I didn’t want to have to speak to him. I hated him so much that it was almost worth losing out on the information, just to avoid it. But if I wanted to help Annabelle, I needed to get it out of him.
Alright, then.
I marched back upstairs to the bathroom and started the bath filling with cold water. Back downstairs, I took one last, disgusted look at him...and then grabbed a handful of his shirt and hauled him out of his chair.
He weighed almost nothing. The booze had turned his muscles to fat and then melted the fat away to leave him skinny and mean. He came awake as I dragged him across the living room. “What?” he slurred. “What do you want?”
I ignored him and dragged him up the stairs, his ass and legs bouncing off each step. He was grabbing at my hand, now, trying to free himself, but he didn’t have anywhere near the strength he needed.
We reached the bathroom and I dragged him over to the tub. I took one last look at his drunken, uncomprehending face….
And then I heaved him into the tub and pressed him down under the water.
He woke up fast. Water exploded out of the tub in white plumes as he thrashed but my arm was like iron, pinning him down to the bottom. The aim wasn’t to kill him. The aim was to sober him up, scare him and soften him so that he’d talk.
I waited three seconds and then loosened my hand a little, letting him rise towards the surface.
And then I remembered a phrase from her diary: purple flower. Back when the other girls had still played with her, Annabelle had gotten caught up playing and had come home too late to do her chores. Her step-dad had beaten her and the next day bruises Annabelle called the purple flower kind had risen all over her stomach and chest and she’d had to claim she had her period so that she wouldn’t have to get changed for gym class.
My hand pushed down until her step-dad was on the bottom of the tub again. As he realized I wasn’t letting him up, he began to kick, his boots hammering on the porcelain.
My hand loosened again. He rose until his face almost broke the surface….
I think maybe he has a spy hole, Annabelle had written. Or a camera. I don’t know. But I can feel him watching me, when I’m getting changed.
My hand pushed down again. And this time, it stayed. There were too many pages of misery in that diary. He’d done too much wrong.
He deserved to die.
32
Carrick
Footsteps downstairs, then running up towards me. Not the heavy footfalls of a man.
Annabelle burst into the bathroom, her face deathly pale. “Stop!” she yelled.
I looked at her, looked at her step-dad under the water...and didn’t move. This is what I do. This is vengeance. Not for the club, for once. For her. And maybe it was wrong but I was way past the point where I was going anywhere except hell. So I might as well take him with me.
“Carrick, stop!” She grabbed at my arm, but I was keeping that fucker pinned with everything I had. “Stop!”
Her step-dad’s struggles were slowing, now. “He deserves it.” My voice was rough with emotion.
She grabbed hold of me, crying, pulling at me. “You’re better than this!”
Her step-dad’s limbs were going limp. I shook my head at her. “No. I’m not.”
She pushed her tear-streaked face close to mine. “But I want you to be!”
I stared at her for three long heartbeats. I remembered what she’d said, back at the compound. I believe in you too. She still believed I could be her hero.
I hauled her step-dad out of the tub and hurled him down on the tiles. He drew in a huge lungful of air, coughed up some water and then lay there groaning.
Hunter appeared in the doorway. “You two go downstairs,” I told them.
Annabelle looked at me with huge eyes.
“I have to find out where Volos is,” I told her. “But I won’t kill him.” When I glanced at her step-dad, it took everything I had to say it, but I said it: “I promise.”
She nodded, biting her lip, and took Hunter downstairs. I picked up her step-dad by the neck.
“Now, you sick son of a bitch. You and me are going to have a conversation where I ask the questions and you tell me exactly the fuck what I need to know.” I paused. “I promised I wouldn’t kill you. But I am hoping, fucking praying that you try to hold out on me because then I get to beat it out of you. Understand?”
He nodded, terrified.
“Then let’s begin.”
A half hour later, I came downstairs. Hunter and Annabelle were sitting on the couch in the living room. Annabelle looking scared and Hunter was giving me a reproachful glare—probably for taking off on my own again.
“I’m done with him,” I told them. I held out my hand to Annabelle. “C’mon. Let’s get anything you want from your room.” I figured she wouldn’t want to ever come back here again.
Upstairs, she slowed as we passed the closed door to the bathroom. A faint groan came from inside. She swallowed and continued along the hallway.
In her room, she stopped and frowned at the empty closet. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I know where your clothes are.”
She turned to the bed and started gathering up the books. Then she froze as she saw the diary lying on top of them. Her gaze snapped to me, first accusing and hurt and then ashamed.
I opened my arms and she ran to me, slammed into my chest and nestled there. “I’m sorry,” I told her as I wrapped my arms around her. “I shouldn’t have read it. I couldn’t stop.” I squeezed her tight as she started to cry. “But that bastard can’t hurt you anymore.”
I held her like that for a long time. The press of her warm body made me feel human again, after the cold violence in the bathroom. After what I’d nearly done.
When she moved back from me, she gathered the books into a pile and hefted them, then added a framed photo of her and her mom from the wall. We both looked around. The room was pretty much empty. “Anything else you want to keep?” I asked.
