“That doesn’t look too stable anymore,” Battle managed to say what we were all thinking as we warily walked beneath it anyway to get to the other men and women who were hidden away down there.
No sooner did we get within five feet of the mouth of the room before bullets started flying. “Shit!” I heard Shorty call out. “Hit.”
“How bad?” I asked.
“Flesh wound,” he called back.
“What the fuck you complaining for then?” Phoenix asked. “Start shooting back.”
“Hold your fire until you have your target in sight. There are women down here.”
I heard Phoenix grumble something and knew that he wasn’t the type to care if there were casualties so long as we won the war without any further harm coming to our own men. It was part of the reason he stayed a nomad. He couldn’t handle the social norms the rest of recognized. We didn’t kill women and children if it could be helped, and we considered men taking some damage as a result to be acceptable.
Still, we managed to gain entrance to the room. Once we did, the two men standing guard over a woman who was tied to a post in the middle of the room were taken out quickly. Each was dropped with a shot to the chest. The woman tied to the post was screaming bloody murder while the other was tossed aside on the dirt floor in a corner looking completely broken. She was lying in a pool of what looked to be mud, but I knew it was her blood that had to be mixing with the dirt on the ground around her.
“Jesus,” Chief called out as he went to her first. I glanced around noticing a partitioned off portion of the underground area. That was where I found Ivan cowering like the little bitch he was as he attempted to load his revolver quietly.
“A revolver, Ivan? Really?” I asked as I pointed my Springfield XD-S 4.0 right at his temple. Some of the guys laughed at it saying it was too small to do any damage. I’d since proven that to be false. For a little, easily concealed weapon, it managed to pack a hell of a punch. I was all for using Ivan’s head to punch a hole through to show the guys just how effective it could be too.
“Smoke!” I heard Ghost and grinned down at Ivan as I tapped the barrel of the gun to his head.
“They want me to keep you breathing. Do you deserve to take another breath, Ivan?”
He spat at my feet in response. I removed the gun from his temple and knelt down so I could be at eye level with the bastard then I grinned at him. “You don’t deserve a quick death, fucker.” Then I stood and walked away to let Ghost and Sweet handle him.
“How is she?” I asked as I moved quickly back to the woman I’d noticed earlier.
“She ain’t good, that’s for sure,” Six-Pack told me as I drew closer. He leaned in. “I think it would be a mercy for us to let her die judging by her injuries.
“Was she the mouth or the virgin?” I asked.
“I’m guessing the mouth,” he informed me. “That one back there keeps thanking Hold ‘Em for saving her virtue.”
“Good thing he already has a road name or that shit might need to be changed,” I joked.
“No doubt,” he explained as he helped me lift the woman.
“We need to get her upstairs before this whole place destabilizes. I don’t want to bring the med kit down here.” As if to hurry us, we all heard another small rumbling as dirt and debris fall loose from the ceiling where the beams had been cracked by the grenade.
Once we got the woman upstairs, the severity of her wounds became far more apparent. The sheer amount of filth in the wounds was going to make them extremely hard to treat. I suddenly wished Surfer hadn’t just had his own issues with another club and a missing kid, because we could have used him here with us.
“Jesus fuck!” Spike hissed as we passed him with the woman.
“Someone call for the prospects to get their asses over here. We’re going to need both the vans and maybe one of those trucks too.”
“Any clue what we’re doing with the women?” Spike asked.
“That’s for Sweet and Ghost to decide.”
“We’re taking them to Angel Girl. The women want to help them out, get information, and get them back to their families if they have them, or keep them on to help rehabilitate them after their ordeal. MiMi started up this thing for victims of sex trafficking,” Sweet told us as he moved over to check out the woman we’d brought up. “She going to make it?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “She’s a mess. We’re going to need to get her clean and then get her some real medical attention.”
“No,” the woman hissed out. “No help,” we all heard her clear as a bell.
“If we don’t get you help, you could die,” I explained.
“Then let me,” she managed to get out before she passed out once more.
“Over my dead fuckin’ body,” Spike growled.
“Let’s get her loaded up in one of the trucks. I’m not putting her in the van with Ivan. He doesn’t get to see the condition he left her in.”
“Agreed,” Ghost called out as he brought Ivan up with his head bagged. The asshole laughed.
“Too late, already know what I did to her body. It used to be lush, now she’ll always remember what I did to her. It’s written there in blood, skin, and maybe down to the bone.” His cackling laughter was cut off by a swift kick to the groin from Spike.
“Oh, sorry, I bet you felt that balls deep, huh asshole?” It was Spike’s turn to laugh. “Don’t worry, there’s more where that came from.”
It took another three hours to get everyone out, back to the barn where we’d stored our bikes, and we did what we could to render the old factory to dust and ash. All the bodies were put down in the underground area and they were doused and set fire to first. Then, the upstairs was doused and burned too. Everything had to go. We weren’t stupid. They’d eventually find the bodies, but we knew how to make sure they were never linked to our club.
