by Stasia Black
He shook his head, the hurt in his eyes so clear it was like a knife slicing straight down the center of her chest. She’d have thought nothing could hurt worse. But then he opened his mouth. “But I guess you’re just too fucking broken after all.”
Don’t. Fucking don’t let him see. He’s almost gone. You’ve almost done it.
Drea made her jaw into iron and lifted a single eyebrow. “Are you done?”
He huffed out a short breath and shook his head again. “I’m going to go find Sophia and protect her like I have my entire life.” He came close, so close Drea thought he was going to either kiss her or scream in her face or spit on her or something. Something, fucking anything. But he just stood there and all she could do was breathe him in and try desperately to memorize his scent because she knew, she knew, this was the last time she’d ever see him, ever smell him, ever know this most amazing man who’d captured her heart.
“Because that’s what family does,” he whispered into her ear. “We’re stronger together. But you enjoy being alone your entire life.”
And then he turned on his heel and left her.
Chapter Thirty-Four
DREA
Drea waited until he was halfway across the parking lot and then it was like her lungs stopped working right. Her hand flew to her chest and she gasped for air.
She blinked and gulped and could barely breathe and soon had her head between her knees, half hyperventilating as she gasped for breath, only managing a hiccupping wheeze every few seconds.
He was gone.
He was gone.
She’d gotten her wish. He’s safe. He’s safe from you. It’s a good thing. So get ahold of your fucking self.
“Get your fucking hands off me! When Suicide hears about this, you’re fucking dead. You’re all fucking dead!”
Drea looked up to see two soldiers dragging a man in a Black Skulls cut across the old parking lot straight toward where Drea stood.
What was—
The soldiers’ faces were impassive as he continued to hurtle curses at them but Drea noticed they didn’t bother being gentle when he stumbled. They just continued yanking him forward even though his legs now dragged along the ground.
“You sons of whores! I’m an important member of the Skulls. They call me Suicide’s right-hand man—”
Drea got her first full breath in minutes as the soldiers dragged the man past her and into the building where David and the others were. It’d be a cold day in hell before Thomas had a right-hand man.
Drea followed them in, if only for the distraction. Anything not to think about Eric walking farther away and the distance that grew between them every moment that passed.
“What the fuck’r you doing here, Pee Wee?” The biker sneered Garrett’s direction. “You sure are lookin’ awful fuckin’ cozy. You turn snitch, that it?”
Garrett just shook his head and laughed. “No shocker you got picked up, Bucket. You always were one sloppy sonofabitch.”
Bucket reared back and then spit in Garrett’s direction and Garrett just laughed harder.
Bucket looked around at everyone else, still jerking so hard in the soldiers’ grips Drea was sure he was about to dislocate one or both arms. He must’ve joined the Skulls after she’d left because she didn’t recognize him.
David stood looking on passively. He was still every inch the General even though he was only in his boxers and a gray T-shirt.
But turned out Garrett wasn’t the only one he knew in the room.
“Doc? That you?”
Drea swung her head to look in Billy’s direction, and it was like she could feel the blood drain from her face because she immediately felt light-headed. She’d still just barely gotten her breath back and now—
How. The. Fuck. Did. Bucket. Know. Billy?
“Wait, you’re her, aren’t you? Suicide’s bitch? The one who’s daddy used to be Pres for the Skulls?”
“What do you know about this man?” David asked, pointing at Billy.
“Well shit,” Bucket grinned Drea’s way, but her eyes were zeroed in on Billy’s pale face. “He done runned away a couple months back. But up till then he used to fix up Suicide’s girls after we used ‘em too rough. Still gotta have good product to sell the customer’s ya see. But don’t mean we can’t still have our fun before we move ‘em out. Suicide’s got his appetites after all.”
Drea was going to be sick.
It was like with Daddy all over again. Discovering how he really made his money. That the food she’d eaten her whole life had been paid for by sexual slavery. The clothes on her back. The roof over her head. The stupid fucking pink Chevrolet she’d been so excited about on her 16th birthday her dad had surprised her with. How many girls had been sold to pay for that?
Poison.
It was a curse that went both ways. Everyone she ever loved would betray her. The same as she would betray and hurt anyone she ever loved.
“Drea, wait, let me explain. I swear I didn’t know when I took the job, I thought I was—” Billy started to plead but Drea cut him a look as cold as ice and offered him more than he fucking deserved, a moment more of her time, a single word: “Don’t.”
Then she turned to David and Garrett but Garrett was already ahead of her, cracking his knuckles, eyes on Bucket. “Let me at him. I’ll get him to fucking talk. He’ll spill his guts about exactly where Suicide is—”
“Thomas,” Drea all but shouted. “His name is Thomas Tillerman.”
“About where Thomas Tillerman,” Garrett amended, “is holed up.”
David gave a short, hard nod.
When Drea looked back at Bucket, she had at least the smallest consolation of seeing that he looked scared as Garrett approached.
Which meant that Garrett had a reputation. As an enforcer? Who exactly had he become in the years since she’d last known him?
