by Meg Jackson
“I guess…I guess not but…”
Silas turned, impatient, and snapped his fingers. Jeremy flashed him a look of rage, but didn’t seem to have the energy to protest.
“Trust me, porky. I’m a professional. Get the bitch in the truck,” Silas said, his patience dwindling quickly. He was getting nervous about his client; something about the way Jeremy was looking at his wife told Silas that he was regretting his actions, that he thought he’d gone too far, that he was softening up.
Silas didn’t need Jeremy to soften up. He needed the exact opposite, if the plan was going to go off smoothly. It would do Silas no good to have some bleeding heart husband hanging around making a mess of things.
To his relief, Jeremy bent down and picked up his wife, who was beyond rationality and only kicked and fidgeted weakly against her husband’s superior strength. As they walked towards the truck, Silas could see Jeremy’s mouth moving, but couldn’t hear what was being said in hushed tones. As they neared, he could hear the lilting rise and fall of Jeremy’s voice, as though he were singing her a lullaby.
Fuck me, Silas thought with a roll of his eyes. We’ve got a softy here.
And wasn’t that just Silas’ luck?
“Where should I put her?” Jeremy asked, tearing his eyes away from his wife’s brutalized face long enough to give Silas a big, stupid, questing stare.
“In the back,” Silas said, nodding his head to the bed of the pick-up. She wouldn’t mind riding in the back; she was half-dead as it is. “And get those spikes off the road, too.”
As Jeremy carried her back and then returned to the string of spikes, dragging them off the baking pavement, Silas saw his opportunity. He went to the car, pretending as though he was admiring the fresh paint, and grabbed the duffel bag, which was conveniently located right under the passenger side seat. Jeremy was so distracted with situating Gabriella somewhat comfortably in the back of the truck he barely looked up as Silas trotted back, opened his door, and threw the duffel bag behind the seat.
“What was that?” Jeremy asked, coming now to the passenger side door and opening it wide. He seemed hesitant to get into the truck, as though he couldn’t figure out why he’d ever gotten into it in the first place.
“None of your business. No questions asked, remember?” Silas said with a sneer. Jeremy was too rattled to debate. He slid into his seat and slammed the door shut, cradling his head in his hands. Silas clucked and shook his head. This bully was starting to bully himself. The poor fool’d gone too far. Silas could tell; he’d reached that point, rare but real, where one human stands back and looks at what they’ve done with eyes stripped of pride, anger, desire.
He had it coming, this moment of self-doubt and, probably, self-loathing.
Silas turned the key and the truck kicked the life. Driving alongside the road until they’d passed the wrecked Mustang then hooking a wide U-turn, Silas headed back towards his little shack. Home sweet home, until he fully earned his paychecks and could get himself a mansion in Sao Paulo.
28
“Honey, I feel like there’s something wrong,” Reign said, tipping his half-empty glass back and forth on the bar. His anger at her had long dissipated, replaced by more sadness than he felt could possibly be held inside one human.
“Sure. You miss ‘er. That’s what’s wrong,” Honey said, keeping herself busy by wiping down the counter. She’d wiped that thing a million times in her life behind that bar, and it always needed more wiping. She sighed. Some day off, she thought again.
After a few drinks with Endo, which had helped her think through the details of what she knew and what she felt about the stranger, she’d been an unhappy witness to Gabriella’s departure. Feeling the call of duty, knowing that Reign needed her but wouldn’t come to her unless she was pouring his drinks, she sent home the girl who’d been covering her shift and donned her old, dirty apron.
“No, something else. I just…I just feel it,” Reign said, and his voice sounded defeated. Honey’s heart went out to him. She bit her lip, keeping her face away from his. He might look at her and see what she was thinking. What she knew. He didn’t need to know anything about it; it would only make things worse, and more dangerous. Better he thought she was flying high and free all the way to Mexico.
