by Addison Jane
I wouldn’t lose her.
No way in fucking hell would I allow her to be stolen from me.
“She’s a fighter, Rip, trust her to fight,” Dad argued. I knew he was trying to get as much information as possible, the more we had, the more he could use, but we were walking a fucking thin line here.
Caleb’s deep voice resonated through the speaker. “People look to me to do a job, exterminate the vermin, and I do whatever I have to do to get that job done.”
“So, you lie, and you cheat the system, and you hurt innocent people in the process?”
I breathed a sigh of relief as I heard her speak too.
“That’s how life works, Dakota. Sacrifices need to be made in order to get the best results. Lose a few to make the city better for the majority? You can’t argue with that.”
Things were silent for a few minutes, and I stood up, leaning in, urging Dakota to speak so I knew she was all right.
When she did, it was like fucking music.
“I hope you got all of that, Huntsman.” I could hear the smile on her face, and I was already pushing back my chair and heading for my fucking bike, the boys and Dad right behind me carrying a massive file in his hand that had been sitting on the table in front of him.
He squeezed the button on the side of the walky-talky and raised it to his mouth just as we all stomped toward the exit on a mission to destroy this asshole who thought he could come here and fuck with us.
“I got it all, we’ll be there soon,” Dad answered before looking directly at me. “Let’s get your fucking woman back and bury this bastard.”
Dakota had done all this, she’d made sure that Caleb wasn’t going to win this fight, and I couldn’t help but be more fucking proud of the fact that she was mine, but also, I couldn’t be more fucking petrified that that wouldn’t be the case for much longer. I needed to take this asshole out.
“Took the words right out of my mouth.”
DAKOTA
I could tell from the way Caleb kept looking at the door that he was expecting it to burst open at any moment. He pulled his cell phone from his back pocket and quickly dialed a number. “We’re going with plan number two, meet me out the back in the loading bay.”
I steadied my feet preparing to fight my way out of there if I needed to. He was on the back foot now, and it was when we were backed into a corner that we came out swinging. There was sweat beading at his hairline, and he quickly swept it away with his Armani suit sleeve.
“I thought you were a smart girl, Dakota.” He laughed but the sound was shaky and not as confident as it was before. He looked down at his watch, then back up again, shaking his head as if he was disappointed in me. “What part of I’m going to come after your niece didn’t you seem to understand? What made you think that I won’t follow through on that promise?”
“The part where I bought plane tickets for her and Amelia to fly to Montana to visit her family for the weekend,” I threw back smugly, my heart rate turning up a notch as his face became an angry shade of red. “And also, the part where I left a message for Meyah telling her that they’re in trouble and asking the brothers up there to look out for them.”
His face clouded over and the storm began to rage. He came forward again, and this time I did back away.
Stay alert.
Don’t let him win.
“Why are you running?” he asked, sounding amused, the sound so strange in contrast to the dark storm raging in his eyes, the storm that threatened to tear me to shreds. He taunted me as he followed me step for step.
I wanted to stand and fight him, to let him know he wasn’t going to win this, and even if he destroyed me, this wasn’t the end.
My ankle hooked on the leg of one of the chairs, and I stumbled. Caleb lurched forward and grabbed my arm with one hand while the other fisted the hair at the side of my head.
“You’re nothing in the scheme of things, Dakota,” he drawled, yanking my head back painfully and bringing tears to my eyes. He slapped at my cheek playfully with his other hand and laughed. “You were just a means to an end, and when I spin this whole ordeal to make it look like you were just trying to take the wrap for the Exiled member you’re fucking, they will still grant me every warrant and every fucking piece of paper I need.”
I tried to look him in the eye, but it was hard with the awkward angle he was holding my head and the pain that was shooting through my scalp and my neck. “Everyone knows what you’ve done,” I rasped, trying not to let the tears in my eyes slip down my cheeks.
He grinned, pulling my face really close to his and lowering his voice. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s your word against mine, and dead girls can’t talk.”
My heart stopped.
His phone dinged.
He drew his gun, and he aimed it directly at my head.
Then he fired.
The shot barely missed my head, I felt it cut through a few stray hairs and my ears screamed a high-pitched squeal. It was deafening, and I couldn’t help but grab hold of them and lean over as I tried to stop the sharp ringing.
That wasn’t the end of it though.
I was confused and wobbly, but I felt the moment the sharp needle stung my thigh, like a bee sting. I gasped and tried to push him away, but the shock of still not being able to hear anything was making my other sense go haywire. Then the warming of whatever was in that needle began to creep through my veins. It was like when you drink a hot drink on a cold day, and you can feel the liquid seeping down into your stomach. I could feel the poison move as my body pumped it through, with every heartbeat, my body started to feel lighter, becoming numb.
Caleb grabbed my arm and tugged me toward the door. I tried to fight against him, but I was just a flailing mess of limbs. With every movement, I felt like I didn’t have enough strength, like those weird dreams that you have when you try to run but you can only move really slow, and it doesn’t make any sense.
