We go in, guns drawn and at the ready. Duke uses his chin to tell each brother which way he wants us to split off. We surround the cabin, cutting off any exits. Boss and I have Duke’s back. We keep to the shadows. It’s not hard, considering the setting sun has just about set, plunging us into a deceptively tranquil twilight.
I don’t get a good feeling seeing the front door cracked wide open. Animal prints and droppings everywhere. The smell. Oh, god damn, the smell. The stench of death is not something I would ever forget. How could anyone?
It’s all I can do to keep from retching. Instinct wants me to cover my nose and mouth, but I keep prepared, finger on the trigger, ready to fire. When we get close enough, that’s when we see a tennis shoe sticking out the door, the shoe and the foot inside it half eaten away. There’s a trail of partially-eaten shoe rubber, chunks of flesh and intestines leading toward the trail of droppings.
Michael’s large, lifeless form lays a gray, cadavered mess in the entry. I’d recognize the man anywhere, even with half his head missing, and not missing from animals. His face had been blown clean off. A fitting end, considering what he did to that guard.
Carefully, I step over the body and pool of congealed blood, working my way slowly through the house. It’s not a large place, living room/dining/kitchen combine with only the table and a small set of cabinets, which jut out into a peninsula to separate the space from where the sofa, TV and coffee table sit. Duke and Boss come up close on my heels.
Liv has been here. Farther away from the decomp, I pick up traces, just subtle hints of Liv’s soap.
No exit off the back, the first door opens to a small, clean bathroom. The second, a bedroom. The comforter looks rumpled, but the bed doesn’t look slept in.
Opposite that room, the hints of Liv’s soap becomes stronger. My feet falter, but when I feel Boss’s hand on my back, I close my eyes, breathe in and out, and push forward. Inside this room, the bed has been slept in. Comforter messed. Indentation on the pillow perfectly fits the shape of Liv’s head.
I’ll never forget any detail of that woman. The shape of her head, her delicate fingers, the hourglass cinch of her waist. The feel of her long legs wrapped around my hips after we’ve finished making love and she doesn’t want me to pull out yet.
The way her eyes and her smile lights up whenever she sees me walk into the room. Even if she’s pissed at me. Even if the smile drops right after. It’s always there, greeting me.
No signs of a struggle. Well, thank fucking heavens for small miracles. The window curtain is pulled to the side, the window open along with the screen. “You think she escaped through this window?” I ask.
“Seems likely. But when? Escaping Michael or escaping when Michael was shot?” Duke pulls a cigarette from the pack he keeps in the front pocket of his cut, puts it between his lips but doesn’t light it. He catches me staring at him and shrugs. “Just found out I got me a kid coming. Doc, Peaches and the new baby don’t need to be breathing in my smoke. Trying to quit.”
“Congratulations, brother,” I mumble. A little gleam of light in this dark situation. Then I turn back to look at the bed again. The last place Liv had lied. “She’d know I’d be coming for her. Michael wanted her, not to hurt her. My guess, she escaped when Michael was shot.”
Not filling them in on my next move, I climb through the window and stand outside, trying to connect with Liv, what her next move would be. Hero joins me along with Blood.
“I got a feeling she went this way.” Hero starts moving. The kid’s got instincts. We move from the back side of the house. She’d have checked the SUV for keys. But there are two sets of tire tracks. One that leads to Michael’s black SUV and one from a vehicle which must have belonged to Houdini.
We follow a trail to the edge of the woods. Dainty toe and heel prints captured in the mud clue us in we’re headed in the right direction. The muddy ground makes following her trail easy. Which made it easy for Houdini, too.
About ten minutes into the woods, Hero moves off the trail. Her pursuer must have been close for her to veer into the underbrush. But we’re definitely on the right path. The snapped twigs and thin broken branches prove that. Eventually, we stumble on a shattered hive, probably wasp, and a large branch lying next to the mess. She’d caught the bastard off guard. Good for her.
