by Brook Wilder
“I know. I just want to keep it in my memory, how warm you are.”
They continued to hold each other for a few minutes, keeping each other close and not paying any attention to the fact that they were surrounded by several people, many of which were probably making fun of them and cracking jokes.
Then Hannah watched Chance leave. Everyone shuffled out of the apartment and down to their bikes and he was the last one to go like a captain going down with his ship. He lingered in the doorway, looking at Hannah with such adoration that she almost wanted to tackle him and drag him back into the apartment and not let him go anywhere at all. But instead they nodded to each other and he walked away. He turned out the door and then he was gone and she was left to stare at the empty doorway. He left it open like a promise to come back and close it and she almost didn’t want to go and close it herself.
She was left there with Cindy and their own anxieties. Hannah knew that Cindy had it worse. She’d been worried over Moose for an entire night and now only seen him for a few seconds before he was gone again to do something far more dangerous. But she didn’t know. Maybe it would be better so have someone else help her bear this burden.
“It will be okay,” Hannah said, walking up to Cindy, placing a hand on her shoulder and gently shutting the door that Chance had left open, the sounds of motorcycles in the distance fading as they moved farther and farther away.
“I know,” Cindy said. “At least I hope I know.”
“Can I share something with you?” Hannah asked, sitting down on the couch and taking a breath.
“Always,” Cindy said, sitting down beside her. “Is everything okay?”
“It is,” she said. “Well, it won’t be if something goes wrong—it’s the reason I’m so worried about all this, not that I wouldn’t be worried anyway but there’s just—there’s something else—I’m pregnant.”
Cindy’s first reaction was a grin that nearly split her face in two. She leaned forward immediately hugged Hannah, holding her close and whispering her congratulations softly. When she pulled away, her face was a little more serious. She pushed some hair behind Hannah’s ear and smiling in comfort.
“It will all be okay,” she said. “I promise.”
***
Chance pushed all thoughts of Hannah from his mind as best he could. It was not exactly the easiest thing in the world to do. He could smell her shampoo with just one thought, he could still feel her warm skin beneath his fingertips. Perhaps he should not have lingered in her presence for so long. But he’d rather have it there to think about, to know and to feel, if he found himself bleeding on the floor and feeling the cold grip of the darkness coming for him to take him away from Hannah forever. He could at least hold onto her when she wasn’t there to comfort him.
He focused, instead, on the vibration of the bike beneath him, the throttle as he pulled ahead. Moose was just behind him and the other chapter leaders were neck and neck with him. Behind them the bikes followed, roaring to their backs like a tidal wave coming for Ben. There wouldn’t be trickery this time. There wouldn’t be sneaking or trying to gain the upper hand. They had the man power and they had the numbers, they were going to come at him full force. They were going to crush him. Espionage was over. He was going to rip Ben limb from limb for threatening his sister, for threatening Hannah, for trying to take his entire future away from him.
They got to the warehouse. The patrol was there and jumped into action the second the group pulled into the parking lot. Chance killed the engine on his bike and jumped off quickly, pulling out the crowbar he brought with him and stepping out to face down one of the men heading towards him, pulling a knife out of his belt. Chance landed the blow first, sending the swing of the crowbar straight into his stomach with as much force as he could possibly muster. The man doubled over and let out a pained groan as he dropped to the ground and gasped for breath.
Chance kept moving forward, Moose behind him. They met up with Link just out the front of the warehouse. He’d been bloodied in the forehead by something but was viciously wiping it from his eyes telling them to keep moving. He might have more cause than anyone for his anger. He’d watched his daughter be threatened by a man who had promised to love and protect her. Chance might have to battle Link for the chance to take out Ben himself. They’d cross that bridge when they got to it, however. They’d need the catch the maniac first.
So they moved into the warehouse. Now that they were inside, a certain amount of stealth was required to make it work. They were the only group members that had gotten inside, everyone else would be keeping the patrol and any other guards occupied. But they needed to maintain that cover. They kept the flashlight on low, half covered as they moved through the halls.
“What do you think we’re looking for?” Link said.
“Cindy said it was an office over top to the one workshop,” Moose hissed back. “She said it wasn’t the main office, he used it in case someone did come in to rob the place.”
Ben was a slippery snake. They wouldn’t have many shots at this. They needed to get it right and get it right now. They moved through the halls, simply keeping an eye out for anything that matched the description. Cindy hadn’t been sure exactly where in the warehouse it was located and had no way of knowing how they would enter, any directions would be useful.
“Should we split up?” Moose asked.
“We’ve discussed that before,” Chance said. “It’s never a good idea. We’re not in a rush. The guys will keep any back up out there occupied. We just need to move steady through this place and find what we’re looking for. The longer it takes the less likely we are of making a mistake and getting ourselves caught.”
