by Wilde, Kati
And she knows it. Yeah, she does. Like now, when she turns away from Handlebar’s stall holding her tray of vitamins—only two little cups left, one for me, one for Tusk. There’s a moment every time her eyes meet mine when that emerald goes so dark, when she bites her lip before remembering to smile bright and wide. When her gaze slips down over my chest, and for an instant she looks so damn hungry that her mouth might as well already be on my dick, it stiffens up so quick.
That’s not just her being a good nurse and giving me a visual examination. That’s want. That’s need.
So maybe I did give her something to remember that night. Maybe I licked her pussy like she was made of sugar. Maybe I fucked her real good.
All I know is, we’ll be doing it again. Soon.
“You’re looking well today,” she says—and I love her voice. A little sweet, a little husky, it finishes the job that her eyes started, bringing my dick to full mast. Not that she can see her effect on me now, while I’m standing close to the bars. But I’m so damn hard, I could drill a hole through the wood making up the bottom half of the door. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I won’t be sorry if I never hear ‘Candle In The Wind’ again. But also real glad they don’t play the Princess Di version, because that shit makes me cry like a baby.”
Her smile compresses into a little grin, as if she’s trying not to laugh. “And how are you feeling physically?”
“Damn good.” Gripping the bars, I let my gaze slide from her eyes to her mouth to her tits. “Like if I had a nurse in here with me through the night, I’d probably make her come four or five times.”
“Only four or five?” Her eyebrows arch. “So you’re feeling weak, then? I’ll make a note in your chart.”
Shit. I do like this girl. And I fucking hate the bastard who steps forward, making the amusement in her smile vanish into that bland, bright curve again.
I don’t look at him. “I don’t need a wingman, Vic.”
“Just answer the nurse’s question, Mr. Wall.”
Mr. Wall.
So he knows my name.
That shit shrivels my dick, but I don’t even blink. “Pretty sure I already did answer her. Since I’m not playing in your little Cage, all that matters to Cherry here is whether I’m in fine enough shape to fuck. And I am, darlin’. Any time you like.”
But I can’t even get a smile out of her now. Not a real one. Just the one she gives everyone else—and even that falters when Victor starts talking again.
“Anna Wall lives on Newberry Road outside of Pine Valley, Oregon. Paul and Clara Wall on Walnut Street, also in Pine Valley.”
Just hearing those names out of his mouth wraps barbed wire around my heart. Cherry’s eyes squeeze shut, her expression a picture of dismay.
But me? They aren’t getting anything out of me. Because the one thing I’m certain of is that the Hellfire Riders are looking out for Anna, for my parents.
Carelessly, I shrug. “Is that supposed to mean something to me, Vic? Because it don’t.”
“You need to change your mind, Mr. Wall. Our associates do not take refusal lightly.”
“Yeah, and you need to stop this cockblocking shit and move out of the way so my girl can give me some vitamins.”
“You have two days to give a different answer. Think it over.”
“I’m not real big on thinking. So how about taking a ‘no’ right now. And tossing a ‘fuck no’ on top, just for shits and giggles.” I look to Cherry, whose eyes are dark emerald pools. “So come on up here and give me some of that sexy Vitamin C, girl.”
She moves closer, her voice a trembling whisper barely discernable over the music. “I’m so sorry.”
“Nah. You ain’t got nothing to be sorry for.” My family’s just fine. I pluck the little paper cup off her tray. “And when I bust out of here, I’m taking you with me. How about that?”
That sweet, nervous little smile appears again. “You’re a good man, Stone.”
I’m not.
But I like it when she looks at me as if I am.
9
Apparently no one cared enough about Lissa’s death to pass on the news right away that she was dead, because a week goes by before they stop sending her meals. We don’t cook here in the barn. Instead the meals are delivered daily from the farmhouse in neatly wrapped individual trays, each one labeled for each fighter, the macros and calories calculated according to their weight.