No one was who they fucking seemed. God, how had she not learned that by now? She saw exactly what Billy had been. She didn’t doubt he hadn’t liked the job Suicide had forced him to do.
But Billy had still done it.
Because of the consistent access to his next fix.
Suicide knew exactly what pressure points to push to get people to do just what he wanted.
And when Billy finally saw one too many fucked up girls brutalized and broken, did he try to free them? To save anyone?
No.
He took as many drugs as he could and then fled.
Just himself.
Just with all the drugs he could carry.
Until one day he heard that Suicide’s best pal and ally, Arnold Travis, had just invaded Fort Worth, and he crawled out of whatever little weasel hole he’d been hiding in.
And ran straight into her and Eric who’d just had their unfortunate introduction to those fucking road spikes.
She shook her head, fucking furious at herself for letting him in even the tiniest little bit. What, did she think by saving him she was somehow saving her mom? How pathetic was she?
Every time she’d tried to save someone lately, it had only blown up in her face, so fine, she was fucking done.
She obviously wasn’t cut out for the role of hero. She’d leave it to people like Eric and David. Cowboys and Generals.
“Take him somewhere out of the way,” David said to the soldiers, nodding toward Bucket. “Preferably out of the hearing of the troops.”
Garrett grinned and rubbed his hands together and Drea didn’t miss the way that Bucket’s brash talk and curses had dried up on his tongue.
Maybe Garrett had changed, but he’d never tried to hide who he was. She remembered the first night she’d found him as he stood waiting for her in the dark.
Waiting for his judgement and execution.
If ever there was a kindred soul, it was him. A boy born and raised into the same heritage of blood and violence as her.
If she had her way, by the end of the day, they’d both atone for their sins one way or another.
GARRETT
Hours later, Garrett closed the door on the weeping man tied to the chair. Garrett’s hands were slick with blood and he wiped them on a spare shirt he’d brought for just that purpose.
Usually he was bothered by how easy it was for him to break men’s bones and pull their fingernails off one by one, but today it had been almost a pleasure.
He still remembered the day Dad first stuck him in a room with a man tied to a chair just like Bucket was in the room behind him. He was a prospect at the time, of course Dad made him prospect same as any other dipshit who wanted in the club no matter that he’d all but grown up in the damn clubhouse. Dad laid out his cut by the door and said it was his if he could get the information they needed out of the man in the chair.
Drea was gone by then. Three months gone. No clue where she went or if she was okay. The whole club had changed, too. After he learned about what the club did—what they really did—selling women? He wished every day of his life that he’d taken Drea up on her offer back when she’d been trying to convince him to leave the club.
He shoulda strapped her down on the back of his Harley and took her across country. Up north maybe. Somewhere they had seasons other than hot, hotter, and dead dry. He’d build her snow men and every year they’d go cut down their Christmas tree from the yard and he’d make her fat with his babies and—
But that was all just piss in the wind.
Gone like it was never there.
And there Garrett still fucking was. Stuck with his dad and the MC.
So he’d picked up that goddamned bat and he’d beaten the man within an inch of his life.
He didn’t get his cut that day, though, because he never asked the guy a single question.
What he did get was a reputation. Last few years, he barely had to lift his fist if he didn’t feel like it.
Most days, though, he wouldn’t lie… he did feel like it.
Cause it turned out, once you got a taste for violence like that, it was hard to quench. Especially cause he was so angry. All the time.
Turned out he’d been angry for a full decade and didn’t even know it.
Not till she came back and life unfurled it’s wings again like one of those butterflies coming outta a cocoon.
Garrett used to like watching Nature Shows after Mama left and he spent so many hours alone. Bugs and insects and shit like that. Eventually he even started using them in his work. Spiders especially. He liked the big, fuzzy ones. Turned out some people’d shit their pants if you put a couple tarantulas on their faces. Literally. Shit their pants.
Garrett didn’t get it. He kept the things as pets. Ozzy and Sharon. They were docile as could be as long as you didn’t go screeching and smacking at them.
Sort of like him.
He could be Mr. Nice Guy, no matter what people assumed about him because of his size or aloof demeanor.
But fuck with his family? Fuck with his woman?
Well the gloves were coming off.
As Bucket, aka Leslie Smith, back there, had just learned. Yup. Leslie. Wonder why he grew up to be an asshole.
But Garrett was done thinking about Leslie’s shitty little life. He stalked back down the still mostly intact covered walkway of the outlet mall to where he’d left Drea and the rest of them.
When he walked in it was to see David at the front of the room talking to a large gathering—well, large as in there were about twenty people in the room. As well as a door that had been overturned and set up on some sawhorses like a table.
On it a big map was spread out.
“—told you, it’s an old battle tactic called defeat in detail. Today all three battalions have been making their presence known in these three strategic locations—New Braunfels in the center. Canyon Lake to the North. Seguin to the South.”
