by Wilde, Kati
Stopping in front of Stone’s.
The fighters are in an uproar. Over all of the noise, I barely register the familiar clunk of a stall door unlocking.
No, no. Not a stall door.
All of the doors.
Oh my god.
Tusk’s triumphant roar echoes through the rafters. Panic sends me scrambling back for the safety of my stall—but it’s not safe, because now it’s unlocked and the first place he’ll look for me. I crawl past my cell and frantically squeeze myself through the bars over the doctor’s office, trying to calm myself enough to think.
I’ve just got to get past him. How do I get past him?
Think.
Forcing my breaths to slow and deepen, I drop from the bars and land next to the examination table. Quickly, I kick off my high heels. As soon as Tusk’s inside my cell, I can sprint down the aisle. I’ll be running toward the gunman. I don’t know who he is, but I’ll take the risk of being shot. Better than being caught by Tusk.
And if Tusk does catch me…I have a weapon. The scalpel’s slippery from my drool. I wipe the handle dry on my skirt while creeping silently across the concrete floor. He probably couldn’t hear me in here, anyway. Not with so much shouting echoing around inside the barn.
At the door I pause and crouch out of sight below the small window that’ll give me a view of the aisle, gathering my courage. Just peek through. Watch Tusk go into my stall. Then run like hell.
Okay. I can do this. Holding my breath, I peek through the window.
And he’s there. Tusk is right there. Looking back at me.
He grins.
Screaming, I stumble back. The door crashes open and his giant body blocks all the light from the aisle. His naked body. He’s already hard, his eyes gleaming like his teeth, as if in anticipation of ripping me apart.
He stalks inside. Scalpel clutched in my fist, eyes locked on his, I circle around behind the examination table, trying to put anything between us. Oh my god, but he’s fast. So fast. One second he’s just walking and the next he’s charging. Blind terror grips my heart. I turn to run and slam into a tray of medical equipment, sending it crashing to the floor.
Then he’s on me. Screaming, I slash at his chest. I cut him, I know I cut him, but it’s like he doesn’t feel the blade at all. But one shove sends me flying and I hit the back wall so hard that stars flare behind my eyes. The explosion of air from my chest leaves me dizzy—then horrifyingly aware when he drags me down under him, shoving my thighs apart, ripping away my panties. Sobbing, I slash at his throat and only cut his shoulder before he grabs my wrist and pins my hand. Thunder cracks in my ears and he’s all over me, crushing me beneath him, heavy between my legs and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.
But he’s not moving. Not moving at all.
Because that thunder had been a gunshot.
And Tusk is dead.
On top of me.
With a shriek, I shove at his massive weight, scrabbling my way out from beneath him. The shadow of another huge form crosses the room, the dull metallic gleam of a weapon in his hand. New panic tears through me. Because this nightmare can’t end like this. It can’t.
“Please,” I beg frantically as he comes closer. “Please, I don’t care what you do to me. But please first let me find my b—”
Hard fingers shove fabric into my mouth, cutting me off. And it’s Stone. Relief staggers through me, then vanishes again.
Because he’s so angry. So savage as he hauls me close.
“All this time, you had a way out,” he snarls viciously. “And a fucking knife. You could have escaped and went for help. All this fucking time.”
No, I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Wildly I shake my head, try to tell him. I try to pull out the gag but he rips my stocking from my leg and ties it around my head, securing the wad of fabric between my lips. Fighting, I pull at the silk and a second later he binds my wrists behind my back. Movement to the left catches my gaze and I realize there’s someone else in here with us.
The gunman. Oh god, oh god. But not just any gunman.
The blue-eyed devil. The one called Gunner. Stone’s friend.
The one who betrayed him. The man who put him in here.
But now Gunner came to free him?
Confusion and terror tangle in my chest. Then the world upends, and I cry out in surprise as Stone tosses me facedown over his shoulder. All I can see is the concrete floor and his gray sweats as he carries me down the aisle. Blood rushes to my head, my stomach hurting from panic and dread, my spit saturating the gag in my mouth.
