always did know how to fucking insult me,” Steel ground out.
“Not sure it’s an insult. She doesn’t want you to die, bro,” I pointed out. “I mean, she wasn’t all, ‘let me roll up so I can spit on his grave.’ She wants you to live. Ghost’s right, that’s pretty much as big of a compliment as someone can give to another person.”
“If she’s on her way, we need to be on ours too,” Nyx stated, putting an end to the conversation with a firm tone. Just because the dude was a sick motherfucker didn’t mean he wasn’t the bomb at being the Enforcer.
“They can’t ride on the back of a bike,” Giulia muttered weakly, and I cut her a look, unsurprised to see she was close by but had propped herself up against a tree.
This situation would traumatize anyone. But someone who’d only recently been traumatized? Fuck, it was a wonder she wasn’t catatonic.
When Nyx glanced at her, I knew he saw that too and his face darkened in a way that, usually, he dedicated to the bastards he slaughtered. This one was only softened by the love in his eyes.
Yeah, the love.
Giulia didn’t burn to nothing at the sight. Didn’t disappear into a puddle of ash at the foot of the tree. If anything, she shot him a shaky look and rasped, “I’m okay.”
“You’re not,” he instantly countered.
“I’ll be okay then.” She blew out a breath. “We need transport. The MC is too far away to help.”
“It’s three hours away, Giulia. Not Mars.”
“Look at them and tell me we have time to fuck around?”
Ghost cleared her throat. “If we could just eat something, maybe that would help?”
Steel pulled a face. “Don’t you need, like, fluids or something?”
“You got sports drinks in those Mary Poppins bags of yours? Or just water?” Nyx questioned.
“Just water,” I hissed under my breath. “Dumb of me to forget.”
“Water would still be nice,” the ghost whispered.
I flinched, because of course it fucking would be.
“I’ll go get the bags.”
“Nyx brought them already,” Giulia murmured, as she began to riffle through the saddlebags that were at her side. Bags I’d only just seen.
In my defense, it was still gloomy as fuck around here. Couldn’t see for shit, and trust me, there was enough shit around this place for that to be true.
The dawn light was too weak to make that much of a difference on the forest, and it was a reminder that even though I felt like I’d aged a good two years since I’d first entered these woods, it had probably only been sixty minutes from start to finish.
Sixty minutes from hell, and fuck, if a Satan’s Sinner said that?
He meant it.
Three
Link
It took four hours to get shit sorted.
A quick Google told us there was a rental place a thirty-minute drive away, and Nyx and Giulia took off to pick up a van and a fuck ton of water and sports drinks from the nearby Walmart.
I didn’t want to know what Giulia had to do to help the women, but giving them some privacy to do it had been hard enough. There’d been cries of pain, moans of discomfort, and each and every time I heard their hurt, I wanted to grind Lancaster’s dick into dust.
That my violence would never be able to come to fruition pissed me off all the more.
I was glad the fucker was dead, but you could only die once, and that bastard? He needed to die a thousand times.
With our backs to the women as they cleaned up using the baby wipes Giulia had also brought with her, I wasn’t entirely sure how they thought they could scrape off what appeared to be weeks’ worth of grime with some wipes. I mean, Johnson’s were good, but that good?
Hell, I wasn’t even sure if a good old soak would get the crap off their skin.
But, try they had, and though they didn’t look or smell much better when Giulia came to us to let us know they were done, the women appeared a bit perkier, and by perky, I meant they didn’t look like they were going to die on us.
Which, considering we were leaving Sarah behind until we could return with the appropriate gear to bury her, was too apt.
Death was on the horizon if we didn’t make it home and fast.
Amara was the weakest, and I figured that was because she’d expended the most effort by escaping her cage—I wasn’t even sure how she’d done that, but I was grateful she had. Only that clanging noise she’d been making had given us a clue as to her location.
Ghost was weak too, but she had a smile on her face which I didn’t particularly understand, but fuck, if she could find something to smile about then I was glad for it. She’d curled into me as I hauled her into my arms and sighed when I walked her through the forest.
“We’re going to be okay,” she’d told me, and I really fucking hoped she was right.
“‘Course you are,” I’d replied gruffly.
“No. I mean it. We’ll be okay. Now that we’re out of that place…we’ve survived worse.”
Worse?
Sweet fuck.
I couldn’t have this conversation. Couldn’t. Have. It. But the ghost went on. Telling me about the ship that had brought her over from Europe, followed by a truck ride where they hadn’t seen the light of day for eighty hours.