“Leave the intuitions to me, babycakes,” Honey said. She wished Reign would just get properly drunk, have himself a good bawl, and wake up feeling fresh and new and ready to fuck some other girl. Lord knew there were enough of them hanging around. But Honey had seen their goodbye; she knew that it was going to take more than a few half-assed performances by the ladies of Ditcher’s Valley to rid Reign of the pain in his heart. Poor kid.
“You think she’ll be okay?” Reign asked, his voice not quite hopeful but at least not as pathetic as it had been sounding.
“I got a feeling she’ll be just fine. Now drink up. The faster you get drunk, the faster you get to forgetting her,” Honey said, really, really wishing that Reign would give up the ghost and start taking shots like all the other men did when some girl ran off on them. The less space he had in his mind for rational thought, the better off he’d be.
“I don’t feel like drinking, and I don’t feel like forgetting,” he said sourly, shoving his glass towards her. She caught it one-handed and sighed.
“Ok, fine. You wanna remember her. So remember her. Tell me what you’re gonna miss, I’m all ears,” Honey said, stretching her hands out and looking straight at him. Their eyes met and it took everything in her not to flinch. She didn’t want to lie to Reign. She hated lying to her boys. But if she told him what she really felt, he’d likely do something damned stupid, and it’d be her fault. She needed Reign’s blood on her hands like she needed her ex-husband back.
“I don’t know. I don’t wanna talk about it, either,” Reign said, his head slumping. Honey was relieved that she didn’t have to put on that “everything’s okay” face anymore, but she also worried about the soon-to-be President. He didn’t look good at all.
“You don’t wanna drink about it, you don’t wanna talk about it, what do you wanna do about it?”
“I wanna…shit, Honey, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go for a little ride,” Reign said.
“Maybe that’s a good idea,” Honey agreed, shaking her head and resuming her endless bar-wiping. “But keep your mind on the road. You remember what happened to Bull.”
“How could I forget?” Reign said. It was too easy to lose yourself in thoughts and get yourself killed; that’s what had happened to Bull. Reign didn’t plan on ending up like that poor sap.
Honey watched as Reign got up from the bar, moving as though his whole body was made of lead. She wished she could take the weight off his shoulders, but there was nothing she could do, and she knew it. She could only hope that he’d leave what ailed him on the road. And that with Gabriella gone, there wouldn’t be any worries about the mysterious man or her cop husband or any other trouble she could have dragged in.
Reign let the door swing shut behind him and looked up at the star-filled night. He remembered a similar night, only a day ago, when he’d made Gabriella buck and come for him, then held her on the cooling sands. Only a day ago, but it seemed like a lifetime.
He cursed the memory. He cursed her husband, for driving her into Reign’s arms and then driving her away. He cursed her, for bewitching him and then leaving. He cursed the night that seemed so cold and empty without her voluptuous warmth at his side. He curse the club, for keeping him from following her. He cursed Honey for not convincing her to stay. And he cursed himself for falling in the first place, for letting himself slip just long enough to get hurt worse than any physical beating he’d endured growing up.
With a roar and a screech, his tires turned the dust and he was gone, riding into the empty night, wanting to feel as empty as the miles and miles before him. Empty, at least, didn’t hurt.
29
“Are you really sure you need it?”
“That’
s none of your business is it, partner? We agreed on this long before I handed you your wife on a silver platter. You don’t want to be the sort of man who goes back on his promises, do you?”
“What if I paid you more?”
“Well, for one thing, it’d help if you paid me the rest of what you owed me at all. And if you wanna give me a nice bonus for doing such a stellar job, I won’t say no. But we agreed on that toe, and I’m taking that toe,” Silas said, his eyes glinting with annoyance.
He did not like the way his client was looking from his shivering, gagged wife to Silas and back again. Gabriella had finally stopped screaming through the dirty rag that stuffed her throat; her eyes, wide and wild, were glued on Jeremy.
As well they should have been; in a twist of irony that anyone could admire, the man she feared most had suddenly become the only thing between her being the proud owner of ten toes and losing one of her little piggies. But, really, nothing Jeremy could do would save her or her toes; Silas needed one, and he always got what he needed, one way or another. He clicked the razor-sharp shears in his hand idly.