We’re getting out of here. I should be filled with relief but I don’t know where we’re going now. And I’m obviously not free.
Because I owe him. I remember Stone saying that. I owe him.
And that he’ll collect.
A strange calm settles over me. Because I do owe him. So I’ll pay up. As fast as I can. Then I’ll go to the police and get help for Matt. He’s safe for at least a few weeks at the doc’s clinic. Papa isn’t going to tell my brother that everyone at the stables escaped. They’ll never admit that I’m gone. They’ll just keep telling him to fall in line or they’ll hurt me.
But I’ll be out of their reach. And there’s nothing, nothing that Stone will do to me that compares to what Papa might. I know Stone’s angry. But I don’t think he’d ever really hurt me.
I’m not so sure about his friends. And terror fills me again as I remember how, in my panic after realizing Tusk was dead and I might be next, I almost revealed that I had a brother.
Stone might not hurt me. But I can’t risk anyone discovering who Matt really is. Especially anyone who’s a member of an outlaw motorcycle club.
Heat flares against my side the moment Stone steps outside. Craning my neck, I catch an upside-down glimpse of the farmhouse engulfed in flames—and the other barn, too.
Horror crawls through my gut. Did his friends get the other fighters out first? Or are they in there burning? Desperately I twist and fight Stone’s hold, trying to dislodge the gag.
“Settle the fuck down.” His grip tightens, his fingers clamped on my thigh. “Unless you want me to march you over to Handlebar and tell him that Crash didn’t have to die in that Cage. That if you didn’t wait until you were saving your own goddamn skin, his brother could have been in a hospital weeks ago.”
Handlebar. If he’s out, then they must have freed the men in those stables, too. Relief fills my chest even as my throat tightens unbearably. I did try to get Crash out. Tried to get all of them out.
But that plan was too little, too late.
Abruptly Stone halts. The world spins again, the blood rushing from my head. Freezing cold metal bites into my bare skin as Stone sets me down in the bed of a pickup.
He leans in and grits out, “Don’t fucking move or I’ll round up every single man you caged up and bring them over here to use your pussy.”
So…all one of them. Stone’s the only one I lured in. Because that plan went wrong, too. And he thinks that I was just saving my own skin.
But until Matt is free, I’ll go on letting him think it.
Defiantly I stare back. Daring him to follow through on that threat. Even though he told me once that he doesn’t share. His jaw clenches, then he draws back and orders someone to make sure I don’t move before stalking away.
I don’t watch him go. Instead I watch the stables and farmhouse burn, while a riot of emotions storms through my chest.
Matt said my plans aren’t shit; instead, the world is. And although tonight’s plan went to shit…so much went right. I didn’t kill a guard and free the fighters. But the guards are dead and the fighters are free, and it doesn’t matter who did it. All that matters now is keeping Matt’s identity safe until he’s free, too.
Which is the same thing I’ve done for months. So everything has changed…but also nothing has.
Because Matt’s life still depends on my silence. Because I’ve still got so much to h
ide.
And because with my luck, the world will keep on turning to shit.
19
Stone
“Maybe not the best time, brother,” Gunner says, his voice wary.
As if there will ever be a good time for this. A time when my chest isn’t a rotted and ragged hole, a time when I don’t feel Crash’s body going limp against me and his spine popping apart with a twist of my hands, a time when I’ll be a brother worthy of the name again.
There’s no good time or bad time now. There’s just a time to get shit done.
And this needs to get done.
It wasn’t only the Hellfire Riders who made up the rescue cavalry. The Bedlam Butchers joined them. Handlebar’s with a group of them now. No one’s wearing a vest—won’t give anyone a chance to point fingers later—but I know them. All of them dangerous fuckers, slapping Handlebar’s back and laughing and celebrating his return.
