by Wilde, Kati
I know why he’s asking. It was damn near impossible to get straight answers out of the family members of the missing fighters, but their fear spoke for them. Some had merely been threatened. Others had gotten worse than threats.
So I wasn’t going to take that risk with my parents or sister. “Not that these fuckers will find. They’ll be looking for ghosts.”
My wallet held fake identification and nothing that links me to home. My kutte only tells them my road name and which club I belong to. But if they’re stupid enough to go asking the Riders about me…well, shit. I hope they do.
The other man nods, his face grim. “Best that way.”
It is Cherry. She comes out of the room carrying a tray, smile bright and hips swaying—and except for her facial features, in no way resembling the vulnerable, jittery woman I met at the tavern.
My chest tightens up. Because I liked that woman. What I’m seeing now, though, tells me that woman was nothing but pretend.
Maybe I’ll like this woman, too. Fuck knows I can’t take my eyes off her. She heads over to one of the cells on my side of the corridor, so I don’t have a good angle on her. Handlebar does, though.
“What’s the story with the girl?” I ask him.
“Cherry? She’s a fucking angel. Though she’s got claws, too.” Abruptly he grins, raising his voice. “Ain’t that right, Hush Puppy?”
Laughter comes from the other cells. Some fucker yells out, “I thought we agreed to call him ‘Donut Hole’?”
“My vote is still on ‘Falafel’!”
“I don’t give a fuck what you all call him. Fried balls are fried balls,” Handlebar says loud enough to carry, then settles down and focuses in on me again. “A few boxes to your right is Tusk, who’s the sickest fucker you’ve ever met. Watch your six around him. He pulped some poor bastard’s skull in the weight room, and I don’t ever want to know all of what he did to Lissa. But if I get a chance to kill him, I intend to kill him. I suggest you do the same.”
Fair enough. “Who’s Cherry with now?”
“Crash.”
Dispensing pills, it looks like. And making notes on a clipboard.
Handlebar continues, “Every morning, we get our multivitamins and general health check. Then a healthy balanced breakfast, then cardio. I hope you like to run, fucker. Five miles a day, minimum—and Cherry records our times, along with our pulse rate and blood pressure.”
“You shitting me?”
“Not even a bit. Then a healthy balanced lunch, followed by weight training. Healthy balanced dinner, lights out at ten. We’re also expected to spend our down time with the heavy bag in our stalls. Because if we go soft, we die in the Cage. Yeah?”
Fucking hell. Except for the ‘healthy balanced meal’ shit, none of what he’s saying is any different than what I do on the regular at home. But I don’t like the idea of doing it on command and on someone else’s schedule.
I watch Cherry head across the corridor. Christ, those legs. Did she wrap them around my waist while my cock was up inside her tight little cunt? Or maybe she never got further than a blow job. Not being able to remember if I had her on my dick bothers me more than her drugging me does.
But no doubt that as soon as the roofie kicked in, there was someone ready to swoop me up. Now that guard never lets Cherry get too far away from him. “Who’s the drill sergeant?”
“Victor.”
“He runs the security crew here?”
“Yep. Right now you’ve got Mike in the control room, and Charlie who just came out of it. The others who are usually at this stable are Delta, Hotel, Bravo…oh, hold up. Bravo’s toast. Rome’s toast, too, because he”—Handlebar makes a neck-snapping motion with his hands—“got a little too close to me.”
“Are you fucking around with those names?” All of them letters in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
Handlebar snorts. “Hand to god, brother. That’s what they call themselves.”
Maybe to preserve their anonymity but mostly just proving they’re a bunch of assholes playing soldier. “So who’s in the cell?”
Because more than just Handlebar and Crash have disappeared from the clubs the Hellfire Riders are friendly with.
“Hatchet.” The other man’s lip curls. “From the Eighty-Eight.”
Not a friend of the Riders or the Butchers, but a piece of neo-Nazi trash—and someone who must have fucked up and was sent here for punishment, because the Eighty-Eight Henchmen’s noses are all up in the ass of whoever’s running the Cage.