My eyes kept drooping shut, between whatever the hell he’d injected into me, mixed with the fact that he’d just fired a gun beside my head and thrown every sense I had in the fucking trash. We stumbled through the door and into the hallway, Caleb’s arms around me hold me up and me trying to struggle against him, but probably actually looking like I was barely moving. I finally managed to pry my eyes completely open, everything was a blur of distinct baby blue police station walls as they rushed by, flashes of people and doors and shapes joining them.
I opened my mouth to scream for help but the noise that came out was incomprehensible, and to anyone who passed by this scene just looked like a police officer trying to take an addict away.
A hand grabbed my wrist and jerked my body back, landing me right on my ass on the floor. Shadows and figures moved around me, someone hooking their hands under my arms and pulling me to my feet. My legs felt like jelly, and I could barely keep my eyes open.
Voices, so many damn voices, all around me.
They were getting louder.
They were arguing, but I couldn’t understand why.
My body was suddenly pushed against the wall, my weak neck unable to protect my head from being thrown back as well. Then a face appeared.
Austin?
It was fuzzy, but he was looking down at me, his eyes worried and bloodshot, his mouth moving but no words coming out. “Ausimmm,” I tried to say his name, but the letters all became blended together, and I just couldn’t seem to get my tongue around the sounds. It was like I was having an allergic reaction, and my tongue was too big to move around my mouth.
His head suddenly hung down.
It made my heart tear.
It fucking hurt.
He was broken.
There was only one other time I’d seen him this way, and it had been when my dad had died. My brother was always so strong, so powerful, a force of nature who fought hard to make the world a better place. But sometimes he let that overcome him, sometimes he didn’t see the other side of things and the good people.
When he looked back up, there was a single tear on his cheek. I wanted to throw my arms around him. I wanted to ask him why he was crying. I wanted to tell him that everything was going to be okay because I’d caught Caleb out. I had evidence, and we could take him down.
But I couldn’t. I had to watch as he stepped back and allowed Caleb to step back in, and even though the world was spinning and the walls felt like they were going to cave in on me at any moment, I could see the way he was fighting a triumphant smile.
And I could make out some of the words he was saying.
Hospital.
Handcuffs.
Safe.
He pulled a pair of handcuffs out of the waist of his pants, and I started to struggle.
I fought.
No. I couldn’t let him do this, I couldn’t let him take me away. I needed to be here. This was where Huntsman would come. This was where Ripley would find me. Once he got me out of here, I was done, there was a possibility I would never be free.
Yet, Austin just backed away, shaking his head, looking at me in horror as Caleb snapped the metal cuffs around my wrists.
I cried.
I felt the tears trailing down my cheeks and tasted the salt on my lips. Then I watched my brother be comforted by his colleagues as I was dragged backward down the hall, my feet barely able to move across the carpet as Caleb held up my body. We navigated several hallways and a staircase before we reached a large room with a roller door. It went up as we approached, and outside I spotted an ambulance.
My brain couldn’t put two and two together as he opened the back doors and hefted my body inside. Was he actually going to take me to the hospital? What the hell was his play here?
He dropped my body onto the bed and took the seat beside me, huffing and puffing.
My stomach was beginning to swirl, and my body was tired. Everything felt like it was moving slower, my heart, my brain, my limbs barely if at all.
Movement at the ambulance doors drew my eye, and just as I expected an EMT to climb in and begin to assess me, instead I saw a face appear, one that was far too familiar and one that should not have been anywhere near a fucking police station or Caleb.
They smiled, looking me dead in the eye before the doors slammed closed.
That suddenly told me just how much trouble I was in.
And told me that now, as the darkness took over my brain, forcing my eyes to close and my breathing to slow, that I might not ever see the light again.
RIPLEY
I couldn’t believe I’d been so fucking stupid. I’d let them walk out with her. And I hadn’t done a fucking thing. I should have trusted my gut that told me things weren’t right, I should have let her explain before the shit hit the fan. I should have fucking protected her, that’s what I should have done.
The entire ride to the police station was a goddamn mess. I weaved in and out of traffic, taking chances and risking fucking everything because if I got there and she was—I couldn’t even fucking think about it, but I only had my fucking self to blame.
This girl, she’d put herself through hell the past few weeks, trying to fight for the very people who went against everything she thought she knew. She was raised to believe in right, and we had spent our lives doing things that bend the rules, that pushed the boundaries, and were just fucking wrong. Yet, she’d never once looked at me like I was less than or like I wasn’t fucking worthy of being close to her. Not like her brother.
It was strange how two people who were raised in the same home could develop such different views on the world. Even with the way that she’d been burned in the past, Dakota was more likely to see the good in people. She was more willing to give someone a second chance and pull them closer as opposed to pushing them out on their own. Yes, she was sharp, and she did well to protect her own heart, and place a barrier around herself so that she couldn’t be hurt easily, but she was also so willing to make sure no one else felt the kind of pain she’d been through either.
