“You have no idea.”
When we approached the door, Lil’jon took a key out of his pocket and let me in, saying, “Are you okay in there alone?”
I wasn’t, not at all, but Lil’jon wasn’t who I wanted with me. “Just find Mathias, okay?”
“I will, Jessa,” he promised. I walked in and the door shut behind me.
And the lock clicked.
At first, I thought, of course he’d lock me in because then Charlie couldn’t escape. But Charlie was chained to the wall.
Or at least he had been, at one point. Now, he was behind me, his hand covering my throat, another stuffing a rag in my mouth so I couldn’t scream. I gagged hard and he didn’t let go. He tied my hands behind me, plastic biting into my wrists.
“I’ll bet you want to know what I’m going to do with you?” he asked. “I don’t have long before I need to decide. I’m leaving tonight. I could bring you to Keller’s with me and do our original deal. I think that might be the best thing. Or, I could just send you back home to D.C.”
Both options had me seeing white-hot anger coupled with intense fear, but I couldn’t say anything through the gag.
I didn’t have to, because he continued, “But don’t worry, that going-home part’s not an option. See, I called home, Jessa. I spoke to your father and I told him that you were alive. And do you know what he said? What your mother said?”
I didn’t want to know—not then, not ever—but Charlie wasn’t giving me that option. Instead, he yanked my hair and he held out a tape recorder and he forced my ear down to the speaker so I could listen. And then he pressed the play button.
Charlie’s voice was first. “Yeah, she’s here, with me. I’ve got some help in getting out but I need more. Things got a little rough.”
“I thought you were taking care of her.” My father’s voice, but something in his tone didn’t jive with the “taking care of her” line.
“I tried. Look, I can still bring Jessa home.”
“That’s not what we wanted, Charlie. That wasn’t the agreement.”
“What do you want me to do? Leave her kidnapped by a biker gang?”
“If you pay them enough, will they take care of it?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. We’ll make sure the money gets to you. Enough to free you and enough to take care of the other problem.”
“This isn’t my fault. You shouldn’t have checked her into that hospital after she tried to kill herself.”
“I wouldn’t have if her mother and I would’ve been the ones who found her,” my father said, and then the tape stopped and I stared at Charlie in horror.
“Yeah, Jessa, that’s right. You’re the other problem. We can’t have you running around, spilling what you know.”
Who would I tell? What difference would it make? I wanted to ask, and that was the truth. It’s not like I could go to foreign governments and tell them what the United States was planning, and even so, I didn’t have any proof.
“It’s just bad for business, Jessa. Especially if the lights do come back on.”
“Just leave me here.” I said it through the gag, but even though it was unintelligible, he knew what I wanted—he’d known it all along.
He laughed. “You’d like that, to stay here and be that biker’s slut, but I can’t trust you. I could never trust you. I should’ve gotten rid of you a long time ago, just like your parents asked.”
In the air tonight
Tru
“Hey babe.” Caspar’s arms slid around her waist and Tru ran her hands over his muscled forearms.
She looked over her shoulder and he caught her mouth for a kiss. “Hey. I thought you’d be with Jessa.”
“Why’s that?”
She pulled out of Caspar’s arms, but only so she could face him. “Because she’s with Charlie, on your orders.”
Caspar shook his head slowly and Tru grabbed at him. “Go get her, Cas—please...something’s really wrong.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Numb
Mathias
Something was very wrong. I froze as my body chilled and I tried to figure out what was happening. My first thoughts ran to Bish and I put my palms against my forehead and tried to concentrate.
Was he hurt? Because I hurt and, fuck, if something had happened to him in Keller’s care...
“He’s gone, he’s gone!”
Lil’jon was shouting that, over and over, and it didn’t fully register where my pain was coming from until I looked up and saw what was happening for myself.
A crowd had formed around the middle of the compound, oddly silent after Lil’jon’s warning. I tried to focus, to push down the panic and anger forming, and I saw the people moving back, moving away from something coming toward them.
Not something. Someone.
Charlie.
He’s gone was Lil’jon’s way of saying, He escaped. And he’d grabbed Jessa.
Caspar was next to me. “You don’t know if she helped him.”
I know she didn’t, I signed as I watched Charlie and Jessa move toward the main gates. He’s got to have someone waiting for him.
“Keller or LoV?”
I hated to say it, but I did. Defiance.
Caspar’s silence was a heavy weight between us. Then he disappeared, leaving me to track Charlie and Jessa. I was hidden behind the heavy scrub that thrived in this weather. Brown, thorned, twisted and heavy, it was both dangerous and yet provided excellent cover. I bent on one knee and pulled my weapon. Wished I had my rifle but there wasn’t time to grab it.
You don’t have to rely on your weapon—you are one. You know the right places to hit.
Bish’s voice, in my ear, the way it always was when we were on the hill, reconning, and he was my spotter. This was one of the most important shots of my life and I’d have to take it alone.
The one thing I wouldn’t do was take it in secret. If I was going to kill Charlie, I’d do it face-to-face, so he’d know. I watched a few seconds longer as he dragged her with a hand around her neck and a gun to her head. He was darting looks left and right. All around him, Defiance members were moving aside, clearing a path.