Once we got back I took the injured woman into the farm house to get her cleaned up. Journey, the woman who was once a member of the S.H.E. MC helped me to clean the wounds so that we wouldn’t have to invite more men in than myself to take care of the woman. I was already dreading her waking up and freaking out about me being there with her unclothed body.
Hell, the woman was a complete wreck. Her torso had been carved up with ‘Ivan’s Whore’. ‘Mouthy Bitch’ had been carved into her upper back above her shoulder blades, and шлюха was carved into her lower back like a tramp stamp. “What does it mean?” Journey asked me.
I looked it up using my cell. “Whore,” I told her.
“Those fuckers,” she hissed out. “You know the girls are going to be all over this trying to find out who the bastards were selling the girls to.”
“I get it. I’m sure our clubs will be working together on that front.”
Journey shook her head. “I can’t believe this is still such a prevalent thing. You would think we had already cut the head off this particular dragon before, but it just comes back with more heads each time.”
“You take out the leaders and it creates a vacuum that needs to be filled,” I explained to her. “When one organization drops the torch, another will gladly pick it up. There are too many depraved assholes in this world willing to pay to ruin people’s lives for this to ever come to an end.”
“That’s part of the reason I had to get away for a while. I love her for doing it, but MiMi kept dragging more sad-sack cases into the club, and I just couldn’t handle hearing another story like theirs. I needed a break.”
“I get that. Just remember, for every sad story you heard, there’s another person who was saved and is able to heal now.”
I stayed and watched out for the woman to make sure she was healing okay and that the antibiotics we were able to give her were going to help stave off the worst of it. She seemed to be doing well, considering her wounds. It had been 12 hours since we liberated the women from the factory. It was high time I found where and what they were doing with Ivan, and I had a feeling that would
be happening in the barn.
“Where is everyone?”
“There’s a small shed out in the woods about fifty yards in,” Sweet told me.
“He still alive?”
“For now.”
I tipped my head up at Sweet and then moved out there to see for myself. “He give anything up yet?”
“From what I hear he’s been pissing himself to tattle on everyone all morning. Was sealed up tighter than Fort Knox until Spike took a run at him.”
“Damn.” I wondered about the man’s motivation because he seemed pretty shook up about the fact that the woman we’d rescued had been so abused.
“He had a woman once, lost her to this same shit.”
“She was killed?”
“No, only wished she had been.”
“She okay now?”
“She is, but it wasn’t Spike that got her there, and he still hasn’t been able to forgive himself for that.”
I didn’t bother asking any further questions. It wasn’t my business and it wasn’t Sweet’s story to tell. Instead, I moved on toward the tree line where he indicated I might find the little shed that housed the man responsible for killing my sister and brother-in-law. “He still alive?” I asked Wren, who was standing outside the building keeping guard.
“He is, but he ain’t in the best of shape anymore.”
“Doesn’t deserve to be. Mind if I get in there, or are you under orders to keep me out?”
“Wouldn’t keep you out even if I had been ordered. You do what you need to for Soph, and we’ll figure the rest out another way if we need to,” he told me. I patted his shoulder and then opened the barn door. The stench hit me immediately. Hot piss, coppery blood, and on top of that was that acrid smell of shit. Since I didn’t see a bucket anywhere for the man to relieve himself I figured he had shit himself at some point.
“Well, Ivan, if my nose doesn’t deceive me I’d say you smell worse than a preschool full of kids who failed potty training.” The man said nothing, simply grunted a response. I turned to Ghost, “You get anything from him?”
“We got plenty,” he indicated with his head that I could take my turn now, but before I could get even a swing in, Ghost stopped me when his cell started ringing.
“Give me a minute. I want to be here for this.” Ghost stepped out then and took only a few minutes before he poked his head back in and called me out.
“What’s up?” I asked as I moved out of the building and shut the wooden door behind me. Ghost did not look pleased.
“There’s a situation at home,” he explained.
“What kind of situation?”
“It’s Poppy. Leanne has Brant and Bubba with her, but they found Poppy unconscious at the house. She was really sick, and they’re not sure if the fever took her down or if she knocked her head when she fell.”
“What the fuck?” I yelled.
“Where is she now?”
“She’s at the hospital getting looked at. Leanne says she’s not doing well, still hasn’t woken up yet.” I stood there, momentarily stunned by the news.
“The baby?”
“Don’t know anything else yet.” He glanced behind me at the shed. “We can try to keep him alive for you, but…”
“I don’t give a fuck about that. End him. I need to get to Poppy and Brant. Poor little man must be scared out of his mind.”
I already showed Journey what to do for the chick we found. Make sure she gets that medication, or whoever takes her knows how to dose her properly and for how long. It’s really important considering the condition we found her in.”
“I got it. We’ll make sure everything is taken care of. Update me as soon as you know anything,” Ghost told me, as if his wife wouldn’t be doing that already.
I knew why he insisted on it though. He wanted to make sure I was alright while we waited to see how Poppy pulled through. Hell, I was already beating myself up over the fact that I didn’t even know she was sick once again. Never again. This kind of thing would never happen with us again. From here on out, Poppy and me were going to be partners in every way, and that included letting each other know if we so much as got the fucking sniffles.