Moose didn’t look like he completely agreed but he always didn’t seem keen on his own idea anyway. He wasn’t the fighter, Chance had always been the one to take on their biggest fights when they happened, Moose was the leg man, the getaway car.
So they moved on until Link yanked hard on both their arms, stopping them in their tracks. They turned to see a workshop that could fit the description. An office was sitting over top of the main floor, the light still on, the door ajar.
They didn’t say a word, running off together and into the workshop, jumping over boxes and chairs, headed for the steps that lead to the office. They scrambled up the stairs and into the office where they found it empty. The light was on, the door ajar, the chair pushed back as if it had recently been sat in but no other signs of a human being were visible in the room. They looked around quickly, tearing through papers and drawers, looking for clues like some teenage Scooby Gang. But Chance was getting desperate in his frustration. He needed to find something, he needed to find anything. He needed to get some kind of upper hand on Ben, he needed to get himself some kind of revenge for what he did.
But there was nothing to be had, the office had been cleaned out, the evidence gone, taken off into the night. Then Chance turned to look at the security monitors, and there was his second chance in the form of Ben taking off across the halls of the warehouse, running at a sprinting pace to get away.
Chance didn’t even wait, launching himself out of the office and down the stairs several at a time, heading after him.
Chapter 21
Somewhere behind him, Link and Moose somehow caught on and went out after Chance. They couldn’t keep up though, he was running on pure anger, pure hatred. He was running on nothing but adrenaline and desire to do horrible things. He was seeing red. He’d never been the type of be a murderer, it was the one part of this lifestyle that he found it hard to truly get behind. He’d shot people before, put bullets in their bodies and made them bleed, but he’d never killed anyone. He watched his father murder his enemies and torture people for information and he knew he could never be that man. But right now, all he could imagine was clawing out Ben’s eyes himself, punching him until his face was nothing but an unrecognizable bloody pulp. He wanted to make bruises everywhere.
Later, the feeling w
ould scare him. It would make him terrified of his own temper and wonder if there was something hiding beneath the surface that one day might hurt Hannah. But for now all he could focus on was the feeling of cement beneath his feet, pushing him forward towards where Ben was running from him. He felt the wind all around him, the breeze in the halls as he moved and moved. He didn’t know where to look, he didn’t know the warehouse well enough, but he could hope that his anger was righteous enough that maybe the universe was going to grant him the ability to find him.
He skidded around corners and his wish was granted. He collided with Ben. They tumbled together into the ground, sliding into the wall with groans and grunts and thuds. Chance was faster to recover, he scrambled to his feet. He grabbed at Ben who was dazed. He grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him to his feet, shoving him into the wall and pressing hard like he might just make him part of the wall itself. Ben was slowly coming to, his vision seemed to be clearing as his eyes focused better on Chance.
“You’re faster than I remember,” he grumbled out.
Behind them, Chance heard feet behind them as Link and Moose caught up with them. They were standing behind them.
“Knew you weren’t man enough to find me alone,” Ben coughed out in a wheezy laugh, the air having been knocked from his lungs.
“Shut up,” Chance ordered, spit flying from mouth.
Ben was just laughing. Chance punched him. He leveled his fist right across Ben’s face, colliding with his nose and feeling a satisfying crack under his fingers, a spurt of blood following. It wasn’t enough. Chance punched him again. Ben just laughed more.
“Chance, enough,” Link said. “You’re not going to solve anything. We need to get him out of here, back to—”
They were cut off by the sounds of sirens just outside the window. Flashes of red and blue lights followed, bouncing off the darkness in the halls. There were shouts and yells, cops yelling at bikers and vice versa.
“Shit,” Moose hissed.
This cut their time short by with each second they stayed standing there, staring down at each other. Ben was smirking some more. It was going to become a game of mercy. Who could last longer, who was willing to keep their hand over the burning fire for a long enough time to ensure they came out on top? Ben was ballsy, Ben was dangerous. Ben was going to get them all killed or arrested and Chance had a baby on the way. He had something to lose that no other man in that room had.
He needed to get out.
“Go,” Link said. “Both of you. We don’t win this round today. You need to go.”
Moose and Chance looked at one another. Chance took one last, long hard look at Ben before he sighed and shoved Ben back. He took his own steps back and out of the room. Moose was following him. They took off into the night as the lights and sirens from the cop cars chased them out of the darkness.
Chapter 22
Chance should not have felt as awful as he did when they got out. The police stormed the place. Someone had tipped them off and they went in with riot gear, perhaps expecting an army to be guarding the stashes on the inside if the patrol outside was so large. But there was nothing, Chance knew that as he watched the seen unfold. Around him, several members of the Black Death were being handcuffed and walked away from the scene by police officers in various stages of reading them their rights.