I couldn’t look anywhere but at Jessa. And once Charlie was firmly in the clearing, I stepped out from the cover. He froze and then pushed the gun harder against her, making her cry out in surprise and pain. I clenched my hand around my gun, then released the grip to the looser one I’d need in order to take my shot.
“Get out of my way,” Charlie snarled. I shook my head as I took a step forward and he took a step back. I kept moving forward, determined while he continued his retreat, holding tight to Jessa as he did.
We were the only ones moving.
“I’ll shoot her if you come closer,” Charlie threatened.
No, you won’t.
“I don’t know what you’re saying, you fucking freak.”
“Mathias says you’re a weak-willed asshole,” Jessa told Charlie, her voice little more than a gasp. “He knows you can’t shoot me.”
“Sure I can, honey. Then I’ll blame Defiance. Either way, you and your boyfriend are screwed,” Charlie said.
I pulled my weapon, ready to take the shot, but Charlie started to fall before I could. That was the start of the confusion, and I saw the look of panic on Jessa’s face as Charlie jerked against her from the force of the shots. As his knees buckled, she pushed him away and I got off a shot to his hand. He still got off his shot, but not where he’d intended, because he’d been trying to kill her.
As it was, blood blossomed against her shirt. He’d hit her, but she was running from him and toward me and more shots fired. But they weren’t mine.
Charlie finally collapsed, facedown on the ground at the same time Jessa threw
herself into my arms. I tightened my arms around her, my hand covering where the bullet had hit her. As I felt her blood on my hands, I looked over her shoulder to see Hammer, standing there, weapon now at his side. The look in his eyes was something I never wanted to see again. This hadn’t been so much about Jessa as it was avenging the woman he hadn’t been able to when she’d been hurt.
I stared at him until he caught my gaze and only then did his expression change. He gave a nod in my direction and went to Charlie. I picked Jessa up gingerly and walked her to the infirmary, ignoring the confusion that ensued once everyone started talking again. There were a few hands that touched my shoulder, offers of help, but I kept moving as Jessa trembled in my arms.
Someone must’ve gotten to the doctors faster, because the doc named Fred was waiting for me, along with Aimee. They had a stretcher and I lowered her onto it, but she wouldn’t unwrap her arms from around my neck. We all pushed the stretcher inside that way, and Aimee spoke to Jessa calmly, explaining that the doctor was going to give her something for the pain. That I’d be there when she woke up, and Jessa peered up to look at me.
I will, I mouthed.
She nodded and finally let go, but I held her hand until she fell asleep.
“You can stay,” Fred told me. He’d learned, after trying to kick countless people out of situations like this, that no one around here shied away from blood. He’d cut her shirt off, put a sterile sheet over her and eyed the wound. I knew the bullet hadn’t exited, and I also knew that it was sometimes better to leave it in than risk more injury taking it out.
I hated that she’d have a mark on her, never mind a bullet from Charlie inside of her indefinitely. But I wanted Fred to do what was best for her and I stayed the entire time, until they’d irrigated the wound, determined it was best to leave the bullet in. She had IV lines running with antibiotics and pain meds, and finally, Fred told me she was out of the woods.
“I gave her a good dose of pain meds. She’ll sleep for a while,” Fred told me. “Might want to get comfortable.”
The only comfortable place I had was in her arms, but I refrained from telling Fred that. Instead, I pulled up an old recliner they kept by the bedside, close enough so that I could reach out and grab her hand—or her, if I needed to.
I also kept my weapon out, and a couple of hours later, I woke up blinking and grabbing for my gun when Hammer said, “Just me, Mathias. Do no harm.”
I looked up at the big blond guy standing in the middle of the room with his arms up and muttered, Shit, silently.
“I get it, man. It’s one of the reasons Aimee won’t sleep in the same bed with me yet.”
Ah jeez. I signed, Sorry, and even though Hammer didn’t know many signs, he got the gist of that.
“Yeah, me too.”
Thank you, I signed, pointed to Jessa.
“I know you’d have killed him. But he was still her husband. She might’ve hated you for it at some point, no matter how much she didn’t love him,” Hammer explained. “I didn’t want that for you.”
Aimee doesn’t hate you for not being there. I had to write that on the back of the pad of paper by Jessa’s bedside. Hammer took the paper off the pad and held it, so hard it crumpled a bit in his grip. It was like he wanted to remember those words, or he wanted desperately to believe them and couldn’t yet. He shoved it in his pocket and then nodded in my direction.
“I’m glad she’s all right, man.”
I shook his hand. Mouthed, I owe you, and that he understood.
“Good. Then you’ll have to stick around,” was the last thing he said before he left the room.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Light comes out of black
Jessa
I woke in a haze, hearing a male voice. For a long moment, I had no idea where I was and panic shot through me. I tried to sit up and hands were on my shoulders. When I felt the mouth against my cheek, I stopped resisting, because I knew it was Mathias. I recognized his mouth moving against me.
He was saying, I love you, the way he’d said it over and over against my cheek after I’d been shot. And I signed it, the way I had as he’d carried me, but just in case he hadn’t seen it then, I made sure he watched me sign it now.
