Harry

by KJ Dahlen

  He tied her hands and feet separately and then tied a rope around her neck and waist to hold her up.

  Blacky walked over to the door of his cell and drawled, “Kind of overkill don’t you think?” He motioned his head at all the tying.

  “Shut the fuck up.” Moose growled. “Maybe I’ll put her in your cell and let her kill you for us instead of hanging you day after tomorrow.”

  “You really think you’re gonna hold her here?” Blacky asked sarcastically. “She escaped your attempts once already.”

  Moose knelt at her feet to secure her foot and suddenly her foot kicked out at him catching him along the jaw. Moose stood up with a growl and decked her. He had a fist of iron and he didn’t hold back his punch. Her head smashed against the bars hard enough to knock her out this time. He ended up breaking her nose as blood flowed down her face and dripped off her chin. “Fucking bitch.” He growled. “I hate hitting women, dammit!” He leaned down and secured her ankle and no one said a word. Moose was a bigger man and never used his position as Enforcer to his advantage but this was one of those times. He looked over at Blacky and told him, “Make sure when she wakes up that you tell her the more she struggles to get free the tighter the rope around her neck will become. If she just stands there until we come for her, she might survive.”

  Blacky just glared at him and then he turned away.

  Tate came forward and studied her face for a moment then turned toward the stairs. “I’ve seen enough. I didn’t know God made women that hard.”

  “God didn’t make her, the devil himself formed her from clay.” Blacky snorted. “Then he breathed his own evil into her and this is what he created.”

  Gunner stepped forward and ordered Moose, “Gag her. I don’t want her brother to join her down here.”

  Blacky paled and took a step back. “Yeta is here somewhere? How do you know that?”

  “He was with her earlier when she took Dana.” Gunner nodded. “I’m sure he’s out there somewhere looking for her even as we speak.” He cocked his head. “Do you know him?”

  “Yeah, I know the fucker and if he sees what you did to his sister, he’ll kill you all slowly and painfully. You’ll be screaming for death and he’ll laugh in your face.”

  “Maybe it’s you he’ll come after first.” Gunner shrugged. “Either way, you’re going to die.”

  “You are turning into a motherfucker you know that?” Blacky shook his head.

  “Right back at you brother, only you’ve been one since we began haven’t you? So good night dead men,” Gunner bid his farewell as the door shut.

  Blacky didn’t say anything but instead watched as the three men went back upstairs. In the silence that followed, he heard the lock click ominously.

  From the other cell, Arizona chuckled softly at his misfortune.

  “You’re next asshat.” Blacky growled.

  “I hope they hang you first. I want to see you swing,” Arizona told him.

  Blacky glared at him. “Why the fuck did I ever choose you to help build my empire?”

  Arizona shrugged. “Cuz, you’re a dumbass, probably.” He laughed loudly.

  Yvette groaned from where she hung on the bars.

  Both men stared over fearfully at the hit-woman and finally, they both shut the hell up.

  When Tate and the others joined the men around the table the next morning, he noted that Harry was working on Annie’s computer. But he looked frustrated at not being able to find what he needed.

  Tate walked down the hall and stood in the doorway of the infirmary. When Annie looked at him, he motioned her over to him.

  Patriot looked up and noticed when she moved away. He went over and sat down next to a sleeping Becky.

  Annie joined Tate in the hall and stared at him, waiting for him to speak.

  “The boys could use your help. Will you come? No one can make heads or tails of your laptop.”

  Annie smiled. “Your son Harry is a genius and he can’t find what he needs on my laptop? He never listens.” She hooked her arm with his and said, “Let’s go see how bad he screwed it up, shall we?”

  Tate chuckled. “Yep, you are so Harry’s woman... that I can see.”

  They both laughed and strolled back down the hallway.

  When they reached the table, Harry was growling and looking like he wanted to toss her laptop at the wall.