Mine and Lissa’s portions were never as large as theirs. Papa has stringent ideas about how much a woman should eat. So our calorie count is barely enough to cover what we actually need.
When the fighters die, maybe a day or two passes before the meals stop. Lissa and I used to split the dead fighter’s extra meals. It was the shittiest, most horrible feeling in the world. But I remember her telling me once it could help us stay strong.
Staying strong. That’s why I eat hers along with mine.
It never, ever stops tasting like ashes.
But the next delivery only includes my lunch and dinner. So I heat up the last one of hers along with mine, then grab my spork.
Tango comes in as I’m finishing up, because it’s time to escort me back to my stall. He doesn’t say anything about the two trays in front of me. He knows I’m only supposed to have the one each night, but none of the guards have ratted me out. All of these guards are pieces of shit, but they can have their nice moments. All week, I’ve been doubling up my meals and they all know it.
But it’s over now, anyway.
With a sigh, I dump my tray and wash my spork. The utensil always has to be in a particular spot when the kitchen is checked. Lissa’s is right there, too. I think about taking it—they might assume it disappeared along with her meal deliveries—but decide not to risk it.
Not now, at least. I’ve got another plan to put into motion.
To Tango, I say, “I need to check in with Crash, because he was having stomach issues this morning.”
He nods. “You’ll get a minute.”
Good. My heart beats a little faster as I head out of the kitchen—veering all the way over to the opposite side of the aisle as soon as I come out, as far from Tusk’s cell as I can walk. More than once, he’s been jacking off as I pass. A few times he’s let his semen drip from his fingers as I go by. Like the weird guy out of Silence of the Lambs. But there’s no Hannibal Lecter in the next cell to make him eat his own tongue.
There’s just Stone. I glance into his stall as I go by. He’s working the heavy bag, muscles flexing beneath tanned skin. For all that he doesn’t intend to fight in the Cage, he doesn’t stay inactive in his cell. Instead he’s always working out. Maybe keeping busy, or to stave off boredom. I’m not sure, and I don’t get much chance to ask.
But it’s been three days since Victor gave him the ultimatum. In the months I’ve been here, that two day warning has never passed without Victor coming back with evidence that the worst has happened. Not once. But we’re on day three and still nothing. Maybe Stone’s confidence wasn’t misplaced.
Which doesn’t mean everything will turn out all right. If they can’t make him fight, they’ll kill him.
But they won’t waste their investment right away. So they’ll try for a while first.
Hopefully by then we’ll be out of here.
Crash is the key to that plan. Because I can’t just get the medicine I need—the doc will want to see documentation leading up to it. And I can’t ask Matt to make up a story of constipation, because the Doc knows our relationship and he might be rightly suspicious. But Crash is a good guy. And he feels as if he owes me for putting him in the exercise group with Handlebar and for helping to conceal his tumor from the doc and Papa. Still, he might have played along even if he didn’t owe me.
I halt in front of his stall. Tango stops a few feet away. Crash looks over at me, eyes narrowing as I say, “Any improvement on the, uh, bowel situation?” I glance at Tango as I ask the question, lowering my voice slightly,
as if trying to keep patient confidentiality. “Are you still blocked? Or have you been able to...you know?”
One of the things I like most about Crash is that he’s smart. And quick. “Take a shit? Not yet.”
“Okay. Well, let me know in the morning if you’re having the same problem. In the meantime, I’ll ask them to add more fiber to your meals.”
Laughter passes over his expression, then is gone. “Just what I fucking need. More of that whole grain bullshit.”
“Sorry. If that doesn’t work, I’ll ask the doc for something stronger.”
“All right. Thanks, Cherry. You always take real good care of me.”
I give him a bright smile. “That’s what I’m here for. You should also drink lots of water. Sometimes that helps to get things moving.”
“I’ll do that.”
I wish him goodnight. Not looking over into Matt’s stall is so hard, but I don’t dare because I might burst out laughing. Yet there’s a little skip in my step as I continue on—then stop dead when the music suddenly goes silent.