Yet all that laughter stops when they see me heading their direction. Because I killed one of theirs. But I don’t owe them a damn thing.
Handlebar, though. I owe him a hell of a lot more.
“I’m so fucking sorry, man,” I tell him hoarsely. The heat of the fire’s burning in my eyes, scorching down my throat as I spread my arms wide, welcoming what’s coming. “I’ll take whatever you got. Fists. Bullets.”
I want the fists. I want the bullets. Either one is better than the agony ripping through my chest as Handlebar closes in on me, the grief in his eyes exposing a hole as dark and ragged as mine.
If he wants to fill that up with my blood, I’ll let him. But I owe him something else, too.
“He gave me some last words for you.” Though I don’t know how I’ll choke them out when I can barely speak past the raw ache in my throat. “If you want to hear them first.”
His jaw clenches, the flames from the barn glinting in his eyes. Then he nods, his big hand clasping the back of my neck, pulling me in to rest his forehead to mine.
Just like Crash did when he told me this. “He loves you. You’re the best ride partner he ever had.” Fuck, I can’t breathe again. “And you have to take care of his mangy cat.”
A choked sound breaks from him. Then nothing for a long damn time.
His voice is real thick when he finally says, “I kill you now, we start a war between our brothers. But this ain’t about them.”
“No, it’s not.” And I’m not worth dying for. “When?”
“I’ve got shit to take care of first. I need to pull Crash out of the ground, lay him to rest where he ought to be laid. Then there’s this fucking Cage. Because that killed him, too.”
“We need to burn the whole fucking thing to the ground.” Not just these barns. The whole goddamn operation. Because I’ve still got shit left to do, too. And I still need something to fill me up. Something that isn’t soft and sweet, but as raw and as bloody as I am.
“Yeah.” His grip tightens on my neck. “We take down Papa. We take out whoever the fuck owns the other stables. Then you and me…we settle up.”
“Fair enough.” I pull back, locking my hand with his, sealing in that promise. And fulfilling another. “Tusk is dead.”
“Good. You’ve got Cherry?”
I nod. Yeah, I’ve got her. And I intend to keep her.
I should drop off her sweet ass in the nearest town and never look back. But Papa and all the fuckers running the Cage will be searching for her.
Instead of them finding her, though, Cherry’s going to give me what I need to find them.
But that’s not the purpose in front of me as I head back to the truck. Instead I’m still seeing Tusk, pinning her beneath him. Instead I’m hearing Cherry scream. Instead I’m remembering the moment I realized that he’d gotten to her, and feeling like my whole world was about to end.
My whole world. If I needed a measure of how fucked up my head is, that’s it right there. Because she’s not even a fraction of my world.
She’s just a girl I kissed in a bar. A girl who couldn’t ever be anything more to me than that. Because she’s a girl who’s all about saving her own skin—and trusting a girl like that, a man not only risks himself but all his brothers, too.
I thought she did right by Crash? Nah. She did the bare fucking minimum.
That’s the thought I hold onto as I jump into the back of the truck. The memory of Cherry out of her cell, with a fucking blade that she could have used at any goddamn time. The memory of Handlebar choking up.
Still gagged, she’s sitting where I left her, back braced against wheel well and watching the barns burn. I crouch beside her.
“You’re going to pay for every fucking lying word that came out of your mouth. You understand?”
Tusk’s dead. But I’ve got one thing left to keep me going. And I know this girl now. She’ll do what it takes to save her own skin.
Except she’s not even listening.
I grip her chin, bring her emerald eyes around to meet mine. “You understand?”
Quickly she nods.
Yeah. She’ll agree to any goddamn thing, and knowing that curls more rot through my stomach. I search her eyes, looking for the rage that I liked so damn much. Looking for any sign that she’ll push back—like she did only a little while ago, when I threatened to let the fighters pull a train on her. Even gagged, she all but dared me to. Like she knew it was bullshit. But now there’s nothing.
