Ace looked away.
“OK, now.” Aidan’s voice was quiet. “You tell me where she is and I’ll forget that you and Spider were in a secret relationship for three years. I can also forget that when you moved up to VP in the club, you ended it with him to protect both of you… though you did meet up off-and-on for more than a year after before he called it totally quits. Finally, I may also develop amnesia about the fact that you gave him enough money to shut him up – money that he used to start The Web.” His smile was terrifying. “You want me to forget all of that, Ace?”
“I – I – yes.” The game was over now and he knew it – how the hell did this asshole know all of this? Where had Ace fucked up? They’d always been so careful, for obvious reasons. And if Carter knew, then who the hell else did? “Yes. I want you to forget all of that.”
“You sure? ‘Cause I’m positive that your fag-hating MC brothers would be very interested to know that a closeted gay man was their VP.” Aidan’s voice was gaining strength now. “They’d probably be happy that I enlightened them, actually. Might even ask me to join up, huh? Maybe take over your job when the post is vacant, when you go on that mysterious and very sudden ‘long trip’ out of town?”
“No. Don’t.” He was almost shaking. “They won’t just kill me, OK? They’ll kill Spider, too.”
“You really begging me for mercy? Did Gabi beg the same way? And how much mercy did you extend to her?”
Ace was silent, then he shot King and Honey a look.
“She didn’t get any mercy.”
“Yeah, I know that,” Aidan said calmly. “But you tell me where she is and you and Spider just might. Now, I’m not asking again… where the fuck is she?”
“About fifteen miles out of town, up in the mountains.”
“In a cabin?”
“No.” Ace looked down. “She’s – she’s buried.”
Losing his cool for the first time, Aidan shot to his feet, his chair hitting the floor. “Buried alive?”
“Yeah.”
“How long ago?” King asked, seeing that Aidan was paralyzed with horror.
“About… ten hours.”
“How long can someone survive being buried like that?” Honey said, her voice hushed. “How many hours?”
“Depends,” King said. “I’ve seen people survive up to a day.”
Aidan found his voice again. “Where exactly?”
“I’ll show you on a map. You can be there in fifty minutes.”
“Talk fast, you fucker,” Aidan snarled. “If she dies, I’m burning your whole life to the ground. You get me?”
Ace nodded, hoping to Christ that the bitch had enough fight left in her to still be sucking down air. “Can you pull up a map on your cell phone?”
**
King drove the back roads like an Indy pro – he barely slowed down for the curves or bumps, barely paused at crossroads. It was pre-dawn and the roads were deserted… the fuckers had certainly chosen a lonely spot to kill Gabi. Nobody would hear her; nobody would stumble across her. Her body would never have been found, King was sure of it.
Aidan was still silent and King risked taking his eyes off the road to glance at the other man. He hadn’t said one word since they’d left an unconscious Ace with Honey and he sat there now, his face a terrifying blank.
“Aidan?”
The blond head turned towards him. “Yeah?”
“You doing OK, man?”
“No.”
King took a big breath just as his cell beeped. “Check it, yeah? The guys might already be up there.”
Aidan opened the text and gave a grim smile. “Knox and Tank are there with the shovels. They say that the earth has clearly been disturbed.”
“So they found her.” King spun the wheel hard to the right to avoid a fallen tree trunk.
“Yeah.” Aidan set the phone down and went back to staring silently out the window.
King left him alone; he couldn’t imagine what the man was thinking or feeling right now. Hell, if that were Naomi down there? Just the thought made him sick and furious and the MC’s reasoning for doing it made the whole thing even worse, if that was at all possible.
After Ace’s revelation about what they’d done with Gabi, Aidan had managed to ask one more shocked, stunned question.
“Why bury her?” Aidan had demanded. “Why not just shoot her at my place, kill her on the spot? Kill both of us, actually?”
