“Okay, so what does it matter? The bastard is six feet under now.” I mutter, annoyed we’re even talking about the bastard.
“They want us to help get a woman who’s being held captive.” Zane tells me, ‘cause obviously Blackjack and Fist know what he’s talking about.
“Okay, so they want us to go down to Wyoming?” I ask, shocked these guys even knew about it.
Fist cocks a brow; Blackjack makes a grumble and Zane blinks a few dozen times in the couple moments of silence between the group of us. Fist is the one who speaks, “Wyoming? Why’d we go to Wyoming?”
“‘Cause that could be where they are. I know someone who overheard Blossom talkin’ to someone about the Bears.”
“The agent never gave us the location of the club. Shit, this means we have a lead before they do. I’m all for helping this girl, but I want revenge on what happened to Cracker and Saffron. Agent Williams wants to lock Grizzly up, but if I can get to him before she does, I’ll make that fucker suffer.”
Fist downs his beer and walks away from us, back into his house. “Guess we’re heading out in the morning.”
Zane cackles, “You and I both know we’ll be heading out sooner than that. Better go get some shut eye before we go hunting.”
Chapter Six
She did it anyway (because she is brave)
~ Unknown
Alexa/Lola
I wake to a crippling burning sensation striking my back. Unlike the rest of the time, the lights in the basement are on and there’s a group of men standing in the room. Instantly I recognize Grizzly and Rascal, but the other three are strangers to me. They all remind me of the type of people from the sticks you should steer clear of. They look rough around the edges. One has facial hair that sticks out in numerous lengths, obviously unkept. Another is so pale you’d think he’s a cadaver, and the last one . . . well, the teardrop tattoos coming from his eye tell me the type of people he’s affiliated with.
Now I’m only left contemplating one thing: what the hell is going on?
“I’m done doing this his way. Rascal has his eye on you girl, and you’ve blinded him. Now if you don’t tell me the information I need I’ll do the same to you. You see this knife here?” Grizzly asks, pointing to a long blade. It must be five or six inches long. If I’m not mistaken, it’s a hunting knife. I’ve never gone hunting or killed anything in my entire life. Or, crap, that’s a lie. I hit a rabbit when I was twenty. I tried to stop but the little fucker was an idiot and ran faster. I cried for a while but accepted it for what it is, Darwinism in its finest form.
I nod at his question, waiting for him to say more.
“I will take this knife and stick it straight into that pretty eye of yours. Then I’ll drag it around until I can cut it out. Who knows what I’ll do then, I might even eat it.”
Every part of me wants to gag. It would be a natural reaction, right? But I can’t because I hear the sense of seriousness laced in his tone. Grizzly isn’t threatening me in any way. Instead he’s making a sickening promise. Somehow, I feel like regardless of what happens he’ll do what he wants to me.
“Do you understand me, girl?” He yanks back a long, black whip and slams it down onto my flesh. My skin feels like a match has been lit and is running across my skin, lasting for moments after the impact. I try my hardest to not react to what he’s done, however it’s no use. While I’m strong, I’m also human and the tears well behind my eyes as my throat closes in.
Anxiety and fear take over my body. I’m anxious because I’m in the room with a man who is obviously a psychopath. From what I’ve heard him say when he’s upstairs with Rascal he’s one of the easiest to profile. Grizzly would take no remorse in his actions, much like fictional serial killers like Hannibal Lector. However, I don’t believe he’d go to the lengths of displaying his killings. Grizzly is the type of killer who gets high off the pain of his victim, craving to see the pain and fear in their eyes as he has the most control over them than any other person will ever have. He’d stick a bag over my face and suffocate me, getting a hard on every time I’d gasp for air. Or, he’d stick my head in water and hold me down until I didn’t move another inch.
Damn, why am I even thinking like this right now?
I nod, showing him I’ve fully comprehended everything he’s just said.
“I’ll cut to the chase. I want to know where your deadbeat daddy is.”