She looked into the empty closet again. And then, bending, she pulled something from the shadows down at the bottom. The brown, threadbare rabbit from when she was a kid. She clutched it to her chest and led the way downstairs.
Outside, I led her and Hunter into the backyard, then looked around for the place her step-dad had told me about. I finally found the patch of loose dirt and sent Hunter for shovels from the tool shed. Annabelle looked at me blankly but it was easier to show her than to explain.
Hunter and I dug together. It only took us a few minutes to uncover the suitcase and the sports bag, heave them up into the sunlight and shake off the worst of the dirt. Annabelle frowned at them, then opened them up.
I grabbed her hand, because I knew what she’d find.
Her clothes. Her purse. Her phone and its charger. All the things someone would pack, if they ran off to New York. Annabelle drew in a shuddering breath, squeezing my hand for strength. I understood: when her step-dad had told me this part, I’d nearly broken my promise. It was sickening, how well he’d planned it.
“No one would ever have looked for me,” she whispered.
I pulled her into my arms and held her so close that I could feel her heartbeat. I didn’t want to let go of her and that was the only thing that stopped me from marching into the house and killing the bastard for destroying her faith in mankind.
Hunter backed off, giving us some space. I held Annabelle tight, the guilt filling me, choking me, until I couldn’t take it anymore. I drew back and looked into her eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” I blurted. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back.”
“I chose not to call you,” she said. “I was keeping you for when I really needed you. And you came then.”
I wanted to say something but I couldn’t find the words. I could feel stuff stirring in my chest, shit I hadn’t felt since I was a teenager, and I couldn’t explain it. Not just wanting her. Not even just wanting to protect her. More than that. “I’ll never leave you again,” I said at last.
She swallowed, tears welling up in her eyes. “Promise me that,” she said.
I nodded. “I promise.” And then my hands were on those soft cheeks, my thumbs rubbing away her tears, and I was grabbing her and kissing her hard, kissing the pain away. My hands slid up her cheeks and I buried my fingers in her soft copper locks, unable to help myself. Every brush of that silky hair against the backs of my fingers was reassurance that she was here, now, and not back in those years of hell with her step-dad. And meanwhile her hands were under my cut, running over the muscles of my shoulders and back, clinging to me as if I was her link to the present. I don’t know if I was imagining it or if her step-dad had dragged himself up off the bathroom tiles and made it to a window, but I felt like he was watching us. She’s mine now, I thought viciously. She’s mine and you’re never getting her back.
When we finally broke, her tears had dried but she still clung tight to my hand as we stumbled across the uneven ground to get back to the road. It would have been quicker to cut through the house but neither of us wanted to venture inside again. Hunter was waiting for us by the bikes. He’d already strapped Annabelle’s bags to them and was in the saddle, ready to go. I nodded to him to go on ahead. “We’ll catch you up,” I said.
He nodded and roared off, but not before giving me another of those reproachful looks. Shit. He was pissed I’d come out here solo, acting on my own again instead of involving the club. He’d tell Mac and he’d be pissed, too. I’d have to deal with that tomorrow.
I climbed onto my bike and Annabelle climbed on behind me. But when I sat there without starting the engine, she touched my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
I sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “Your step-dad didn’t know anything. He never saw Volos’s face. He never heard his real name. He overheard one of the fucker’s bodyguards say something about standing stock.”—I shrugged and shook my head in disgust—”must mean the other women they’ve bought, the ones they haven’t sold on yet. But that’s it. Nothing we can use to find him.” I gazed back towards the house. “I should have killed him.”
Her cool hands grabbed my cheeks, her skin soft against my stubble, and turned me to look at her. “No you shouldn’t,” she told me. “That would make you like him. Like Volos.”
I lowered my head. “I already am like him.”
She put her hand under my chin and made me look at her. “No you’re not.”
I stared into her eyes. She knew I’d done things for the club. She knew I’d killed. But she didn’t know the worst of it.
She didn’t know about the innocent life I’d taken.
“What?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“You read my diary,” she said defiantly. “I should know this. Whatever it is.”
I looked back at the house. “Reading your diary showed me the worst of him. Not of you.”
She put her hands on my chest. “I want to know all of you. Even the worst parts.”
But I shook my head. The memories were a sac of poison inside me, the toxins slowly dripping out and soaking through my soul. I’d gotten used to that bitter, dark taste but I didn’t want it touching her. I didn’t want it touching what we had. I turned to face front and finally started the bike. As it roared into life, her arms slipped around my waist. But there was a tension between us, now.
I gunned the throttle and we left her old house behind forever. Her past was laid to rest but I couldn’t get away from mine.
I wanted to be with her, body and soul. I wanted it so bad. And she was right: if you’re going to really be with someone, you have to know them completely.
But I couldn’t tell her about I’d done...once I started, it would all come out. Briggs. Chicago.
My family.
I couldn’t take telling her that.
But if I didn’t tell her, I might lose her forever.
33
Annabelle
“Okay,” I muttered. “There’s something you don’t see every day.”