Before ten p.m. What in the world…?
I look back down the aisle. Tango is looking that way, too. Victor comes out of the control booth—though he’s not usually in the barn so late. My stomach sinks as he heads straight to Stone’s cell.
“I have a message for you, Mr. Wall.”
Oh no. No, no, no. Dread pulls me back down the aisle. Because I’ve seen this before. When the Iron Blood threatens or beats anyone, they take a video as proof. I’ve never seen Victor make such a production of it, though, turning off the music first and announcing that he has a message.
He stops in front of Stone’s stall and holds up a tablet—and whatever Stone sees on the screen turns his face white. His hands come up to grip the bars, his burning gaze fixed on the image before him.
I can’t see what it is. But I’ve seen them before. People beaten, bloodied. Crying and begging.
Victor taps the tablet to start the video playing. The volume’s up so high everyone in the barn can hear. At first nothing but a faint, frantic barking in the background.
Then a man’s voice. “Say something to your brother, Anna.”
“I’m okay. Don’t freak out,” is a woman’s quick, hoarse reply. “I’m all right.”
“A little roughed up,” the man agrees cheerfully. “But it could be worse. This could be my fist.”
A sharp crack follows—a slap hard enough that the sound echoes through the barn.
Stone flinches but doesn’t take his gaze from the screen. His jaw is like granite. The barking in the background continues.
The man in the video says, “Now, Stone, here’s the deal. You fight, you win, and you’ll get to call your pretty sister and hear how alive she is. In fact, you can call her after every fight you win. Anna—do you know what happens if your brother doesn’t call?”
“It means he lost,” she chokes out on a sob.
“It means something else, too. Because for everyone else, the threat to their family is enough to make them fight. Then we leave the family alone, even if he loses. And they keep their mouths shut so it’s a win-win for everyone. Yeah? But with your brother, and because he’s so fucking stubborn, we’ll be doing something different. Because as soon as you lose, Stone, I’m coming back here to finish what I started. I’m going to fuck your sister’s sweet ass, I’m going to tear that pussy apart with my cock, and then I’m going to put a bullet in her brain. So as soon as you lose, motherfucker, your sister loses, too.”
Victor lowers the tablet. And the way Stone stares at him—I’ve seen that look before. All humor gone. Only a promise of death left.
Neither man says a word before Victor heads for the barn exit. But I hear Handlebar telling him quietly, “I’m so fucking sorry, man.”
I am, too.
As if he hears me think that, Stone’s deadly gaze slices in my direction, cutting me open with all the hate and anger that I deserved from him at the beginning.
“Let’s be clear, girl,” Stone tells me in a voice that I’ve never heard from him. So cold. So lethal. “Now I’m mad.”
At me. Because I’m the reason he’s here. Because I’m the reason his sister was beaten. Probably raped. Maybe worse.
With a burning knot in my throat, I nod. Stone turns away from me as if I’m nothing to him now. A second later, the pounding on his heavy bag starts up again.
“Come on, then,” Tango says. “Show’s over.”
And no skip left in my step. Just a heart so heavy, I barely make it to my stall before I begin to cry.
10
Stone
Three days later, I’m ushered into a van, chained to a seat, and headed for the Cage. Not to fight. Cherry must have slipped me one hell of a roofie because I don’t pass their drug test. They still bring along all the fighters in the stables to watch, so that we can study the men we might be up against next time.
And I’ll do that. I’ll watch them. Because I can’t afford to lose.
Though on the way there, it’s real fucking hard to see anything but Anna. For three days, whether my eyes are open or closed, my sister is all I’ve seen. Stripped naked and strapped to a chair with duct tape. Tears streaking down her cheeks and blood dripping from her mouth, her jaw swollen from where that bastard hit her. And only one question keeps pounding through my head.
How the fuck did he get to her?