“C’mon, I don’t know what weird fetish you have but…”
“And it’s none of your business what weird fetish I have. I’m taking one of those toes, and you can’t stop me,” Silas said, growing weary of the conversation, which had already taken up too much of his time. He stepped forward to Gabriella, who let out another strangled shriek.
Jeremy stared at his wife as Silas grew closer to her; she was shaking her head wildly, her eyes pleading with him, begging him to help. Her swollen eyes, black and blue and steadily looking worse. He’d done that to her. He could remember doing it. He could remember what it felt like. It had felt so good. Now he felt…almost guilty.
All those other times, he’d been right to hit her. She’d deserved it. She’d deserved it this time, too. But maybe he’d gone a little bit overboard. It looked like her nose was broken, and two huge cuts on her face would need stitches. Not that she’d get them. Not professional stitches, anyway. He couldn’t exactly take her to a hospital. But he wasn’t altogether inept with a needle and thread, and he figured he could make do as well as any ER scrub.
The shears glinted in the sad, dusty light of the shack. Gabriella was kicking her bound feet uselessly, hopelessly. Her eyes never left Jeremy’s. He closed his eyes, but he could still see them in his vision, calling to him, begging him to stand up and, for once in his life, take care of his woman. Because she was his woman. His. And no one else’s.
And that meant that Jeremy could do whatever he wanted to her, but no other man should lay a hand on her. Not in friendship, not in love, and not in violence. It was wrong for him to let Silas do that to her. Determined, and putting on his best Colorado PD face, he stepped behind Silas and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“You better listen to me now, buddy,” Jeremy growled. This Silas dude seemed tough, but how tough could he actually be? And it wasn’t like Jeremy needed him anymore; Silas had handed Gabriella back to her rightful owner, that was all. He’d get his money. Jeremy thought of it as a reward for finding an errant puppy. That was the extent of what Silas was owed, and Jeremy was going to enforce it. Just like he enforced law on the streets and obedience in his home.
Silas felt the cop’s hand settle on his shoulder. Something in his chest bubbled up, grew twice its size, threatened to burst. He did not like being touched. Not from behind like that. And he did not like being called buddy, especially not in a tone of voice like that.
Silas made a snap decision. He rarely made such decisions, but when he did he trusted the instinct. Turning on his heel, he felt the satisfying crunch of metal on flesh, heard the sound of meat being ripped, saw Jeremy’s eyes like two broken saucers before him. Silas forced the shears, lodged deep into the cop’s abdomen, to open up, spreading the hole until it gaped like the mouth of hell.
Jeremy’s lips opened in a soundless cry, his hands falling to his gut. Silas withdrew the shears, now bloodied and needing a cleaning. That was a shame. Hot, red blood began to spread across Jeremy’s shirt, right in the center, his stomach ripped open, pain dancing through him like a fevered ballerina. He’d never known such pain.
Blackness flooded his eyes, and his head spun, began to detach from his shoulders. It was as though he could look down and see himself, his hands desperately but uselessly clutching his open flesh as if he could hold the wound closed even as his blood poured from him, dripping onto the ground. He saw Gabriella, her eyes closed, tears streaking clear paths across her bloodied face as she fell to the side and heaved with sobs. Silas before him, looking idly down at the shears, then back up at Jeremy expectantly. Waiting for him to fall down, pass out, and die.
Jeremy didn’t want to give him the pleasure, but he had no choice. First, he crumpled to his knees, now staring up at the devil who’d did this to him, hating the feeling of kneeling before Silas almost as much as he hated the feeling of his life leaving his body. He didn’t want to die like this, in this submissive pose, like he was about to lick his boots.