  Annie stood there and chuckled softly. Then she moved over to Harry and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Now babe, what did I say about throwing my laptop?”

  Harry reached up and took her hands. “That I wasn’t allowed to.” He grumbled, even as he got to his feet. He turned around and held her hands.

  “What’s going on big guy?” she asked him quietly. “What are you trying to find?”

  “We were looking for some kind of list of the members of Yeta’s gang, so we can track them all down. We need to eliminate them, so they can’t take up where Yeta leaves off.”

  Annie stared at him for a moment then sat down in his chair and began typing commands on her keyboard. Name after name began popping up and as they did, she noticed a pattern of sorts. The longer she looked at the list the more pale she got. Finally, she pushed her chair away from the table.

  Tate and Gunner watched all this with confusion. What had she found that they’d missed?

  “What did you find honey?” Tate finally asked.

  Annie looked up at him in surprise. “These men, most of them aren’t Russian at all. Yeta formed his own gang and only threatened that he was Vory V Zakone. He might have been at one time maybe, but he isn’t anymore.”

  “How do you know about these other men?” Gunner asked.

  “I’ve seen them on wanted posters when I was searching for Becky.” Annie sighed.

  “You can remember things you saw briefly months ago?” Boone asked her.

  “You better believe she can.” Becky’s voice came from the hall. She’d woken up to find Patriot sitting next to her and not Annie. “She has what they call eidetic memory, she can remember shit from when we were two.”

  Gunner shook his head. “It would have taken us months to figure all this out, maybe years.”

  “So what you’re telling us, is these guys are just regular thieves and gangsters?” Moose suggested.

  Annie nodded. “Let me show you.” She sat down again and brought up the wanted posters she’d seen before. Running down the list, she pulled up all fourteen names and they all had a list of crimes they were wanted for. “The worst crimes are on Yeta and Yvette themselves. They are wanted for murder and there is no limitation on murder charges.”

  “Maybe we can take down Yeta’s numbers and clear the streets all at the same time.” Gunner tapped his chin.

  “What are you thinking boss?” Boone wanted to know.

  “If we can find these guys and where they’re staying,” Gunner explained. “We can call the cops and get them to round them up all at once. That way, they don’t have the chance to call Yeta. Then when he goes to make his move, no one will answer his call.”

  Boone nodded. “It might be enough to throw him off his game and he’ll make the mistake we need to take him down. Once and for all.”

  They spent the next several hours lining up all the men. Rigger, Annie and Harry, each did searches and location finding on their own laptops.

  Gunner, Cobra and Tate made calls and lined up their end of things.

  Gunner also took Tate and Cobra along with most of the men to the ammunitions room, where they all looked over the firepower they might need if these supposed Vory V Zakone along with Yeta tried to get the jump on them.

  Finally, they all had dinner and most looked tired from all the preparations.

  “Boss, we got watchers,” Rigger announced as he gazed at his monitor. Gunner had installed some outside cameras, most of them had been fitted with night vision lenses.

  “How many?” Boone asked.

  “Three. They’re all in the woods.” Rigger lo
oked over at Gunner. “I can almost see their faces and one of them looks like he’s got a scar on his face.”

  “That’s Yeta,” Annie whispered. “He’s here looking for his sister.”

  “Gypsy, Moose,” Gunner called out. “I want you two up on the roof with infrared scopes. Take the tranc rifles. They’re quiet and we don’t want to let Yeta know he’s alone until it’s too dammed late. I need you two to pin down the other two and keep them busy until back up gets here. I think the cops will be very happy to have Yvette off the streets. Maybe we’ll even get her brother as well. That would be icing on the cake to take them both.”

  “Or it could get one of us killed,” Tate reminded the other man.

  Gunner grinned. “The trick to staying alive in a situation like this is to be smarter than the other fellow. We have the advantage of being on home ground where he doesn’t. We know every nook and cranny of this clubhouse and he doesn’t. Even if he got the plan for this place, we know it better.” He grinned. “How do you think we knew Yvette got in so quickly?”