“Who’s up top?”
“Some slick fucker they call Papa.”
“Who’s he with?”
“Fuck knows. Never got close to him, never talked to him personal. He uses the Iron Blood to bolster Victor’s crew but comes in with his own security. Private and real fucking professional. Other than that…?” A shrug lifts his broad shoulders. “No goddamn clue.”
Which means this Papa doesn’t give much away, because Handlebar wouldn’t miss a thing. And the asshole who tried to grab Zoomie had private security, too. Lots of money. The Hellfire Riders probably should have taken a closer look before blowing them up and burying their remains out in the boonies, but we didn’t know then how big this operation was.
Handlebar gives me a rundown of the other men filling the stalls between him and Hatchet. First there’s Flack, who he calls an asshole. Airbag, who’s all right. Abyss, also all right. On my side there’s Crash, then Log Cabin, who’s an asshole, and Bullethole, who’s all right. Both stalls to either side of me are empty, then the last one holds Tusk. Room for fourteen fighters, but they only have ten—though Handlebar says there’s another barn on the property with the same setup, and that there must be other stables owned by others like Papa nearby, because they don’t travel far to the Cage on the nights they fight. And they don’t fight anyone from the same stables.
Then he stops talking, because Victor and Cherry arrive at his stall—and it’s easy to see why he called her an angel. Her voice is so sweet and cheery and bright, she’s like a sexy beam of sunshine.
Then she turns my direction. For an instant, that brightness falters and I get a glimpse of the jumpy girl who first caught my eye in that tavern. Then her wide smile returns, those full lips so luscious and red and sultry, her gaze almost shy as she hangs back and looks up at me through her lashes.
I guess she’s not giving me vitamins or a health check right away, because instead Victor steps closer.
“As you’re new here, I’ll go over the rules with you one time. Lights come on, you wait in the center of your stall until we tell you to come forward—”
“Yeah, Handlebar already filled me in on your rules. I just don’t give a fuck.”
Cherry bites her lip, her smile dissolving into a fearful expression as she glances over at Victor. But that asshole isn’t going to do anything. Handlebar just told me he snapped a guard’s neck, and he’s right over there in that stall instead of in the ground somewhere, so that means the guards don’t do shit to the fighters.
Not that I’ll be fighting.
Victor’s eyes narrow. “These rules are for your own good. The healthier you are, the longer you live. And what we expect of you is—”
“Mad Max, yeah?”
Cherry’s head snaps up, eyes going wide, her face pale. “Wh– what?”
“What you’ve got is basically the Thunderdome. Two men enter, one man leaves. Except I won’t be fighting.”
“You’ll change your mind soon enough—”
“No, I won’t. So get the fuck out of my face and let me talk to my girl.” Who’s looking shocked, terrified, uncertain. “So, action movie fan—which one’s your top Mad Max? The original? Or The Road Warrior?”
Her wary gaze darts to Victor again before a hint of a curve returns to her mouth. “It used to be Beyond Thunderdome. Until Fury Road came out.”
“Aw, shit. I haven’t seen that one.” I’m lying my ass off. “So how about you curl up with me in my
cell tonight and tell me what happens?”
“Cherry will be in her own stall, Mr. Stone. Because she’s a good girl. And she follows the rules. Isn’t that right, Cherry?”
Like a light blinking out, her wide and beautiful smile returns. “Yes, sir.”
“And you, Mr. Stone—”
“I’m not fighting in the Cage.” All the amusement drops from my tone. “Not now, not ever.”
“Not right away, no. The next match is in ten days, and you won’t have a clean blood test by then. But soon enough, you’ll change your mind.”
A clean blood test? “Is that because of whatever you slipped into my drink, darlin’?”
Those emerald eyes meet mine, the green shadowed and dark. Like she’s swimming in guilt.
“It’s all right, girl,” I tell her. “I ain’t mad.”
I won’t forget. But am I angry? Nah.