Ace had the decency to look a bit ashamed. “Trigger wanted to… to drive you all crazy. He wanted you to know that we’d taken her alive and for you to always wonder where she was – if she was still alive and being tortured or raped somewhere. He wanted to… to completely break you guys that way.” He looked down at the table. “He also said that he wanted you to know that you’d completely failed your girlfriend when she needed you the most. For you to – to live with that.”
Aidan had stared at him for a few seconds before hauling back and punching the man hard enough to knock him out cold. Then Aidan stopped talking until just this moment, torn up inside in ways that King couldn’t even begin to imagine. Fucking animals, burying sweet Gabi alive, like a piece of garbage. He hoped that she was holding on to some of her nerves of steel right now – not panicking may be the difference between life and death.
The calmer she is, the more air she has, and the more time we have to get to her. Come on, sweetie. Breathe slow and shallow. Hang in there.
They broke through the trees to a clearing and before King had fully stopped the vehicle, Aidan was out and running to Tank and Knox who were already knee-deep in a hole they’d dug. Without a word, Knox handed him his shovel and stepped aside; he knew that Aidan would want to do something now. Anything would be better than standing helplessly by and watching someone else try to find the woman he loved.
Aidan thrust the shovel in to the earth, threw dirt over his shoulder, attacked the ground again. Tank was moving just as fast, his muscles rippling and straining. Within minutes, both men were sweating heavily but they didn’t stop long enough to even wipe their faces. They were both panting and their breaths were the only sounds in the clearing. King and Knox stood to the side, watching, silent.
Five minutes passed, then ten. Aidan was slowing down now, out of sheer exhaustion, and that pissed him off. He doubled down, gritting his teeth, ignored the ache in his arms and legs and back. The stitches in his neck pulled and burned, and he ignored that too. If he ripped them out, he wouldn’t care at this point. All that mattered was finding her.
A loud clunk echoed around the forest. Everyone was so surprised, they actually all froze for a split second. Then when they realized what this meant, Tank and Aidan dropped to their knees and started scraping at the dirt with their fingers.
“Fuck,” King said. “That’s it.”
They cleared the whole lid and started digging around the sides so they could pry it open. King and Knox joined in now, scrabbling wildly with their fingers.
King knocked on the lid. “Gabi? Gabi! Can you hear us?”
All the men wished hard for an answering knock, but none came.
“Almost there, guys,” Tank grunted. “Another two inches. Come on, now.”
They worked fast, but for Aidan it was an eternity. His fingers were bloody from the stones and dirt and scraping against the wooden lid, but he didn’t notice a thing. All he could think about was the fact that he was mere inches away from Gabi… and that this wooden box may well be her casket.
Finally, finally, Knox managed to get the crowbar in to the side of the box and with one strong movement, he lifted the lid. It cracked and the other men yanked off the broken pieces, ignoring the sharp edges. And there she was, still in her pajamas. Covered in dirt and eyes closed and very, very still.
Without a word, Aidan reached in, scooped her up in to his arms. He handed h
er up to Tank who laid her down on a blanket on the ground. Aidan scrambled out and flung himself next to her, pressed his ear to her mouth. “Gabriela?”
Nothing. No breath sounds.
“Oh, fuck…no.” His fingers fumbled on her wrist and throat, trying to find a pulse. “No.”
King took Aidan’s shoulders firmly, pulled him back and away. “Let Knox.”
Aidan sat back on his heels and watched as Knox started CPR. Aidan could have done it himself, of course, but he seemed to have completely lost the ability to cope with anything at the moment. All he could handle right now was kneeling in the dirt, shaking and trying to catch his breath. Rage was close again: he tasted it, it was burning his chest, rising in his throat.
Don’t you fucking lose it. If you lose it, it means you’ve given up hope. And you haven’t done that – not yet.
King was kneeling next to him, still touching his shoulder. That huge hand was a comforting, solid weight and Aidan actually found himself drawing strength from it. King had a steadiness to him that only seemed to increase exponentially as a situation went more and more to shit. The man was masterful in a crisis and Aidan suddenly understood that if he fell apart here, it was going to be King who’d be the one to put him together again.