I can’t help be proud of my woman.
The trail continues on a little ways, bare feet and boot prints. Then what looks like knee prints in the mud.
“Is that… blood?” I squat down to run my fingers through it, rubbing the brownish-red substance between my fingers and thumb. Yeah, blood. Dried and moistened from the air or ground.
“Shit.”
I hear Hero and follow his gaze. No more bare feet. Only a boot trail. This is where he caught her. He didn’t appear to even try to cover up the trail and the boot prints don’t double back.
We head out in the direction of the prints, careful not disturb any we see or potentially ruin any we don’t. The woods get thicker, darker—making it harder to track the prints—before it gets lighter. Though Hero never loses the trail and eventually we emerge into a large clearing where the mountain flattens out. We’re lower than we’d been where Liv got caught.
Standing in the center of the clearing, I can see energy towers running up a mountain pass to the left and a railroad track to the right. But as it’s a clearing, the moisture from recent rains dried up. No more boot prints.
“Which do you think is more likely?” I point to the energy towers, then turn. “Or the railroad?”
“Either would work,” Hero replied. “If it were me, I’d follow the railroad. Hard to know where the towers stop. The railroad’ll keep going.”
“Fuck.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Which way, you think? East or west?”
“That one, I’ll have to think about. Mark the position on GPS.”
Boss’s cell pings with an email. I turn slowly, woodenly as a sudden, overwhelming fear prevents me from moving any faster. He clicks the screen and the shrill scream of Liv’s voice full of pain fills the clearing.
“Which way?” I demand. She won’t make it through another attack. Even if we get her back alive, I’m on the brink of losing the only woman I’ve ever loved. Will ever love.
Blood frantically clicks on his phone. “West, there’s a huge chasm. The bridge crossing was struck by lightning last year. It’s closed off. So my best guess, east.”
I take off full run in the direction of the railroad tracks, heading east. The brothers’ shouts call for me to stop. Duke, our president, demanding it.
Fuck that. I can’t stop now.
15.
Livvy
This recovery took less time than the first, and I’d managed not to puke. It’s funny. Not ha-ha funny, the other kind. The pain is unimaginable when it happens. Worse than any pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. And I think he wants it to linger, but since the first time, it doesn’t.
Once he left and the impact burn calmed, it’s now just a bad memory. And that’s the funny part. The man responsible for helping bring on my breakdown is now helping to treat me. Who would’ve thought Houdini would aid in my recovery?
He won’t break me this time. I won’t let him. Gage and I deserve our happy ending. As long as I keep remembering myself, we’ll get there.
Once again, I crawl around on the dirty metal floor checking for weak spots. Rust spots. Something. Anything. Nothing so far. I make it to the door and pull hard to no avail. I’d figured it would be useless before even trying.
Well, nothing for it, I keep going. Crawling on my hands and knees slowly looking for something that might help me escape. When I reach the mattress, I crawl up and keep dragging my hand between the fabric and wall, making sure my nails scrape the floor. Dirt and other crud collects beneath the nails until they hit a loose rivet. A loose rivet.
I flip the mattress up and begin to dig at it. Catching the nail, it rips harshly away at the quick. The
damn thing bleeds hard enough that I can feel my heartbeat at the wound. Without thinking, I bring my finger up to suck on the tip, hoping to ease some of the pain, vaguely aware that I might be exposing myself to tetanus. When had I gotten my last tetanus shot? Too long to remember, which means too long to be effective.
Whatever, the blood seems just enough to slick the rivet, enabling me to dig it free. The small hole the rivet left behind isn’t enough to work with. It’s not rusty or broken. I look from the hole to the door, then back again.
I wonder… Standing, I move back over to the door and drop to look at the rail the door slides open and closed along. An idea comes to mind. It’ll either work or get me killed, but it’s all I have. The only thing I have.