Holy fuck.
What these women had been through?
I wanted to scream.
Then, something occurred to me. “He didn’t kidnap you, did he?”
Ghost rocked
her head on my shoulder. “He bought us.”
Fuck.
I blew out a breath as my brain started rattling around inside my skull. I couldn’t focus on that, couldn’t focus on anything other than getting them back to the clubhouse where Stone could sort them out.
She’d bitch about it at first, but she was one of us, knew the score, and knew how shit worked so she’d help. Even if that involved her cursing us to hell as she went about her business.
I could deal with that, I could, mostly. I just wanted the women to get help. I couldn’t imagine what they’d been through, couldn’t begin to understand how someone could imprison them the way they had.
“It’s okay,” the ghost soothed, making me flinch because if anyone needed soothing, it was her. Not me.
“No, it’s not,” I’d retorted, managing to control my tone enough not to bite at her. I wasn’t feeling soft and gentle, wasn’t feeling tender and easy. None of those were my usual state of play, but I had to be all four of them because Ghost and the other women deserved no less. “Ghost, it’s the exact opposite of okay.”
She tilted her head to the side. “My name isn’t Ghost.”
“You whisper like one,” I countered, like it made total sense and maybe it did to her because she snickered.
“I like this name.”
“You do?” My lips curved despite themselves. “I aim to please.”
She snorted. “This I doubt.”
“Then you’d be wrong. Got the best rep in the MC,” I boasted, but I wasn’t really. I didn’t give a fuck about rep, didn’t give a shit about what the club bunnies thought about me. I liked what I liked, took what I needed, simple.
But if it made Ghost laugh?
Yeah, I’d talk smack all damn day.
“Will we cause much trouble for you?”
My brow puckered at that. “Don’t worry about that. Just worry about getting better.”
“A dead body will cause more trouble,” she muttered in that soft voice of hers, a tone so quiet that it made me strain my ears to hear it.
“I didn’t say that,” I chided, even if she was right.
“You didn’t need to. It’s true. But I know that isn’t why you’re helping. I didn’t mean it that way.”
“If we wanted you dead, we’d work to that end. We want you to live, Ghost. Didn’t come all the way to the border just to stick our thumbs up our asses and gawk at you.”
“That sounds uncomfortable.”
My lips twitched and I was on the brink of making a joke about how she’d be surprised, but if anyone knew what it meant to be uncomfortable, it was her.
Inside, I wriggled. Yeah, I knew that sounded weird. But I internalized my fidgeting because I couldn’t do shit about it now. I was used to wanting to fidget on my bike, so I forced it inside, just like I did now. I focused on that and split it with getting us back to the van Giulia and Nyx had rented.
The vehicle was a big one with three rows of seating where we each placed one of the women. We’d probably have to set fire to the damn thing and lose our deposit because there was no way the upholstery wasn’t ruined after this trip, but that was neither here nor there. Storm, our VP, was good with shit like that, so he’d be the one to dispose of the vehicle when the time came.
Giulia handed them all something, and I saw they were bags of trail mix and a large bottle of sports drink. When she passed them bottles of pills next, I wanted to wince at the amount of pain they’d be in, but I took a step back and muttered, “Giulia, drive safe.”
“Of course.” She tipped her chin up. “I’m a good driver.”
Nyx chucked her under the chin. “Gonna be hard with that smell. They’re gonna moan and cry and…” He blew out a breath. “Not gonna be easy.”
“I could have been one of them. If he’d managed to get me out of the bar, if he’d managed to get me into his car, only fuck knows where he’d have taken me, what he’d have done.” Her chin tilted impossibly higher. “I’m good. We need to get going.”
She reached up on tiptoe and kissed him real fast before she spun around and headed for the driver’s seat.
Without waiting on us, she began the slow reverse down the rough track and I had to admit, she did a pretty good job of getting them out of there.
Nyx, his body tense as he stared at his woman in the driver’s seat, grumbled, “Fucking hate cages.”
My lips twitched. “You just hate that she’s riding in one.”
“Should be riding bitch on the back of my hog.”
I clapped my hand on his back, amused at his grouchy tone despite the situation. “You gonna piss on her and mark your territory? I wanna be there to watch you do it because she’ll fuck you up, brother.”
He shot me a scowl. “What does that have to do with me hating that she’s not riding back with me?”
“Because you’re gonna blow your wad with her if you try and hold on too tight.”