  “Dana warned us what questions she was asked and what information she gave them.” Boone shrugged.

  “But didn’t Yeta also get that information as well?” Tate asked.

  “He did indeed.” Boone nodded.

  “I told them what they wanted to hear,” Dana explained. “That we were holding Blacky and Arizona in the basement. I just never told them where the basement was. Or that it was set up with a silent alarm.”

  Gunner nodded. “We knew the moment she came through the doors and we watched as she found the basement door.”

  Tate grinned. “I see what you mean, being smarter than the next guy. Very clever.”

  Gunner looked at his men. “Ok, let’s get the women to safety first then we’ll batten down the clubhouse and wait for Yeta to make his move. I’ve already made the call to pick up the rest of his gang.”

  Boone looked outside and noted it was dark out now. “He should be making his move soon.”

  “Let’s get ready then.” Gunner nodded. “Ladies, we’re putting you in the church. That’s an inside room with no windows and can be bolted from the inside. You’ll be safe there.”

  Lucille, Winona, Dana, Becky and Annie filed into the church room. Cobra told Jett and Thor to stay behind just in case. Then Jett bolted the door and everyone settled down for the wait.

  Annie was busy on her laptop the whole time they waited. At one point, she halted then began typing. Something had caught her eye and she couldn’t stop searching for answers.

  Jett turned and watched her for a while and wondered what she was looking for then all hell broke loose on the other side of the door and everyone froze.

  Chapter Nine

  Everyone looked afraid and huddled with each other, except Annie. She completely ignored the sounds coming from the outside. Her mind was somewhere else. She might have accidently stumbled on the reason Yeta and Yvette wanted this clubhouse so bad. If it was true, the Savaged Souls could be sitting on a small fortune and they didn’t even know it.

  Becky joined her sister and waited. She watched as Annie continued her search. Finally, she broke Annie’s digging. “What are you looking for?”

  Annie turned her head and Becky saw her eyes were glazed over. “What?” Annie shook her head. “Oh sorry, I was caught up in something else. What did you want to know?”

  Becky knew that look. She should, she’d seen it enough growing up. “What did you find that’s so damn interesting?” She glanced down at Annie’s laptop and gasped at what she found herself looking at. Swinging her gaze back up at her sister, she asked, “Is this for real?”

  “It might be.” Annie cautioned. “I just got started, but if they think this is real, no wonder they want this land.”

  Becky shook her head. “If they got this land they would strip mine it and once they had all the gold, they would abandoned it.”

  “What are you girls talking about?” Winona came over with Dana and Lucille.

  “We may have found something that could tell us why Yeta and Yvette want this place badly enough to kill for the land,” Annie explained.

  “Why is that?” Dana looked at the others. “There’s nothing here except woods and hills. The land isn’t much good for anything, you can’t even farm it. Something or other about land contamination of some sort I think.” She shrugged. “The locals think the land is jinxed or something. That rumor goes back at least a hundred years or so. Something about a massacre or something?”

  Annie nodded. “This land once belonged to an Indian tribe. They were called the Ghost Protectors. I couldn’t find out which tribe they belonged to, only their name. It was rumored they were all very powerful shamans. The tribe that settled here were the land’s protectors as they claimed at one time to be the fifth generations of their people. The tribe felt there was something here most sacred to their tribe. When the white settlers came here, they found gold and other gems and forced the Indians off the land or so they said. They really came in and murdered the whole tribe living here. When they began to mine the land, rumors about ghosts walking the land began to be heard. Stories about bad accidents and deaths that couldn’t be explained. Scary stuff. Finally, the settlers were all scared off when there was nothing much else found. Some people said the spirits of the Indians protected the land from giving up its secrets, so no more gold was ever found here.” Annie shrugged. “I read in my research that if anyone comes here to harm the land, the spirits of the old ones will return again to protect the land and its secrets.”