There’s no way he could mean my actual father. I changed my name when I was a minor which means any access to that information is highly restricted. It’s as if Lola Müller never existed. The whip strikes my skin yet again, digging deep into my arm. I pull it back to my body covering it with my other hand in the hopes he’ll stop.
I should consider myself lucky I’m even able to move in the first place. Since I’ve been in the basement I’ve been allowed to walk around on this cold floor, able to stretch my damn legs which are now weak as hell. I can barely stand without wanting to topple over. They only feed me the bare minimum. The same goes with water. I bet that’s their master plan. Minimize the amount of food and water I’m intaking so I become desperate and give them the information they desire.
The joke’s on them, though. I haven’t seen my father in years, and I don’t plan on it either.
“Are you going to speak up, or should I whip you again?” Grizzly asks. My attention is focused on him until I hear a cackling laughter from one of the other men. The one with the scraggly beard.
“We could always do things my way, Prez. If we do . . . she’ll beg for it all to stop.”
“Was I speaking to you, boy?!” Grizzly hollers out, snapping the whip in the other man’s direction. I watch him fall to the ground as the leather hits him and he whimpers out in pain. While Grizzly is focused on this idiot, Rascal keeps his eyes on me. While he is cruel there is something more to the way he talks to me. I may sound crazy, or like one of those women who start to develop Stockholm syndrome, but I sense it.
Now, I’m not saying I’m in love with the dude or anything close to it. But I can see how he has this . . . interesting pull toward me. While it gives me the creeps, I’ll use whatever I can to my advantage.
Grizzly returns his attention to me, starting to flick his wrist up in the motion I’m becoming very used to. “Okay, okay! I don’t know who you’re talking about. Can you elaborate?”
Grizzly walks around me in a circle and suddenly everything becomes quiet. The only thing I hear is the clicking of his steel toed boots against the concrete floor. He makes a clicking sound with his tongue before he starts to speak. “Tsk. Tsk. Lola, you should know better than to lie.” My heart sinks into my stomach at hearing me being called by my birth name. A name I haven’t heard in over sixteen years. Lola was a scared, naïve little girl who only wanted to stay alive. Now I’m known by Alexa. Alexa is so much different than Lola. Alexa is a survivor. She’s a woman who put herself in self-defense classes, who graduated college with the highest GPA in her class and made valedictorian. Alexa took every awful thing that made Lola afraid and used it to fuel her drive and ambition.”
I feel the whip wrap around my neck and look up to see Grizzly smiling as he tightens his grip. “Come here boy,” He hollers and the man who suggested he take care of me comes walking over. Grizzly hands him the end of the whip and pulls out the knife, bringing it just below my left eyelid. “Now, how about we try this again. Where is that father of yours?”
I try to take in a deep breath but I’m unable to. Fuck! Regardless, I’m screwed here. He won’t believe a word I say. “I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen that bastard since I was sixteen!”
“You see, I wanna believe you, but I don’t.” The sharp end of the knife comes closer and I feel it dig into my eyeball. Screams heavily flow out of my mouth until I don’t know how I’m even breathing. I feel wetness sliding down the side of my cheek and think it’s tears until I shift my head down and see the crimson red color of blood.
If that isn
’t the worst part, I see my eye rolling on the floor in front of me.
Chapter Seven
Fear does not stop death. It stops life
~ Unknown
Alexa/Lola
My head pounds as I wake, not even realizing I had fallen asleep. Did I fall asleep or did I pass out from the torment I just endured? Placing my arms under my body I push myself up, look around the room and see I’m alone.
Surprisingly the light was left on, however, I don’t see any light coming through the windows. This only means it’s either the middle of the night or early in the morning. I try to stand up and somehow do, but lightheadedness hits me like a slap in the face. Floaters appear in my eye while I feel insanely weak. I decide to go back to the ground and lay on my back. The concrete hurts but not nearly as bad as it typically does.