Another boon from the little rivet hole is the small amount of light that filters inside. No windows. Stagnate air. It gets so warm in here during the day. So warm that most of the time I have to strip the tee from my body and laze around naked, like now, because I can’t stand to have anything touch my skin. And I can’t sit on the mattress for fear of my sweat dampening it. I found that out the hard way. That night had been unpleasant to say the least. It’s never fun to sleep on a wet spot. The way the temperatures drop at night, damp and cold. I shivered harder that night than I have any time since.
I shiver every night.
The little hole is like a private window for only me to know about. Not Houdini.
Except for meeting Logan Hollister—the man who would become Houdini—back in the day, I never used to keep anything from Gage. He was supposed to be Raif’s best friend, but in reality, he’d been mine.
He’d brought me coffee every morning. Chocolate for my periods. I’d never paid for a movie ticket or dinner out. Hell, we’d been dating long before we’d ever dated.
And most importantly, he’d been there for me, to take care of me, through every major life- shitstorm the world had thrown at me.
“She’s gone, Gage.” I wipe the tears away with the sleeve of my blouse, though it’s no use. They keep coming.
“Shh…” He holds me, placing tiny kisses along my temple as he smooths my hair down.
“She’s gone,” I whisper through my sobs.
Gage shifts me so I sit on his lap. “She left you a long time ago, Liv.”
The drugs had taken hold of my mother years before. Pretty much right after I was born, when she finally realized my father had used her and his only intent was to continue using her as his club whore. But she wasn’t exclusive. My father passed her to any brother who had a taste for young, pretty and naïve.
“But now I’m all alone.”
“No. You got Raif and your pop.”
I don’t have Raif, he treats me like he’s embarrassed by me. He treats me like if he’s caught being nice to me by his mother or anyone who could report back to his mother, he’d be betraying his mother. Because Misti hates me.
And I never had my father. He never even showed up to see me born. From what Mom said, he never visited her in the hospital, helped pay for medical costs or even came to pick us up when she’d been released.
When I was six I found out from a club whore who my father had been fucking, that he’d been fucking her the night my mother gave birth.
The club whore thought it was funny. Laughed as she blew cigarette smoke in my face.
Gage knows this. He knows all about it. So for him to even imply what he implied—I start to push up from his lap, but Gage holds me tighter. “Then you got me, baby. And that will never change.”
He presses his forehead to mine, uses his thumb to wipe away my tears and then leans in to capture my lips. His plump, wet lips devour me with that simple touch. He’d never kissed my lips before. Cheeks or forehead for years, never lips. I sink into his kiss, giving myself over through my mouth, the delicate touches from my fingertips.
The new tears fall for a completely different reason. My heart feels so full. He pulls back only enough to look into my eyes. “I love you, Liv. I’m in love with you. When you turn eighteen, I’ll take you away from here. Promise, baby.” He presses another sweet, loving kiss to my lips.
“That’s two years, Gage,” I manage to get out through kisses.
“Two years.”
In two years, he’ll take me away from here. He loves me. Gage St. James loves me.
Predictably, once the light filtering around the door dims to twilight, I hear him outside fumbling with the lock. Quickly, I throw the T-shirt back on to cover my body, pick up the rivet with my toes, and move back over to wait beside the door.
He looks surprised to see me standing so close to the exit. Usually, I press myself as far back against the wall as possible on the mattress.
“There a reason you’re standin’ here?”
“Hungry,” I lie. “Can I please have my bar?” Only feeding me one granola bar once a day, he swallows it up easily. Houdini hefts himself inside, and when he’s making enough noise not to hear, I slide my foot over to place the rivet in the track.
Houdini reaches in his back pocket to pull a semi-flattened granola bar and throws it at my head, exactly as he does every time. I fumble trying to catch it and the bar falls onto the floor. A ruse today.
I squat down to pick up the bar and tear open the filmy packaging in order to covertly watch him slide the door shut.