Knox breathed in to Gabi’s mouth, did chest compressions. Over and over, the rhythm oddly soothing. Aidan kept his eyes trained on Gabi’s face. God, she was just so beautiful and he stared at her colorless cheeks and gray lips and remembered the last time he’d stroked them, kissed them.
Was it really just yesterday afternoon?
When she coughed and gasped for air – brutally hard and painfully, really fighting for a return to life – Aidan gasped too; that was when he realized that he’d been holding his breath. Knox was leaning over Gabi now with his huge hand on her cheek, talking softly to her, offering warmth and comfort as she slowly came around. Aidan made a move to stand up and go to her, feeling frantic and damn-near hysterical, but King’s hand clamped down on his shoulder, holding him still.
“Wait,” he said softly. “Just wait. She’s going to be confused and scared and she’ll need you to be calm. She’s going to need reassurance that she’s safe and it’s all over. You ready to do that for her?”
Aidan looked up in to his gray eyes, saw nothing but compassion. He nodded.
“OK, then.” King let him go. “Be there for her now.”
Aidan sat down beside her just as those astounding eyes opened. She blinked, hazy and lost, trying to focus. Knox stepped back, joined King and Tank a few feet away. There was no privacy but Aidan truly didn’t care: all he saw was Gabi, alone and frightened.
“Gabriela? Baby?”
She startled at his voice, lifted her eyes to his. Her lips moved but no sound came out. He saw that she was forming his name over and over and he smiled.
“Yeah, it’s me. You’re OK now, angel. I’ve got you.” Carefully, he reached out to touch her and was relieved when she didn’t shrink back. “Come here.”
Gabriela let him pull her to his chest. When he settled her on his lap, she curled right up against him, shaking and silent, eyes wide open and terrified. Aidan didn’t hold her too tight, not wanting to make her feel trapped, but he stroked her hair over and over, a soothing motion that seemed to help her relax.
Gabi couldn’t believe that she was back here in Aidan’s arms, pressed to his powerful body. She couldn’t talk, not yet, and all she could manage to do was cling to his shirt with both hands, hard and tight, holding his warmth to her. She’d been so cold down in the ground and she found his heat even more comforting than his strength or his hands.
King knelt down beside them now, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. “Gabi? Honey?”
She looked at him.
“You want some water?”
She nodded and King handed Aidan the bottle. “Easy, now. Not too much all at once, OK?”
Aidan held the bottle to her cracked, dusty lips and she drank greedily. A trickle ran down her face, cutting through the dirt, exposing some bruising on her chin. He felt anger rising again and he pushed down on it, hard. There’d be plenty of time to lose his shit later… his priority right now was getting Gabriela to the hospital and then back to his place. He was never letting this woman out of his sight ever again.
He leaned back a bit, trying to get her to look at him. She was clearly in shock and he gently turned her to face him.
“Baby?”
She didn’t react at all this time and now her shaking got worse.
“Gabriela? You hear me?”
Still nothing and he looked up at King. “Where’s the ambulance?”
“Two minutes out. Just keep talking to her, man.”
So Aidan sat and whispered in her ear, telling her that she was safe and it was all over. She didn’t say one word the whole time, didn’t even seem to see him anymore and he wondered if she even knew she was out of the box. She was sunk so deep in her own mind now, trapped in her own private nightmare and Aidan had no idea how to pull her out of the darkness. He couldn’t do a single fucking thing except what he was doing… and he felt anger and powerlessness when he realized that it wasn’t anything like enough. She needed more.
Anything, angel. Anything at all. You tell me and I’ll do it. Just open your mouth and ask, baby. Come on. Ask.