Austin, on the other hand, he watched his sister be brought into his life because of how someone had treated her, because of how they had mistreated her, and that made him more protective, more adamant that he would never let it happen again. That meant to him that the ties she made to anything which could be destructive needed to be severed.
The relationship she had with Austin was much like the relationship I had with Drake. Maybe it was an age thing where the older brothers always felt the need to attack in order to protect.
I honestly wasn’t sure, but what I did know was no matter what the hell he felt toward me, I wouldn’t let him get in the way of me making sure that Dakota was safe, even if I had to lay him out in order to get to her.
I respected that he was her brother and up until this point, it had been his job to watch over her. But it was about time he respected that I was the one who was going to do that job from now on.
The chorus of motorcycles roared up onto the curb in front of the police station, not giving a fuck as all four of us parked right there on the sidewalk, skidding to a stop almost directly in line with the front doors, before I kicked out the stand and propped my ride up like this was a parking space and I fucking owned it.
I could see several people inside looking out at me, some curious, some angry as all hell. I yanked off my helmet and placed it on my handlebars before I climbed off and headed straight for the front door with fury burning in my fucking veins, my dad and the boys right behind me.
They had my back.
The old lady at the front desk stood up, her eyes wide and her mouth chattering like she wasn’t quite sure what to say, but it didn’t matter because a short look to my right, and I could already see Austin standing and walking toward me from down a long hall, fire in his eyes.
I turned to face him. “Where the fuck is she?”
He roared forward, the anger in him taking over. I saw the moment he chose to take a swing, but he was letting his anger lead and he wasn’t fucking thinking, so I ducked out of the way and dodged around his body, shoving him in the back and sending him crashing into the floor.
He slammed his fists against the tiles before he used them to push his body up off the floor.
“I don’t have time to deal with your temper tantrums right now,” I roared. “I want my goddamn Old Lady, and I want her now.”
“If it weren’t for you, she wouldn’t fucking be here,” he screamed back, his body heaving as he took in deep full breaths. A couple of other officers jogged over, trying to place themselves between us.
“See that’s funny when it’s actually one of you asshole’s who blackmailed her into this idiotic plan in the first place, and the longer you leave her in a room with him, the less likely that she’s going to come out of that room alive.” I needed to keep my head in this. Because it could be so easy to feed into his anger and argue about whose fucking fault this was, but all I wanted was Dakota in my damn arms, so I knew she was safe.
“What the hell are you talking about? You’ve been taking too many fucking drugs.”
“He’s talking about this,” Dad cut in, his voice barely over a speaking tone but able to draw the entire room with his assertiveness. He clicked a button on the walky-talky and it began to play.
“I thought you were smarter than that, I really did. I thought you were smart enough to take me seriously.”
“When you told me you were going to hurt my family?”
“When I warned you of what could happen.”
The room was frozen.
You could see the understanding that was growing on Austin’s face.
“That’s not the only thing,” Dad noted. “I’ve got pictures, I’ve got recordings, I’ve got texts. I even have a couple of guys who attacked Dakota a few months ago. With a little persuasion, they came through with statements about how Caleb Corrigan paid them to break into Dakota’s apartment and hurt her in order to scare her into moving faster.”
My heart was in my throat.
>
I was going to kill this asshole.
Austin though wasn’t moving, and the other cops were looking to him for some kind of lead.
“Look, we can go through all of this, but right now, I just need to get Dakota out of that room with that crazy bastard and as far away from him as possible.” I wasn’t above begging at that stage if that meant I knew she was in my arms.
I’d even leave the bastard for them to deal with.
For now.
But with the way Austin’s face crumbled, I knew right then it wasn’t going to be that fucking easy.
“Where the hell is she?” I demanded, taking a step forward. Dad followed my movement, obviously concerned I might lose it. And he was close to right. “Austin!”
He blinked, and the look of horror on his face sent a chill through me. “He took her to the hospital. He said she was trying to take his gun and kill herself. There was a shot. He sedated her. I argued with him, but he said I was too involved. I was too close because I was her brother.”
“He sedated her?” I barked. “So, where are they?”
“The loading bay,” he said in a hurry. “It was only a few minutes ago, literally just before you walked in the door.” Without a second thought, he took off running, and I was right behind him.
“Shake, Shotgun, go around the side of the building to the loading bay,” Dad ordered, the boys not wasting a second before they were rushing back out the front doors while we dashed down the hallway behind Austin heading for the staircase.
My throat was tight, and I was finding it hard to keep a level head.
We rushed down the staircase, my gun at the ready because if I saw that asshole, I wasn’t about to let him get away. I didn’t give a flying fuck if I went to jail for shooting the bastard. I needed to make sure he couldn’t worm his way out of this one or walk away unscathed.
Austin keyed in the numbered code for the large roller door. It was where they brought in offenders in paddy wagons. And also where the ambulance would come to pick up anyone who needed to be hospitalized. It was more easily accessible with the large door, and the space was big enough to remove the more unruly offenders.