The rivet works, allowing the door to shut fully enough not to raise suspicion, but the lock fails to fully engage.
My heart becomes giddy with hope and excitement, even if my face remains solemn.
“Sure you wanna eat the whole thing now?” He laughs, referring to the times I’ve puked, which means I know he’s going to hurt me again.
The bar goes down my throat like sandpaper. Compartmentalize. The pain will go away. Don’t break down, Liv. Gage. You have to get back to Gage.
I shouldn’t have taken my eyes off him. It’s not until I feel his hand fist my hair to haul me up that I realize my mistake. My scalp burns as I slap at his hands several times and he gives me a rough shake as he drags me over to the welded horseshoe. There he throws me down half on, half off the mattress.
I cry out in pain when my knee clips the horseshoe.
On the mattress, I rub at my knee, distracted by the pain. He likes to see me in pain, the fact that he laughs while I wince would be enough evidence, but since he’s started the torture sessions, I swear he gets himself off afterward. He either gets himself off or finds someone to get him off as hard, as he gets once I begin screaming. I noticed his erection the second day, so on the third, I tried to hold back the screaming. It didn’t work.
The scream escaped my lips and then he punished me extra for denying him.
So now I let myself scream.
From the black, plastic garbage bag, he again pulls the thick, leather collar and chain to secure to the horseshoe. The shackles are bad, but the collar, the collar is the worst. It makes me feel less than human. I know there are people who get off on the bondage thing, and I don’t judge them, but that has never been my scene. I don’t fight him when he fastens the collar around my neck. He tightens it just tight enough to leave red marks when it’s removed and to make breathing just that little bit difficult enough to remind me he’s the one in charge and can take my life at any moment.
Once he feels confident I’m secure, he removes the tripod from the bag to set up. Secures the phone. Pulls up the video app. But unlike the other times, he not only pulls the prod from the bag, but Michael’s switch. Or one just like it, the one he’d used to beat my back.
He turns me so my back faces the camera and lifts my tee up over my head, not off. It catches on my arms. His hand glides against the skin from the middle of my back down over the curve of my naked ass, and even if I can’t see, I know he’s recording touching me to get at Gage.
“I want the Hollister whore and the bastard,” he says, I know not to me. The message is for the Lords. Then he slaps my bottom a couple times. I brace, waiting for what’s to come next.
Per the usual, he touches the prod to my thigh and I scream. My muscles convulse, but he tugs on the chain connected to the collar to keep me on my feet. It chokes and I gurgle, clasping at the leather with shackled hands to pull it away from my neck. There’s still air in my lungs—it’s that constriction. Constriction goes against life and thus feels unnatural.
Thankfully, he jerks the charge away, but knowing from days of this treatment, the reprieve is temporary. I brace for a second go. What I don’t expect is to hear the whoosh of the switch right before the sting cracks against my skin. The pain so different from the charge, coming so unexpected, although it shouldn’t because I saw him remove it from the bag, noted it in my mind. I guess I’d been so focused on preparing for the prod charge that I neglected to let it penetrate why he’d have the switch.
My back bows away from him, legs shaking violently and I fall to my knees. There’s no reprieve this time; he tugs me up by the chain again and before I’m upright enough to ease the strain against my neck, he’s pressing the charge against my thigh.
Back and forth, back and forth, compartmentalizing becomes harder and harder with each attack. He finally stops when I’ve used up all my tears and no sound comes when I scream and I drop to my knees one last time.
He doesn’t pull me up again. Instead he rubs his erection beneath his jeans along my jaw and bends forward to whisper in my ear. “That was beautiful.” Then he kisses my cheek.
The revulsion I feel can’t be described in my current state and I flinch from his touch. This time, he takes no offense or at least doesn’t appear to until he clips my chin with a bent finger hard enough that I know it’ll bruise.
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Brimstone Lords MC 3) Page 13