Is Gunner dead?
The Prez?
Blowback? The Hellfire Riders’ warlord knows just about every thing that needs to be known, sees just about every threat that’s coming. And they all knew this one would be coming. So how the hell did that bastard get past all of them?
I should have been there. I should have fucking been there. Instead of jerking my cock in a cell, pretending everything would be hunky-dory swell. Anna needed me to do what I do best. To get shit done.
But I didn’t do a goddamn thing.
I still can’t do a goddamn thing—except exactly what these bastards tell me to do. Roll over, play fetch. Turn into a mad dog when they eventually put me in that ring.
After about three hours, the van stops. There’s nothing to see yet. They’ve got the vehicle set up like a prisoner transport, with no windows in the cargo hold and no access to the cab, no view out the front. Six of us are shackled to the benches. At the barns, four other vans were loaded up at the same time, along with most of Victor’s guards—and I’m guessing that’s the real reason every fighter gets a free show. Not so we can get a look at the competition, but because they need the guards here, not at the compound.
They don’t take any chances moving us all as a group. Instead we’re escorted out one at a time.
I don’t give them any hassle when my turn comes. Despite all the money these bastards rake in by streaming these fights over backass channels on the dark web, the facility they’ve got us in is a rundown piece of shit. It’s an old abandoned warehouse, with what I’m pretty fucking sure are bats flying around in the rafters. The Cage itself is just a big box of chain link fencing that might take a couple of workers a half hour to erect.
They probably put it up today. An operation like this will stay mobile, harder for the authorities to track down. Most likely, they haven’t used this location before and won’t use it again. So even if the cops get their hands on one of the broadcasts, even if someone recognizes this warehouse, they’ll be chasing after ghosts.
And those broadcasts are where the bastards are putting their money. The cameras they’ve set up sure as hell didn’t come from Walmart. Thick cables run along the floor toward a van mounted with a satellite dish—a van that likely serves as the mobile heart nestled deep within onion-like layers of code hiding the broadcast’s source.
At the other end of that signal are all the rich fuckers around the world who get their jollies watching men kill each other—with a buy-in of a million bucks just to see the fights. There isn’t an audience on location. Just the guards, the fighters. Proba
bly a few video technicians in the van.
After they chain me to another bench, I scan the faces of the fighters around the Cage who were brought in from different stables. A few of them I recognize from rally fights up and down the west coast. All of us lured in by some sweet ass bait.
All of us stupid assholes with our brains in our dicks.
Cherry’s here, too. But I can’t even look at her without seeing my sister strapped to that chair, bleeding and crying. Without feeling like I’m rotting from the inside, because I fell for a sad smile and sent those bastards straight to Anna’s door.
And how the fuck did they get to her?
But that’s the wrong question to ask now. It’s a question with an answer, but not an answer I can get while I’m here.
That’s the real issue—I’m still here. Which means the Riders haven’t found a link between Cherry and the Iron Blood that’ll lead them to the Cage. Yet the Iron Blood found a link from me to my family.
But how the everloving fuck did the Iron Blood figure out who I was?
Supposedly the reason they picked me is because I won a fight. But they found Anna, so that doesn’t track. I didn’t give them anything to go on. No real identification. Just my kutte. But nothing on my vest would lead them to my family.
I didn’t give Cherry anything to tell them, either. She knows I’m a lumberjack, but I work for Widowmaker, another Hellfire Rider. He wouldn’t offer that information to anyone. I told her that I had a dog, but they didn’t track down my family using a dog’s name. Especially a name as common as Daisy.
But winning a rally fight isn’t the only reason men end up in the Cage. Some are targeted. Either to punish them or to send a message. I can imagine what the message was—to stop looking for the missing fighters, which was why Gunner and I were at the rally in the first place, trying to dig up info that would lead us to the Cage.
Yet that doesn’t tell me who aimed the Iron Blood in my direction. Who knew my real name and told them I was at that rally?