**
Gabi’s near-catatonic state persisted until the ambulance guys arrived. But when one of them gently tried to insert an IV needle in to her arm, she snapped to awareness and made her first sound since being pulled out of the ground: she started to scream. She screamed and screamed, forcing the men to hold her down as she fought wildly to get away from the needle. It got so bad that they had to give her a shot to knock her out before they could start to treat her.
Aidan held her arms, feeling like an asshole the whole time. She was so clearly terrified… why the hell was he making it worse by holding her down? He knew she was hysterical and beyond reason, but he still didn’t want this to be happening.
“Gabi,” King said in a low voice. “We’re not going to hurt you, honey. I promise.”
“No more darkness!” she screamed, thrashing her head from side to side until Tank held it gently. “No – no more!”
At last, the EMT managed to get the shot in her leg and she slowly, reluctantly, started to relax. The men let her go and she looked up at them blearily.
“Aidan.” Her voice was so broken, he ached to hear it. “Please… I don’t want to go back in the dark.”
“Oh, God, baby.” His throat was so damn tight. “I’m going to be right there the whole time, holding your hand. You’re not going to be alone in the dark. Not this time.”
“You promise me?” she whispered.
“I promise.” He leaned down and kissed her lips, a sweet, lingering kiss. “I’m right here.”
She gripped his hand hard. “Don’t let go.”
“No way.” He held her hand to his chest, rested it just above his heart. “Never.”
The drug was taking effect and her eyes were closing. She whimpered, a sound of pure terror, forced her eyes open again. “The dark…”
“I’m here.” He stroked her hair. “Right here.”
Gabi’s eyes closed now, stayed closed. Aidan shifted to one side so the EMTs could work on setting up the IV and the oxygen, but he didn’t let go of her hand. She was unconscious, so she’d never know that he’d let go – but he’d made the woman that he loved a promise and damned if he was going to break it. Not even for a few minutes.
Chapter Eighteen
When they reached the hospital, the doctors wanted to take Gabi and Aidan protested – strongly. Security was called and it took King, Jax and Mac to wrestle Aidan away from Gabi’s gurney.
“Aidan,” Mac hissed, holding him by the shoulders. “They’re not dicking around here, man
. They will throw you out if you don’t calm down.”
“I told her I’d stay with her!” Aidan shouted. “She’s afraid to be alone!”
“She’s out cold,” King said, trying to reason with him. “She has no idea what’s happening right now. Let them take her, just for a few minutes. They need to check her over, make sure she’s OK.”
“She’s not OK…”
“Aidan.” Jax spoke softly and that got and held Aidan’s attention. “I know how you feel, alright? I really, really do. Nine months ago it was me standing here, desperate to be holding Sarah’s hand and by her side and I couldn’t. I had to give her over to people qualified to help her in a way that I just wasn’t able to. Then – when they were done helping her – I could get back to doing what I could do for her. You have to do the same thing now, man. Give Gabi over. Just for now.”
Aidan stared at Jax. “I – I don’t know if I can.”
“You can because you know it’s the right thing to do for her.” Jax motioned at a chair. “Sit.”
Aidan did and Mac and King exchanged relieved glances. Mac nodded at the security guards and they walked away.
Aidan drew a shuddering breath. “Fuck.”
“Yeah, that is for damn sure.” Jax sat down next to him. “What do you need?”
Aidan looked dazed now. “I don’t know.”
Mac examined him closely, looked at the thick gauze on his neck. “I know one thing you need.”
“What?” Aidan said.
“You need me to sew you up again, man. You’ve ripped your stitches open.”
King turned Aidan’s head, saw the first splotches of blood seeping through the bandage. “Goddammit, Carter. Go on.”
“You guys’ll stay?” Aidan asked King and Jax. “You’ll come and get me if they say I can be with her?”
“In a heartbeat,” Jax assured him. “Now let Mac stop the bleeding, man. No way you want her to see you like that.”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s true.”
Jax and King watched Mac take Aidan off to find an empty examination room and they both sighed.
Killer Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 3) Page 20