Heck, I think everything I experienced not long ago is a dream until I see blood covering my naked body. I glance over to the floor and see a puddle of blood, and a few feet away is . . . is my eye. I can’t hold my stomach contents down this time. The little I’ve eaten and drank comes pouring out of me bit by bit.
Since I’m alone with the light on I can take my time to glance around the room and become familiar with it. When I was in the shed I was restrained, unable to use anything to my advantage. Here I haven’t been tied up in the same way. I’m not sure why they haven’t limited me to any extent . . . but you won’t see me complaining either.
There are two electrical boxes in the back right hand corner of the basement with some sort of thick wrap around the tubing. I don’t want to call it a pipe because that would be inaccurate. There’s no hard surface to it from what I can see. It kind of looks like electrical tape wrapped around something numerous times.
Four large green columns go up through a concrete block in the floor and hold up parts of the basement, giving them structural support. I’ve run into one or two of them before but I’ve never seen them until now. The basement is some sort of older brick and I’m not talking nineteen-seventies. It looks like something you’d see in the eighteen-hundreds, old stacked stone on top of the other with concrete holding it together. The stone is partially painted over but it’s peeling in most places. This is when I see a pipe half-way hanging off the wall.
I refuse to be dumb and not use the tool I see right in front of my face. In all my time here I haven’t been given an opportunity like this. My entire body aches from top to bottom. I’m exhausted, extremely malnourished and to top it all off the left side of my face is stinging from the blade he cut me with earlier.
Putting one hand in front of the other and using my knees to the best of my ability I army crawl over to the other side of the basement where the hanging pipe is. If this thing is as old as I think it could be, it’ll be the perfect weapon to use. I sit on my ass as I reach the hanging pipe and place my hands around the edge, pulling with all my might. Surprisingly it gives way after a mere few seconds of me pulling. I make sure to hold on tightly so the metal doesn’t clink against the floor and notify my captors something is going on.
I can tell the boxes on the other wall are electrical ones, however I’m not sure why there are two boxes instead of one. I hold the pipe close to my chest as I slowly venture over to the wall where the boxes are and return to sitting on my butt. From glancing at the boxes there isn’t any sort of lock on them and I think this is too good to be true. Surely they would’ve protected their electricity in some way.
Now that I see how easy this should be, I muster up every ounce of strength I have, move up onto my knees and bring my body upward into a standing position. With my fingers I open both boxes, place the pipe between my legs and hold it as I flip off every switch I can. Within a matter of minutes, I hear cursing from upstairs and even the basement returns to its usual pitch-black darkness.
Grabbing the pipe from my legs, the harsh sounds of boots pounding against the wooden floor become closer and closer until I hear the awful creaking sound of the basement door come flying open.
“What in the hell is going on?” Grizzly hollers out, more agitated than I’ve ever heard him before.
“Looks like the power went out, Prez.” Rascal replies. No sooner as he finishes talking Grizzly chuckles in a way which makes me think he’s furious.
“I doubt the power just went out, Rascal. The bitch you’re into flipped the switches to the boxes. I thought I told you to shut the fucking light off. You didn’t do what I said, did you?!” At this point Grizzly is screaming and it’s incredibly easy to figure out where he is.
I make my way around the two of them and place my hand in front of me, feeling for the door. It takes a couple of minutes for me to find it, but I do. Meanwhile they’re both cursing as they fail to find me. I take a step up and bring the door shut, closing it and lock the handle like they always do.
Cursing greets me once again and I make my way up the stairs, dropping to my knees and crawling up them one by one. My head hurts more than it ever has before. You’d think someone is shoving an ice pick through my ear with how it radiates to the front and back. Add in the pain I’m trying to ignore from my eye being carved out and I’m in pure hell. Fuck, I know they did this for a reason. They purposefully have been feeding me the littlest they can which will still keep me alive. They didn’t want to give me any advantage if I somehow managed to escape.