The drill sergeant tries again. “Mr. Stone—”
“But you, Vic. I’m going to kill you.” My broad smile tells him just how much I’ll enjoy it. “So go ahead. Make your threats, tell me how you’ll torture my family and friends, get it all over with. Just don’t block my view of Cherry, because the sight of her is the only thing that’ll keep me awake through all the jabbering you’re about to do.”
I can practically hear his teeth gritting. Because that’s my other natural talent. Pissing off tight-assed fuckers and making them lose their shit.
Though Victor doesn’t lose his. Instead he shakes his head and gestures Cherry forward, and she begins asking me how I’m feeling.
And, hell. Truth be told, I’m feeling pretty damn good.
Because I’ve got no intention of playing along with this Cage shit. Instead I intend to tear this operation down. And ride off into the sunset with the girl.
Just another day at the office.
7
Stone should be mad. He should be mad at Victor, at the situation he’s trapped in—and especially mad at me. Because I was supposed to save him. And I didn’t.
I wasn’t the one who ended up drugging him, as he seems to believe, but a detail like that hardly matters. The way it all turned out, I might as well have slipped him the roofie like I was supposed to. Because nothing I did made any difference. Except now I’m in even more trouble.
Victor hasn’t punished me for my rebellion yet, because he’s leaving that to Papa. But he’s watching me more closely. Reminding me to keep my smile on.
And although I was ready to die that night, I’m not ready to die now. It’s one thing to be killed for saving a man’s life. I don’t want to be killed for not smiling wide enough.
So I smile through the health checks. I smile while the first group runs around the track, and smile while Matt gives me a look that asks whether I’m truly all right.
I’m not. Because everything in the whole world is wrong. And I tried to do one thing right…and failed.
That failure hurts so bad. And it hurts to see Stone so determined not to give in. Almost every fighter who comes in is defiant, at first. Yet Stone’s defiance is on another level entirely. As if he truly believes they won’t get to his family. That they can’t get to his family.
But they always do. Which makes me even more worried for Stone. Because Papa won’t damage the fighters. But he’ll often make the fighters pay in other ways, and the longer and harder they resist, the more it’ll cost them. The more Papa will hurt them by hurting whoever the fighter loves. I don’t want to see that day come for Stone.
And today, it probably won’t. It might not for a week or more. So it’s with mixed emotions that I watch two guards escort him outside to join Crash and Handlebar at the track—my heart aching because he’s been thrown into this mess. But genuinely smiling again when he greets Crash like a long-lost brother, pulling him in for a back-thumping hug.
“No contact unless you’re in the Cage!” Delta calls out.
Stone ignores that order. He draws back but grips the other man’s shoulders, grinning at him. “We’re a long fucking way from Afghanistan.”
“Not that you’d know by looking at this place,” Crash says, gesturing to the desert scrub around us, then to the turret where a guard watches over the track with a sniper rifle.
So they know each other from the military. I want to tell them not to reveal that connection, to pretend they aren’t friends. Because if Papa truly can’t find a family member to use against Stone, he might use that friendship with Crash.
But Crash is ahead of me on that. In a low voice, he says to Stone, “Handlebar tells me your family are ghosts. So if they pull some shit and try to use me—don’t let them. I’m already a dead man.”
Stone frowns. “What the hell does that mean?”
“NO CONTACT!” Delta bellows.
“They will tase you,” I tell them softly.
That draws Stone’s attention to me, and his frown darkens. “They couldn’t give you a fucking coat?”
Because we’re in the high desert, but it’s the middle of November. This outfit doesn’t do a thing to protect me from the cold. Since the fighters have nothing but sweatpants and running shoes, they aren’t covered much better. But as soon as they begin their run, they never seem to feel it as much.
I pretend not to feel it, either. “I’m used to it.”
“Are you?” His voice lowers. My breath stops when he catches my wrist and flattens my hand to his bare chest. His pectoral feels like heated steel beneath my palm. “Your fingers are freezing.”
“Yo, fucking new guy!” Tango shouts. “Don’t touch the nurse!”