Chapter 15
She looked so small lying there in the bed with the white hospital blanket pulled up to her breasts and her hair slicked back on her forehead by sweat from the fever she’d had. My chest ached as I took it all in. Poppy had never once, in the time I’d known her, appeared weak. That was what hurt the most. I left her to end up in this situation while I was chasing vengeance. I knew I needed to do it in order to keep her safe too, but at what consequence? We almost lost her anyway.
“She’ll be okay,” a man called out from the dark corner of the room where he was propped in a chair with his feet resting on a little table he’d pulled around.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Didn’t anyone tell you?” He asked, a certain amount of smugness present in his voice. I just stood there and stared at him. “I’m the one that found her.”
“I thought Leanne found her,” I said.
“No, Leanne came not too long after I arrived, but when I saw they were in trouble I called for help. The kid was screaming his head off, the dog looked antsy as fuck.”
“Bubba didn’t attempt to attack you?”
“No. Leanne showed up, and had a key to get in and got a hold of Bubba first. Apparently, Poppy had texted her and told her she wasn’t feeling well.” Snake stated coolly.
“Why weren’t you with the men in Goldsboro?”
“I had already been on my way here to see Poppy when the call went out. I was too far out. They said they’d roll without me.” He shrugged his shoulders.
“What were you doing coming to see her anyway?”
“We’re friends. No matter what.”
“Such good friends you never bothered to give her a head’s up that her man was cheating on her for years? You had to know.”
“I knew. I hinted around to her for years, but she never got it.”
“Why not come out and say it?”
He huffed. “Walker’s my club brother. I couldn’t come out and tell her. You know how it is.”
I gave him a scathing look. “I think an exception would have been made considering her brother is also in the club and would want her protected.”
He scoffed. “You know shit don’t work that way. She chose to land herself with a brother, for better or worse.”
“I think you had another reason for not wanting to be the one to tell her.”
“Yeah, I did.” His admission came with a bit of aggression in his voice. “I wanted her for myself, and I knew she would never come to me if I was the one who told her.”
“She would never come to you after, because you weren’t the one man enough to tell her in the beginning though,” I insisted.
“Yeah, didn’t see that one coming, I’ll be honest.” He scuffed a foot across the floor as he stood and moved deeper into the shadows. “I was going to transfer up here when I realized she was moving. I talked to Sweet about it, and he saw right through my reasons.”
“He wouldn’t let you?” I asked, actually surprised.
“No, he fuckin’ wouldn’t. Said he’d get Ghost to block the transfer himself if he had to. Poppy deserved a clean break from the boys of Sierra High is what he told me.”
“Can’t say he was wrong there either.”
“Then she met you,” he spat out.
“Do you think if there was any part of her pining away for you that she would have made that instant connection with me the way she did?”
Snake huffed and ran his hand across the clean shaven side of his head. Both sides had been shaved down leaving only a short mohawk down the middle. “Walk came back fucked up after he was up here last. We all thought he had been in Florida visiting family. That’s where he told Sweet he was headed. Only thing I got out of him, when he was barely conscious, was that Poppy got everything she ever
wanted and it wasn’t with him.”
“You needed to see for yourself?”
“Yeah, I did.” He turned and looked me right in the eye then. “I fucked up with her all those years ago. I wanted her from the moment I saw her, only I was distracted that night and Walk got to her first. Knew from first sight she was going to be a special kind of woman. I should have fought for her then before he got his hooks into her. Hell, we all knew that dick would never be any good to a woman.” He shook his head and then let it hang there on his shoulders a minute before meeting my eyes again. “You take better care of her, you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I promised him. “I know it’s little consolation when your feelings are involved, but I love her. She’s every damn thing to me.”
“Good. Make sure you show her that every fuckin’ day, because Walk sure as fuck didn’t. Now, he’s drowning himself in rot-gut liquor to try to forget how bad he fucked it all up.”
“You heading back to Georgia?”
“Nah. I’m gonna stick around until she comes back to the land of the living. Came to see my girl, gonna make sure she knows I was here.”
“She ain’t your girl,” I insisted.
“She’ll always be my girl. It’s just in different way than I’d hoped she would be.” I nodded my head at the man. I couldn’t begrudge him having a part in her life. He may not have been upfront with her about what a club brother was doing behind her back, but he still managed to be the only one of those fuckers down there who cared enough to see that she was doing okay.
I moved away from him and dragged the other chair to sit beside her. Her hand was cold when I picked it up and put it in my own. “I’ll give you my warmth, baby. You take it, my strength, and anything else you need from me to get better, honey. I need you. We took care of business and everything is going to be just fine now. There’s no more danger waiting on the horizon. That means we have more family days like the one we had before I went to work. Remember Brant’s face when he saw that blanket fort in the backyard? He lit up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. I can’t wait to be sitting out there with you guys while watching you nurse our baby too.” I let my other hand slide down her blanket covered body until it rested over her belly. I need you to get better for the baby too. You still have a long way to go, honey.
Redemption Duet (Aces High MC - Cedar Falls Book 0) Page 40