Garrett didn’t see Eric or that little shitstick Billy. Then again, maybe Eric was out somewhere dealing with Billy. Drea was standing near the back of the group. She jumped a little when she noticed him and her eyes immediately went to the bloody cloth in his hands, then they shot up to his face.
For a second, his stomach clenched. Would she be disgusted by him and pull away?
But all she asked was, “Did you get what we need? Do you know where Suicide is?”
He breathed out and nodded. “He’s in a hospital on the Riverwalk.” Then he nodded toward the front of the room. “What’s going on here?”
Drea rolled her eyes. “Men playing with their armies.”
Garrett shook his head. Drea was nothing if not single-minded, he’d give her that. He focused in on what David was saying.
“All three battalions have retreated but it will almost certainly have gotten reported before comms were shut down earlier. Which was exactly what we wanted. When confident of great numbers, protocol is to meet any attack with a show of force. They’ll divide their army up and send troops to each of the three locations because they have larger numbers.
He started drawing on the wall with a black marker. “I estimate they’ll send up to 5,000 troops to defend each location.”
A murmur went through the crowd. People were obviously not happy to hear that number.
“But sir, even with the new volunteers, we only got at most 8,000.”
David shook his head. “Defeat in detail,” he repeated the earlier phrase. “It’s how Napoleon defeated the Italians during the French Revolution. In the Civil War, General Stonewall Jackson took down a force of 60,000 men with only 17,000.”
Damn. Even Drea stopped rolling her eyes and looked interested hearing that.
“Any more modern examples of this working?” asked someone else.
David shook his head. “The way it works is you split up your smaller force into three or four locations. Let the enemy know you’re there with a big force, like we did today at Canyon Lake, New Braunfels, and Seguin. But they don’t know exactly how many it was. All the people will say is it was thousands. Which it was. A little over 2,500 to be exact. But they don’t know how many we’ve got. So they send their 5,000. Here, here, and here.”
“Shit, General, aren’t they gonna wipe the floor with our asses? They got twice as many men as us!”
“Well see,” David started smiling, “this is why this little trick didn’t work past about 1914. Airplanes. If you can just fly over and see how big the enemies force is, you can’t trick them. Satellite imagery made it even worse.”
“Enough congratulating yourself,” Drea called out. “Get to the point.”
The soldiers laughed and David waved them down. “Okay, okay. So we’ve got anti-aircraft artillery stationed outside all three locations. Anyone tries to do a flyby overhead, BAM, they’re going down.”
“And in the meantime, we leave just 500 men at Canyon Lake and Seguin and have the rest meet up with the central force in New Braunfels,” he drew arrows on the wall, “and then we attack those motherfuckers, except now we’ve got over 6,500 to their measly 5,000.”
“Holy shit,” Garrett whispered.
“Then that force moves on, up to Canyon Lake, again with superior numbers.”
“We’ve got more volunteers coming in all the time, too,” Jonathan said, stepping up beside David. “After the Black Skulls killed the governor of this Territory and took it for themselves two weeks ago, they’ve terrorized the people and they’re ready to fight back. Tonight we give them their chance.”
A cheer went up from the crowd.
“Damn, they’re sure good at givin’ speeches,” Garrett said.
“And they know their military history, which is all well and good for them.” Drea turned his way, giving him her full attention. “But I don’t give a shit about saving the world. All I care about is getting in that damn city, getting the women I made promises too out of that hellhole, and putting a bullet in Thomas Tillerman’s brain. You hearing me?”
“Loud and clear. Loud. And. Clear.”
Drea nodded. The s
oldiers were dispersing as David moved from group to group giving what sounded like personalized instructions for tonight’s attack. They’d move out after sundown. Drea supposed these were squad leaders or whatever the hell you called people in the military who led smaller groups of men.
She moved past them and straight to the map on the makeshift table. Garrett came up right beside her.
It was a large map of San Antonio with a cutout to the side with an enlargened view of the Riverwalk.
“So where is he?” she whispered.
Garrett made sure his hand was dry so he wouldn’t smudge it, then traced his big finger over tiny lines that indicated the San Antonio river.
“There,” he said. “Nix Hospital. It’s old as fuck even though it’s been renovated a buncha times But it’s been there forever. Built hundreds of years ago or some shit. Bucket said that Suici— I mean, Thomas, likes it cause apparently the old exam rooms make for good holding cells.”
Garrett could see Drea bristle at his words but he pushed on. “It opens right up onto the river, though.”
Drea’s mind was already moving a million miles an hour and her hand came to the map, tracing the river upstream. He’d had the same thought and shook his head.
“Thought the same thing, but the river sprouts up in the middle of San Antonio. It’s not a way in.”
Drea frowned as she looked down at the map. “Where exactly does it start?”
“Shit if I know.” Garrett shrugged.
Drea dropped down, her face inches from the map. Garrett shook his head. “It’s not a way in, I’m telling ya. I don’t think it goes any farther up than that park where the zoo is.”
Drea’s head came up so fast she almost busted him in the chin. He jerked back right in time.
“What zoo? What park?”
“Uh, the San Antonio Zoo. I don’t know what the park’s called.”