“She’s checking my heart rate, asshole!” Stone’s gaze never flickers away from mine. “How’s it seem to you?”
Deep. Strong.
“A little fast,” I whisper, though that’s just my own frantic pulse, racing as his warmth seeps into my hand. He’s flirting with me as if nothing has changed—as if we’re still in the tavern, where he kissed me and made me remember a time when I still had a future. When I still had hope.
But we’re not at the tavern anymore, and hope isn’t as sweet as a kiss here. Instead it hurts so much. Like a blade through my chest, like the clunk of a locking stall. And my throat aches when I tell him, “You should be more careful than this.”
“She ain’t lying, brother,” Handlebar says. “And they won’t care if they take her down with you.”
Stone’s jaw clenches and he releases my wrist. I curl my fingers, trying to hold onto his warmth. But it’s gone before they finish their first mile.
* * *
As they’re walking off the track, Handlebar calls out to me, “So, Cherry—did you stash the prize money somewhere?”
“What prize money?” I hold up a battery-operated blood pressure cuff, and he extends his arm so that I can fasten it around his wrist. “What are you talking about?”
“Stone’s prize money.”
They think I stole it? Hurt fills my chest. Which is stupid. Because after luring Stone into the Cage, where he’s probably going to die, what’s a little theft?
“That’s why they picked him up, yeah? He won a rally fight.” Handlebar flashes me a grin and leans his head in, adding in a low voice, “Tell me where you stashed the cash, and I won’t tell anyone else.”
Oh. They don’t really think I stole it. They’re just teasing me.
It’s hard to laugh, though. Because I did wrong Stone. And his winning a fight wasn’t why they picked him. But the last time I told him why, that the blue-eyed devil had set him up, he didn’t believe me. And all his easygoing good humor vanished into lethal fury.
He’s in good humor again now. “Christ, man. I can barely fit my dick into a pair of jeans. I sure as hell couldn’t stuff ten grand into my pocket, too.”
I glance up in surprise. Was he carrying around that much? “You won ten thousand dollars in that fight?”
“Yeah, I did.” His gaze narrows on me. “Just like they announced before and after the match. I thought you watche
d me kick that little prick’s ass?”
Throat tight, I shake my head. “They only showed me a video.”
“So you’d know who to pick up,” he says flatly.
Mutely I nod, not meeting his eyes. He’s not angry that I drugged him, but his tone tells me that my lie doesn’t go over so well.
Until he shrugs. “Eh, it wasn’t much of a fight, anyway. Broke more of a sweat out here on the track.”
Which obviously wasn’t much of an effort for him, either. A light sheen of perspiration glistens over his bare skin but, even after running five miles, his breathing is deep and even. Crash’s is about the same, and Handlebar’s more heavy and ragged, but easier than in his first week here. A lot of these big guys are strong and muscular, but never put the time into cardio before arriving. Some don’t put in the time after, either. Like Tusk—he gets out on the track and just walks, and the guards can’t really do anything about it.
Just like they don’t do anything to stop the chatter here. The fighters aren’t supposed to talk to each other. But the guards don’t even bother warning them anymore. Not unless Victor’s around.
Crash grunts. “The Iron Blood took it, then.”
“Nah,” Stone tells him. “I left it in the motel safe. Gunner’s likely got it now, so it’ll be waiting for me when I get home.”
When he gets home. I force myself not to think about how unlikely that is. Instead I try for optimism, too. “It’s a nice amount to have waiting for you.”
“Yeah, it’s not as much as it sounds like. Not after I pay club taxes on it. And I stuck a K into the toy drive box.”
My heart stutters. “You donated a thousand dollars to a kids’ charity?”
Then I helped kidnap him.
Crash snorts out a laugh. “He probably did. I can’t tell you how many times he nearly ended up in the shit after helping some kid who was only there to lure us in so their daddies could light us up. Or, fuck—that time a fucking flea-bitten stray ran into the kill zone, and he nearly blew the whole fucking op.”