I take it slow but am able to get to the first floor. It’s pitch-black like the rest of the house so I crawl around, trying to keep as quiet as I can. Who knows where the other three men are? If I’m lucky, they’re still in bed.
It takes me about ten minutes to find the front door, place my hand on the knob and open it. I don’t bother shutting it, but instead crawl onto the porch and down the few steps onto the snow-covered ground. Shit. I didn’t think about this. They’ll be able to follow me so easily once the sun rises.
I stop for a moment, seeing the sky starting to turn orange. I need to get a move on before I get caught. I continue crawling through the pain and I maybe make it fifteen feet before I hear a whistle come up from behind me. “Well, my, my. How’d you manage to get out?”
Chapter Eight
“You win some, you lose some. Except for me. I always win.”
~ Unknown
Bull
I didn’t get an ounce of sleep last night. Instead, I drank plenty of water and filled my stomach. The last thing I wanted was to drive out here with a hangover, or even still drunk. The drive out to Big Horn was a little over two hours away from us. Instead of getting on our bikes, we hopped in a couple of trucks. Fist and I took one truck, whereas Zane and Blackjack hopped in the other. We didn’t want everyone to come along with us since this is such an important mission. Hell, even if we got all of them to bed and forced them to drink a gallon of water I can bet they’d still have cinnamon rum flowing through their veins.
From what Roxy said she didn’t have the exact location of where the Bears now are, but she did say they’re on the edge of the National Forest. There aren’t too many who live out this way, so I’m positive we’ll be able to locate where they’ve been hiding out.
I have my hands on the wheel when Fist speaks up, “I called Boomer. He told me they saw someone moved into an old abandoned cabin a few weeks back. I’m pretty sure this would be them.”
Shit. I didn’t think Fist would ever call Boomer unless he was desperate. Those two have a shit ton of drama between their two families. Unlike the Bears, Fist and Boomer’s dad were able to have a successful truce. Boomer’s dad retired a few years back and his son was voted to be the new Prez of the Corrupt Kings MC.
“They giving us backup?”
Fist grumbles back his response, “Mhm. Apparently Grizzly has been making shit difficult for them too.”
Honestly, I’m still a bit surprised Fist even wanted to come along. He’s been sticking to himself so much none of us really know what he’ll do. I’d call this a good surprise, though. “Have you thought about how you’re going to do
this yet?” I ask Fist, knowing the old man has probably dreamed about this day for weeks. Hell, spending that much time alone should give you the mentality to plan how to axe someone who’s harmed the people you love numerous times.
“Of course I have, but nothing will be enough. No matter what I do, it won’t make up for the great losses we’ve all had.”
I nod, understanding what he means. There’s no amount of revenge that ever makes losing a loved one feel better. Fuck, I’d know. When I was in MARSOC one of my sisters was killed by a target. I made it my own personal mission to hunt the bastard down and make him suffer. I think that was the moment I knew staying in MARSOC wasn’t the right choice for me. Instead of following a direct order I went on my own time and took care of the bastard. It didn’t matter if I was caught on surveillance doing what needed to be done. I just knew how I needed to avenge my fallen sister. What no one knew is Arizona was more than another member in uniform. The woman made every sacrifice she could for her country, but more than that, she had my damn heart. The moment she died in my arms was the one time I felt completely helpless. That day I started to hate the chain of command, the order that wasn’t given which ended up resulting in me losing the first woman I ever loved. Two days later the accident happened and I lost not only my legs after being too close to a bomb, but everyone else in my squadron. I didn’t know if I was lucky or being eternally damned to hell.
I was discharged from MARSOC after losing my legs and went through hell trying to recover. I found the MC afterward and found a new squadron so to speak, one who didn’t need to follow a chain of command and would do what needed to be done versus twiddling their fucking thumbs and waiting.
Chaos: A Reapers MC Boxset Page 33