Perhaps this is what you deserve though, Jeremy’s mind flickered, the thought completely blindsiding him. He crumpled next onto his hands, then onto the floor, where his blood pooled around him, filling the room with the smell of metal. He didn’t have many thoughts after that. The room spun, then disappeared, and then everything disappeared, even his thoughts. Life pulsed through him once, twice, three times…and then stopped. As suddenly as his life had begun, it was over.
Silas shook his head, looking around for a rag to wipe his shears on. The body count was rising. He hated cleaning up after killings. He briefly considered getting rid of the chick now, before she could cause any trouble. Mostly just because it’s easier to dispose of two bodies at once than one body twice.
But he figured it would be more helpful to have her alive in case of emergency. If none of his other little gifts to Reign would compel him to come save his damsel, her voice just might. He didn’t worry about the other half of the money Jeremy owed him. He’d search the wallet, take what he found. He’d make out like a bandit regardless. This was better, anyhow. He never fully trusted the cop to keep his trap shut to his buddies on the force.
Gabriella stared at her husband’s lifeless body, unable to breathe or swallow or do anything. He had been her last hope. Now she was locked up with this maniac who wanted to cut off her toes. And kill me, too, she thought, her mind growing hazy the more she looked at Jeremy, his hands, once so full of violent energy, now limp and shapeless, blood pooling around and between his fingers.
My husband is dead, she thought from somewhere far off. I’m finally safe.
Silas didn’t see it, but as Gabriella fell away into her own mind, passing from consciousness to unconsciousness like a ghost passing through a wall, she was laughing.
30
Reign saw a dark shape emerging before him on the highway. It looked like a car, parked sideways across the road. As he got closer, he saw that that’s just what it was. And as he got closer, his heart began to speed up even as his bike slowed down. It was a red car. A convertible. Tires shredded. Marks on the pavement, illuminated as his headlights got in range. He knew that car.
His hands trembled as the bike rolled to a stop and he placed his feet on the ground, reaching up to remove his helmet. What happened, he wondered, mind racing with awful possibilities. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a natural hazard of the road. Those tires were more than popped; they were destroyed. All of them. And who would leave the car right in the road?
Someone who didn’t have time to call a tow truck.
Or didn’t care.
It was Gabriella’s car. And she wasn’t in it.
They were shitty tires, her phone didn’t have service, she walked to get help…
But why wouldn’t she walk back to town, in that case? There wasn’t another place for miles, and he hadn’t passed her on the fifteen miles between town and here. Reign pulled out his own ph
one, the same carrier and style that he’d given Gabriella. He had plenty of bars.
This was bad. This was very bad. Reign trembled, and thought, surprisingly, of his sister.
Not another, he thought, the idea bringing a kink into his jaw as he grit his teeth. I won’t lose another woman I love.
He didn’t protect his sister.
He wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.
Something awful had happened to Gabriella, and he wasn’t just going to leave her to her shithead ex-husband’s devices. Not like Miranda.
Kicking his bike back to life, Reign hooked around and sped back down the road; if ever there was a time he needed his club’s help, it was now. He’d have every man scouring the town and everything in a hundred-mile radius, and by sunrise she’d be safe. It had to be so. He couldn’t imagine the alternative…it wouldn’t be right. He wasn’t a good man, but he couldn’t be so bad as to deserve this again.
The bar came into view, and he peeled off the road, parking his bike randomly off to the side. His stride as he walked across the porch and into the bar was the stride of a leader, a man with a mission, someone who would accept no argument or denial. He carried this same aura with him, and everyone knew when he entered. Heads turned; half-drunk, the gathered members of the Black Smoke Motorcycle Club rose to greet him, all feeling his determination.
Honey put down the glass of beer she’d been filling from the tap, the head foaming up as she stared at Reign, anxiety rising like bubbles in her throat. I should have told him, she thought suddenly, knowing from the look on Reign’s face that there could only be one explanation.
Something had happened to the girl, and Reign had found out. Somehow, that little bike ride he’d taken had brought him straight to the conclusion that something was dreadfully wrong with Gabriella. And Honey was the only one, besides Endo, who might have a clue about the particulars.