Good, he mouthed.
“Yes, good,” I told him. I was so tired, but I didn’t want to go back to sleep. “What happens now? Because I know they’re nice here, but I’m a little tired of ending up in the infirmary, for any reason.”
I’ll make sure of it, he mouthed.
“You know, you’re going to have to teach me more signs,” I said gently. I didn’t want to rub in the fact that Bishop wasn’t here to translate, but then again, it’s not like it wasn’t on Mathias’s mind constantly.
I know, he mouthed, and then he reached back and picked up a pair of headphones. Rest.
He slid them on and put on music for me, some slower ballads, and I let the music and the touch of Mathias’s hand on mine pull me back under.
Wild boys wander far from glory
Mathias
I’d been so wrapped up in Jessa that I’d forgotten about the fact that someone had helped Charlie grab her in the first place. I sat in the dark room, wondering about Bish and thinking about how that connection I had with him had extended to Jessa today.
“You’d go to Bishop if you could.”
Jessa’s voice, weak but not unkind, reached out to me in the dark. I couldn’t lie so I didn’t bother trying. The fact was, I was here with her, not running off to find Bish, and that meant something too. This was what he’d wanted. And Jessa was who I wanted.
I moved close to her bed and leaned against it. The alphasmart was at her bedside and I typed, Doctor said you can leave tomorrow.
She looked confused, not at what I typed but why I was using the device in the first place. “Don’t, Mathias. Don’t push me away now.”
I guess that’s what I was doing, putting some distance between us. I typed, You almost died.
“I found out that I get to live. And I’m really beginning to understand that sentiment.” She paused. “I’ll go with you to find Bishop.”
We can’t. He doesn’t want that.
She thought about that for a moment. “Then we’ll wait here for him. He’ll know where to find us if he needs us, and when he’s done, he’ll come back.”
He won’t be the same. I thought that, but I didn’t sign it, because maybe giving some kind of voice to it would make it true. But it continued echoing in my mind until I discovered Caspar watching me from the doorway.
“Jessa, how are you?” he asked and she nodded, managed, “I’m okay.”
“Good. Listen, gonna borrow your man for a minute.”
She nodded again and closed her eyes and I stood and headed outside. Aimee passed by me to wait with Jessa, and she gave me a quick, reassuring pat on my arm as she passed.
Caspar lit a cigarette and offered me one. I took it, letting the smoke swirl around me with its comforting warmth.
Finally, I signed, It was Lil’jon, and Caspar nodded. Taken care of?
“Yeah. Figured I had to make an example. You had your hands full.”
He’d killed Lil’jon, no doubt in front of many other Defiance members, because of his transgression.
I owe you.
“Yeah, you do. You owe me what you promised.”
I’ll follow through.
“I know. For now, go back to your girl.”
That’s exactly what I did. She was awake when I walked back inside and she said, “What did Caspar do to Lil’jon?”
I guess she’d been more awake than I’d thought when Caspar had first walked in. He’s not our problem anymore.
“Good.” Then she asked, “Did you hear the tape?” and when I nodded, she said, “Did everyo
ne?”
Only the men who sit at the table. And only so they’d know what they were up against, in case this was all a ruse.
“It’s not,” she said. “I heard my father’s voice. You know it makes sense now.”
I did, but I wished I didn’t have to tell her I agreed. She was torn apart by it anyway.
“What hurts the most is that I wasted my whole life, up until this point. If I’d just had the courage to run earlier...they would’ve let me. They wanted me to disappear.”
But you didn’t. And that’s the kind of fate shit I’m talking about.
She blinked up at me, and I knew it wouldn’t be as easy as that. Words didn’t always cut it in these situations, but sometimes, some of them did. I love you, Jessa. From the first moment I saw you. For now, let that be enough.
“Enough?” she asked. “Mathias, that’s everything. Everything.”
And then she said, “Can you get me a line to D.C.?”
Baby, I know you’d always be around
Mathias
Jessa had gotten through to D.C. with a series of special codes. With so many people attempting to contact the government by any means possible, D.C. had come up with the codes as a way to make sure that the people who needed to get through to them did.
Caspar and I’d listened while she’d told her father, in no uncertain terms, that she knew what he and Charlie’s father had done. That she had proof of what they’d planned on doing to her. And that she would take everything to the proper authorities.
Defiance had saved her, but Jessa had saved Defiance as well.
The one thing she didn’t ask was her father’s influence to pressure Keller into giving Defiance supplies without Bish. Because she understood, like me, that Bish’s debt to me was something he’d felt could never be repaid.
But this sacrifice, goddammit, this did repay it in spades. All debts were done and now, three months later, three months into Bish’s sentence, I was a full-fledged Defiance member.
For what Bish had done, he’d be able to patch in the second he walked back into Defiance.
The new rules shortened the probie time from two years down to three months, and technically, the six months I’d already been with Defiance didn’t count. But hell, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going anywhere and I wasn’t doing anything differently. I was still training people, taking shifts to guard against outside dangers. Doing what Caspar and the other twelve who ran the table needed. The only difference was my pledge to be Defiance, not just that I was staying there.
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