  Winona shuddered. “But that just rumor right?”

  “As much a fact as there is gold and other minerals here just waiting to be found.” Annie shrugged.

  “Are you sure about this?” Jett finally asked. He and Thor had been listening but neither of them put much stock in her story. But Jett could see the appeal for someone like Blacky and the twins.

  “I haven’t really dug into it enough yet, but that’s what I’ve found so far,” Annie admitted.

  “But it’s possible isn’t it?” Thor wanted to know. “It could be real couldn’t it?”

  Annie shrugged. “Well, I’ve always known there’s a grain of truth in every folklore. And just like every fishing story ever told, the more the story gets told the bigger the fish was.”

  “So the story could have some grain of truth to it?” Jett asked.

  “If this is scared ground, disturbing it would bring out the worst in people,” Annie warned them. “Whether you believe in the spirit world or not. If they get this land and turn it into a garbage dump, it wouldn’t be good. I’ll dig into this some more, the answers have to be here somewhere.”

  “I don’t know this Blacky or the twins but would anyone really believe in this shit?” Jett asked.

  “Blacky would,” Lucille told them. “And he’s slick enough to talk anyone into anything.”

  Dana and Winona both looked over at her with curiosity.

  “Do you know Blacky?” Winona asked.

  “I’ve heard the stories about him while I’ve been here,” Lucille admitted. “None of them paint a very nice picture of the man and when there’s that much bad said about someone, most of it is usually true.”

  Gypsy looked through the scope on the tranc rifle and saw the figure of a man standing just inside the wood line. He was smoking a cigarette and staring at the clubhouse.

  “Got one,” he called out softly.

  “Got the other one,” Moose called back. “Taking a shot.”

  “One, two, three.” Both rifles went off at the same time and both men fell.

  Gypsy found the third man and they watched as he didn’t move. He hadn’t seen the other two go down yet.

  “Maybe we should just drop him where he stands and drag his ass in the club.” Moose snarled.

  “Well, that would make things easier for us but we need Gunner’s ok first,” Gypsy stated.

  “On it,” Moose whispered back as he grabbed his
cell and sent a text. A moment later, he swiped his phone and raised the rifle to a firing position. He waited a bit then his finger tightened on the trigger and he took his shot.

  Gypsy then saw the third man go down. They both took the stairs down to the ground level and walked to the woods.

  Moose walked over the place the third man had fallen and looked down at his body. It was the man with the scar on his face. He could see the tranc still in his neck and he had no doubt the man was out cold but he was taking no chances. He quickly searched the other man and tied his hands behind his back. This time he didn’t make the mistake he’d made with Yvette. He ziptied each wrist then used a third zip tie to bring his arms together.

  He hoisted the unconscious man over his huge shoulder and carried him inside the gate.

  Gypsy carried another man in and several men came running from the club to grab the third man down.

  Once inside the club they dumped the three men on the floor and Gunner motioned for all three to be secured. As the brothers put the leg irons on the three men, they began to wake up.

  Yeta woke up with a snarl. “What the hell are you doing?” He growled. “Release me. Release me now!”

  “Not a fucking chance.” Gunner grinned at him.

  “I will reign down hell on this place and kill every single person here,” Yeta promised them as he struggled to get to his feet.

  Before he could stand, Moose hit him and knocked him to the ground again. Then he padlocked a chain around his waist.

  Yeta looked up and noticed it was tethered to the heavy chain attached to the wall. “You don’t know who you’re messing with here. I own this property and I’ll be damned if I will let you deny me what is mine.”

  Gunner shook his head. “This MC owns this land and Blacky had no right to sell it to you. He didn’t own it in the first place. Whatever deal he had with you wasn’t legal.”

  “He showed me the papers. His name was on the fucking papers!” Yeta snarled.

  “Maybe his name was on the original papers but everyone else had to sign them as well and I know I never signed any god damned sale papers,” Gunner assured the other man.