I was looking up at a huge white banner that stretched between two trees. Sixth Annual Hill Descent Challenge, it read. And right in the center was a cartoon of an ox riding a Harley.
I looked down to where the real Ox straddled a real Harley. The cartoon looked sensible by comparison. I’d wondered how on earth such a big guy could ride a bike and the answer was, simply, he has a very big bike.
The Harley must have been custom-built for him. It was longer, wider, meaner. A rhino could have ridden it and not have looked out of place. Ox just about fit.
The event was pretty simple. Ox rode all the way from the top of the twisting mountain road to the bottom at breakneck speed. There was a sweepstake with prizes donated by local businesses: the winner was the person who guessed closest to the exact time. After six years, it had gotten pretty serious, with a big digital clock linked up to the Sheriff’s speed trap hardware at the finish line and hundreds of sweepstake entries. Mom sold hot dogs and there were commemorative t-shirts, too. All the money raised went to the kids’ ward at the medical center.
“And he organizes all this himself?” I asked Carrick.
He nodded, sliding an arm around my waist. “We all help out, but it’s a him thing, not a club thing.” He looked at Ox. “I know...he doesn’t seem like the type. But he likes kids.”
I smiled. I was enjoying getting to know them. Mac, Hunter, Ox, Viking...the bikers who’d scared me so much when I first walked into the clubhouse were starting to feel like friends. And with Mom around, it almost felt like a big, weird family. “Gentle giant with a heart of gold, huh?”
Carrick gave me a look. “Not so gentle when he gets riled. Don’t ever make him angry.” He used the arm around my waist to hook me around so that I was facing him, then pushed the hair back from my cheek. For a second, he just looked at me. I could feel myself flushing. I still wasn’t used to the way he looked at me: those intense blue eyes eating up every detail, drinking me in like I was the best thing he’d ever seen. Then the lick of raw heat that let me know he was imagining stripping me, hurling me on the bed and roughly taking me, his stubble scratching my cheek as he pounded into me from above or his breath hot in my ear as he slammed into me from behind—I swallowed, a wave of heat racing down my body to pool in my groin.
When he looked at me like that, with those eyes as clear and blue as the sky, it seemed like everything was perfect. But inevitably, his eyes would cloud with pain. Something he was remembering, something that was eating away at him from the inside. That thing he’d done that he thought made him irredeemable. The one he still wouldn’t share, the one that meant there was still distance between us.
He slept like a baby in my arms each night but, if I woke and went to the bathroom, I’d sometimes return to find him in the midst of a nightmare, face so contorted in hate and disgust that my chest clenched up tight. But when I woke him, he’d refuse to talk about it.
Mac passed us, his cell phone clamped to his ear. “One minute!” he announced. “They’re all ready at the finish line!”
Carrick glanced at him and I saw his face tighten. He and Mac had had a shouting match just after we returned from my old house. Mac had been mad that Carrick had gone off on his own again and Carrick had snapped that he’d do what he wanted. It had been three days and they still hadn’t made up. I’d seen how close the two of them were. It must be killing them to be at each other’s throats. And I knew that I was part of the cause.
At least there’d been no more attacks by Volos. Everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop but there were enough armed bikers attending today’s event that I felt safe. Even the Sheriff’s department was there, since they’d had to close the road. Sheriff Harris had been looking into Volos for us but so far had drawn a complete blank: no one had any information on the guy.
Ox started his bike, sending plumes of blue-gray smoke into the air. Its massive engine made the air throb and the pavement shake. The crowd whooped and roared.
Ox revved his engine. The crowd cheered and started a countdown. “Ten! Nine! Eight!”
Carrick leaned in to kiss me before the start. For a moment, our problems were forgotten. It only needed a brush of those hard Irish lips against mine to make me forget everything. He kissed me hard, then teased me. His tongue licking along my upper lip...and then he sucked it into his mouth and nibbled it in a way that made my whole body lift and quiver.
“Seven!” yelled the crowd. “Six!”
Carrick’s hands slid down my shoulders, down my sides and grabbed my ass, pulling me closer, my body fitting so neatly against his, like we were designed to fit together. What had started as a quick kiss became something else: his hands were possessive, locking me against him, and there was nowhere I would have rather been in the world.
“Five! Four!”
His tongue found mine and we kissed open-mouthed and hungry, my hands running over the muscles of his arms. God, I wanted this man. I needed him. Why wouldn’t he let me know that final part of him, the part he hated so much?
He reluctantly released me as the crowd yelled, “Three! Two! One!”
I opened my eyes and turned to look just as Ox roared away in a cloud of tire smoke. Everyone else coughed and turned away but, me being me, I inhaled it like it was nectar. Burnt rubber. Oil and gasoline. And—
I blinked. And then tore away from Carrick and ran to the start line as Ox disappeared into the distance. He caught up to me as I squatted down right where Ox’s bike had been and fingered the ground. “What is it?” he asked.
I wiped the clear liquid off the pavement and put my fingers right under my nose to check I was right. But I knew that smell anywhere. I’d smelled it when we’d been working on Hunter’s bike, checking the oil and the tranny fluid and the—
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