Nyx growled under his breath. “Do I have to remind you what she’s just been through? And what she’s currently doing as she transports more of her attacker’s victims across the goddamn state?”
“The woman kicked a guy hard enough to rupture his fucking balls, dude. She attacked Luke back. She came out the victor. You forget that and you’ll underestimate her.” I shrugged. “It’s no skin off my nose if you suffocate her to death by trying to keep her safe, but—”
Nyx raised a hand. “Enough, Link. I’m not in the mood.”
I shrugged again, watching as he took off for his bike, climbed astride the beast, and set off. The second he did, and the second Giulia saw him, she drove off from where she’d been idling, waiting on us to haul ass.
“Why you needling him?”
Shooting Steel a look, I muttered, “I’m opening his eyes.”
“Why? It ain’t like this is a new piece to Nyx’s puzzle. He’s always been protective of bitches. What he saw in that cabin must have been like a knife to the fucking gut for him.”
“Giulia’s good for him,” I replied softly. “I don’t want him to fuck it up by being too Nyx.”
“Maybe that’s what she likes. She’s glued to him enough. Fuck, they’re both like squids.”
My eyes widened at that. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Means they’ve got their tentacles all over each another.”
That had my nose crinkling. “That’s fucking gross.”
Steel shrugged. “True though. They’re sucked onto one another. Probably for life knowing Nyx. He ain’t one to get serious unless it was hardcore shit.”
Because I agreed with him on that score, but not the fucking tentacle shit, I just said, “We need to get you a different porn site. You’re watching too much hentai.”
He flipped me the bird. “Fuck off.”
“Only thinking of your poor ma. What’s she gonna do when she finds you in bed with a fucking octopus?”
He shoved me in the shoulder. “Prick. Let’s get going.”
My lips curved even as I climbed onto my bike. Nyx and Giulia hadn’t waited on us, so it was definitely time to catch up.
Somehow, we had to right the wrongs that had occurred in these woods, a forest that, with the light of morning, was a beautiful, if still eerie place. It was hard to think of all the monstrosities that had gone down here, harder still to think of the dead woman back in that cabin.
I felt as big of a bastard as Lancaster for leaving her there, in that fucking place, but I didn’t have much of an alternative. It was amateur to bury a body in the woods, and disposing of her remains…I blew out a breath. No. She deserved a sweeter ending than what she was going to get.
As I kick-started my hog, I thought about how I could make that happen and began the journey home. A journey that Sarah would never make again.
* * *
Stone
When I saw him roll through the compound gates, that same fucking bright orange hog between his thighs, same old hair whipping all over the goddamn place from
under his helmet, I wanted to kick him off the bike. I did. I wanted to do something, anything, to make him hurt as badly as he’d made me hurt.
He’d let me think he was ill.
Sure, Nyx had been behind that, the schmuck, but Steel could have texted me, let me know that he was okay. Instead, I’d spent two hours racing to West Orange, trying to get here in time to…
I blew out a breath.
What?
Say goodbye? When we should never have said that in the first place?
I gritted my teeth as I stacked my hands on my hips. At the sight, Rex muttered, “Sweet fuck.”
I knew why.
I was named after the Rolling Stones—yeah, my mom’s imagination was shit—but everyone knew I went stone-cold when I was pissed. When I started showing emotion? They knew to run for the hills.
I’d been raised with these fuckers. I knew the score. Knew that if Steel had been injured, it would have been doing something the government considered illegal, and I knew that no matter how fast I raced to get to him, it wouldn’t be fast enough. People bled out from gunshot and knife wounds fast.
Nyx had called at the end of a busy shift in the ER. I’d already been hyped up from losing a kid on my watch. She’d come in after a simple car crash. So simple, she hadn’t presented anything except for a headache. A fucking headache. My superior wanted to send her home, give her some Children’s Tylenol. Me? I’d had a bad vibe. I was still only a resident and Hyde was a fucking senior resident, which gave him more pull than me.
I’d forged his fucking signature to get her a CAT scan, but it had been too late.
She’d died.
She’d fucking died while I bullshitted around with the bureaucracy that was fundamental in a med program.
I was amped up, ready for a fight, and the sight of Steel, someone I fucking loved, who I’d thought was dying, riding back without a care in the world?
Yeah, I wanted to kick him in the balls.
Badly.
I gritted my teeth when he pulled up, barely even noticing the cage that was braking to a halt alongside him.
“You’re not dead,” I told him stonily—that was my rep, after all.
Link: SATAN’S SINNERS’ MC: TWO Page 5