Chance was on edge, pacing around in front of his bike, his eyes going back to the hole in the wall the police had blown and entered through. Several more cops had gone around the building to secure the perimeter to ensure that no one would get in or out unless it was through their own made exit.
“We’ve got him,” Moose said. “Just relax for a second. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack after all this.”
Moose was leaned up against his bike. Despite his words and despite his apparent calm demeanor, Chance could see the agitation brewing beneath the surface of his skin. His knuckles were white from where they gripped to his biceps so painfully tight that his arms were stiff, his face pale. He was just as anxious, just as nervous to see what became of all this.
First came out the people who had been locked up in the building. Chance could have thrown up. There were so many of them exiting like it was some exodus of Hebrews to freedom. It was made worse that they were all ages.
“Jesus Christ,” Moose whispered as they both gaped at the scene. The crowd was immediately flocked with police officer and EMTs who instantly started asking questions and offering medical help.
“I’m going to fucking destroy him if he doesn’t get his ass kicked in jail,” Chance said, staring at the scene in utter horror.
Ben was going to sell all these people, different ages, different genders. He wasn’t just picking up some girl on the street here or there and deciding to dabble in the possibility of selling her off. This was a massive ring. He must have been the supplier for every pimp in the tri county area with the amount of people who were now pouring out of the building in droves.
“I’ll help you,” Moose growled, watching the whole thing as well.
Chance wondered how close his sister had come to being a part of Ben’s disgusting game.
Next came out boxes of weapons and drugs, tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of paraphilia came out of the warehouse in large boxes dragged out by teams of officers. Ben would be going to jail for life. There was no question about that.
Or he would have been. If they’d managed to catch him at all. Ben was gone. The search teams exited the building, declared it clear, and brought Link out with them. He seemed fine. There was no sign of a struggle, no sign that he’d been harmed in any way. But Ben was gone.
“He’s an eel,” Link said. “A lot of confusion happened when the cops came banging down on the door—not that I’m throwing blame anywhere.”
He was.
“So he got out,” Moose asked. “All that for nothing?”
“I wouldn’t say it was nothing,” Link corrected. “We freed an unfortunately large amount of people from modern day slavery. We just got thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs and weapons off the streets. We did good tonight, boys. We may not have gotten the grand prize. But we did a whole world of good just today.”
Chance wanted to believe that was true, he really, truly did. He wanted to be proud. He wanted to be happy that they’d managed to make a difference but all he could feel was the anger and the resentment growing inside him that they’d come so far only to trip at the finish line and lose. The big fish got away.
Chapter 23
Chance had every available man out on patrol every night looking for Ben. He even went as far as to call in a bounty on his head. That got quite a bit of attention but it still returned no results. Link was right. Ben was an eel slipping right through a fishing net and heading off into the night, blending into the blackness of the sea around him. It was frustrating and caused more than one night of missed sleep.
“Please just try to get some rest,” Hannah said, sitting down next to him one night when she found him awake. “I know it’s frustrating and scary for all of us but you’re only doing more harm to yourself by not sleeping. Plus, you’re letting him win by letting him get to you.”
“I’m not letting him do anything,” Chance snapped and then immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry.”
She sighed and rubbed his neck. Chance didn’t deserve how good Hannah had been to him in the past few weeks. He’d been a total nightmare, a complete pill to swallow. He was irritable and difficult and moody. She was pregnant, he was supposed to be waiting on her hand and foot and instead she was up at night comforting him. That needed to stop. They needed a change of pace, somewhere they could go to relax and unwind and block all of this out of their minds.
“How do you feel about moving?” he asked.
“Okay, now I know you need some sleep, come on,” she said, tugging at him.
“No, I mean it,” he said. “We can’t raise a kid here. I mean we could, but do we really want our k
ids first home to be our dingy apartment—”
“I think I cleaned it up pretty well, excuse you—”
“You did. But my point is. Our kid deserves a yard, a place to run around, somewhere with a view, right?”
She sighed and looked off out the window into the night sky. He could see the Hannahe desires that he’d been harboring playing out on her face as well. Every child deserved at least a place to run around and scrape their knee for the first time or somewhere they could kick a ball around. There was a quad in the apartment complex but they’d be sharing it with dozens of other people. Their child deserved a place entirely of their own.
So that’s how they found themselves back at the cabin where they first realized they could fall in love. It was exactly as they remembered.
Scout had moved out. She’d gotten herself back into the world. After a few weeks of reflection and solitude she decided she couldn’t take anymore solitary healing and returned home permanently. She did decide, however, that she was going to take over the lease on Chance’s place. It worked out for everyone, Scout got a fresh start for herself and they didn’t have to worry about incurring any punishing fees for breaking their lease. Everything seemed to be moving forward.