I shouldn’t want her to do anything but fall in line…but fucking hell, I want to see something more in her than this. But the only flames in her eyes are flickering reflections from the flames consuming the compound. Jaw clenched, I let her go.
My head’s so fucked up. And my heart, too. Because it took until now for me to ask Gunner, “Anna?”
“Safe.”
A knot loosens in my chest. “And the fucker who touched her?”
“Taken care of.”
Dead. The unwinding knot moves up into my throat as Zoomie climbs into the truck. Spiral’s behind the wheel, Blowback’s heading our direction. More trucks are being loaded up with fighters and getting the fuck out of here. Just about the whole club showed up to break me out. And it looks like it went off clean. No brothers lost.
But they’d have risked their lives for me. That’s fucking everything.
And it’s too much.
“I love a goddamn bonfire.” Grinning, Zoomie takes a seat on the opposite tire well. “But we forgot the fucking marshmallows.”
My throat’s so damn tight. “Next time.”
“Aw, look at you, you big asshole, promising to get kidnapped again just for me.” She reaches over to playfully shove at my head before nodding to the woman beside me. “Who’s the nurse?”
In that tiny outfit, still gagged by the panties I shoved into her mouth and the stocking that I tied around her head. The little skirt hardly covers her bare ass, and she’s got her legs folded and tucked in so she isn’t flashing everyone.
“Cherry,” Gunner says.
She’s staring at him. Not like girls usually stare at his pretty face. I’m the one who threatened her but she looks more afraid of him.
“Cherry?” Eyes narrowing dangerously, Zoomie says, “So why aren’t we roasting her instead?”
“Because I’ve got something else in mind for her.” That pulls her emerald gaze to me, and she draws in on herself when I add, “And I’m going to take a real long time to do it.”
There. A little spark. A defiant lift of her chin. Just like when she was sucking my cock, making me come. When she was making the rot stop hurting so goddamn much.
But the hurt’s what I deserve. So I focus on what I should be doing, instead—and that’s what comes next.
Blowback vaults over the tailgate just as the truck starts pulling out. So almost everyone who makes decisions in this club is here. Thorne’s not, but I figure the VP is holding down the fort at home, ready to bail us out if shit goes south.
But that means we’re still missing one. “Where’s the pre
z?”
I assumed Saxon would be one of the first through that barn door.
“With Jenny,” Zoomie says quietly.
With his woman. But he wouldn’t have stayed away for some small reason. Something in Zoomie’s voice tells me this isn’t a reason I want to hear, though.
And I realize there’s someone else missing. “Red?”
Jenny’s father. And a man who is like an uncle to Anna and me. A man who’s been fighting lung cancer for months.
His face grim, Gunner nods. “He took his final ride.”
Not going out the way the cancer would have gotten him. Going out on his own terms.
My throat closes up. “Who was with him?”
“Thorne and Saxon, and all of the old timers.”
I should have been there. I should have fucking been there for him. Should have said goodbye.
But the Cage took that from me, too. “When do we hit the Iron Blood?”
Blowback says, “Soon.”
It can’t be enough. “We’ll have to keep a few alive so we can get to Papa. Fuckers who will talk. Maybe pick up some of the Eighty-Eight, too. Too bad there’s too many of those Nazis to put them all down.” The sound of a sharp indrawn breath has me glancing over at Cherry. I tug her gag from between her lips. “Who’s Papa?”
Her throat works before she replies with a rasping, “I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not. I only ever heard them call him Papa.”
“Handlebar said he had professional security. Who were they?”
“I don’t know. I kept my head down and tried not to look at any of them.”
“But you know what Papa looks like?”
She bites her lip, her gaze searching mine. Then she shakes her head.
A lie for goddamn sure. And since what she’s saying is useless to me, I shove her gag back into place. She’s still saving her own skin. Right now, she’s more scared of Papa than she is of me.